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Choose Your Sound
Because there are so many variables and you can choose them so easily, describing the specific sound of the Steelhead is almost impossible. You can, within certain limits, make it and your cartridge sound any way you like. But no matter how you vary the impedance in MC input, the resistance in MM, or…
Editor: WOW! Mikey likes it! Thank you so much for your honkin' great review of our new Steelhead Phono Stage. That the only severe complaint you have about our upstream-swimming Fono Fish is regarding our gaudy gold cosmetics, well, hell, I couldn't agree with you more! Although there are those audiophiles who prefer the shiny gold look, it hasn't ever been my personal favorite, so I started moving us back to our ol' black'n'blue cosmetics in September. By CES we'll be fully switched over and in compliance, although if you don't like my knobs, I will have to take…
Rockport's Antares speakers—400 lbs each and $41,500/pair—had been in my system for about a month when I sat down for my first listen to the Boulder 2008, so I'd become accustomed to and quite familiar with their performance using my reference system. The Antares is an impressive, full-range design. Driven by the Manley Steelhead phono stage, the Hovland HP-100 preamplifier, and the Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista 300 power amp, their sonic picture was big, full-bodied, and just plain tactile. No pain, but…
On really massive orchestral material, the Aesthetix Io Signature and Manley Steelhead have a slightly superior sense of ease when coping with huge transients, but the Aesthetix Rhea was not in the least embarrassed by the comparison.
There was perhaps a bit more image-to-image bleed-through [with the Aesthetix] than with the Io Signature or the Steelhead. Things were just a fraction more loose down low than with the Io Sig or the Steelhead....On the Beethoven concerto, the spacious…
With the ASR Basis Exclusive on Cisco's upcoming reissue of Ian and Sylvia's stunning Northern Journey (Vanguard/Cisco VSD 79154), the guitars, mandolin, and autoharp crackled with sparkling, transient-snapping excitement yet with plenty of body, while Ian's and Sylvia's voices had a you-are-there clarity and presence. Image definition was precise, three-dimensional, and well focused, while Russ Savakus' bass was taut, with plenty of wood behind the string plucks.
Switching back to…