Now an e-mail from enthusiastic tweaker Martin Thomas (MartinThomasM@aol.com): "Jonathan, I have been a follower of your audio reviews for…
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If LPs you have not—Philistine!—and so must go the way of the jewelbox, you might consider purchasing ETF 5.x from Acoustisoft (reviewed by Kal Rubinson in Vol.21 No.7). This impulse-response measurement software and microphone package ("ETF" stands for "Energy Time Frequency") costs $149 and works with most PCs, and now even with game cards. I've got the latest version and a modern laptop; all I have to do is install the software and "ping" my room.
"Heard anything great?"
It was the Brass Ear, aka Bill Brassington, at HI-FI '96. Brass was covering the Show for The Audiophile Voice.
"Yes. YBA and Mordaunt-Short."
I half expected Brass to laugh. He didn't.
"I know. That YBA stuff is good. Let's go listen."
"Bring a disc. What do you have?"
"Something Lars would like. You too. Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky, performed by Yuri Termirkanov and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic." (RCA 6196-2).
This is full-bodied orchestral/choral music, to say the least. It is, in fact, the Swede-…
Roy Hall, and others who import itty-bitty British eye-fye, have been proving for years that you can get great sound from small, relatively inexpensive systems. But as Roy and others find, selling this stuff in North America can be a tough go. Hell, it's hard to get people to listen, never mind buy.
There are some great integrated amps from England. The Creek stuff—better than it's ever been. The Audiolab 8000S, which I have in my listening room now, imported by Dave Lang of Artech—a killer of a line-level integrated for $995. The Myriad MI-120, now being imported (influxed?) by Michael…
Le switch for the Integré is located—"hidden" is a better word—under the left side of the faceplate. You have to fumble for it. But then again, the switch is not meant to be used much. You should leave the Integré on all the time.
On the back, you'll see two sets of speaker terminals. One set of terminals has female banana sockets, while the other set is like a pair of Michell banana plugs built right into the amp. You might assume that the two sets of terminals are otherwise similar. You'd be wrong.
The female banana terminals have a coil connected in series with the two…
What did I hear, by way of the phono stage?
Absolutely superb performance—lots of detail, a wide, deep soundstage, tonal neutrality, and a complete absence of any splashiness or spitting—the kind of thing that can drive you mad with a crummy phono stage. YBA separate preamps are noted for their superb phono stages; my guess is that the phono stage in the Integré is not far behind in quality.
A 50Wpc integrated amp, even with phono stage, hardly seems like a bargain at $2345 (footnote 3). But it is. You get beautifully detailed, neutral sound, a superb tonal balance, magnificent…
Robert Deutsch wrote about the YBA Integré DT Delta in June 2002 (Vol.25 No.6)
If you want to evaluate audio equipment, you have your technical tests and your listening tests. Engineering types will go for the former, while music lovers tend to prefer the latter. The controversy about which kind of test is most useful continues.
There is another kind of test: the test of time. If a product continues to sell year after year without any major advertising effort to encourage its popularity, the manufacturer must be doing something right.
This seems to be the case with the…
Sidebar: Contact Information
YBA products are distributed in the US by Audio Plus Services, P.O. Box 3047, Plattsburgh, NY 12901. Tel: (800) 663-9352. Fax: (450) 585-5862. Web: www.audioplusservices.com.
Sam Tellig wrote about the Integré Passion in February 2003 (Vol.26 No.2):
"You have to come over and hear this."
This was the fall of 1988. My friend David Wolf had just opened Audio Images, a high-end hi-fi salon in New Canaan, Connecticut (footnote 1). David was lining up brands—always dicey for a new dealer.
"What is it, David? Did you land Mark Levinson? Krell?"
"I got YBA."
There was such hope in his voice.
"It's a line of French electronics and the stuff sounds fabulous."
In many ways, YBA seemed just right for the upscale…
A long, relaxing listening session can be good medicine. But I've never heard a doctor prescribe, "Listen to your favorite recording three times and call me in the morning." At least, not yet.
The National Institutes of Health is now funding studies of "alternative" healing techniques at major medical universities. According to the New York Times (January 31, 2000), the story begins with Senator Tom Harkin's amazement over the improved health of his former congressional colleague, Berkeley Bedell. Bedell began alternative therapies after a diagnosis of Lyme disease and prostate cancer. A…
Take the EPR paradox (EPR stands for Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen) in quantum mechanics. Suppose you and a partner each have a device that simulates flipping a coin when you press a button—something like a Game Boy. The coin behaves as a subatomic particle subject to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle: just as a particle can have a position and a momentum, the coin has an orientation (heads or tails), and can also assume one of two colors (say, black or white). The Uncertainty Principle places limits on how much information is available about the coin after it has been flipped. In this case, you…