Soon…
search
It's said that your first experience on entering a space sets the tone for all that follows. At LP pressing plant Record Technology, Inc. (RTI), that experience is my encounter with veteran pressman Richard Lopez, who responds to my request for direction. As he leaves his vintage record press to lead me to owner Don MacInnis, Lopez reads aloud the sticker on a box of recently pressed LPs. "WORLD'S FINEST PHONOGRAPH RECORDS," he declares with pride. As I reflect on how few workers today feel so connected to the products they make, I sense that something special lies ahead.
As Hoffman plays a reel, he points to the oscilloscope on the board, which shows energy in the center of the soundstage. This is easily confirmed by listening. While on most tapes some instruments are positioned closer to the left and right mikes, most place the piano and bass in the center. To Hoffman, that sounds as if you're in a really good seat in a club. And while the ever-secretive, 85-year-old Van Gelder has often insisted that he didn't pay attention to such things, Hoffman believes that you can't get sound like this without really trying.
"We give audiophiles the…
Today, as every Saturday, I brought my daughter to the stables where she has her riding lessons. But this time was different. As we pulled up the long gravel driveway, we found ourselves dodging a riderless horse, moving at a trot across our path. It turned out that the very cold weather had caused a latch to malfunction—"gate won't close, railing's froze"—and five horses had gotten loose.
The situation was messy but not unpleasant. I had fun catching one of the older horses—a small, good-natured Arabian who apparently wanted to go back inside—and within a few minutes the stable…
One pipe or two, the Saadhana carries on the Rethm tradition of distinctive styling. Looking more like a domestic periscope than a loudspeaker, it mixes straight lines and curves for a light, elegant effect, and the visual lightness is enhanced by the diffusers at the enclosure's base, over which the rest of the thing seems to hover: The Saadhana appears lighter than it really is. The molded surfaces of my review pair were sprayed a deep shade of copper, and while the sides of the first Saadhanas were clad in a veneer of padauk wood, Rethm has made the change to soft, acoustically…
KEITH JARRETT TRIO: The Cure
Keith Jarrett, piano; Gary Peacock, bass; Jack DeJohnette, drums
ECM 1440 (849 650-2, CD only). Manfred Eicher, prod.; Jan Erik Kongshaug, eng. DDD. TT: 77:36
Keith Jarrett, piano; Gary Peacock, bass; Jack DeJohnette, drums
ECM 1440 (849 650-2, CD only). Manfred Eicher, prod.; Jan Erik Kongshaug, eng. DDD. TT: 77:36
It's almost impossible to believe that this trio could have gotten any more tight, loose, funky, or trusting of each other—in a word, better—than they were on last summer's Tribute (reviewed in Vol.14 No.8, August 1991), but when it comes to Keith Jarrett's "Standards" Trio, I've learned to expect miracles.
Here, in seven more standards and one Jarrett original, is yet more evidence that…
WAGNER: Götterdämmerung
Hildegard Behrens, Brünnhilde; Reiner Goldberg, Siegfried; Matti Salminen, Hagen; Bernd Weikl, Gunther; Cheryl Studer, Gutrune; Hanna Schwarz, Waltraute; Ekkehard Wlaschiha, Alberich; Helga Dernesch, First Norn; Tatiana Troyanos, Second Norn; Andrea Gruber, Third Norn; Hei-Kyung Hong, Woglinde; Diane Kesling, Wellgunde; Meredith Parsons, Flosshilde; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra & Chorus; James Levine
DG 429 385-2 (4 CDs only). Cord Garben, prod.; Wolfgang Mitlehner, eng. DDD. TT: 4:29:53
Hildegard Behrens, Brünnhilde; Reiner Goldberg, Siegfried; Matti Salminen, Hagen; Bernd Weikl, Gunther; Cheryl Studer, Gutrune; Hanna Schwarz, Waltraute; Ekkehard Wlaschiha, Alberich; Helga Dernesch, First Norn; Tatiana Troyanos, Second Norn; Andrea Gruber, Third Norn; Hei-Kyung Hong, Woglinde; Diane Kesling, Wellgunde; Meredith Parsons, Flosshilde; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra & Chorus; James Levine
DG 429 385-2 (4 CDs only). Cord Garben, prod.; Wolfgang Mitlehner, eng. DDD. TT: 4:29:53
The story of Wagner's scripting-in-reverse of the first three…
In the ice-cream world, chocolate is the universal end of the line. Vanilla experiments that taste great but look foul, maple syrup flavors that are more maple than syrup, tutti-frutti that's too tutti—all are recycled as chocolate flavor, their visual sins permanently hidden from view. In the world of wood, the equivalent of chocolate ice cream is the ubiquitous "black ash" veneer. The original color and character of the wood are irrelevant: it all ends up stained black.
I was reminded of chocolate ice cream when I unpacked the loudspeakers I'm reviewing this month. Both are…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Two-way, stand-mounted, reflex-loaded loudspeaker. Drive-units: 1" (28mm), ferrofluid-cooled doped fabric-dome tweeter; 4.5" (115mm) plastic-cone woofer with 3" (75mm) voice-coil and diecast chassis. Measured crossover frequency: 2.4kHz. Electrical crossover slopes: not specified. Frequency response: 80Hz–20kHz ±3dB at 2m with grille on. Variation from reference: ±0.3dB. Sensitivity: 81.0dB/W/m (2.83V). Nominal impedance: 8 ohms. Power handling: not specified. Amplifier requirements: 50–150W.
Dimensions: 11.6" (295mm) H by 7.25" (184mm) W by 8.4…
Sidebar 2: System context
Power amplifiers used to drive these speakers were a pair of Mark Levinson No.20.6 monoblocks; the preamplifier was the remote-controlled Mark Levinson No.38S. A Mod Squad Phono Drive EPS amplified LP signals from a Linn Sondek/Cirkus/Trampolin/Lingo/Ekos/Arkiv setup sitting on an ArchiDee table. Digital source was a Mark Levinson No.30 driven by a Mark Levinson No.31 transport via Madrigal AES/EBU cable and an Audio Alchemy DTI•Pro or a Sonic Frontiers UltrajitterBug.
Interconnects used were AudioQuest's AudioTruth Lapis x3; speaker cable was a bi-wired…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
Almost all the measurements accompanying this review were made with the DRA Labs MLSSA system, a full-length card that fits into a PC. This generates a pseudo-random noise signal which is picked up by a B&K 4006 microphone, calibrated to be flat on-axis at the approximate measuring distance I use. The host computer then compares the microphone's output with the drive signal it sent out to the loudspeaker and, by performing a cross-correlation operation, calculates the speaker's impulse response. By windowing out reflections of the speaker's output from room…