But one thing I'd not done in the 25 years since I began both making my own interconnects and…
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Being a metallurgical engineer, I've always been intrigued by audio cables—their construction, the materials they're made of, how they're produced, and, of course, how all of that relates to their sound. Over the years, I've auditioned a wide range of cables, from Nordost's round conductors in a flat cable, to Alpha-Core's flat cables in a round conductor, to MIT's complex termination systems. I've even got a closet full of cables—some quite good—from companies that no longer exist.
Another aspect of the Anaconda's big, bold sound was a huge, expansive, open soundstage. On the AC/DC album, the soundstage, artificial though it may be, was noticeably wider than with any of my reference wires. Depth was increased as well, and the music projected farther out into my listening room, contributing to the system's bold, immediate sound.
Individual images were slightly larger with the Anacondas than with my reference cables, and the distances between them seemed larger and more distinctly portrayed as empty space. This big, expansive nature was particularly captivating with…
The conductors and insulators are sized and chosen to best serve a specific function. The bass quad, for example, consists of two 16 AWG negative conductors and two 19 AWG negative ones, while the treble half uses 18 AWG positives and 21 AWG negatives. AQ calls this Spread Spectrum Technology, the idea being that any size and material of conductor has a distinct sonic signature that occurs over a specific frequency range. Mixing the conductors spreads out this signature over a wider range, preventing the effects from piling up to the point of audibility. A final bit of wizardry is the use of…
Sidebar: Specifications
Description: Interconnect and loudspeaker cables. Anaconda interconnects available with single-ended (RCA) and balanced (XLR) terminations. Gibraltar speaker cables available in single- and biwired configurations, with spade-lug or banana-plug terminations.
Prices: Anaconda: $$1250/m pair, balanced (XLR) or unbalanced (RCA). Gibraltar: $850/10' pair, full-range (single-wire) or biwire configurations; $1700/10' pair, double-biwire configuration, spade-lug or banana-plug termination. Approximate number of dealers: 350. Warranty: lifetime, unconditional.
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After a number of years of equipment reviewing, one gets rather blasé about "compact" loudspeakers. The appearance of yet another one that looks like hundreds of others and embodies no radically new innovations to pique one's curiosity is likely to be greeted with a passionate Ho-Hum.
That, at least, is how we felt about receiving a pair of Advent speakers—their first product since the company was formed. Of course, we were pleased to see a new hi-fi manufacturer taking the plunge and we wished them well, but my God, not another oversized "bookshelf" loudspeaker! Who needs it? And at $112…
Sidebar: Specifications
Description: Two-way direct-radiator loudspeaker. Crossover frequency: 1kHz. Balance control: Tweeter switch selects flat, +3dB, or –3dB. Impedance: 8 ohms. Power capacity: 100W program.
Dimensions: Not noted.
Price: $116 each in walnut veneer, $102 each unfinished (1971); no longer available (2006).
Manufacturer: Advent Corporation, Cambridge, MA (1971). Company no longer in existence (2006).
Manufacturer's Comment
Editor: We are very grateful that Stereophile has evaluated the Advent loudspeaker on the basis of absolute sound quality rather than restricting comparisons to its price peers.
We are a bit confounded by the statement that the speaker is "noticeably amplifier sensitive," because this does not agree with our experience. The Advent loudspeaker is critically damped, having an almost ideal system Q of slightly less than 1. As a result, it does not change character when used with different amplifiers that differ only in damping factor, so long as each of them…
I've touched on loudspeaker placement in irregularly shaped rooms several times in the last few "Fine Tunes," but reader Peter Machare (Peter.MACHARE@usda.gov) wants more information about setting up L-shaped and other nonstandard listening areas. Here's how he describes his layout: "I have an L-shaped room. The speakers are at the bottom of the L and point up the long part of the L. Not all of us are perfect rectangles, you know."
That's true, Peter—a lot of us are squares! [badaBOOM] (Thanks, it's been a while since my last rim shot.) As some of you may recall from an earlier article…
Everybody, including myself, was astonished to find that it was impossible to distinguish between my own voice, and Mr. Edison's re-creation of it.—Anna Case, Metropolitan Opera Soprano, 1915
In the July 1990 "As We See It" (Vol.13 No.7, p.5), I examined the conflict between those who believe existing measurements can reveal and quantify every audible aspect of a component's behavior, and those who consider the listening experience a far better indicator of a component's performance than the numbers generated by "objective" measurements. Implicit in the objectivist position is the…
Dr. Lagadec supports his thesis with a very simple analysis of what happens when changing level in the digital domain and the nature of the attendant requantization error. This function is considered perhaps the simplest and best-understood type of digital signal processing. However, he has discovered a previously unknown form of error created by this simple processing: the digital gain control's transfer function (difference between input and output signals) varies according to the amount of gain or attenuation. The nature of the transfer function's non-linearity (imprecision), introduced…