Michael Fremer

Michael Fremer  |  Dec 29, 2024  |  First Published: Feb 01, 2015
When a magician pulls a quarter from someone's ear or saws a woman in half, I believe in magic. I know it's an illusion—not real—but that doesn't mean that magic isn't real.

What's real is that the magician's illusion is believable because your eyes see it and, until sometime later—even if only a fraction of a second—your brain doesn't argue. The best your brain can do is tell you, "Yes, you saw that, but you know it didn't happen."

Funny, then, how anti-audiophiles always claim that the ear is more easy to fool than the eye. Yet books have been devoted to cataloguing optical illusions. Do you believe that a railroad track's two rails meet at the horizon? Sure looks like it! The brain and ear are easily fooled, yet our very survival depends on their reliability. And the survival of an audio reviewer's credibility depends on his ability to be fooled as rarely as possible.

Michael Fremer  |  Dec 20, 2024  |  First Published: Mar 01, 2015
At the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show, Herman van den Dungen handed me a surprise: a brand new Kiseki Blue cartridge manufactured from new-old-stock parts. It wasn't mine to take home—only to look at, to prove it was real.

Herman van den Dungen may not be a household name even for audiophiles, but his products are: his PrimaLuna electronics are exported from the Netherlands to the US and distributed by tube connoisseur and collector Kevin Deal for PrimaLuna USA.

In the 1980s, Kiseki was legendary among audiophiles, even if their cartridges' prices were beyond the reach of most. But the brand's history is less well known—and younger analog devotees may not have heard of Kiseki at all.

Michael Fremer  |  Dec 11, 2024  |  First Published: Apr 01, 2015
Forty years ago, moving-coil cartridges were exotic. Now they're mainstream. The main advantage of MCs is obvious: rather than the system used in moving-magnet cartridges, in which relatively heavy magnets attached to the stylus's cantilever are moved past a stationary coil-and-armory assembly to create the electrical signal, moving coils, as the name implies, move the relatively lightweight coil and armature past the magnets. The lower the cantilever assembly's moving mass, the lower the system's response time. The lower the response time, the faster and more detailed the reproduction of the music. And MCs' electrical characteristics mean that they have greater bandwidth.
Michael Fremer  |  Nov 11, 2024  |  First Published: May 01, 2015
It's difficult to believe that more than five years have passed since Ortofon introduced its ground-breaking MC A90 moving-coil cartridge ($4200 when last available). The limited-edition MC A90, with its radically shaped body made of powdered stainless steel Selective Laser Melting (SLM), celebrated Ortofon's 90th year in business. The MC A95 ($6500), celebrating their 95th year, retains the A90's seductive shape, but the new body is built of powdered titanium, and thus is even more effectively self-damped.
Michael Fremer  |  Oct 08, 2024  |  First Published: Jun 01, 2015
But first, the blowback I expected following my February 2014 column on Synergistic Research's Uniform Energy Field Technology room treatments never arrived—in fact, quite the opposite. My own positive experience of the UEF devices was confirmed by e-mails from readers who'd already used them, and from those who'd taken up Synergistic's offer of a money-back guarantee. Skeptics will charge that what I and these readers heard is evidence of confirmation bias, but people say this about any positive remarks made about audio components priced above $500.
Michael Fremer  |  Sep 02, 2024  |  First Published: Aug 01, 2015
Photo: Echopark

With its swept-wing shape and platter-forward design, Sperling-Audio's L-1 turntable ($35,950, without tonearm) stands out in a crowd. This high-mass design from Germany is the result of a collaboration between Ansgar Sperling and Michael Bönninghoff, two fiftysomething engineers who began working together in recording studio construction.

Both also bring to the L-1's design and construction years of experience in signal processing. For years, Bönninghoff was the chief developer at Brauner microphones, and today is the technical director of the German pro-audio company S.E.A. Sperling worked in radio and signal processing, and has a strong interest in tubed electronics.

Michael Fremer  |  Aug 12, 2024  |  First Published: Oct 01, 2015
The "Meet the Editors" panel at T.H.E. Show Newport Beach 2015. (L–R): Robert Harley, Chris Connaker, John Darko, Michael Fremer, David W. Robinson.

Add to the deniers of the Holocaust and Climate Change those who say that the vinyl resurgence isn't happening.

Seriously, the pushback was bound to happen, and the bigger this so-called "hipster fad" gets, the more the scoffers sweat. In 2014, according to my sources—representatives of the world's largest pressing plants—more than 73,985,000 LPs were pressed. That's correct: almost 74 million LPs. Taking into consideration such things as multi-LP boxed sets like The Beatles in Mono (which might be counted as a single record in terms of sales), defective discs rejected by consumers or retailers, and unsold records, of which there surely are many in the pipeline, we could cut the number in half—and still have around 35 million. That's more than a 40% increase worldwide over 2013.

Michael Fremer  |  Jul 08, 2024  |  First Published: Nov 01, 2015
How big is the performance gap between TechDAS's new Air Force Two ($52,000) and original Air Force One ($105,000) turntables? How do you halve the price without also sacrificing the build quality and features of the flagship model that defines the brand? Even $52,000 is more than most people pay for an automobile, not to mention a turntable. Still, TechDAS's assertion on their website that the price of their new model price is "reasonably improved" over the old strikes me as an understatement.
Michael Fremer  |  Jun 03, 2024  |  First Published: Sep 01, 2015
Using light to read data from a disc sounds a lot like the technology behind the Compact Disc—but you may be happy to hear there's nothing digital about DS Audio's optical phono cartridge. The DS-W1 uses the motions of a Shibata stylus and boron cantilever to modulate the output of its externally powered light-emitting diode (LED).

This Analog Corner is reprinted on Stereophile's sister site Analog Planet website.

Michael Fremer  |  Jun 03, 2024  |  First Published: Dec 01, 2015
Does everything produce an improvement?"

My skeptical visitor, to whom I'd just pointed out some of the acoustic treatments and other accessories in my listening room, wasn't trying to push my buttons. He just wanted my opinion.

"No," I said. "Some things make the sound worse—way worse—but after all these years, I'm convinced that just about everything that can be done to a room or a system produces an audible difference, for better or worse."

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