june/july - SCN Research

Transcription

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POSITIVE FEEDBACK ONLINE - ISSUE 1
This is a dynamic site, meaning articles and reviews are being added every few days.
So come back often to see what is new! Latest update 7/17/02 - see NEW.
june/july
EDITORIAL
The Higher End
by David W. Robinson
REVERBERATIONS
Our readers respond…we respond right back!
AUDIO DISCOURSE
Auric Illuminator, Audio Systeme Desk, and more!
by Dave Clark
The Art of System Tweaking
by Clay Swartz
Auroville 3, reviewing the reviewers.
by Srajan Ebaen
Auroville 2, for July.
by Srajan Ebaen
The Mysteries of His System, The Verses in His Life,
A Love Story, part Nine.
by Barry Grant
Moving forward, spending time with the Plinius SA-102 amplifier,
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8200 integrated, and CD-LAD preamplifier.
by Ed Morawski
Yes, Polarity is Absolute (But Only Your Ears Know For Sure!)
by Clark Johnsen
Doctor Platus’ Phenomenal Prototype Platform
by Dave Glackin
An Eye for Electricity and an Ear for Mods, addressing Power and
Parts in Amplifiers (a VAC Avatar) and the Digital Front End (a Sony
SCD-1).
by Greg Maltz
Auroville 1, for June.
by Srajan Ebaen
CD Tweaks, HDTV and the Audiophile, and Shakti Onlines
by Clay Swartz
Delivering on DSD: An Inquisition into Inaccuracy, Thoughts on
the Sonus Faber Signums and Harbeth HL Compact 7es Mk IIs
loudspeakers, and the Bel Canto EVO 200.2 amplifier.
by Kelly Tang
Digging Into DSD, thoughts on the the Marantz SA-1 SACD player.
by Kelly Tang
"I Don’t Drive Stock!" Modding & Hotrodding the Sony SCD-1
SACD player, Part 1: The Audiocom Superclock and Superclock
Power Supply.
In Which PF Does MoFi, hears GAIN 2 & DSD, and returns to
River City very impressed! (From the PF archives of significant
articles, 1998)
On the Margins: Gaining, at last, a Sense of Proportion,
adjusting to a new home with the Audio Physic Tempo III
loudspeakers, David Berning’s ZH-270 amplifier, and Equi=tech’s
ET1.5RQ-FM power line conditioner.
by Tom Davis
the audio analyst, the ClearAudio Virtuoso Mk II moving magnet
cartridge
by Greg Weaver
The "Mostly" Audiocom Modification of the SCD-777ES
by Jim Treanor
Tweaks and more!
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by Dave Clark
DIY AUDIO
A direct coupled, active loaded, parallel feed SE 45 amplifier
Design by John Tucker, with contributions by Mike LaFevre, John
Camille, and Kim Jenkins.
DIY Audio: the Journey
by Kevin Haskins
Kismet 3: the Last Generation
by Fabio Camorani
HARDWARE REVIEWS
Marigo Audio Labs VTS Tuning Dots
as reviewed by Dave Clark and Francisco Duran
Audes Studio loudspeakers
as reviewed by Steve Lefkowicz, Jim Grudzien, and Victor Chavira
Lamm LL2 preamplifier
as reviewed by Larry Cox and Francisco Duran
Empirical Audio Holophonic interconnects
and Clarity 7 speaker cables
as reviewed by Ed Morawski and Carlo Flores
Antique Sound Labs AQ1001DT integrated
as reviewed by Francisco Duran, Dave Clark, and Victor Chavira
Walker Audio Ultimate High Definition Links
as reviewed by Dave Clark
Media Access Aurios MIBs
47 Laboratory Flatfish CD player and Progression DAC
as reviewed by Francisco Duran, Dave Clark, Larry Fisher,
and Larry Cox.
Final Labs Daruma 3II isolation bearings
as reviewed by Larry Cox, Dave Clark, and Francisco Duran
McIntosh MC352 amplifier
as reviewed by Larry Cox, Dave Clark, and Victor Chavira
Resolution Audio Opus 21 CD player
as reviewed by Ed Morawski
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Audio Valve Eklipse preamplifier
as reviewed by Art Shapiro
Arcam CD72T DiVA CD player
as reviewed by Ed Morawski, Larry Cox, and Jim Grudzien
Dynaudio Contour 3.3 loudspeakers
as reviewed by Pat Brady, Dave Clark, and Bryan Gladstone
Final Labs Music 5 preamplifier and Music 6 amplifier
as reviewed by Dave Clark, Mark Katz, and Francisco Duran
47 Laboratory 50-watt Gaincard integrated amplifier
as reviewed by Larry Cox, Steve Lefkowicz, and Francisco Duran
Gryphon Callisto 2100 integrated amplifier
as reviewed by Ed Morwaski, Roger McNichols, Jr., and Victor
Chavira
Joule Electra Stargate amplifiers (plus an interview with Judd
Barber)
as reviewed by Bryan Gladstone, Mark Katz, and Dave Clark
JPS Kaptovator AC cord
Linn Komri Reference Monitor loudspeakers
as reviewed by David W. Robinson
Magnum Dynalab MD-308 integrated amplifier
as reviewed by Larry Cox, Victor Chavira, and Carlo Flores
nOrh CD-1 CD player
as reviewed by Ed Morawski, Carlo Flores, and Francisco Duran
Peter Belt "X" Coordinate Pen
as reviewed by Carol Clark (with a little help from Dave)
Shakti Innovations Stones and On-Lines
Stealth M7 interconnects, speaker, and AC cables
as reviewed by Francisco Duran, Dave Clark, and Mark Katz
Taddeo Passive Digital Antidote Two
as reviewed by Greg Ewing
Talon Khorus loudspeakers and Roc subwoofers
as reviewed by Clement Perry with a follow-up by Stu McCreary
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WAVAC MD-811 amplifier
as reviewed by Rick Gardner
INTERVIEWS
Stan Ricker Live and Unplugged: True Confessions of a Musical
and Mastering Maven, Part 1
by Dave Glackin
An Interview with Scott Frankland
by Mike Pappas
An Interview with Tony Taddeo
by Dave Clark
An Interview with Winston Ma, Part 1: Ma’s Entry Into Fine Audio
by David W. Robinson & Rick Gardner
MUSIC REVIEWS
Three Jazz Titles: Bernie Wallace, Sarah Vaughan, and Jacintha
by Dave Glackin
The Vinyl Cheapskate, CES 2002—Vinylwise
by Roger S. Gordon
Dr. Sardonicus Does the Music! or "Where Rick reviews a
gazillion discs!"
