I measured the Mårten Design Coltrane with the speaker biwired with the supplied Jorma cables and supported by the Black Diamond Racing cones and pucks, to allow its reflex port to be raised sufficiently high above the floor. Because of the speaker's bulk, it was not possible to raise it several feet from the floor for the acoustic measurements, as is my normal practice. I therefore had to window the time-domain data more aggressively than usual, to eliminate the effect of a strong floor reflection. This reduces the resolution of the farfield measurements in the…
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Naim Audio has a reputation for making products that are truer than most to music's temporal content: rhythm, pacing, the beat almighty. Beginning with their classic solid-state amps of the mid-1970s, Naim's designers have stressed, above all else, the reduction of distortions that puff up and pad the attack and decay components of musical sounds: Getting rid of those additives seems to clarify the timing relationship between different notes in a line, making music more compelling and easier to enjoy. That their gear has historically favored musical content over sonic attributes is no shock…
Lest you assume the Naim's rhythmic strengths hold more interest for fans of rock music than of classical, consider something such as the Boulez/Vienna Philharmonic recording of Mahler's Symphony 6 (Deutsche Grammophon 445 835-2), surely one of the great Mahler recordings of recent times. I thought it benefited from the CD5x's timing strengths, especially given Boulez's choice of a less than brisk tempo for the opening bars—which I've heard suffer when the replay gear is lacking in momentum. Beyond that, the CD5x sounded appealing overall: Timbral colors were, as suggested earlier, well…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Single-box CD player. Formats supported: CD, CD-R, CD-RW. Output level: 2.0V RMS at 1kHz. Output impedance: ±10 ohms. Output jacks: RCA, DIN. Distortion & noise: ±0.1%, 10Hz-18kHz.
Dimensions: 17" W by 12" D by 3" H. Weight: not noted.
Serial number of unit reviewed: 206871.
Price: $2900. Approximate number of dealers: 35.
Manufacturer: Naim Audio Limited, Southampton Road, Salisbury, Wiltshire, England SP1 2LN, UK. Tel: (44) 1722-332266. Web: www.naim-audio.com. US distributor: Naim Audio North America, 2702 West Touhy Avenue,…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog sources: Linn LP12 turntable, Naim Armageddon power supply, Naim Aro tonearm; Galibier Quattro Supreme turntable, Graham Robin tonearm; Miyabi 47, Linn Akiva phono cartridges; Audio Note AN-S2 step-up transformer.
Preamplifier: Fi.
Power amplifier: Lamm ML2.1 monoblocks, EAR 890.
Loudspeakers: Quad ESL-989.
Cables: Interconnect: Audio Note AN-Vx, Nordost Valhalla, homemades. Speaker: Audio Note AN-SPx, Nordost Valhalla, homemades.
Accessories: Mana stands (Linn turntable, preamp); big piece of MDF (Galibier turntable); Base base (EAR…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
As the Naim CD5x is an upgraded version of the CD5, which Michael Fremer reviewed in April 2001, I was interested in seeing what had changed in the player's measured performance. All the measurements were taken from the RCA jacks with the DIN socket turned off with the remote. The maximum output level at 1kHz was about the same as the CD5's, at 2.107V, and the output's absolute polarity was correct. The player's output impedance was still extremely low across most of the audioband, at 2 ohms, but still rose at extreme low frequencies, presumably due to the size…
Art Dudley returned to the CD5X in November 2005 (Vol.28 No.11):
Growing up has nothing to do with hormones or hairlines. Growing up happens when people become blasé about the things that used to excite them—things that made them fly through the air with their mouths open, swallowing wonder the way swallows swallow mosquitoes.
So it goes in the world of hi-fi, where memories are short and yesterday's favorite toys are today's switchplates and curtain rods. Moving-coil cartridges, single-ended amps, OTL amps, electrostatic speakers, AR turntables, Linn turntables, Notts Analog…
Suppose you've put aside some cash for a new preamp. You survey the field and zero in on the Musical Ecstasy 1000 and the Sonic Nirvana Special. Both got good reviews in all the magazines, they look great, and each will set you back about the same number of mortgage payments. So you visit your dealer and camp out for a weekend or two. You listen, you think, you walk around the store, you listen some more, you recalculate your tax return. You listen some more. Finally, you have a winner. "I want that one," you tell your dealer; "the Sonic Nirvana."
A week later the new issue of…
In some ways, of course, the ratings game really does matter. Even though ratings don't give a true and objective assessment of the quality of institutions, they matter because many people believe they do. As a result, they can powerfully shape public perceptions and behavior. Now I'm working at yet another school touched by scandal. Its law school suddenly dropped in the rankings from (so-called) "second tier" to "third tier." What happened? It turned out that U.S. News & World Report made a computational error: The school should have retained its second-tier ranking. Unfortunately, 225…
In the 1950s, psychologists learned just how powerful consensus can be. One famous experiment speaks for itself. Imagine that you've been recruited to participate in a study of visual perception. Your neighbor, for example, is a psychologist studying how people see things; she asks you to come to her lab, look at a few charts, and answer a few questions. There will be a handful of other subjects involved, she explains, and the whole thing will take 25 minutes. No big deal.
So you find yourself and seven or eight strangers seated around a conference table, at the end of which are two…