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OMA K3: $363,000 including power supply and Schröder SLM tonearm
MF described this idiosyncratically styled, massive, and very expensive turntable as looking "somewhat like the Guggenheim Museum topped by a heliport and a construction crane." Even so, he was impressed by its performance, with the 11.1" "aluminum girder" Schröder tonearm fitted with Ortofon Anna D, Lyra Etna Lambda SL, and Lyra Atlas Lambda SL phono cartridges. He described the K3's sound as "fast, clean, detailed, highly resolving, super-transparent, effortlessly dynamic, and capable of producing…

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SAT CF1-09: €55,000
SAT CF1-12: €58,000
In 2018, after selling 70 of his original Swedish Analog Technologies Tonearms, designer Marc Gomez discontinued it and replaced it with two new tonearms. The more expensive, the CF1-09, is now the company's flagship. The CF1-09's tapered, hand-lapped, "naked"-carbon-fiber armtube has an effective length of 9" and incorporates a number of parts machined from solid stainless steel—including a new vertical bearing yoke that's far more massive than that of the original SAT arm and makes the CF1-09 too heavy for turntables…

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Air Tight PC-1 Coda: $10,000
Manufactured for Air Tight by Yoshio Matsudaira of My Sonic Lab, the PC-1 Coda MC cartridge has a very low impedance of 1.7 ohms and an output of 0.5mV, the latter higher than the moving coil norm. Its body is made from an alloy of aluminum, magnesium, and silicon, plated first in nickel and then in chrome. Compliance specs aren't supplied for the 12.7gm PC-1 Coda, but the tracking-force range is given as 2-2.2g; MF found the lower number insufficient and declared the cartridge's tracking capabilities only "moderately good" at…

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Auditorium 23 Hommage T1 & Hommage T2: both $4995 ★
Over twice the size and weight of the less expensive Standard transformer, the Class A+ Hommage T1, designed as a companion to Auditorium 23's Solovox loudspeaker, is a statement product. It has a textured-paint finish, attractive white-oak endcaps, and input and output resistances of 3 and 2530 ohms, respectively. The Hommage T1 shared the Standard's excellent timing, flow, and overall drama, but produced a much larger soundstage; and while the Audio Note AN-S8 was slightly richer, the Hommage…

I performed the measurements of the LKV PWR-3 with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system. Because the amplifier has a class-D output stage, I inserted an Audio Precision AUX-0025 passive low-pass filter between the test load and the analyzer. This filter mitigates RF noise that would otherwise drive the SYS2722's input circuitry into slew-rate limiting. Without the filter, 210mV of ultrasonic noise with a center frequency of 500kHz was present at the amplifier's output terminals. I used the filter for all the tests other than frequency response.

Because the…

After the dinner and the speechifying, and my roast of Chad Kassem, founder of Analogue Productions, Acoustic Sounds, Quality Record Pressing, and Blue Heaven Studios. came the show's 23 Alfie awards, in three categories—…

The test procedure followed, with minor changes, that established for my previous loudspeaker reviews: the MB Quarts were used with both a Krell KSA-50 and a pair of VTL 100W Compact monoblocks, connected with Monster M1 speaker cable. Preamplifier was either a PS Audio 4.6 with its M-500 power supply or a Mod Squad Phono Drive/Deluxe Line Drive combination. Interconnects were initially Monster M1000, later replaced with MIT 330 and MIT CVT.

Source components consisted of a Marantz CD-94 CD player, which was also used to drive the Sony DAS-R1 D/A…

The MB Quart 280 is definitely a 4 ohm design, to judge from the graph of modulus of impedance vs frequency (fig.1), measured with spot frequency tones but plotted with the Audio Precision System One software. Apart from the sealed-box resonant peak around 75Hz (of moderate height), the impedance doesn't rise above 5 ohms until 450Hz. Above the electrical crossover to the tweeter, which appears to be set to 1450Hz, the 280 presents an easy load to the driving amplifier, averaging 8 ohms between 3kHz and 20kHz. Coupled with its low sensitivity (my measurement…