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…
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Sidebar: Peter van Willenswaard in November 1990 (Vol.13 No.11):
"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…
Measurements
The Nobis Cantabile ran quite warm after its preconditioning test, but not enough to cause concern. As with all tube amplifiers, it runs quite warm in any case. Its operation was non-inverting, and though it appeared to have some 1/f noise present on its output, this was generally under 10mV and is not something to be concerned about. The unweighted, wide-band S/N ratio measured 65.6dB, referenced to 1W into 8 ohms.
The input impedance of the Nobis was, like many tube amplifiers, quite high: over 320k ohms, making it an easy impedance match for most preamplifiers.…
With the reality of digital television now almost within our grasp, manufacturers of big-screen sets must feel like sky-divers in free fall. Until the 'chute opens with the snap of digital displays finally hitting the stores, the market for large, expensive, conventional rear-projection models might appear to be controlled by nothing but the force of gravity. In a highly unscientific survey, I asked a few dealers around the country whether big-screen television sales were down and whether consumers seemed to be waiting for the coming of the first digital sets. The answer to both questions…
What Pioneer really is selling here is a pluperfect 4:3 television—"enhanced," if you will. Without losing any of the image, you gain some breadth of perspective through electronic stretching of the sides of the picture. But that approach, for all its mainstream appeal, surely doesn't do much for movies in a cinematic mode. That much became clear the moment I slipped an anamorphic DVD into the Faroudja DV1000 player. Anyone who owns a DVD player and a 4:3 television has seen the skinny people you get when you accidentally display an anamorphic image in that squarish frame. Anamorphic images…
Conclusions
Given the legacy of Pioneer Elite rear-projection design and engineering, I expected a decidedly high-end, cinema-oriented television as the company's last shot at drawing consumers to NTSC in the predawn of digital broadcasting. Instead, the PRO-200 seems to have been cobbled together by a marketing committee.
Given the legacy of Pioneer Elite rear-projection design and engineering, I expected a decidedly high-end, cinema-oriented television as the company's last shot at drawing consumers to NTSC in the predawn of digital broadcasting. Instead, the PRO-200 seems to have been cobbled together by a marketing committee.
In its outward appearance (and certainly at its price), the Pioneer PRO-200 is a grand, formidable television. While John Gannon's wry spin on that monumentality might smack of hyperbole, his comment struck my ears with a ring of ingenuous conviction—and…