The omission of analog sources up to this point had not been a deliberate choice, but a result of the UK's unusually high July…
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Analog vs Digital: On occasion, there was a hint of midrange forwardness, as well as a touch of metallic edge in the X-1/Grand SLAMM's presence region. This touch of character varied considerably with amplification and signal sources (which so far had all been digital). Tubed electronics certainly helped in this respect; I'm indebted to the Conrad-Johnson Premier Twelve and Audio Research VT150 power amplifiers, which proved marvelously synergistic with the X-1.
Installing the X-1 showed just how differently these two High End systems reacted to the same room. The speaker alignment, of course, had to be done from scratch, but at first, the X-1s were a bit of a disaster. Inexplicably, there was almost no bass. The speakers sounded overly dry and deadened, lacking space and air, and sounding both forward and lean.
Several lines of attack were tried to solve these multiple problems. As the X-1 is a single system, its placement has to be simultaneously optimized for both the bass and midrange performance. I had first to find where the low-frequency…
Wes Phillips: How did you come to design the WATT—and the Puppy?
David Wilson: I began making serious recordings back in the late '70s, and monitored them on a variety of commercially available speakers. By about 1980 I had developed the first generation of the WAMM system, on which I would listen to the recordings critically. Generally, what I heard in the field on the monitor speakers and what I heard from the WAMMs was in agreement—the WAMMs told us a lot more, of course, but if a recording sounded okay on the monitors, then it would sound pretty good on the WAMMs.
For some…
Phillips: What has differentiated the successive generations of WATTs from one another?
Wilson: The enclosure has stayed the same—the geometry of that enclosure and its structural integrity are hard to improve upon. The 6.5" drivers have always had paper cones—in fact, the first three generations used the same bass driver, a SEAS unit which sounds wonderful in the midrange. I always voice a speaker by starting in the midrange and gradually working up an octave, down an octave, up another octave, down another octave—which is how I "vowel" a WAMM when setting them up in the field. We were…
In a dark, smoky office, a desk lamp beams a cone of light onto papers, books, pipes, and notepads. A theoretical physicist hunches over his desk, half-illuminated, visualizing the world inside his equations.
Masses move silently through space-time, through lines of force and gravitational fields. Energies expend and absorb. Symmetries couple and uncouple in an abstract, mathematical dance. But something isn't right—some hands aren't joining, some quantities need balance. This world is stilted. "What if....?"
He starts, grabs an eraser, and rubs away the symbol "+" in his fourth…
Metaphysics to the rescue? Maybe. One way to avoid Popper's roadblock is to base your new law on a metaphysical intuition—something like, "God is subtle, but He insists that snaws be white." In that case, your observations of these birds don't have to support any logical leaps. They simply count as evidence that your law, now resting on your metaphysical convictions, is true. It makes a big difference whether or not you reach for metaphysics. Suppose that, while you're at the podium in Sweden thanking the Nobel Foundation for recognizing your pathbreaking research, there's a commotion in the…
Astute readers will note that although my name appears under the "hardware" heading of Stereophile's masthead, I have rarely written about specific products, and, apart from secondary comments or Follow-Ups, have never written a formal equipment report. For years I resisted reviewing because I was usually connected in some way to audio manufacturers and/or retailers, and felt very uncomfortable with the conflict of interest. The other reason I was disinclined to review is that the critical listening required of reviewers is work, and after a long day or week of working on, or with, audio…
The SP's crossover point is 2.7kHz, 18dB/octave on the top and 6dB/octave on the bottom. PBN crossover networks are available in either standard grade, with Kimber Kaps, or premium, with Hovland MusicCaps, which add $190 to the retail price. The review pair was fitted with the premium crossover.
Preliminaries
PBN suggests 100 hours of break-in time before serious listening. This pair had only two hours on them, so I set them up face-to-face, wired out-of-phase, and broke them in at a moderate level with an NAD 7225PE receiver for 10 days before attempting any serious listening.…
One of my favorite jazz recordings is Darn That Dream (Realtime RT 3009), featuring Art Pepper, Joe Farrell, George Cables, John Dentz, and Tony Dumas. In the many times I'd listened to it, I was never able to follow all the players simultaneously during their extended group improv in "Someday My Prince Will Come"—until I heard it through the Montanas. I had the sensation of watching a flock of birds take off together, flying in all directions but somehow communicating with me, the observer, and each other, and all returning to their perch at the same instant. How do they know?
Details,…
They also excelled at conveying the proper sense of threat, an essential ingredient in so much current music: The Cranberries' droning guitars in "Zombie" on No Need to Argue (Island 314-525 050-2), Radiohead's delightfully disturbing "Creep" on Pablo Honey (Capitol CDP 7 81409 2), "The Unforgiven" from Metallica's self-titled "black album" (Elektra 61113-2), and the title cut from Kool Moe Dee's Knowledge is King (Jive JS-1182-2-J). Now a bit long in the tooth, "Knowledge is King" is perhaps the best-ever rap song—an uplifting, enlightening, empowering message forcefully delivered, with…