Description: Solid-state integrated amplifier. Output power: 115Wpc into 8 ohms (20.6dBW), 185Wpc into 4 ohms (19.7dBW). Damping factor: 120. Frequency response: 20Hz-20kHz, +0/-0.2dB. Preamp output impedance: 50 ohms. THD+noise: <0.01% (20Hz-20kHz, line input). S/N Ratio (A-weighted): >98dB, (line); >94dB (MM phono) >88dB (MC phono). Input sensitivity: 250mV (line); 2.5mV (MM phono), 350µV (MC phono). Input impedance: 220k ohms (line); 47k ohms (phono). Overload margin: 26dB (line); 24dB (phono). Channel separation: >70dB, typical.
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Sidebar 1: Specifications
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog sources: VPI TNT IV turntable, Immedia RPM tonearm, Koetsu Urushi cartridge; Rega Planar 3 turntable, Syrinx PU-3 tonearm, Clearaudio Virtuoso, Aurum Beta S cartridges.
Digital sources: California Audio Labs Icon Mk.II Power Boss, Creek CD53 Mk.II, Musical Fidelity A3.2 CD players; Pioneer DV-333 DVD player.
Integrated amplifiers: Cairn 4808, Creek 5350SE.
Loudspeakers: Alón Circe, Alón Petite, NHT SB-3.
Cables: Interconnect: MIT MI-350 CVTwin Terminator, MIT MI-330SG, MIT Terminator 2. Speaker: Acarian Systems Black Orpheus.
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Sidebar 3: Measurements
Before I performed any measurements, I preconditioned the Musical Fidelity A3.2 with both channels driven at one-third power into 8 ohms for an hour. Though the top cover above the internal heatsinks was only just too hot to keep my hand on, the amplifier otherwise handled this test with aplomb.
With the volume control at its maximum, the voltage gain into 8 ohms from the speaker terminals was 41.8dB, 12dB from the preamp outputs, and all the inputs preserved absolute signal polarity. The line input impedance at 1kHz was to specification at a usefully high…
The electric clocks in my house keep better time than the ones I wind, yet I scarcely look at them. It is the ticking, I think, that comforts me. I like to lean my ear against these various pendulums and, back and forth, gently rock my life away.
These ticks and tocks give me a meter to the passage of the day; they are a metaphor for silence. Silence, after all, is not an absence of noise but a subtle acknowledgment of this metronomic beat, the force that both brings new life and inscribes tomorrow's obituaries. There is luxury and terror in this act of resignation, this silent attention…
One of the great imponderables in hi-fi is how much the vibrations of a dynamic loudspeaker's cabinet walls contribute to its overall sound quality. Studies by William Stevens in the mid-1970s showed that, with some speakers, the acoustic output of the enclosure could be almost as much as that from the drive-units. Since then, responsible speaker designers have worked hard either to damp cabinet vibrations or to shift them to higher frequencies where their effect on the music will be less deleterious.
The problem has been that, without hideously expensive laser interferometry setups or…
JA returned to this subject in September 1992 (Vol.15 No.9):
I'm proud to be an English audiophile. I say so not in a spirit of misplaced Jingoism, but merely to point out that the English have always placed a high priority on getting the best sound from their systems. This isn't because liking one's beer warm endows the drinker with an excess of virtue, however, or because audiophile hearts are particularly pure across the pond. No, it's because upgrading your system becomes difficult when nothing is folded in your billfold and the term "disposable income" always seems to refer to what…
The procedure for the experiment was as follows:
Each speaker was placed on an 18" Celestion Si stand, this a single-pillar steel design with the pillar filled with a mixture of lead shot and sand. The stand was spiked to the wooden floor beneath the rug in Tom Norton's office, which doubles as our lab. The interface between the base of the speaker and the top plate of the stand consisted of the following accessories and materials: three "Audio Selection" steel-pointed brass Tone Cones from German Acoustics pointing upward (footnote 5); three German Acoustics soft isolation feet, which…
The first thing to note is that, while the amplitude of the speaker's Helmholtz or bass tuning frequency around 63Hz doesn't change much with the change in interface material, the mode three octaves higher, at 156Hz, is vanquished by all the compliant supports. Fig.1, for example, shows the waterfall plot for the AE1's side panel with the speaker sitting on the three upward-pointing German Acoustics brass cones, while fig.2 shows it when supported by the German Acoustics soft feet. (The frequency resolution of these cumulative spectral-decay plots is 8Hz, which is why the lower frequency…
This tied in with my auditioning of the AE1 on the various supports while setting the pair up for my review auditioning. With the Blu-Tack interface on the Celestion stand, the low frequencies were the tightest and the most tuneful, the lower midrange the most transparent.
Using no interface, the speaker just sitting on the stand, slightly lowered the amplitude of the main resonance but brought up the level of a number of others, the one at 344Hz in particular. That in the upper bass also shifted higher in frequency.
The situation was similar for the accelerometer measurements of…
Though the data in the table are a little hard to unwind, the first thing that pops out (to me at least) is that they reinforce CG's listening impression: that the Target stand designed to be used with this speaker gives the optimal support, resulting in overall lower levels of cabinet vibration across the band when compared with either the solid Celestion stand or the flimsy wooden support. Use of the latter stand, however, does significantly reduce the level of the upper-bass mode apparent when used with upturned German Acoustics cones, while the Celestion stand shifts the mode's frequency…