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Dateline—Chicago, May 30, 9:00pm. Exploding fireworks lit up the sky above the Chicago river as 200 leading high-end designers gathered in the Hotel Intercontinental for Stereophile's 30th Anniversary banquet. After a repast of four gourmet courses and five wines, the time came for after-dinner speeches to celebrate Stereophile's past and high-end audio's future. Publisher Larry Archibald described his adventurous transition from the high-end car business to risky publishing. Introducing J. Gordon Holt, he praised JGH's uniquely lucid writing and his unflinching insistence that equipment…
Kevin Voecks demonstrated this situation at CES, using Snell B Minor speakers in a room of typical dimensions, around 12' by 18'. FFT analysis of the system's impulse response (fig.1), measured with a microphone at the "ideal" seat on the stereo axis, showed the complex effects of boundary reflections and standing waves. On the computer screen the first-arrival response from the speaker (fig.2) was nearly flat. Subsequent curves in the "waterfall" plot (fig.3) showed increasingly severe irregularities, a low-bass rolloff, and a very large 100Hz peak as the standing waves built up.
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Yet another amp from Colorado! This is the third amp to come my way from that state (the others being the Spectrascan and the Rowland Research), and at this point, after living with it for a couple of months, I'm quite comfortable in declaring the Boulder 500 to be one helluvan amp.
Jeff Nelson and Randy Gill, the two principals at Silver Lake Research, have recently crossed over from the professional market into the audiophile arena. That's why the Boulder looks the way it does, featuring a host of such "pro" touches as balanced/unbalanced inputs, conductive plastic input level…
Sidebar: Specifications
Description: Solid-state stereo amplifier. Maximum continuous output power: 150W into 8 ohms (21.75dBW), 250W into 4 ohms (21dBW). bandwidth: 100kHz. Voltage gain: 26dB. S/N Ratio, unweighted: 115dB. Peak current for 10 milliseconds: >50 amps. Input impedance: 10k ohms balanced, 20k ohms unbalanced.
Dimensions: 17.25 W by 25" D by 7" H. Weight: 51 lbs.
Price: $2650.
Manufacturer: Silver Lake Research, Boulder, CO (1986); Boulder Amplifiers, Inc., 3235 Prairie Avenue, Boulder, CO 80301 (2008). Tel: (303) 449-8220. Fax: (303) 449-2987. Web: www.…
Because loudspeakers interact with the acoustics of the room in which they are used, optimizing their positions within that room pays major dividends. Inexpensive speakers, optimally set up, may well outperform more expensive models just plonked down willy-nilly.
Over the years, I have developed a library of test signals that make it easier to set up speakers by ear. I made this suite of signals available on my Editor's Choice Sampler & Test CD (Stereophile STPH016-2), released in July 2003. In this article, I suggest how these signals can best be used. (The CD, which also contains a…
Sidebar: Further Reading
Articles about loudspeakers and how to set them up in rooms can be found at:
www.stereophile.com/finetunes/418
www.stereophile.com/finetunes/306
www.stereophile.com/finetunes/226
www.stereophile.com/finetunes/214
www.stereophile.com/features/806
www.stereophile.com/features/103
www.stereophile.com/features/100
www.stereophile.com/features/99
I'm scared. I've just returned from a visit to the isle of my birth, Manhattan. As the spouse and I walked to Stereophile's offices to meet John Atkinson and Stephen Mejias for dinner, we passed some of the most valuable real estate in the country. It was hard to imagine that, if global warming continues at its current, ever-accelerating pace, the buildings we were marveling at will soon be below sea level.
Today, back in the pseudosafety of my office in hardly placid Oakland, California, I gaze at the headlines on Yahoo.com's front page: "Cyclone Kills 10,000 in Just One Myanmar Town…
BEN FOLDS: Way to Normal
Epic 886970984928 (CD). 2008. Dennis Herring, prod., Joe Costa, eng. AAD? TT: 40:32
Performance ****½
Sonics ***
Epic 886970984928 (CD). 2008. Dennis Herring, prod., Joe Costa, eng. AAD? TT: 40:32
Performance ****½
Sonics ***
People used to love Ben Folds for being a snot-nosed kid, for his bashing of people and places, and for turning his corrosive pen and piano on the complacent, the witless, and, of course, women.
Now on his fourth marriage, with kids growing up, the 42-year-old singer-songwriter is being pilloried for turning soft; for being too mature, too sincere. Since Songs for Silverman (2005), fans of Folds' smart-aleck side have brayed that he'…
Last December, when Wadia Digital announced that it was releasing an iPod docking cradle that could access the digital signal before it had passed through the player's own D/A converter, many audiopundits were surprised. I was disbelieving, and nearly told Wadia's John Schaffer that he was shining me on. After all, Apple has tiptoed around the whole issue of consumers being able to digitally copy their iTunes files, going so far as to wrap its iTunes Music Store files in digital rights management (DRM) code.
Times had changed, Schaffer told me. Apple had initiated a program,…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Docking station for outputting analog and digital audio and video signals from late-model Apple iPods. Input: various shells that fit different iPod sizes. Digital output: S/PDIF (coaxial). Analog output: single-ended RCA. Video output: S-video, component video (RCA).
Dimensions: 8" (203.2mm) W by 2.7" (68.6mm) H by 8" (203.2mm) D. Weight: 2.42 lbs (1.1kg).
Serial Number Of Unit Reviewed: 01700800045.
Price: $379. Approximate number of dealers: 40. Warranty: 1 year.
Manufacturer: Wadia Digital, 1556 Woodland Drive, Saline, MI 48176. Tel…