by Rick “Dr. Sardonicus” Gardner
Sunier on Hi-Res
by John Sunier
Maltz on SACD (continued from Positive Feedback, Vol. 9, No. 2)
by Greg Maltz
A Baker’s Dozen, Minus One: LPs and CDs from CES 2001
by Dave Glackin
Karrin Allyson, Ballads: Remembering John Coltrane
by Dave Glackin
Four Times the Blues: Wild Child Butler, Sho’ ‘Nuff, Henry Gray,
Pinetop Perkins, and Harry “Big Daddy” Hypolite
by Dave Glackin
New Releases: Tom Waits, Lauryn Hill, and Paul Westerberg
by Carlo Flores
Miles Davis, Young Man With a Horn
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by Dave Glackin
The Classic Records Reissue, Heifetz Playing Bruch’s Scottish
Fantasy: One of My Top Two Shaded Dogs
by Dave Glackin
SHOW REPORTS
Livin’ with the Blues in Salina
by Dave Glackin
Music, Sound and Personalities: The 2002 WCES and T.H.E.
Expo
By Dave Glackin
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POSITIVE FEEDBACK ONLINE © 2002 - HOME
BACK TO TOP
higherendissue1
The Higher End
“Yes, I can teach you to fly — but that cocoon has got to go…”
Yes, things have changed. Positive Feedback magazine is no longer going to be published
as a print journal…instead, we’ve shifted to online publication, and have organized ourselves
as Positive Feedback Online. The former audioMUSINGS group, under the editorial
leadership of Dave Clark, has joined the editorial community of Positive Feedback, to form
the new online venture. Some 50 or so editors and writers will be participating in PF Online,
as a larger team.
Dave Clark will be acting as a highly valued new Senior Assistant Editor (in tandem with
Rick Gardner from the PF group), and will also be the new Web Site Editor for PF Online.
Dave and his talented wife Carol Clark are smashingly talented in the realm of html and web
design; I’ve been very taken at the look and feel of their efforts. We believe that you’ll find
the new PF Online to be a massive improvement over the old Positive Feedback web site.
Yours truly will act as the new Editor-in-Chief of the Positive Feedback Online e-zine. With
me will be the old “River City Gang” from Portland, now much more highly visible than
ever…much to the dismay of traditionalists, no doubt!
Ah well; we aren’t doing this for them anyway, eh?
Which brings up a good point: what’s the goal of this new enterprise?
To continue in the best tradition of both publications, really; from audioMUSINGS comes an
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emphasis on the equipment. They are a hardware review group with a well-developed
approach to evaluating audio gear by placing in front of one reviewer after another. This
allows them to form an extended impression of a component or components under varying
conditions. As audiophiles based in the L.A. area, they know each other very well, get along,
and represent all the best things that a gathering of reasonably proximate audio loons can
provide: tunes, good times, pleasant audio tweakiness and the odd ‘phile obsession. It’s
great to have them aboard! (Read more about the aM review philosophy)
audioMUSINGS will therefore continue as a section of the new Positive Feedback Online,
operating as the focus for audio hardware.
Positive Feedback will act as the aegis for the new venture. Those who know PF from its
12.5 years of publication are aware of our philosophy. (If not, check elsewhere on our site for
an eyeful.) In summary, PF is, and has always been, about several things:
Creativity – PF is first and foremost an artistic endeavor, a pursuit of writing in service of the
audio arts. Art is at the heart of all of life, all of music, all of audio—and all of what we do
here.
Community – We are also a gathering of kindred spirits, who happen to like each other and
enjoy working together. What’s more, we don’t quite understand why people would want to
live their lives any other way.
Commitment – PF has always represented a union of ideals and practical work. We intend to
carry through on that commitment here in PF Online.
You can think of PF Online as an extension of Positive Feedback in a new medium, one that
allows us to go with our strengths, and leave all the constraints of traditional publishing
behind.
Which brings me to…
…the question of that I have already heard from some of our print subscribers: “Why’d you
do this?! I prefer magazines…don’t like the web! Say it ain’t so!”
Ask me something hard.
