Ivor also had some unconventional ideas about music reproduction and what a hi-fi system should do—ideas often at odds with the traditional view of "high-end"…
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More than 20 years ago, when the turntable was considered a perfectly neutral component in the playback chain, Ivor Tiefenbrun single-handedly demonstrated to the world that the turntable was not only an important part of a hi-fi system, but perhaps the most important part. That radical idea was the basis for the legendary Linn Sondek LP12 turntable, the product that launched Linn, and which is still in production 22 years later.
John Atkinson: The resistance was quite violent, as I remember.
Tiefenbrun: People felt I was some kind of charlatan. The funny thing is that most marginal, or even nonexistent, improvements were welcomed, and yet here was a very large one that was easily demonstrable. But people actually didn't even want to listen. When they did, of course, they were flabbergasted.
It seemed obvious to me that the quality of the input signal was crucial in the performance of the total system, and that getting information off the record was substantially the task of the turntable; it was a…
Harley: You were talking earlier about having a relationship with the customer rather than just making a sale. Was the upgradeability part of that?
Tiefenbrun: As I always say, it's the relationship that matters, not the sale. I don't believe there's any virtue in selling something to somebody when it doesn't meet any customer requirement. I never felt comfortable with the notion that people should buy our product without knowing actually why they bought it. In other words, personal experience.
I said from the beginning that we want a thrilled customer, not a happy one. We want…
Harley: What do you consider important in music reproduction?
Tiefenbrun: Oh, God. That's a great question. The cop-out answer is to say "fidelity."
Music is an international language of feeling and emotion. And all people respond to music in the same way—hard as that is to believe. To me, what's important is to communicate the emotional message. A hi-fi system above a certain threshold can begin to do that, and enable the listener to respond to the merits of a performance and the message of the composer. That's the goal.
Music does so many things, doesn't it? It's…
When J. Gordon Holt founded Stereophile in 1962, it was very much the outsider. Compared with the mass-market magazine of which he had been Technical Editor, High Fidelity, Gordon's Stereophile was the very model of an "underground" publication, with a publication schedule as irregular as its production values were inconsistent. Its writing was from the heart, however.
A third of an audio century later, High Fidelity is long gone and, much to the surprise of those of us who work on it, Stereophile appears to be regarded by some as the new Establishment in audio publishing (footnote 1).…
The Model Four is the largest model in KEF's current Reference series of loudspeakers, discounting the R107/2 Raymond Cooke Special-Edition (reviewed in a follow-up in October '95). It's also the largest KEF model that uses their Uni-Q® loudspeaker configuration. When I visited the KEF factory last October with a group of audio journalists from the US, KEF emphasized the importance of Uni-Q technology to their future plans. They consider it proprietary, and intend to enforce the worldwide patents they hold on the design. One look at KEF's current line will be enough to tell you why they're…
The system
The system used in the review of the Model Four consisted of the Denon DP-S1 CD transport, Mark Levinson No.36 D/A converter (the two linked by a Kimber AGDL coaxial digital cable), and a Jeff Rowland Design Group Consummate preamp. Amplification and cables will be discussed in the review. All auditioning took place in my (approximately) 26' by 18' by 11' listening room.
The system used in the review of the Model Four consisted of the Denon DP-S1 CD transport, Mark Levinson No.36 D/A converter (the two linked by a Kimber AGDL coaxial digital cable), and a Jeff Rowland Design Group Consummate preamp. Amplification and cables will be discussed in the review. All auditioning took place in my (approximately) 26' by 18' by 11' listening room.
Listening
Because I began my auditioning of the KEFs immediately after finishing with the Wilson WITTs, I started by placing them in the same locations the WITTs had vacated, a few feet out from the…
The speakers balance remained a little up-front, but never in-your-face. Solo instruments and voices were surprisingly palpable now, helped by a tighter quality in the mid- and upper-bass. On the Fairfield Four's Standing in the Safety Zone (Warner Bros. 9 26945-2), the solo vocals still sounded a little rich and warm, but only enough to give the vocals an appealingly full-bodied character. On Gordon Lightfoot's If You Could Read My Mind (Reprise 6392-2), the same positive vocal qualities were noted, together with a guitar accompaniment which was sweet, clean, and subtly detailed. Sibilants…
Sidebar 1: Description
Specifications: Four-way, six-driver loudspeaker system with coupled-cavity bass loading. Drive-units: 1" (25mm) soft-dome tweeter, 6.5" (160mm) polypropylene-cone midrange unit, 2x6.5" (160mm) polypropylene-cone lower midrange units, 2x10" (250mm) pulp-cone woofers. Crossover frequencies: 2.8kHz, 500Hz, 160Hz. Frequency response: 35Hz-20kHz ±3dB, -6dB at 32Hz. Nominal impedance: 4 ohms. Maximum spl: 118dB. Sensitivity: 92dB/W/m. Amplifier requirements: 50-400W.
Dimensions: 47.8" (1266mm) H by 11.8" (300mm) W by 15.3" (390mm) D. Weight: 108 lbs (49kg).
Serial…
Sidebar 2: Measurements
JA measured the KEF Model Four using the DRA Labs MLSSA system and a calibrated B&K 4006 microphone and provided me with the results after I had completed my listening tests.
The KEF's calculated sensitivity measured a very respectable 90dB/W/m. Though this is slightly below specification, the fact that this figure is B-weighted might explain the difference. Its impedance characteristic is shown in fig.1. With a minimum impedance of 3.2 ohms at about 70Hz, and a notable increase in the phase angle below 20Hz, this is a relatively demanding load. The…