Marshall: I decided to go in a different way all together. And, you know, I think it was good that Mo gave me the complete freedom to do that. He didn't put any constraints on me doing things. He didn't say, "Hmm, I'm not sure about that." He was prepared to let me just have a completely free hand, finish the design, and then he would go out and sell it. Fortunately it all worked.
It lasted two years. I left Mo to start Epos (though I went back to work for Mo for a week after my own…
Marshall: And they made it sound worse. Most people I think were in agreement that the best thing you could do with an SL6 was to take that kill circuit out. That made it sound so much better.
Atkinson: I said earlier that you make your own drive-units, including the 26mm dome for the ES-14 and the 32mm for the old '20. I've always been told that tweeter manufacture is fraught with problems because of the very close tolerances required on something so small. You went into that . . .
Marshall: Foolishly.
…
Atkinson: You would agree then with Floyd Toole's findings that, off-axis, you need a controlled dispersion across the band, with no sharp discontinuities at any frequency?
Marshall: Yes, absolutely. However, what you also get with gentle-slope…
When I left you at the end of January's column, I was anticipating speedy upgrades for Denon's AVR-4806 receiver and DVD-5910 universal disc player (each costs $3500) so that I could assess my system with the latest version of Audyssey's MultEQxt equalization software, and compare Denon's DenonLink 3rd Edition with iLink to transmit the multichannel digital data while playing SACD and DVD-Audio discs. Then we could move on…
BARTÓK: Concerto for Orchestra
KLEIN: Partita for Strings
MARTINU: Memorial to Lidice
Christoph Eschenbach, Philadelphia Orchestra
Ondine ODE 1072-5 (SACD)
This, the long-awaited debut disc of the Philadelphia Orchestra in their new partnership with Eschenbach, is superb. Recorded live at Verizon Hall in detailed and powerful 5.0-channel sound, it offers three major, serious 20th-century works, although the best-known, Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra, is not the best reason to buy it. The reasons are the Martinu masterpiece,…
I had that experience recently—only it didn't happen in an audio store, it was a wine shop. Just before the holidays, I walked into a store on Seventh Avenue in Brooklyn and looked over the Bordeaux selection, half listening to the clerk browbeat another customer for not knowing precisely what he wanted. After intimidating the…
With great fear, I submitted to a full ear/nose/throat workup, part of which was a test of my hearing by an audiologist. I sat in a soundproof booth wearing a pair of ancient Koss Stereophones, indicating with a wave of my hand when I heard a sound. With an inferred pat on the back, the audiologist told me that my hearing was normal and advised that I take sinus meds as needed.
But a glance at the…
Editor: I find Michael Fremer's Review of Harmonic Technology Interconnects to be a quintessential example of a significant dysfunction in the audio press, or at least in Stereophile.
Unless I missed something along the way, a widely accepted criteria for electronic audio equipment is to add nothing to the audio signal except gain or transmit signal without altering it. This product, however, adds a great deal according to your own measurements, so much so that it might better be described as a signal "enhancing" processing device. Mr. Fremer finds the…