There are a number of reasons why Positive Feedback made the decision to shift from print
to electrons. (I’m sure that Dave Clark could add his own list here.) As a matter of fact, the
logic—and economics—are so powerful that I’ve been quietly meditating this move for a
couple of years. But now it’s become feasible.
First off, printing magazines has become ungodly expensive. As in, REALLY EXPENSIVE.
Unless you’ve got deep pockets…as in a few million…it’s gotten very hard to play in that
game. Just ask the folks at Fi, Audio Adventure/Play, Ultimate Audio, etc. Takes all the fun
out of it, it does…
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Next, shipping magazines has become even worse. Some of our overseas subscribers were
costing nearly US $10.00 per issue for shipment/handling, which is bloody close to totally
absurd. Sure, we had readers willing to pay it, but it was continuing to go out of sight…and
9/11 only made it worse. With more cost increases on the horizon, it was time for a change.
Web technology, color output technology, digital photography, digital image editing, and highspeed Internet access is finally getting to the point of delivering acceptable…even
exceptional…results, when used properly. As an IT professional in my life as Clark Kent,
mild-mannered college professor, I am intensely aware of what can be done. The
technological moment had arrived for a change.
We’d like to cut the interminable delays and hassles of print publication down to the nearreal time of the Internet. Enough said.
We’d also like to make our issues dynamic in content…more on that in a moment. The web
allows this; traditional print publications don’t.
Finally, the new medium allows some creative possibilities that we’ve never been able to
pursue at Positive Feedback before; Positive Feedback Online will be free to do things in
ways we’ve explored.
About that “dynamic content”…
Here’s something different: each issue of Positive Feedback Online will be dynamic in
content.
By that, we mean that if you come in to catch Issue 1, and read it on its first day, that’s fine
and dandy…but you’ll have to come back in a few days to check it again. There might be
some new essay…or a new review…or some new letters in the “Reverberations” section,
together with responses from an editor or two…or a counterpoint from another editor about
something said by a colleague…or new photos…or a new interview…or new poetry, or
satire, or art work (suitable for printing out and putting on the wall!) of an audiophile
nature...there will always be something new happening.
And until the next issue comes along (every two months…yes, we’ll be bi-monthly), you’ll
have to come back again and again. We think that readers are going to like it!
One more thing: anyone with Internet access anywhere will be able to read Positive
Feedback Online…at a kiosk, at home, at work…in full color…and print out whatever they
want to read. (Yes, that allows you to take us with you into those sacred ‘phile moments in
the toilet.) You’ll get some of the very best audio writing about…not quite like anything else
on the planet.
And all for free.
That’s right: no charge to read PF Online. And no charge to browse the archives.
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The site will be entirely supported by our loyal advertisers, God bless ‘em!
So kick back and enjoy! Welcome to Positive Feedback Online: A Creative Forum for the
Audio Arts. May there be many more issues…good audio times for all…and please accept
my thanks for your patience and support during the long gestation of this artistic project.
All the best,
David W. Robinson…Ye Olde Editor
Positive Feedback Online
BACK TO TOP
letters
Our readers respond…we respond right back!
Send your comments to either editorpf@attbi.com or audiomusings@earthlink.net
Dear Sirs
In Issue one, Dave Glackin reviews a 45 rpm version of LSC-2603. This recording is not
listed in the Classic Records catalog. What recording is this and where is it available?
Ifan
Dear Ifan,
The 33 rpm version is listed in the Classic Records catalog under LSC-2603, and the price
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has been reduced. The 45 rpm version is indeed not listed. The 45 rpm sets are known to
have tremendous sound, and they sell out fast. Chad Kassem at Acoustic Sounds may
possibly have a copy for sale.
Good luck,
Dave Glackin
Hello, Mr Robinson,
First I would say “great job !” for your Positive Feedback. I’ve read your revue of the
Klout/Keltik/5103 system that has been my previous system. Now I have a pair of Klimax, a
CD12, 5103, and the new Komri speakers. As you have also revue this system, with great
photos, could you tell me what pre amp to choose to replace 5103: in fact, I feel the sound
could be warmer.
I live in France, Paris.
Thanks!
Christophe
NB, I’ve you tried other speaker cables with the Komri ???
Hello Christophe...
You have touched upon a very interesting question, one that is of great relevance to me right
now. The preamp is the heart...and in many ways, the soul...of an audio system, in my view.
The 5103 is a very fine preamp, one that I have favorably reviewed, but I have been doing
further audio voyaging, looking for other approaches and designs.
In Positive Feedback Online, Issue 2, I'll be reviewing the Audio Research Reference Two,
Mk. II. This will be followed later in the year with a review of the new Balanced Audio
Technology VK-51 reference preamp.
The ARC Ref Two is not a "warm" preamp, being remarkably neutral. "Warmth" in a preamp
is hard to pin down long distance. You'll want to take a look at tube-based designs for sure;
beyond that, it's hard to advise you, Christophe. Tube preamps can very mightily in
sound...even a given preamp can change its character, depending on the tubes that you
use.
Don't forget your interconnects (which you did not mention). You might give Cardas a try;
they impart a musical richness to the sound that can be most seductive in a given system. I'd
also check the power cables that you're using; I recommend the Cardas power cables in the
Klout-based system, since that is what I went with, after experimentation.
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You question about new speakers cables with the Komri is also timely: Jennifer Crock of
JENA Labs is making a 2 pair -> 4 pair custom set of JENA Labs speaker cables for me to
try with the Klimax/Komri combination. As I said in my review, I have a growing feeling that
the standard Linn speaker cables are not quite the thing for bringing out the best in the Linn
system.
