Brilliant Corners

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Brilliant CornersDigital Processor ReviewsMusic and Recording Reviews
Brilliant Corners #9: a DAC and a Streamer from France's Totaldac
Alex Halberstadt  |  Nov 27, 2023  | 
To misquote Morrissey, some knobs are better than others. The Manley Neo-Classic 300B amplifiers that I've been listening to, for example, have a knob marked "feedback" that goes from 0 to 10. I've learned so much from using it that I've come to believe that if your amp doesn't have such a knob, it should. You see, the higher you set this control, the better the amp will measure. Applying more global negative feedback to these amps lowers their nonlinear distortion and noisefloor, increases their bandwidth, renders them less sensitive to the speaker's impedance variations and otherwise makes them more stable and efficient. In fact, by applying lots of feedback to an amplifier, it's possible to reduce distortion to barely measurable levels.

So what's the problem? Well, a few turns of the knob suggest that negative feedback isn't as useful as it appears on paper.

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Brilliant Corners
Brilliant Corners #8: Can Kissa—Jazz Listening Parlors—Work in the US?
Alex Halberstadt  |  Oct 24, 2023  | 
In a scene from The Silence of the Lambs—a film that for all of its camp happens to be nearly perfect—FBI cadet Clarice Starling asks caged psychopath Hannibal Lecter for help in figuring out a serial killer's motives. "Do we seek out things to covet?" Lecter responds, following Starling with his eyes as though she were his next meal. "No," he continues, "we begin by coveting what we see every day." Lecter's astute observation applies equally well to audiophilia. Much of this hobby consists of coveting: before we own a component, we usually spend a long while imagining all the ways it will improve our lives.
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Brilliant CornersTube Power Amp Reviews
Brilliant Corners #7: Dual-Mono Manley Mahi Amplifiers
Alex Halberstadt  |  Sep 27, 2023  | 
Writing a regular column can be a funny thing; the repetition it requires brings up questions that grow increasingly urgent. Chief among them: What are we doing here, and what is this for? For all the handwringing about story-telling and prose style, what we're up to in the equipment-review section of this magazine is writing about metal boxes filled with wire, capacitors, circuit boards, and other bits of hardware. Life is difficult and goes by in a flash, love and satisfaction are fleeting at best—so why should we care? Well, because some of these boxes manage to connect us to beauty and meaning in a way that can enhance and gradually change our lives. (And yes, both have to be in the mix: Beauty without meaning is anodyne and lacks whupass.)
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Brilliant CornersMunich 2023
Brilliant Corners #6: Munich from the Back of the Bus
Alex Halberstadt  |  Aug 23, 2023  | 
Alex Halberstadt (front) listens to the BAACH-SP Adio system at High End Munich. (Photo: Jason Victor Serinus)

If you're going to Germany to immerse yourself in big-city excitement—churning dance clubs, matterful contemporary art, visitors and food from around the world, and street life that goes on all night—you'll probably find it in Berlin. Though rents have been climbing and there's no shortage of dirty sidewalks and petty crime, the German capital remains one of the most youthful and vibrant cities in Europe, an art and culture center with large expatriate communities and endless things to do. For urban thrills on a smaller scale, you can make a case for Cologne and even Leipzig.

Just maybe don't go to Munich. As soon as you leave the airport, you know you've reached the epicenter of German burgherdom—a place where manicured lawns, public safety, tidy storefronts, and respectful revelers in Tyrolean costumes are the norm.

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Brilliant CornersPhono Cartridge ReviewsTurntable Reviews
Brilliant Corners #5: High Water Sound; TW-Acustic Raven GT2 turntable; Dynavector Te Kaitora Rua & Miyajima Shilabe phono cartridges
Alex Halberstadt  |  Jul 06, 2023  | 
"New York is an ugly city, a dirty city," John Steinbeck wrote in 1953. "But there is one thing about it—once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough." Decades later, the novelist's insight about this appalling, incomparable city still feels true. New Yorkers love to complain about the summers, with their wafting miasma of hot garbage and urine; about the superannuated subway system, which only sometimes resembles a psilocybin trip gone really wrong; about the purgatorial agony of finding an apartment; about the affronts of existing shoulder-to-shoulder with the stupendously rich. . .

What I'm getting around to saying is that easily the best part of living here is the people. One of them is Jeffrey Catalano, who has been a drummer, painter, DJ, and construction worker and today runs a hi-fi business, High Water Sound, from a loft in a former sail-making factory on Water Street in Manhattan's financial district.

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Brilliant CornersMusic and Recording Features
Brilliant Corners #4: Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue
Alex Halberstadt  |  May 03, 2023  | 
It turns out that PVC, or polyvinyl chloride—the stuff used to make Starbucks gift cards, imitation leather wallets, inflatable pool unicorns, the pipes under your sink, and Billy Idol's pants—is also the main ingredient in phonograph records. And today we're living in the silver age of PVC. Not the golden age, since records are no longer the dominant medium for recorded music, but these days we're lucky to again have access to a remarkable amount of music stamped on top-quality hot plastic.

Better still, as listeners have become more knowledgeable and demanding, vinyl releases have become more scrupulously sourced, pressed, annotated, and packaged. Many of today's records show an unprecedented level of care and transparency about their production—and sound terrific to boot.

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Brilliant CornersDigital Processor Reviews
Brilliant Corners #3: On the Horns of a Dilemma—A for Ara speakers, the Lejonklou Källa streaming DAC
Alex Halberstadt  |  Mar 02, 2023  | 
The Amtrak Empire service snakes north along the Hudson River before reaching Albany, where it pitches sharply to the west, eventually winding up in Niagara Falls. In November I rode it—the Amtrak Empire service, not Niagara Falls—from New York City to the town of Hudson, New York. On my left, the sun beat down on the river's expanse while an occasional sailboat flashed by. Above the water, the undulating domes of the Catskills, with their fading yellow and red streaks, looked like the work of an unsuccessful colorist at a busy hair salon.

I was traveling upstate to visit Rob Kalin, a founder and former CEO of the online craft marketplace Etsy and proprietor of a newish speaker company called A for Ara.

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Brilliant CornersPhono Preamp Reviews
Brilliant Corners #2: Manley Steelhead RC phono preamplifier
Alex Halberstadt  |  Dec 27, 2022  | 
The other day it occurred to me that the main difference between audiophiles and more reasonable adults isn't our gear. Plenty of people have impressive hi-fis simply because they can afford them and are running out of things to buy. No, what makes someone an audiophile is the willingness to sit down in front of a pair of speakers (or with a pair of headphones clamped over their ears) and focus the entirety of their attention on listening.
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Brilliant CornersPhono Preamp Reviews
Brilliant Corners #1: Auditorium 23, EMIA, Murasakino, and Sound Tradition Live! phono step-ups
Alex Halberstadt  |  Oct 25, 2022  | 
The first audiophile I met lived near a sewage treatment plant on the outskirts of Moscow. It was a few months after the Soviet Union collapsed, in 1992, when I was a college senior, and I recall walking with my father to his home past block after block of the identical dingy white tenements that encircle most Eastern European cities.
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