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As Laura Atkinson shuffled into my listening room one evening, she spied the Stage loudspeakers tucked away in the corner. "Hey, Dick, those look like Apogees, but they're kind of small." Rising to the occasion, I responded with: "Honey, I shrunk the Apogees." At roughly 3' tall by 2' wide, the Stage is far from intimidating; it even feels more compact and is certainly much cuter looking than the old Quad ESL. Yet Junior's resemblance to the rest of the Apogee family is unmistakable. The canted baffle, the vertical tweeter/midrange along the inside edge of the baffle, and the pleated…
Miracle at the Sands
Apogee's Jason Bloom is not one to bury his head in the sand. But during the 1990 Winter CES, I found him holding court at the Sands, one of the Strip's old-guard hotels. That's where I got my first glimpse of the Stage. Positioned 4' from a bare wall the Stage produced magnificent sound from my far-field listening position. I remember thinking to myself, "Jason has done it again—best sound at the show." The soundstage was utterly transparent from the most delicate treble detail to the bowels of the bass octaves. The veiling that afflicts an appalling number of…
Apogee's Jason Bloom is not one to bury his head in the sand. But during the 1990 Winter CES, I found him holding court at the Sands, one of the Strip's old-guard hotels. That's where I got my first glimpse of the Stage. Positioned 4' from a bare wall the Stage produced magnificent sound from my far-field listening position. I remember thinking to myself, "Jason has done it again—best sound at the show." The soundstage was utterly transparent from the most delicate treble detail to the bowels of the bass octaves. The veiling that afflicts an appalling number of…
I'm sure that most of you have been in the situation of strolling down a street and catching a puff of music leaking from an open window or doorway. At that moment, have you ever had any trouble instinctively telling the difference between live and canned? I should think not. A piece of cake, right? If you've ever failed this test, do not pass go; proceed directly to jail with a lifetime subscription to Stereo Review. It's not so easy to analyze the factors that contribute to at least the audiophile's ability to so effortlessly make this sort of distinction. A key factor to my mind is that…
I'm not suggesting that all of the other cables are no good. Clearly, the Stage is quite sensitive to the choice of speaker cable, and in other contexts with other loads, the Symo's competition will do very well. As you know, I've lived with Space & Time TFA/Return for a long time, and have found it to be an exceptional performer with a variety of speaker loads. This was the first instance in which it significantly failed to measure up. Just when you think you've discovered a universal cable, a counter-example presents itself. It seems to me that dealers and audiophiles had better…
Despite being the baby of the Apogee family, the Stage, as Jason puts it, can "boogie." It can move from soft to loud, as the program material demands, with the speed and impact of a photon torpedo. Relistening to familiar program material through the Stage can prove to be a startling experience. Most of you should be familiar with Ariel Ramirez's Misa Criolla—the Philips recording with José Carreras (Philips 420 955-2). Larry Archibald has accused this performance of lacking a suitable degree of primal savagery. That may very well be, as this production highlights the lyrical aspects of the…
Late in the evaluation, I received a sample of the Cary Audio CAD-5500 analog CD processor. My first impression was that this is one hell of a processor. It carried the Stage and the entire system to new heights (a full review is forthcoming). The areas of transduction in which the Stage already excelled became even stronger: soundstage transparency and the clarity and ease of the presentation were noticeably increased. And as a bonus, the mids became more liquid and suave, while the sense of depth increased as you would expect from a tubed unit. It also appeared that one reason for its…
Let's move the mike to the listening position and look at what happens in fig.3. Here, with the mike off-axis in relation to the tweeter, a midrange recession is quite obvious from 500Hz to about 2kHz. Look at the energy output at 2kHz relative to that at 5kHz and 300Hz. This is a significant and broad valley that you'd better believe is audible.
Fig.3 Apogee Stage, room response at listening position, 10 degrees off-axis (2dB/small vertical div.).
Finally, in fig.4, the measurement of fig.3 is repeated—but with the speaker toed-in 5" toward the listening seat. The…
Sidebar 1: 1990 Measurements
After Dick delivered the review copy to me, Tom Norton and I quickly carried out a set of measurements to see if the Stage had any other idiosyncrasies other than the ones Dick had uncovered. Looking first at the speaker's impedance as measured with Stereophile's Audio Precision System One, fig.5 shows the impedance with the HF control set to Normal, fig.6 with it set to High. Both average around 3 ohms, with a slight rise at 400Hz due to the crossover. A comparison of the shapes of the two curves suggests that the High position is the natural output of the…
Martin Colloms commented on the Stage in February 1991 (Vol.14 No.2):
I had fun with the Apogee Stage, which I regard as a real honey. While not perfect—nothing ever is—the Stage was wonderfully friendly, sounding good from day one and improving further with time and experience. An eminently musical transducer, you can believe all the good things you've heard about this model. Just as I was about to suggest that a stand might be an advantage, I hear that Apogee makes one! A pad of Dacron wadding may also be used, applied to the back panel to tame the 42Hz bass resonance according to…
Sam Tellig commented on the Stage in March 1991 (Vol.14 No.3):
Let me tell you about my friend Lou.
Until recently, Lou rarely hung around with audiophiles. As a result, he's been able to enjoy music and hasn't had to worry much about sound. Actually, his system has been one of the best I've heard—partly because of his superb listening room, with its cathedral ceilings.
Five years ago, Lou bought a pair of Croft OTL mono tube amps from England—still probably the only pair of Croft OTL amps in North America. (Good thing Lou knows how to service his own amps.) He also has a…