I'll report on my results by this fall.
Thanks for reading Positive Feedback Online, Christophe...and thanks for your questions!
Regards,
David W. Robinson
Editor, Positive Feedback Online
editorpf@attbi.com
Hello,
I recently found your web site and have been reading many of the articles posted therein.
First, I'm a fan of Clark Johnsen's writings and enjoyed the "new" piece on the Wood effect
and the story on the Shakelton expedition.
My main motivation for writing this is Dave Glackin's interview with Stan Ricker and Stan's
mention of the great mastering engineer George Piros. I had the good fortune of working
with George for many years when we were both at Atlantic Studios in New York. He would
often tell me stories of his days with Bob Fine and his other experiences in the record
business, usually interspersing his comments with language that would make many
"gangstas" blush. It was great to see George remembered. I know I'll never forget him.
One last thing before I conclude: In the reviews of the Aurio and Daruma roller bearings, two
things came to mind. First, I believe Vistek is offering ball bearings to be used atop the
Aurios now, so contact with the bottom surface of the component is minimized. I wish the
reviewers had tried this as I believe it improves performance significantly. Same for the
Darumas. I wish the reviewer got to audition them "topless" (i.e. with only the ball making
contact with the component). Here again, I believe performance is significantly improved.
The second thing that came to mind in the reviews was the omission of the fact that these
devices work by preventing vibrations from ENTERING the gear (primarily those of seismic
nature, coming from the ground, through the floor and supporting shelves).
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Fun web site. Keep up the good work.
Thanks
Sincerely,
Barry Diament
Thanks for the compliments and reflections, Barry. We're working hard to make PF Online a
place of
creativity and community for fine audio; letters like yours help to achieve that goal.
We'll be publishing the other two installments of Dave Glackin's classic interview with the
great Stan "The
Man!" Ricker. He's a prince of a fellow, and a real treasure....
As to your comments on the components: I'll let the aM group respond as they feel led!
All the best,
David W. Robinson
editorpf@attbi.com
Bob,
Your points on the Aurios and Daruma are well taken. Thanks for the heads-up! When we
originally did the review these were relatively new. With so many end-users having
experienced these, it is nice to know that there is more than one way to skin a cat. A followup is in order then. Oh, and yes we were aware as to the "design" and "intent" of the
devices. Sorry for the omission. We will also have a review of the Townshend Sinks in a few
weeks.
Thanks,
Dave Clark
Senior Assistant Editor, Positive Feedback Online
audiomusings@earthlink.net
Editor:
I found the remarks on the D'Appolito layout in the Linn Komri review both snide and
offhand. As I understand it, the D'Appolito design is a combination of BOTH physical layout
AND crossover design to produce a controlled dispersion point source layout with
reasonably wide horizontal dispersion, limited vertical dispersion and minimal lobing within
the listening window. Properly designed, and many MTM designs do not use the correct
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crossover parameters and are not true D'Appolito designs, D'Appolito designs I have heard
seem to accomplish these design parameters quite well.
I have no problems with what the Linn Komri claims to accomplish. The physical layout looks
like, if done well, it could appear as a point source radiator. But a claim that it is superior to
another well proven design should include an explanation of why it is superior and some
attempt at a logical proof of this superiority; it should not be a couple of words without any
explanation at all. Both audio reviews and Joe D'Appolito deserve better.
Please note that this is not an attack on the Linn speaker, a product I have never heard, just
an appeal for more objectivity and clarity in the audio reviewing process.
Thanks for listening,
Allen Edelstein
hahax@rcn.com
Hello Allen...
My comments about the layout of the speaker array of the Komri vis-a-vis D'Appolito were
not intended as a disparagement, they way that you seem to have taken them. They were
intended to make a casual reference to driver array configuration itself, not to make a
categorical and analytical judgment as to all parameters. My comments as to the sound of
the Komri approach was likewise not an exhaustive and categorical comparison, merely a
casual reference.
"Snide"?
No, not at all. Couldn't be further from my mind.
"Offhand"?
Perhaps, but with none of the malice aforethought that you seem willing to attribute. I must
confess to no interest in "objectivity," a category that I do not believe exists in human affairs,
much less in things audio.
Clarity? I believe that the review is quite clear, so far as it goes.
And so I must refuse your gauntlet, Allen, since I have no interest in the conflict that I never
sought in my original commentary.
Regards,
David W. Robinson
editorpf@attbi.com
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Editor:
I'd like to add a couple comments to the article by Clark Johnsen. As a test of Blackburn's
ideas, why not flip polarity once before some component or wire or part, then flip it back
again downstream of that element? This would eliminate polarity from the source of change
and focus that change on current direction. Seems like a simple experiment.
The other point is that, for example, if my flip-pass-flip idea were applied, for example, to a
tube preamp, and that preamp was either single-ended (Class A) or push-pull (Class AB), for
example, then in the Class A case the tube would have to be perfectly linear over the entire
signal level for no-change to occur. Similarly, the Class AB case which uses 2 tubes in pushpull fashion would have to have two perfectly matched tubes for this flip-pass-flip idea to
show no change.
Basically, I'm agreeing with Clark about the definitions of polarity and absolute polarity, but
I'm also saying that the result of that polarity reversal switch depends on where in the signal
path you put the switch.
Russell DeAnna
Senior Member Technical Staff
Movaz Networks, Inc.
