There are faster ways to start an online fight, but not many. Say "$10,000 DAC" and watch audio-forum commenters descend like pigeons on a dropped hot dog, flapping and furious. They'll tell you the designers are crooks, the buyers are dupes, and anyone not DIY-ing with AliExpress kits is a poseur.
Building high-end hi-fi equipment costs serious coin, but you wouldn't know it from the Anger, Smugness, and Rigidity found on certain objectivist audio forums, where anything north of, say, $5000 is deemed a ripoff or a status buy. To posters in those snark-infested waters, expensive equals…
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Zack Lober: So We Could Live
Lober, bass; Jasper Blom, tenor saxophone; Suzan Veneman, trumpet; Sun-Mi Hong, drums
ZenneZ ZR2025015 (CD). 2025. Ben Van Gelder, prod.; Alessandro Mazzieri, eng.
Performance ****
Sonics ****½
Lober, bass; Jasper Blom, tenor saxophone; Suzan Veneman, trumpet; Sun-Mi Hong, drums
ZenneZ ZR2025015 (CD). 2025. Ben Van Gelder, prod.; Alessandro Mazzieri, eng.
Performance ****
Sonics ****½
Jazz people often hear about the vitality of the Netherlands jazz scene. But if they are American jazz people, they may not hear a lot of evidence. So We Could Live is the evidence.
The leader, bassist Zack Lober, is actually from Montreal. He holds a master's degree from the Manhattan School of Music and had a 14-year career as a sideman in…
Forty years ago, when I was a much younger man, I was a strong dude. I recall one day in 1986, soon after I started working at Sound by Singer, when Krell cofounder Dan D'Agostino drove down from his factory in Connecticut to deliver a load of amplifiers and preamps for us to sell. As the new guy, I was expected to do the grunt work. At the time, Krell only made about a half-dozen products, and the KSA-100 was the biggest and heaviest, at around 120lb in the box. After watching me pick up a few KSA-100 amplifiers, heft them onto my shoulder, and carry them downstairs to the stockroom, Dan…
What I listened to
For a few days, I connected the Brilliance to my office turntable—a Philips AF-887 with Shure M97xe—and spun records through my McIntosh MA6500 integrated amplifier driving Amphion One18 speakers. I got familiar with the controls and dialed in the best-sounding capacitance (350pF). I was impressed with the sound character: crisp and clear, with a full but not thumpy low end. Compared to the built-in phono preamp in the MA6500, the Belleson Brilliance was at another level in terms of clarity, speed, and soundstage depth.
For a few days, I connected the Brilliance to my office turntable—a Philips AF-887 with Shure M97xe—and spun records through my McIntosh MA6500 integrated amplifier driving Amphion One18 speakers. I got familiar with the controls and dialed in the best-sounding capacitance (350pF). I was impressed with the sound character: crisp and clear, with a full but not thumpy low end. Compared to the built-in phono preamp in the MA6500, the Belleson Brilliance was at another level in terms of clarity, speed, and soundstage depth.
Once I was satisfied that the unit I received…
Product photos by Tyler Lo.
My oldest aural memory is my mother singing nursery rhymes to send me off to sleep. After that, it's vinyl records. Being the third child, I benefited from a constant stream of audio-related hand-me-downs, starting with a 1960s kiddie phonograph and a pile of well-worn records from my older brothers. Aside from welding my consciousness and pleasure sensors to recorded sound, those records formed a common reference root for me, my older brothers, and my younger brother, even though our births spanned 11 years. We all spun the same or similar records when we were…
The EM/IA 103 SUT
As I mentioned earlier, this Dream was inspired by watching Jana Dagdagan's YouTube video. It was also inspired by my brothers from the Fraternal Triode Lodge, Jeffrey Jackson of Experience Music (EM) and Dave Slagle of Intact Audio (IA), who recently introduced the EM/IA 103 SUT, a copper-wired, nickel-cored step-up transformer designed specifically for use with Denon's DL-103 (footnote 6).
I smiled as Brother Jackson explained. "This Pelican-cased package consisting of a hand-wound nickel-cored EM/IA SUT ($1500) with a hard-wired cable leadout, a denuded…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I used DRA Labs' MLSSA system and a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone with an Earthworks microphone preamplifier to measure the Stenheim Alumine Two.Five's farfield frequency behavior and dispersion. I used an Earthworks QTC-40 mike for the nearfield and in-room responses and Dayton Audio's DATS V2 system to measure the impedance magnitude and electrical phase angle. The loudspeaker was too heavy for me to carry up the stairs to the large room where I usually perform speaker measurements, so I measured one of the Alumine Two.Fives in my basement listening room.…
My Russian neighbor Alex forges ax heads and smokes pig chests 5' from my bedroom window. At 2:00am, shirtless, in February. One especially cold night, I woke up to the sounds of hammering and loud music. When I looked out, Alex was blacksmithing a glowing red meat cleaver blade, with Rachmaninoff plays Rachmaninoff blaring from a cassette in his boom box. I once helped him break into a white-painted chest-high office safe that he bought at auction. After grinding the tips off a dozen long drill bits, we could see inside through a little hole, and there was nothing in it. No metals dealers…
Super fans who dig deeper into a favorite artist's recording catalog eventually come to the crossroads of performance versus sonics. In the case of Sly Stone, who died this past June at age 82, that question has new relevance with the release on CD and vinyl of a "new" Sly and the Family Stone record, The First Family: Live at Winchester Cathedral 1967.
The audio document of an afterhours performance at a teen club in Redwood City, California, that was named after the 1966 novelty hit by the New Vaudeville Band, this performance is described in the liner notes (with slight hyperbole) as…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I used DRA Labs' MLSSA system and a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone with an Earthworks microphone preamplifier to measure the Volti Audio Lucera's farfield frequency behavior and dispersion. I used an Earthworks QTC-40 mike for the nearfield responses and Dayton Audio's DATS V2 system to measure the impedance magnitude and electrical phase angle. I took a full set of farfield measurements with the microphone at my usual 50" on the tweeter axis, which is 36" from the floor.