Herb Reichert

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Gramophone Dreams #77: Laissez-faire Listening & the Thöress EHT MKII integrated amplifier

Gramophone Dreams Integrated Amp Reviews

Herb Reichert | Oct 04, 2023 | 13 comments

With a system like this, Thoreau would never have gone into the woods to begin with.

Last weekend, I visited an old friend who lives near Walden Pond of Henry Thoreau fame. I hadn't visited him since before the pandemic. He had just finished adding a wing to his house that included a dedicated hi-fi listening room the size and shape of a small church. Below a cathedral ceiling, the sweet spot featured seating for no fewer than 30 guests. Besides serving as his main listening room—he has another one that's smaller—it serves as a large residential parlor with a baby grand piano for use in chamber music performances, which feature prominently in his and his wife's social calendar.

It was a high-SPL thrill to experience his towering, field-coiled RCA theater horns powered by RCA 845 amplifiers.

Audio-GD Vacuum HE1 XLR line preamplifier

Tube Preamp Reviews

Herb Reichert | Sep 29, 2023 | 9 comments

In red letters on the first page of Chinese audio manufacturer Audio-GD's website are these words: Wisdom in mind, enthusiasm at heart.

I like this goodwill greeting because it sets a mindful tone. I presume that sentiment was issued by one Mr. He Qinghua, because farther down the page, it states, "All Audio-GD's products are designed and developed under the leadership of Mr. He Qinghua." When I began my auditions, I took this salutation as an advisement, making it my plan to study Audio-GD's Vacuum HE1 XLR line-level preamp with as much wisdom as I could muster and the enthusiasm of high expectations.

Gramophone Dreams #76: Lounge Silver Copla, Grado Platinum3 High, Benz Gullwing SLR, Shure V-15 Type III

Gramophone Dreams Phono Cartridge Reviews Phono Preamp Reviews

Herb Reichert | Aug 24, 2023 | 6 comments

I'm going to tell a story about blind listening, because it illustrates what I consider the most important issue in today's audiophile environment. I'm going to skip the names of the participants because you probably know them. And I'm not going to name the components, because their role in this story is merely as symbols of their type. Here is what I'll reveal: We were playing LPs through an expertly curated, six-figure–priced sound system in a largish room that suited the large speakers perfectly.

The occasion was a "listening party" at a friend's apartment. The guest list included me and four of the most experienced listeners I know. The plan was for everyone to nosh lightly, drink good wine, and weigh in on a new, unnamed, not-free low-output MC phono cartridge, only available on a limited, made-to-order basis.

Gramophone Dreams #75: dCS Bartók APEX; HiFiMan Audivina, HE-R10P, HE1000 V2 headphones

Digital Processor Reviews Gramophone Dreams Headphone Reviews

Herb Reichert | Aug 03, 2023 | 7 comments

I view poetry as more than a literary genre. It's a worldview and a state of being that frames my daily experience in the supernal. I've consumed a lifetime keeping my senses peeled for authentic, manmade mysteries, especially in art and music. Music is my favorite hunting ground, and nowhere have I found mysteries as DNA-deep as the 59 takes of 29 songs recorded in only five days by Delta blues legend Robert Johnson (1911–1938). I've played the Columbia Records 1961 anthology King of the Delta Blues Singers (Columbia LP CL 1654) 100 times since my days in Chicago as a teenager, and I still haven't grasped more than a portion of its juke-joint poetics.

Acelec Model One loudspeaker

Stand Loudspeaker Reviews

Herb Reichert | Jul 28, 2023 | 36 comments

The Acelec Model One speakers I'm auditioning ($6495/pair) are not princesses in pink, or frog green, or made of some chemically distilled polypudding. Nor are they conventional-beyond-reason MDF boxes covered with stick-on vinyl pretending to be wood. The Model Ones are squat, small, serious-looking, two-way standmounts. They are 11.2" tall, 7.7" wide, 11.5" deep, and 37.5lb heavy.