Atlanta, GA 30093
Editor:
I'm thoroughly enjoying the new PF Online, and am looking forward to new articles and
reviews being posted weekly, rather than waiting for my "fix" once a month. I'm also enjoying
the archived interviews and reviews being posted as well, as there were some great ones
that deserve repeat attention.
In the interest of community, and our shared love of Music (with a capital M), here is a
wonderful link for everybody to peruse. It is an extensive glossary of musical instruments
from around the world, and amazing in its breadth. There is so much music and information
"out there" that we never see here in the U.S.. For those who love the music of other
cultures, an invaluable resource as well. It's at
http://www.worldmusicportal.com/Instruments/instruments.htm
David and Dave, keep up the great work.
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alan m. kafton
audio excellence az
Thanks for sending this along, Alan! It's a very useful resource, and is hereby recommended
to readers of Positive Feedback Online.
David W. Robinson
editorpf@attbi.com
Dear Sir;
Thanks for your web for giving me profound news and the audio world! I appreciate the
reviews of your editors, as I already dropped other webs' comment and stick to yours.
To fuel my understanding and wish to know an equipment: Marantz SACD Player SA14,
would you please advise how can I find it from your contents?
With kind regards,
ML
Australia
Hello ML... We're glad to hear that you're find PF Online to be a helpful audio resource.
Please drop by regularly! We have not yet reviewed the Marantz SA-14. My very favorable
comments on the Marantz SA-12S multi-channel SACD player will be appearing in the near
future here on PF Online.
Best regards,
David W. Robinson
editorpf@attbi.com
Dear Sir;
In reading your review policies on your web site, I couldn't help but notice that you folks are
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in the no-bad-review camp. The other point of view is the one expressed by John Atkinson of
Stereophile, that once a component has been submitted for review, the reviewer will
evaluate it, and the magazine will publish his or her evaluation. I'm not talking about the
differences in reviewing methodology here, and I even suspect that Mr. Atkinson would
agree that your method has merit. It may be impractical for an organization whose members
are scattered across a continent, even an ocean, but it's a good idea. I am solely focusing on
your relative policy regarding publishing the reviews.
I have written reviews myself, of software packages. My editor was in your camp, and we
returned many things unreviewed, often with notes describing the flaws we found, and an
invitation to submit revised products for review, without prejudice. I can see the validity of
Atkinson's position, as well. His argument would likely be that his policy keeps manufactures
honest, since whatever they submit will be reviewed, even if the review is unfavorable.
I would be interested to hear your thoughts on these viewpoints, and even to hear what
motivated your choice. This is a core question in the reviewing business, and informed
debate is a good thing. I myself don't know where I stand, the editor I spoke of was my
uncle, and he is a man I have the utmost respect for. But I cannot decide if he is right on this
one.
Thank you,
Shannon Menkveld
PS Your website is fantastic. Congratulations, this is web publishing done right, at least on a
cable modem. The site renders perfectly in Mozilla 0.9.9, in both win98 and linux. Many,
many thanks for the standards-compliant page.
Shannon, thanks for the kind words on the site. As to your concerns to our "no-bad-review"
policy, I would like to respond by saying that we are not really part of that camp. Nor are we
part of the "if it stinks it is our duty to say how much" camp either. Where we see ourselves
standing is more in the middle. I don't feel it is our role to beat-up on products, nor are we
here to decide the fate of any company's success—let the market place do that. Besides, for
the most part, audio today is a sea of great-sounding products, each with their strengths and
weaknesses. Yes, there is the occasional turd out there, but when we select products it is
more from what we would like to hear along with what we feel the readers would like to see,
then trying to be the "audio police."
Yes, we have received products that did not work for the reviewers involved and ended up
not being published, they simply could not find much to say that was positive. Why beat a
dead horse? But these are by far the rare exception (I can think of only two over the past 5
years and in each case the maufacturer decided either to pull the product from their line or
redesign it). It is our policy that if it is sent for review and I get all the reviews in, we will
publish the reviews as they stand. Naturally, the manufacturer can offer any response they
feel is warranted. And yes, we have had a few plead with us not to print reviews as they
were "raves." This they felt would be a death blow to them as a business. By the way, all are
still going strong!
What we feel needs to be said in a review is an honest response to what a component
sounds like within a system—meaning you will get the good with the bad. And remember, it
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is the system you are listening to, not an individual component. Our reviews as are fairly well
balanced, in that we make every effort to explain not only why we liked a product, but
perhaps why we didn't.
But when we write that a product doesn't do this or that, it does not mean that the product
itself is "bad." Just that we preferred something else. On the other hand you may find the
product to be the cat's meow. Which is why we use multiple reviewers; while one or two may
have loved this or that about the product, the other(s) may not, or vice versa. Please read
some of our reviewes in the audimusings' Back Issues section and you will gain a greater
understanding of what we are doing.
Dave Clark
Hello Shannon... These are fine questions; I’ll meditate loosely upon them in the order that
you asked them.
It is my belief that all audio reviews are, at best, no more than indicative. The comments of
even a good writer should be regarded as transitional impressions, expressed as momentary
guides for further exploration by the audio seeker who reads them. They are conditional, not
relative, not absolute. This means that all reviews should be kept in perspective, and should
always be tested by the audiophile in his or her own listening room. The enjoyment of audio
and recorded music being an intensely existential moment, arising out of profound spiritual
depths, there is simply no other way to validate a response.
