Sidebar 2: Associated equipment For most of my listening the analog front-end consisted of a VPI TNT turntable with all the latest updates, including the Flywheel (footnote 1), fitted with either a Rockport Capella air-bearing linear tracking arm or the Graham 1.5t with ceramic armtube. The cartridge was either a Clavis DC or a Dynavector XX-1L. The 'table sat on a Bright Star Audio Big Rock TNT isolation platform, which rested on a TNT stand filled with lead shot and sand. I also listened on the Rotel RP-900 turntable/Sumiko Blue Point combo.
The digital source was an EAD T-7000…
Sidebar 3: Who the heck is Audio Physic? Audio Physic President Joachim Gerhard is 38 years old and has been an audiophile for about 20 years. His hi-fi passion started out as a friendly competition with some friends about who had the best system. At the time, Gerhard had a big Tannoy horn, one friend had the Koss Model IV electrostat, and the another friend had the Ohm F.
Even then, Gerhard was struck by the basic dilemma that he's been working on ever since: how to overcome the seemingly insurmountable conflict between achieving musicality, pace, rhythm, and drive on the one…
I was lucky to hear a demonstration of the Terra. It added an enormous amount of realism to music reproduction—there was simply more "there" there. On the other hand, it sometimes cruelly revealed studio trickery. The Sonny Clarke Memorial Quartet's Voodoo (Black Saint BSR 0109), one of my February 1992 "Records To Die For" selections, was revealed—in a system composed of the Forsell Air Bearing turntable with arm and Flywheel (footnote 2), a Lyra cartridge, Adyton electronics, some prototype speakers, and just one Terra subwoofer—to have been the object of rather more equalization than I…
Sidebar 4: Measurements The Audio Physic Virgo is a reasonably hard load for an amplifier to drive, as shown by its plots of impedance magnitude and phase against frequency (fig.1). Not only does the impedance drop below 4 ohms for pretty much the entire midrange, but the phase angle is also moderately high in the upper bass and low treble. The changes in impedance with frequency, however, are small. The "saddle" in the magnitude trace at 27Hz indicates a low tuning frequency for the large port. The wrinkle at 230Hz is probably due to a cabinet resonance of some kind.
Fig.1…
Regarding the Virgo's horizontal dispersion (fig.4, which shows just the changes in response off-axis), there's a peculiar step around 1kHz, which is perhaps due to the side-firing woofers. Other than that and a slight flare at the bottom of the tweeter's passband, the dispersion is even, with progressive HF rolloff as the listener moves to the speaker's sides. This always correlates with excellent imaging ability, and the Virgo is no exception, to judge from MF's auditioning comments and my own listening. The apparent peak at 27kHz in this graph is due to the on-axis interference notch in…
To examine how these quasi-anechoic responses sum, fig.6 shows a spatially averaged response trace taken for the pair of Virgos in my own listening room after I had experimented for a while to get the optimal integration with the room acoustics. There's a slight energy excess in the upper bass, which is only partly due to the room; note, though, the excellent low-bass extension, the Virgo being flat to below the 31.5Hz, 1/3-octave band. This gave both rock and orchestral recordings a secure musical foundation, I found. Though the midrange and treble in-room meet superb ±1.5dB limits between…
Mikey wrote again about the Virgo in June 1999 (Vol.22 No.6):
Despite my Sonus Faber Amati ravings, my long-term reference, the Audio Physic Virgo, need not apologize for its performance. It is still a very special loudspeaker. The proof is that Audio Physic has had a difficult time selling the excellent $10k/pair Avanti, which is priced between the Virgo and the $19,000/pair Caldera. (From what I've heard of the Caldera, I find it inexplicable that this speaker is still placed in Class B in Stereophile's "Recommended Components" rather than Class A.) The Virgo is that good.
…
Geminiani: Concerti Grossi
Concerto 1 in D, Concerto 2 in B-flat, Concerto 3 in C, Concerto 4 in F, eight others.
Andrew Manze, Academy of Ancient Music; Alison McGillivray, cello; Richard Egarr, harpsichord.
Harmonia Mundi HMU 907261.62 (2 CDs). 2000. Robina G. Young, prod.; Geoff Miles, Mike Clements, engs. AAD? TT: 2:24:19
Performance ****?
Sonics ****? In 1716 in London, violinist Francesco Geminiani, just off the boat from his home in Italy, was called to play before King George I. Worried that an unknown and somewhat less-than-stellar harpsichord accompanist…
As much as I'm tempted by the impressive sweep and scale with which some of the large, full-range loudspeakers endow music, for some reason I find myself more at home with more compact examples of the breed. This is not through lack of familiarity with large speakers, a pair of B&W Matrix 801s occupying pride of place in our living room (which also serves as my wife's listening room). Yet I find myself hankering after that ultimate soundstage precision that only minimonitors seem capable of producing: the loudspeakers totally disappearing, vocal and instrumental images hanging in space,…
Both satellites and subwoofer come with comprehensive Owner's Manuals covering all aspects of setup and use and offering good advice on where to site the units within the room to get the optimum sound. Would that all loudspeakers were as well served in this respect.
The sound
The Modulus pedestals were supplied ready-assembled; all that I needed to do was to fill the 22", diecast aluminum center pillars first with 12 lbs of No.8 hard lead shot, then with dry sand to within 1" of the top plate. A foam plastic insert then ensures that the top plate is adequately damped. The base of…
