Digital sources: Oppo Digital UDP-105 universal disc player, custom Baetis Prodigy-X4i music server running JRiver Media Center v28 and Roon 1.8, Mytek Brooklyn+ DAC, exaSound s88 streaming DAC, and Okto DAC8 Pro D/A processors. QNAP TVS-873 NAS.
Preamplifiers: Coleman Audio 7.1SW for source switching. 3 Topping Pre90s for buffer/line-drivers.
Power Amplifiers: Benchmark AHB2, NAD C 298.
Loudspeakers: Revel Ultima2 Studio with IsoAcoustics Gaia I isolation feet. Revel Performa3 f206 for surrounds. Two SVS SB-3000 & one SB-2000Pro subwoofers…
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Sidebar 3: Associated Equipment
Parisian high-end audio dealer AnaMighty Sound's room, F114 in Atrium 4, showed several products made in Switzerland from darTZeel, Stenheim, and Nagra. The room also became a mini-concert venue for a couple of demo sessions on Saturday that incorporated live music: Jazz saxophonist Jérôme Sabbagh played solo, accompanied by playback of his No Filter album bandmates on the room's system. They played 24-bit/96kHz versions of the tracks with Sabbagh's sax parts/tracks omitted.
These half-hour presentations were a nice diversion; a different way of showing how, or to what extent, a system…
The Los Angeles and Orange County Audio Society (LAOCAS) has chosen John Atkinson, former editor-in-chief and now technical editor of Stereophile, as the winner of its 29th annual Founder's Award. The award comes 57 years after JA1 began making recordings on his first tape recorder and 46 years since he began working at a hi-fi magazine, as an editorial assistant at British magazine Hi-Fi News & Record Review.
John's career has been illustrious and varied. Due to his self-described "schizophrenic nature," he was passionately drawn to music but excelled academically in science…
I have this friend, a smart, good-looking young physicist from Argentina. Naturally, I call him "Gaucho." He lives in a glistening-white steel-and-glass apartment overlooking lower Manhattan. I visit him regularly, usually with a group of audio friends, mainly to compare recordings, drink wine, and talk hi-fi.
One day, unexpectedly, Gaucho invited me over to listen to his system—just me—so that I could tell him what I "really think" of his system's sound.
His digital source is Roon into a dCS Rossini DAC and Master Clock. His record player is the latest SME 20/3 turntable with an…
Then Woo Audio's 3ES preamp/electrostatic headphone amplifier arrived. Putting it in my system as a preamp radically changed my thinking about what a line-level preamplifier could be and should do. Its push-pull 6SN7 voltage-amplifier tube and push-pull 300B cathode-follower output put a shot of LSD-clarity and power-triode umph into every signal passing through it. After Jack Wu collected the 3ES, I sulked and sighed longingly for a month, wishing for a full-function linestage that would be at once vigorous and invisible.
Then, recently, when the Linn Audio LP12 Klimax record playing…
Music lovers (and reviewers) long for those listening moments when their entire being lights up with joy. For me, that divine spark surfaced unexpectedly one February afternoon when, late for an appointment, I dashed into the music room, searching for my keys. That's when I heard a bit of the 24/96 WAV files of this issue's Recording of the Month, conductor Andris Nelsons's mammoth survey of the complete orchestral works of Richard Strauss, which I'd cued up on repeat to help Meitner's MA3 integrated D/A converter ($10,500) settle in. I didn't know which of Nelsons's two orchestras, the…
Amadeus Meitner told me that Ed's "passion project" for the last few years has been perfecting the company's DS-EQ1 Optical Equalizer, a dedicated phono preamp for DS Audio optical cartridges. Through his research, EMM Labs learned how to make "serious improvements to its analog architecture." My upgraded DV2 includes component-value adjustments and "optimized" circuits in the (analog) output stage. The considerably more open soundstage and extended top of the upgraded DV2 significantly altered my impressions of this flagship integrated DAC. Had my DV2 not been upgraded, I would not have…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Fully discrete single-bit 16×DSD upconverting integrated D/A processor with volume control and remote control. Roon Ready, with streaming from Tidal, Qobuz, Deezer, Spotify, and vTuner internet radio, and file playback from NAS, external drive, or USB stick using Roon or UPnP/DLNA. Inputs: AES3 (XLR), S/PDIF (RCA electrical and TosLink optical), USB, USB Media (2) Type A, a Network/ Ethernet interface (RJ45), and RS-232 for Remote and Service. USB Audio input supports up to DSD128 and DXD with full MQA decoding; other inputs support up to DSD64 and…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Digital sources: dCS Rossini SACD/CD transport, Rossini DAC, and Rossini Clock; EMM Labs DV2 Integrated DAC; Synology 5-bay NAS 1019+; Roon Nucleus+ music server with HDPlex 200 linear power supply; Uptone Audio etherRegen, Small Green Computer Sonore opticalModule, TP-Link gigabit Ethernet media converters plus multimode duplex fiberoptic cable (2), Linksys routers (2); Small Green Computer linear power supply & Small Green Computer/ HDPlex four-component, 200W linear power supply (3); external hard drives, SSD USB sticks, iPad Pro; Apple 2017 Macbook…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I measured the Meitner MA3 with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system, repeating some tests with the magazine's higher-resolution APx500 system. I performed the testing using the AES3 and coaxial and TosLink S/PDIF inputs, all of which accepted data sampled at all rates up to 192kHz, as well as via the USB and network ports, the former using my MacBook Pro, the latter using Roon. Apple's AudioMIDI utility revealed that the MA3's USB port accepted 16- and 24-bit integer data sampled at all rates from 44.1kHz to 384kHz. Apple's USB Prober app identified the Meitner as "…