You must do this for yourself—an act that requires exertion, passion, and attention to
detail—no one else can do this for you. Any attempt to substitute the views of an “audio
authority” for your own maturing sensibilities (the education of which is the supreme task of
the audiophile) is doomed to die the death of the derivative soul and the dilettante.
The true audiophile is deeply empirical, while understanding that the source of musical
ecstasy is far beyond the ability of mere measurement to fathom. He or she is therefore free
to try anything, disbelief suspended, knowing that there is much that can only be known by a
willingness to try.
We must take the responsibility for the quality of our own audio and musical experiences, for
no one but us can carry the burden of our preferences and our choices.
Why “no negative reviews”? For epistemological reasons, really. Every audio system is an
interrelated whole, a combination of interactive strengths and weaknesses. Changing a
single component—indeed, changing a minute detail—can, in my experience, change the
character of the whole thing.
Given the reality of system synergy, the only way that I could in good conscience produce a
negative review would be if I had energetically and exhaustively evaluated the component
under all possible conditions, and had optimized all aspects of system performance. (Clark
letters
Johnsen did an excellent summary of what would be required to do this several years ago in
PF; I should re-print it to remind us all of the long list of what that involves.) Then, and only
then, could I reasonably conclude that a given component in a given system was “bad”—and
even that would be conditional.
The logistics of reviewing and economic considerations would impose this, even if I wished
otherwise. I think it best to be philosophical about the limits of what can be done in audio
reviewing, and proper to be honest about those limits.
On the other hand, a good impression really means something! We have found something
that works, and that should be shared.
In summary, “bad impressions” are inconclusive (because they are not exhaustive—we must
not argue from silence here), but good ones are indicative. I should say that I also assume
that people want to know “where the gold is,” not “where the gold ain’t.” Then again, human
nature has saddened me more than once. Regardless, I long ago decided for these reasons
only to publish reviews of the magical moments, those special times when wonderful things
happen in a listening room. Any component or system that is submitted for review that
doesn’t “make magic” for one reviewer is often sent to another; if it strikes out another time
or two, it is simply returned to the designer/manufacturer/distributor with a polite “no review.”
The fact that we couldn’t find the magic doesn’t mean that someone else, somewhere else,
might not; we should walk humbly in light of that fact.
Some people do indeed say that the publication of “bad” reviews “keeps the manufacturers
honest,” or “establishes the credibility/integrity of a review magazine.” I disagree; such a
practice ensures neither of necessity. There are dishonest designers and manufacturers;
there are corrupt/inept journalists; “negative” reviews can sometimes be used to produce the
appearance of integrity, without actually producing the fruit thereof.
Every editor is free to pursue his or her own path. John Atkinson and I disagree on the
question of publishing negative reviews, but that’s neither here nor there, I think. Positive
Feedback Online and Stereophile are two radically different publications, with different
worldviews in some important regards. Ultimately, the reader must choose which worldview
is kindred, and read accordingly.
Glad to hear that you are enjoying the Positive Feedback Online site, by the way! I give the
credit, and real kudos, to Dave and Carol Clark, our gifted web site editorial team. It’s a fine,
clean layout, highly compliant with various browsers according to the email that I’ve
received…easy on the eyes, no?
All the best,
David W. Robinson
letters
Editor:
As a clarification of the SACD mods that I do: All of my modifications are designed to widen
and deepen the sound stage and improve imaging. The clarity, detail and transparency are
greatly improved. These changes affect both CD and SACD modes.
I should note that I am now also an installer for the Allen Wright Vacuum State SACD mods.
See http://www.vacuumstate.com for more information. My prices for installation are the
same as those listed on Allen’s web site. Note: There is a waiting list for these boards.
Contact me if you wish to be put on the list. These boards can be put in most Sony SACD
players.
David W. Robinson mentions Audiocom's Super Clock upgrade for his Sony SCD-1 in this
issue of Positive Feedback Online. This is a $248 part that replaces the stock oscillator on
Sony's digital board. This add-on board lowers jitter to such an extent that the sound is
improved in all respects. The labor to install this mod is $100. This part is HOT! I can’t keep
them in stock.
The Super Clock Power Supply that David mentioned is also available. The cost is $263 for
the part and $100 to install. This is a good mod for those who don’t have their Sony's
modified with black gates in the existing Power Supply.
The Sony modifications listed below come in three different types. The first two modifications
are my own. The others are from Audiocom. The first modification I offer replaces 32
resistors in the audio board with Vishay vsh type resistors. I also replace 12 capacitors in the
low pass filter section with REL polystyrene capacitors and I replace two Electrolytic
capacitors in the power supply with Black Gate caps. The total cost is $460. The labor is
$200 and the parts are $260. Parts for this mod are stocked at all times and the turn around
time is 48 hours.
The second modification is the same as the first, except I use Vishay’s best S-102 resistors
in the audio section. The total cost is $720, labor $200 and $520 parts. The resistors for this
mod are not stocked, but I can get them in a few days. These Vishays have the best
transparency and detail I have found.
The third modification is the Audiocom modifications from the UK. Check out their web site
at http://www.audiocom-uk.com. The mods are listed on their web site and my prices for the
modifications are as follows:
1. The complete modification cost is $1982 for the parts. My labor to assemble the complete
kit is $450.
