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Stop Digital Madness! Larry Archibald comments

Larry Archibald comments:

This editorial frankly worries me. On the one hand, I fear that the mere mention of rampant (potential) problems in the turntable world will impel thousands more to hasty purchase of a CD player—a technology which I consider immature. On the other hand, aspersions seem to be cast here at work which is sincerely done, and for which we have no hard evidence to the contrary.

The publication of Prof. Reilly's work as an AES preprint, however, invites critical examination. In my discussions with Prof. Reilly and her colleague Neil Levenson, much reference was…

Stop Digital Madness! Professor Reilly responds

Professor Reilly responded—with spirit!—in January 1986 (Vol.9 No.1):

Dear Mr. Holt:

Enclosed is my rebuttal to J. Gordon Holt's "Stop Digital Madness" ("As We See It," Vol.8 No.8). In spite of being tremendously upset and angered by the manner in which my work was reported, by the errors contained therein, and by the shoddy reproduction of the graphs, I have kept my rebuttal at an unemotional, professional level.

To place an antidigital label upon me is entirely without foundation. In trying to restore my music system to listenable quality, after going through a large…

Stop Digital Madness! Professor Reilly responds part 2

In what was at first a dubious reaction to my hypothesis, experts at two large companies regularly working in these fields subsequently found such microcracks. (See Levenson's column in Fanfare, November/December 1985, for micrographs of these microcracks.) In a sampling of about 50 shafts and bearings, we have consistently found that 'tables with a history of playing digital records for more than a few hours have these microcracks. Unused 'tables, or used ones which have played only analog records, show no microcracks. We are currently increasing the sample.

To account for the observed…

Stop Digital Madness! JGH Responds

JGH Responds

Anyone who extracts from a manufacturer, as a condition for returning a preamp for repair, a promise that no digitized music be played in the room with it, and then denies being antidigital, is trying to kid somebody.

Despite the prolixity of Prof. Reilly's response to my editorial, she has still made no attempt to address the questions I see as crucial to this whole affair. These questions are:

1. Who were the "others" whose "independent tests confirmed" that ultrasonic information accompanies digitized music? Names and publication attributions, please.…

Stop Digital Madness! LA Appends

LA Appends

While I had some fears about publishing the Reilly material, and JGH's attack on it, my fears have been laid to rest. Stereophile Vol.8 No.8 was distributed at the 1986 Winter CES, and it turns out that many industry people had already heard of Judith Reilly's research. We received no lukewarm responses to JGH's article: a large number of people were actively offended by Prof. Reilly's findings, and a small number adamantly defended her.

A phone call was received just before deadline from a perturbed Tony Gregory of Audiophile Systems, the U.S. Linn distributor. I had…

Blind Tests & Bus Stops

On mornings when I can get up early enough after a late-night listening session, I take the last express bus from my Brooklyn suburb to Stereophile's Manhattan office. An inveterate people watcher, I notice that while my fellow travelers and I don't form a traditional queue at the bus stop, preferring instead to mill around in something that resembles a jelly donut, we still enter the bus in the order in which we arrived at the stop. The balance between individualism and social necessity is thus preserved.

At the other end of the line that separates social sophistication from mob…

Blind Tests & Bus Stops Letters, September 2005

Letters in response appeared in September 2005 (Vol.28 No.9):

Amplifiers & measurements

Editor: Although I am one of the few classical musicians I know who actually cares about the quality of reproduced sound, I have never considered my ears to be golden. Still, I can confidentially differentiate realistic-sounding equipment from crap. I attended the debate at Home Entertainment 2005 between John Atkinson and Arnold Krueger (if one can term any verbal interchange with Krueger a debate, or even a discussion). [An MP3 recording of the debate is available.—Ed.] I was fascinated…

Spendor S3/5se loudspeaker

Transistors can be made to sound like tubes, digital can be made to sound like analog, and cables can be made to sound like no cables. You'd almost think we live in an age of miracles.

But can a little speaker be made to sound like a big one? Generally, no. Moving a 5" plastic cone back and forth 41 times a second is not the same as reproducing the lowest note of an electric bass, and loudness is not the same as scale. Like it or not, in 2003 as in 1903, the only way to move a lot of air is to move a lot of air.

But the Spendor S3/5se does one of the nicest end runs around the…

Spendor S3/5se loudspeaker Page 2

The hookup wire looks better, too—this despite the lack of soldered joints, forgone in favor of push-on connectors, themselves merely crimped to the ends of the wires—and the links that go between the two pairs of chunky, gold-plated terminals are plated with gold, in contrast with the cheaper ones you get with cheaper speakers.

Other than that, the standard S3/5 ingredients prevail, including a beautifully made woofer with a molded frame, Spendor's own individually made inductors (I've been there! I've seen them do it!), and an intelligently designed thin-walled cabinet that uses a…

Spendor S3/5se loudspeaker Page 3

For whatever reason, I could never quite get the Spendor to "float" voices as well as it did solo instruments: Other speakers allow singers a greater and more believable sense of presence—the Spendor's failure to do so remained its most notable shortcoming, certainly more so than dynamic compression, lack of bass, or anything else so obvious. Heard through this speaker, familiar voices also sounded very slightly darker and somewhat chestier than I'm used to hearing—as true with Janet Baker singing Purcell's "When I am laid in earth" as with Peter Pears doing the solo tenor turn in Britten's…