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It's a strange sort of progress: As culture and commerce evolve, most people look for simple, easy solutions to their needs. Enthusiasts, however, go out of their way to complicate matters, often choosing products that are expensive and difficult to use. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the world of home audio, where typical consumers have embraced the notion of smallish, self-contained music systems—yet audiophiles, who are surely as crazy as bedbugs, seem bent on parsing an ever-increasing number of individually distinct products from the basic concept of a music system.
At first, I tried to limit myself to comparing only the Linn Lingo and Naim Armageddon power supplies and changing nothing else. But that proved impossible—not because it couldn't be done in a material sense, but because I just couldn't wrestle the 700-lb gorilla in one corner of the room without at least saying hello to the one in the other: The Linn Ekos ($3000) and Naim Aro ($2750) tonearms, which are as different from one another as can be, and which surely influenced the development of their respective companies' motor drives.
And try as I might, I couldn't escape the pattern that…
As January 1, 2000 approaches, and the MP3 whirlpool continues to swirl, one simple fact has made me feel as if I'm stuck at the starting line of the entire download controversy: The sound quality of MP3 has yet to improve above that of the average radio broadcast. Until that changes, I'm merely curious—as opposed to being in the I-want-to-know-it-all-now frenzy that is my usual m.o. when to comes to anything that promises music you can't get anywhere else.
According to Gene Hoffman, the 23-year-old CEO of Emusic.com, which sells music in the MP3 format, the quality issue will be solved…
John Atkinson's track-by-track written evaluation in the July 2003 issue of his new Editor's Choice: Sampler & Test CD (Stereophile STPH016-2) drew me like a magnet. Here was a reviewer-editor putting into words his musical perceptions, gathered while he served as the engineer for the various recordings sampled on this compilation. JA's dual roles of writer and engineer merge complementary perspectives, yielding what should be useful descriptions of the sonic values of some of my favorite reference CDs. As I was about to start my review of Piega's new hybrid loudspeaker when I read this…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Three-way, reflex-loaded, floorstanding loudspeaker. Drive-units: 4" x 8" coaxial, rectangular, treble-midrange flat ribbon; three 7" long-excursion aluminum-cone woofers. Crossover frequencies: 650Hz, 3.5kHz. Crossover slopes: 4th-order, Linkwitz-Riley. Frequency response: 28Hz-50kHz, ±2dB. Bass tuning resonant frequency: 36Hz. Sensitivity: 89dB/W/m. Nominal impedance: 4 ohms. Recommended amplifier power: 100W continuous, 250W peak.
Dimensions: 40" (1020mm) H by 10.5" (270mm) W by 16.75" (430mm) D. Weight: 88 lbs (40kg).
Finishes: Silver (…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog sources: Linn Sondek-Lingo turntable with Linn Ittok tonearm and Spectral moving-coil cartridge; Day-Sequerra Classic, McIntosh MR-78, Sony ST-5000 FM tuners.
Digital sources: Krell KRC-28 CD player, Sony SCD-C555ES multichannel SACD player.
Preamplification: Duntech MX-10 head amplifier, Margulis phono section, Krell KCT preamplifier; Mark Levinson ML-7 preamplifier with L3A MC phono cards.
Power amplifiers: Krell FPB-600c, Mark Levinson No.334, No.436 monoblocks.
Loudspeakers: InnerSound Eros Mk.III, Revel Ultima Salon.
Cables:…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
Its measured sensitivity of 86dB(B)/2.83V/m makes the Piega slightly below the average for the speakers I have measured over the past 13 years. Its impedance (fig.1) also drops to 3 ohms in the midbass, which means that it will need to be used with a good current-capable amplifier. The traces in fig.1 are free from the wrinkles that would indicate panel resonances, and investigating the aluminum-sheathed cabinet's vibrational behavior with an accelerometer revealed a well-behaved design, with only a low-level mode at 350Hz evident near the top of the side panel (…
Victor Khomenko, the "VK" of Balanced Audio Technology's VK-5 preamp and VK-60 amplifier, was born in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad), and grew up two blocks from the Svetlana tube factory. He attended the prestigious Leningrad Polytechnic Institute and received an M.S. in physics and electronics, specializing in electronic emissions. He spent his early working life in the Russian electronics industry, then emigrated to the US in 1979—with $400, a family, no home, and no job.
His expertise didn't go unrecognized for long. Since 1981 he has been with Hewlett-Packard, working on digital…
Deutsch: Isn't it the case that you're going to end up with roughly twice the parts cost?
Khomenko: Even that's not necessarily true. If you look at the parts cost of the Khomenko-5, a fully balanced differential design, it's not substantially higher than many single-ended designs. There are many different ways of building balanced circuits. The word "balanced" is interpreted in so many ways. Recording engineers talk about one type of balanced interface. If you talk to instrumentation designers, they mean something different. I saw one article in which there was a very clean, simple…
Deutsch: So you probably wouldn't advise audiophiles to tweak Balanced Audio Technology products...
Khomenko: I don't really have a problem with it. If somebody wants to play around with the Khomenko-5 and the Khomenko-60, they can do it, but I doubt very much that they'll improve the sound, because most of that is determined by the basic topology—maybe 90%. Also, we've selected the components very carefully. Is there room for some improvement? Maybe very minor, but I agree with Steve that in most cases [tweaking] will be a step backward (footnote 2).
Bednarski: I would have to…