2. Audio Board capacitor replacement. $367 parts $120 labor.
3. Audio Board resistor replacement. $476 parts $120 labor.
4. Audio Board regulator replacement. $330 parts $60 labor.
letters
5. Audio Board OP Amp replacement. $201 parts $45 labor.
6. Power Supply capacitor replacement. $410 parts $60 labor.
7. Power Supply regulator replacement. $198 parts $60 labor.
Note: The Audiocom Super Clock and Super Clock Power Supply are EXTRA! They can be
added to any mod on this page.
All of the above parts can be obtained in 2 to 4 days from Audiocom's American parts
distributor, Reference Audio Mods. Allen Wright Boards take one week to get and they must
be ordered 5 boards at one time.
If you have any questions feel free to call me at: 503 - 659 - 6599 or 503 - 490 - 8602
Richard Kern
Audiomod
Editor:
Glad to see the first issue. Soooooooooo very nicely done. Sincere
thanks for another great online resource, and best wishes for a long and
prosperous future.
Tom Dressler
Amarillo, TX
Thanks, nice to know that all the hard work on the new site is appreciated.
Dave Clark
Editor:
All the success to you all....great idea to show future reviews with a pic beside the
equipment to be reviewed....great layout....
letters
regards,
lloyd
Thanks, I am trying to offer something just a bit different by the way the site looks and
navigates. Wanted it to look more like a print magazine than a web-zine.
Dave Clark
Mr. Robinson,
Regarding your article "I Don't Drive Stock!" you listed what I consider to be a partial list of
all the modification "experts" available. Although I have a fairly new company, I offer a
modification package that gives my customers the most "bang for their buck." I prefer to
offer modifications for Sony's lower priced players such as the SCD-CE775, SCD-C222ES,
and DVP-NS500V which I believe give the best performance for the price. These players
are also technologically more advanced than the SCD-1 by several years.
You might want to consider looking at my website, www.SACDmods.com , to see an
alternative for audiophiles with a smaller budget.
Thank you for your time!
Matthew Anker
ca_144@omalp1.omeresa.net
www.SACDmods.com
Ye Olde Editor responds:
You're right, Matthew...I wasn't aware of your site and services. It looks like you've got some
interesting upgrades for some of the entry-level SACD players.
PF Online readers with the models of SACD sources that Matthew mentions will definitely
want to browse his site.
David W. Robinson
editorpf@attbi.com
letters
Editor:
Harvey and his unusual, yet entertaining way of looking at the audio world will be missed. I
wonder if now and then he materializes in your listening room by arcing a 300B tube just to
make fun and let you know he is listening still?Regards,
Peter Serrano
We’ll hear Gizmo in the whisper between the electrons, Peter....
Editor, Positive Feedback Magazine
Dear Sir,
I want to thank you for your review of the First Impression Gold Series Cables in Positive
Feedback, Vol. 9, #2. However there were some omissions that probably left some
misimpressions as to who actually is responsible for their design. Your conclusion in
wondering “how Winston finds time to accomplish so many brilliant products is a mystery to
me” is easily answered. He gets help. FIM is owned exclusively by Winston Ma and
produces audiophile CD’s. FIM Cables is a joint venture of Paul Weitzel and Winston Ma.
Paul Weitzel has been producing and designing ultra high-end audiophile components under
the Tube Research Labs, Inc. brand name since 1990. Anyone lucky enough to own any of
his amplifiers, and other of his products, can only be aware of their exceptionally high
quality. His power cables have been available since the start of his company and are second
to none. I’ve had some since 1995.
I agree that the sonic merits of the First Impression Gold Series Cables are without question
the best I have ever used. I only ask that you give credit where it is due, and that is to Mr.
Weitzel. It’s only fair that your readers be aware of the facts in the development of the FIM
Cables. I’m certain that Mr. Ma is probably embarrassed at the omission of his long-time
friend and collaborator in the creation and production of this fine series of products. I’m sure
that it was not your intention to damage the reputation of Mr. Weitzel, or to minimize his part
in this project, so hopefully this sets the record straight.
Respectfully Yours,
Rick Rubin
Cc: Winston Ma
Positive Feedback asked Winston Ma to respond to Rick Rubin’s comments; Mr. Ma’s
comments appear below:
Dear Mr. Rubin,
letters
Thank you for copying to me your letter to Positive Feedback.
I never told Positive Feedback that FIM Cable was my design. However, the Reviewer has,
naturally and excusably, made an assumption that the design was mine since it was
developed under the auspices of FIM. Mr. Paul Weitzel did show that part of the review to
me, raising a similar query. I told him that I did not tell Positive Feedback that the design was
mine. In fact, as far as I can remember, the reviewer never asked me about this. Perhaps, I
underestimated Paul’s feeling about the subject at that time. He might subtly wish me to
clarify this with Positive Feedback. I did not do so because, on the one hand, personally I did
not think it was a big deal, and on the other I was busy and was preoccupied with other
things at that time. Besides, it was not entirely wrong. There are so many designs and
products out there. Who really cares?
The true background of this matter? According to Paul, he has had years of experience in
designing cables, among other things. Some years ago, he did show me a couple of his
hand-built cables. I did not pay too much attention to them at that time.
I have also had over 20 years of experience with cable designs through marketing some
very high-end cables. I have had numerous opportunities to discuss designs with audiophile
cable manufacturers, and have offered suggestions on certain designs.