Gramophone Dreams #74: Elekit TU-8900 kit amplifier

Gramophone Dreams Integrated Amp Reviews

Herb Reichert | Jul 11, 2023 | 24 comments

It was a cold March-in-Brooklyn morning. Clouds had been shedding wintery mix since daybreak. By 9am, birds were flash-mobbing my window, demanding suet. But I was frozen—unable to pull my mind loose from the grave flowings of American composer Ned Rorem's Book of Hours, as performed by Les Connivences Sonores on the album Musikalische Perlen (24/48 FLAC, Ars Produktion/Qobuz). The sounds in my room were sensuous and mesmerizing, and I needed to float in their mysterious energy as long as I could.

I was listening through the most compelling sound system I had assembled since I started writing for Stereophile. The dCS Bartók DAC/streamer was funneling the harmonic purity and hypnomagik of Odile Renault on flute and Elodie Reibaud on harp into HoloAudio's appropriately named Serene preamp, which was feeding Elekit's TU-8900 300B/2A3 kit amplifier, which was sending a few of its triode-tube watts to the TAD's $32,500/pair Compact Evolution One monitors, more compactly known as the TAD CE1TX.

AXPONA 2023 was Cool Like Jules

As We See It AXPONA 2023

Herb Reichert | Jun 19, 2023 | 5 comments

The Stereophile crew at AXPONA 2023, minus Herb Reichert (L–R): Jason Victor Serinus, Rogier van Bakel, Michael Trei, Jim Austin, Ken Micallef. Photo by David James Bellecci-Serinus.

At AXPONA 2023, I saw teenage besties cruising rooms together. I saw fashion-conscious 20-somethings listening in sweet spots, and young parents with younger children. Yeah, there were a few gray boomers like me, but only a couple were wearing Hawaiian shirts. AXPONA 2023 vibed like a tribal conference at a sacred pilgrimage site, and I've never enjoyed an audio show this much before.

Gramophone Dreams #73: PTP Audio Solid9 Turntable, Sorane SA-1.2 Tonearm

Gramophone Dreams Tonearm Reviews Turntable Reviews

Herb Reichert | May 31, 2023 | 22 comments

I wish that all who love LP playback as much as I do could hear a Thorens TD 124 or Garrard 301 or EMT 930 in their systems, but those products are subject to the vagaries of supply and demand: They are rare and pricey.—Art Dudley

TAD CE1TX loudspeaker

Stand Loudspeaker Reviews

Herb Reichert | May 18, 2023 | 9 comments

The most money I've ever spent on a pair of loudspeakers was back in the early 1990s, when I bought a pair of used TAD TH-4001 wooden horns and their associated TD-4001 compression drivers. The TAD horn's smooth, micro-resolved response was a refinement upgrade from my multicell Altec horns; plus, the TADs' French-polished wood looked radically less industrial than the soldered-tin, tar-filled 1005/288C horns they replaced. None of my horn-fanatic friends had anything sonically or aesthetically comparable, and all of them were envious. I didn't keep the TADs long, because the friend who admired them most made me a very "friendly" offer.

That was my first experience with Japanese loudspeaker design, and it exposed me to a level of engineering precision and fine craftmanship I had not yet encountered in American-made speakers.

Gramophone Dreams #72: Abyss Diana & Focal Utopia headphones; Eleven Audio Broadway & Naim Uniti Atom HE amplifiers

Gramophone Dreams Headphone Reviews

Herb Reichert | May 04, 2023 | 0 comments

Since the 1980s, I've been asking every speaker designer I meet, "What amplifier do you recommend using with your speakers?" Annoyingly, they always say, "My speakers are easy to drive. Any amp will do." Whereupon I'd whine, "Aww, come on man, don't feed me that. What amp did you use when you were designing the speaker?" The closest any manufacturer came to providing a real answer was Wendell Diller of Magnepan, who, when I reviewed his .7 quasi-ribbon speaker, said, "We used an amp of our own design. It's not for sale. But any amp that doubles its power into 4 ohms will be fine." Wendell's answer helped me choose effective amplification and feel more confident about my conclusions.

Unlike loudspeaker manufacturers, headphone manufacturers know that which amp a reviewer uses could make or break a review of their product. So, wisely, they seem grateful when I ask for guidance.

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