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I performed the measurements of the Mastersound Compact 845 amplifier with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system. The tubes were installed when I received the review sample, and I waited for an hour after powering up the amplifier before starting the testing. The Mastersound runs hot—after an hour the temperature of the top panel in front of the line-stage tubes was 115.9°F/46.6°C.

The Compact 845 inverted polarity from both the 4 ohm and 8 ohm output transformer taps with the balanced and single-ended inputs but preserved absolute polarity from its Direct…

In three 1958 sessions at Rudy Van Gelder's Hackensack, New Jersey, "living room" studio, Davis and Scott recorded…

I am well aware that the majority of Stereophile readers are not (yet) into multichannel, but two-channel and multichannel audiophiles have long relied on similar media and components. Some of…

Digital sources: Oppo Digital UDP-105 universal disc player, Apple TV 4K, Custom Intel/Win11 music server running JRiver Media Center v30. exaSound s88 Mark II, Okto DAC8 Pro, Mytek Brooklyn+ D/A processors. Marantz VS3003 3 in/1 out HDMI Switch, QNAP TVS-873 NAS.
Preamplifiers: Coleman Audio 7.1SW for balanced source switching. Topping Pre90 preamps for buffer/line drivers.
Power amplifiers: Benchmark AHB2, Paradigm Zamp.
Loudspeakers: KEF Blade 2 Meta (L, R), Revel Ultima2 Studio (C). Revel Performa3 f206 (SL/SR), PSB Imagine XA (FH), Atlantic…

Description: 16-channel Dolby Atmos and DTS-X renderer, Dolby, DTS, and PCM decoder, and digital-to-analog converter. Input: 1 HDMI/ARC/eARC input with word clock on BNC. Supports PCM (44.1–192kHz/16–24 bit), Dolby Digital (DD+, TrueHD, Dolby Surround, Atmos), DTS (AES, HD Master Audio, HD High Resolution Audio, Express-HD LBR, Neural-X). Outputs: Word Clock on BNC, 2 HDMI (full A/V passthrough and audio-only), Dante/AES67 on RJ45, AES3 16 channels via 1 DB25 connector, balanced analog (16 channels via 2 DB25 connectors). Network interface with PoE via RJ45. THD+…

I measured the Arvus H2-4D with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system. I connected the H2-4D's Ethernet port to my network and used the unit's GUI to set the processor's output configuration to "5.1.2," to make sure there was no DSP being used, and to set its volume control to the maximum. Initially, the data source was the HDMI output of my Roon Nucleus+, and playback was with the Roon 2.0 app, which recognized the Arvus as an ALSA device. However, concerned that I was getting anomalous results with data sampled at rates higher than 48kHz and bit depths greater than…

Few people make albums about isolation and loneliness sound as appealing as John Doe does. That's what Doe has achieved with his latest solo release, Fables in a Foreign Land (LP, Fat Possum FP 18001). Set as a song cycle in the 1890s, the album's 13 songs reflect Doe's penchant for dust-and-diesel storytelling, within an acoustic-trio format. It's "telling stories and playing music around the modern campfire," Doe said in an interview.

Doe's mining of what some call the "dark folk" vein during the latter portion of his solo career hearkens back to his…

Mettler: The sequencing on Fables is key to telling the story. By the time we get to "Sweetheart," you feel like it's in the right place—it couldn't have been, say, track 2; it had to be track 12.

Doe: I let Steve Berlin do the Fables sequence. He said, "Can I have a shot at it?" And I said, "Sure, go for it." We all agreed it was a good sequence. I think we made only one or two changes. We left "Sweetheart" off the vinyl, so don't be too disappointed. We did that because the sides were a little uneven, and we didn't want that.

Mettler: Well, you can put "Sweetheart" out…

Though it's often forgotten in the wake of Motown's success, there was also a blues scene in Detroit in which no one loomed larger than John Lee Hooker. Cut at a single session in 1962 in Chicago, Burnin' has been reissued by Craft on 180gm vinyl.

Hooker, who began his career playing solo, rockin' joints with his upbeat crowd pleasers put over by his growling vocal delivery, decided here to play with a group of musicians imported from Detroit,…