Analog sources: Rega Planar 3 turntable, Rega RB300 tonearm, Grado Reference Master cartridge; Audio Refinements AM/FM tuner.
Digital sources: California Audio Labs CL-20 DVD player, California Audio Labs Delta CD transport and Alpha 24/96 tube DAC, Audio Refinements CD player.
Preamplification: EAR 834P tube phono preamplifier.
Integrated amplifier: Mesa Tigris.
Loudspeakers: Celestion A3, Joseph RM22si.
Cables: Synergistic Research and JPS Labs interconnects, speaker cables, power cords.
Accessories: Argent RoomLenses, EchoBusters room…
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Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Sidebar 3: Measurements
The EAR V20 left Chip Stern's New York apartment in pristine condition, but by the time it arrived at our Santa Fe offices there were visible signs of shipping damage, including dents in one of the protective tube cages. Nothing in the following measurements, however, suggests any operational damage or degradation.
In normal operation, the cages surrounding the EAR V20's tubes get quite warm, but never uncomfortably hot. It's likely that the lower-than-normal operating temperature is due to the choice of multiple small, low-power output tubes in place of a…
"What? What??? No Smiths?" asks reader Steven J. Wilder in this issue's "Letters" (p.9), regarding my interjection in the "Honorable Mentions" sidebar of last November's "40 Essential Albums." Hey, I think The Smiths suck—okay, Mr. Wilder? Morrissey's self-absorbed adolescent whining had no place on a list that included music from such grownups as Morrison, Mitchell, and Mingus. I'm not alone in this sentiment. Jon Iverson, www.stereophile.com's webmaster, almost stapled together the pages of Mojo magazine's April 2001 retrospective of Morrissey's and Marr's music so he could skip over it…
Jitter is not what digital sound quality induces in the listener; rather it is the instability in the clock signal that controls exactly when the analog waveform is sampled in the original A/D conversion, or when the digital word input into a DAC results in an analog voltage being produced at the chip's output. "So what?" is the response of digital advocates, "As long as a digital one is recognized as a one and a digital zero as a zero, then how can there be any difference in sound?" goes their argument, normally culminating in a fervently expressed "Bits is bits!"
Would that things were…
Sidebar: Peter van Willenswaard in November 1990 (Vol.13 No.11):
If, in digital audio, one doesn't pay a similar amount of attention to characteristic impedances when connecting two pieces of equipment, jitter will occur....The amount of jitter caused by impedance mismatching is admittedly small, but some simple arithmetic may clarify the situation. If, in the final digital/analog conversion, we do not tolerate more than 0.5 LSB of amplitude error (vertical axis), neither should we accept a greater error along the horizontal axis (time)....Vertically there are 65,535 steps in a 16-bit…
"Not for pianists."—pianist Leopold Godowsky, at Jascha Heifetz's Carnegie Hall debut
There's one thing I enjoy about single-ended triode amplifiers, although it isn't so much a characteristic of a good SET as the combination of a good SET amp and an appropriate loudspeaker: They load the room convincingly when the music demands it. It's a hard thing to describe, but I know it when I hear it, like open fifths or pornography. And it can be subtler and less bombastic than you might guess—like the first piano chord in Schubert's "Trout" Quintet: There's a manner in which the sound of that…
And under the best of circumstances, I come away richer, too (not literally, of course—although it's fun to mess with the heads of the pathetic old hens who revel in thinking we're all on the take). I can learn a lot about the product I'm reviewing straight from the horse's mouth, and some of that information may carry over to other things. What's not to like?
Well, for one thing, there's serious potential for unfairness. If I open my home to Company A, then I'll have to do the same for Companies B through Z as well. I've heard complaints about this more than once from manufacturers who…
I dig tube amps. When all's said and done, good tube amps seem to sound more like real life than most solid-state gear; even after listening to and enjoying the hell out of musical solid-state designs like the Audio Research D-240 II and the Muse Model One Hundred, once I hook up the big VTL Deluxe 225s again it's just like going home. I could go on about timbral accuracy and clearer midrange textures, but the bottom line is, music just plain sounds better when you shoot it through good tubes, and once most people experience that magic, they're hooked.
Only problem is, that ol' valve…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Stereo hybrid tube/solid-state power amplifier. Rated power: 35Wpc (15.44dBW/8 ohms), 30Hz-21kHz, at less than 0.3% THD or IM. Input sensitivity: 1.15V. S/N ratio: >100dB.
Dimensions: 16" W by 12" D by 7" H (including tube height). Weight: 30 lbs.
Available cabinet finishes: oak, walnut, cherry, mahogany, maple, and black lacquer at no additional cost.
Price: $1695 (1992); no longer manufactured (2004). Approximate number of dealers: 43.
Manufacturer: Nobis Technologies, W141 N9316 Fountain Blvd., Menomonee Falls, WI 53051. Tel: (414…
Review system
I hooked the amps up to my hi-fi rig: Aunt Corey's Homemade Buffered Passive Preamp, Audio Research SP-14 phono stage, Well-Tempered Record Player fitted with the Sumiko Blue Point cartridge and Analog Survival Arm Wrap, the Proceed CD Library 100-disc multi-player, Theta DS Pro Basic II processor driven via Theta's excellent digital cable by either a JVC XL-Z1050 CD player or the dig-out jack of the CD Library, and ProAc Response Two speakers seated on the back-breakin' heavy-metal Target RS2 stands. Interconnects were Kimber KCAG except for Straight Wire Maestro between…