Sidebar: MP3? FLAC? AAC? AIF? WAV?
Readers continually ask us which file format they should rip their CDs to. Low-bit-rate MP3s are tempting to many because they maximize the number of songs that can be stored on a given hard drive. On the other hand, the AIF and WAV formats are claimed to be of true "CD quality." Is this true? And what about FLAC and ALC?
In March 2008 I wrote an article on this subject. I urge you to read it, but in a nutshell: For serious listening, we do not recommend any of the lossy-compressed formats—MP3, AAC, WMA—at any bit rate. AIF and WAV are,…
"Be like my friend Frank. He imagines that he's purchased certain products—right now he's imagining that he bought a pair of hard-to-get English speakers which he has read a review of but hasn't heard. This is ideal, since the speakers can sound better and better as Frank imagines more and more. When he tires of these speakers and gets excited about something else, he doesn't have to trade them in. He only needs to start imagining the next product." That was Sam Tellig's friend Frank, back in March of this year. No one could have said it better, but I have a followup.
Of course, I don't…
KEITH JARRETT TRIO: Tribute
Keith Jarrett, piano; Gary Peacock, bass; Jack DeJohnette, drum
ECM 1420/21 (847 135-2, 2 CDs only). Jan Erik Kongshaug, O. Fries, engs.; Manfred Eicher, prod. DDD. TT: 115:05
Damn. Just checked my private stash of pure, uncut, Peruvian superlatives, and they're just about out. Bummer. Worst scene a record reviewer can play. But what'd I expect after listening to 6½ hours of Jarrett's Sun Bear Concerts, then Dave Holland's Extensions, then the Hot Spot soundtrack, then Taj Mahal's new Mule Bone (the Natch'l Blues Rides Again!), and Elvis Costello's…
There was a time, as recently as 40 years ago, when frequencies below 100Hz were considered extreme lows, and reproduction below 50Hz was about as common as the unicorn. From our present technological perch, it's too easy to smirk condescendingly at such primitive conditions. But just so you're able to sympathize with the plight of these disadvantaged audiophiles, I should tell you that there were two perfectly good reasons for this parlous state of affairs. First of all, program material at that time was devoid of deep bass; not because it was removed during disc mastering but simply…
What about bass "speed"? Some pundits have branded this term technically inaccurate, because, as they point out, the steepness of the transient's leading edge is determined by its upper harmonics, which may after all not be reproduced by the woofer but rather by the midbass or midrange drive-units. Yet, I think that we have all observed slow, sluggish, or woolly bass response. So the real question is: Does a woofer have to be fast? An excellent figure of merit for woofer speed is its acceleration factor, defined as the ratio of the woofer's magnetic force to its moving mass. This is nothing…
I think that most listeners would be perfectly satisfied with a 40Hz bass extension provided that there is sufficient excursion capability to reproduce the bass octaves cleanly and effortlessly at peak SPLs of around 110dB at the listening seat. Too often it's the lack of dynamic power rather than frequency extension that disappoints audiophiles. Take a good 50Hz horn, for example. Despite its modest frequency extension, such a horn invariably elicits an instinctive positive reaction because of its effortless and dynamic impact.
Once the SPL requirement at a particular frequency is…
The limits for Doppler distortion were also investigated by Fielder and Benjamin. To refresh your memory, Doppler distortion is frequency modulation of the higher frequencies by the lower frequencies being reproduced by a single driver; something like tape flutter except that here the music or cone excursion provides a constantly varying modulating signal. The bottom line is that, for practical cone excursions, and with the bandwidth limited to 12.5Hz to 100Hz, the FM distortion due to the Doppler effect appears to be far below the threshold of audibility. Thus the harmonic distortion…
A few years ago I reviewed the ProAc Tablette (Vol.7 No.4). When J. Gordon Holt, the champion of tonal accuracy, first heard them he was violently put off by their tonal imbalance. "Violins sound like children's toy violins, celli are emasculated," and on and on he went. My review was less than a rave, yet he castigated me as "having gone off the deep end" for my failure to trash them. Yet in my system, side by side with my reference speakers at the time—the helium-driven Hill Plasmatronics—the Tablettes were superior in defining the underlying bass lines and highlighting the pulse or…
Based in the Czech Republic, KR Enterprise is headed by an occasionally gruff Dr. Riccardo Kron and his American-born wife, Eunice, who operate the company out of a partially abandoned factory that was once part of the state-owned Tesla High Vacuum Technology facility in Prague. The Swiss-funded company is unique in that it manufactures both amplifiers and the tubes that power them. KR's tubes have found favor with other amplifier makers as well—especially the 300BXS, electrically identical to a standard 300B but rated at 25W in class-A.
Dr. Kron is driven to build tubes that…
Hookup is straightforward, with a single-ended RCA jack input and two pairs of hefty, custom-made, nicely machined speaker terminals (though it appears that only one tap is available from the output transformer). Flip the on/off switch and a red front-panel LED signals warm-up. Within a few minutes of turn-on, the unit reaches operating temperature and the LED changes color from red to green. The amp's sound begins to "develop" after about an hour's warm-up. There's also a three-position input-sensitivity knob that one should not turn with power on. How nice it would have been to have been…
