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The pyramidal cabinet, constructed from 1" MDF and beautifully finished in gloss-black lacquer, is equally complex. Extensive use is made of damping and bracing to minimize panel resonances, and the 1.6" front baffle is constrained-layer-damped; ie, it is made of a sandwich of two MDF panels with a layer of high-loss thermoplastic damping material between them, and has profiled edges to optimize high-frequency dispersion. The midrange units have their own internal chamber, and the twin flared ports that load the woofers are dimensioned and placed so that the natural pipe resonances are more…
Aiding the Sony speaker's clarity was a superbly clean-sounding treble register. While the SS-M9ED was in no way reticent in the highs, those highs seemed completely free from the grain that would otherwise have me reaching for the volume control. Since I heard Hammond B-3 organist Jimmy Smith live at the Blue Note last February, his Dot Com Blues CD (Verve 314 549 978-2, Stereophile's "Recording of the Month" for April 2001) has been spending a lot of time in the Levinson transport. Like many recordings these days, its recorded balance is a little hot in the treble, yet Smith's stereo-miked…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Four-way, reflex-loaded, floorstanding loudspeaker. Drive-units: 1" (25.4mm) ceramic/carbon-dome supertweeter, 1" (25.4mm) soft-dome tweeter, 5" (127mm) plastic-cone midrange unit, two 8" (203mm) plastic-cone woofers. Crossover frequencies: 200Hz, 2kHz, 22kHz. Frequency range: 29Hz-100kHz. Frequency response: 26Hz-25kHz, ±1.5dB. Sensitivity: 86dB/2.83V/m. Nominal impedance: 4 ohms (2 ohms minimum). Amplifier requirements: 50-400W.
Dimensions: 44.25" (1125mm) H by 15.75" (400mm) W by 21" (555mm) D. Weight: 127.6 lbs (58kg) each.
Serial numbers…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Digital sources: Mark Levinson No.31.5 CD transport and No.30.6 D/A processor connected with Illuminations Orchid AES/EBU datalink; Sony SCD-777ES SACD player, Accuphase DP100/DC101 SACD transport and processor; Technics DVD-A10 DVD-Audio player; Dell 866MHz Pentium III computer fitted with Digital Audio Labs CardDeluxe and RME Digi96/8 Pro soundcards connected to dCS 972 upsampler via 75 ohm S/PDIF and Canare 110 ohm AES/EBU datalinks, running Windows Me, WinAmp 2.5, Acid 2.0, and CoolEdit 2000; Apple Macintosh 8100 80MHz fitted with two Sonic Solutions…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
The big Sony's impedance (fig.1) stays within 4 and 6 ohms in the bass, most of the midrange, and the mid-treble. There is a large impedance peak in the upper midrange, due to the crossover between the midrange driver and the main tweeter, but the impedance drops above 8kHz, reaching a minimum value of 1.75 ohms at 22kHz. Fortunately, the electrical phase angle is low at this frequency, but there are a couple of regions where quite a high capacitive phase angle is coupled with a generally low magnitude. Around 10kHz, for example, you have 3.7 ohms coupled with…
The same wide dispersion is also seen in the vertical plane (fig.7), though the on-axis peak above 20kHz drops back above and below the main tweeter axis. As the crossover between the tweeter and supertweeter is set at 22kHz, perhaps what we're seeing here is evidence that this crossover is optimized for the best integration slightly below the main axis. This is sensible, given that that axis is 39" from the floor when the speaker is fitted with its carpet-piercing spikes.
Fig.7 Sony ES SS-M9ED, vertical response family at 50", normalized to response on tweeter axis, from back…
The end of two audiophiles' friendship:
"How do those new loudspeakers sound?"
"I don't know. Let me put a disc in the CD player and we'll listen."
"But how do you know what the CD should sound like?"
"I assume it's supposed to sound like the instruments and voices would sound in real life; the absolute sound, if you wish."
"But you don't know if that's appropriate. Recording engineers have an arsenal of special-effects boxes and signal processors at their disposal. And as you can see from Peter Mitchell's "Industry Update" column in this issue of…
Assembling the master tape
Like many CDs, all the editing on this disc was performed electronically in the digital domain. Unlike most CDs, however, Stereophile's Test CD (footnote 1) was edited and assembled on a Macintosh IIx computer. Instead of transferring digital audio data from one tape to another through an editor, as in conventional digital editing, this project was assembled on a computer hard disk attached to my Macintosh. Hard-disk-based editing is creating a revolution in professional audio. These systems may one day be as common in recording studios and mastering…
Like many CDs, all the editing on this disc was performed electronically in the digital domain. Unlike most CDs, however, Stereophile's Test CD (footnote 1) was edited and assembled on a Macintosh IIx computer. Instead of transferring digital audio data from one tape to another through an editor, as in conventional digital editing, this project was assembled on a computer hard disk attached to my Macintosh. Hard-disk-based editing is creating a revolution in professional audio. These systems may one day be as common in recording studios and mastering…
Peter Mitchell's organ recording had been digitized with a modified Sony PCM-F1-format processor. Rather than go back to the original master tape, I recorded the digital datastream from a Madrigal Proceed CD player directly onto the hard disk. Since Sound Tools accepts the S/PDIF output signal found on most CD players, direct digital-to-digital transfers are possible.
After about half the total program was assembled in the playlist, it was transferred, in the digital domain, through the DAT I/O back to the Nakamichi 1000. We had originally thought the Stereophile Test CD would be about…
Track information, Tracks 1-4
[1] Reference Tone (DDD) 1:21
1kHz sinewave tone at -20dB, L+R, with a spoken introduction by Sam Tellig (The Audio Anarchist)
[2] Channel Identification (DDD) 0:26
Left, then Right, with Sam Tellig and Ralph the Christmas Dog
[3] Channel Phasing (DDD) 0:39
In-phase, then out-of-phase, with Sam Tellig and Ralph the Christmas Dog
[4] Pink Noise at -20dB (DDD) 2:15
Correlated between channels, then uncorrelated from 1:11