As for the birth of FIM Cable: initially I did not go into cable manufacturing business because
I am semi-retired and have been very busy with the production of FIM recordings. Due to
Paul’s repeated encouragement, I eventually agreed to start investigating the design of
cables some two and half years ago. Another reason that prompted me to go into this field
was that at that time, I was looking for better cables for my music room, and I found that the
cables I had did not satisfy me. We started to carefully audition cables by other
manufacturers, and finally used Paul’s several prototypes as the basis for R & D. We
listened to a good number of various construction formats together. I made suggestions,
gave my OK to the final design, and provided funding. We asked an OEM manufacturer to
build the cables. Hence, it is a joint design, not a design solely by either myself or Paul
Weitzel.
I hope this is clear. Thank you for bring this matter up.
Yours truly,
Winston MA
First Impression Music
(Via the Internet)
(To which I would add that I wrote the review, I had not actually checked into the ancestry of
the design; I simply attributed the work generically to the head of FIM. It was not my intent to
disparage Paul Weitzel’s creative work—I was simply unaware of it! Apologies to Paul, who
is a very fine fellow, and a gifted audio artist.Ye Olde Editor)
letters
Editor:
To improve the sound of a Denon DCM-370, just unplug the three conductor cable running
from the main circuit card to the little circuit card by the headphone jack. Some sort of ESD
or over-voltage protection components for the headphone jack cause distortion even at the
rear panel output of this CD player. Of course this mod disables the headphone jack, but this
is easily reversible.
Of course, it seems possible to change or remove the headphone protection components,
but this would be more difficult and perhaps would cause reliability problems. I’m not sure
what their purpose is.
If you want to get a quick idea of the sonic effect, use the Denon remote and set the output
level down to -6. Then turn up the gain in the amplifier to get the same loudness. Removing
the cable as described above is even more effective.
I don’t know if this fix is valid for any other Denon CD players, but judging from criticisms of
some of them, it would be worth a look in the case of recent models.
Charles Miller
Via the Internet
To the readers of Positive Feedback:
Harvey Rosenberg has passed from this mortal coil. The words hit me like a sledgehammer.
Dr. Gizmo has succumbed long before his time, and David Robinson had told me of the
news of his passing.
Gizmo was an inspirational messenger of musical ecstasy. He unabashed enthusiasm
infected thousands of us audiophiles with a renewed enthusiasm for listening. You didn’t
have to agree with his tastes or theories. Just reading his words or talking to him on the
telephone was sufficient to get your audio juices flowing.
Harvey was a free sprit. In both mind and body he had a way of living that made those of us
with seemingly less lives to live vicariously through his journeys in life.
Motorcyclist, audiophile and tweaker to the nth degree, Harvey epitomized a soul whose
journey in this life was to touch those who were fortunate enough to meet and talk to him
letters
and instill them with a passion for their lives and avocations.
I vividly remember spending hours on the phone with the gruff voice that was Dr. Gizmo’s.
The discussions were about our journeys towards our own musical ecstasy and audio
expression. Don’t get me wrong: we were from totally different audio camps. His was one of
tubes and horns; mine was the world of solid state and direct radiators. Yet we found lots of
common ground.
The search—and the results—were our area of commonality. It didn’t matter if the subject
was single malts, music or women. I can recall a long discussion we once had about
Snapple flavors (all of it off color!)
Harvey’s enthusiasm “jump started” many of us who had strayed off the audiophile course. I
gave his book, The Search for Musical Ecstasy, Vol. 1: In the Home to many friends, and
the results were always startling. Guys connected with what he was saying, and started their
own journey as a result. Harvey was the great enabler of men’s audio journeys.
When a man has passed from this life to the next, those remaining ask themselves what did
he contribute to society? What mark has his life made?
With Harvey, the answers are many-fold. His life touched a number of us in ways that only
his loss has brought into focus. A passion for living, seeking the highest, and exploring the
avenues less traveled were trademarks of Harvey. Being outside of the “box” and reveling in
it made Harvey...well, it made him Harvey. Who else could have appeared on the cover of
this periodical wearing a kilt, headdress and smoking a cigar? Only Harvey.
So how do we honor his spirit? I would have to think that Harvey would want all of us to
carry forward with a zeal for life and music. (Of course he wouldn’t want us to forget about
single malts and women either!) Helping others in their audio quest, whatever that might be,
is at the heart of this.
To honor his spirit and passing, I will be pouring two glasses of fine single malt this evening
and listening to some great jazz. I will be rejoicing, knowing that Gizmo is wherever he is,
looking over all of us while listening to the greatest sound system in the galaxy!
Harvey, you were one-of-a-kind, and I thank you for spending part of your time in this life
with us.
Mike Pappas
Lakewood, CO
Via the Internet
letters
Dear Sir:
It was through your publication that I discovered Harvey Rosenberg’s web site;I first
discovered Harvey through my budding interest in audiophilia back in the early 70’s. I
purchased his book/catalog Understanding Tube Electronics through the mail and was
pleasantly surprised and highly entertained by his wit.
I was saddened by the demise of N.Y.A.L. and the legal battle Harvey was involved in at the
time.
Due to life circumstances, a divorce, and addiction issues, I lost touch with the audio hobby,
and it wasn’t until I got into recovery in 1998 that I picked up an issue of Positive Feedback
and discovered Harvey was alive and well and still fighting the good fight. I remember my
sense of loss after it sank in, that no, this wasn’t one of Harvey’s practical jokes. I remember
emailing Harvey, offering him my original copy of Understanding Tube Electronics, because I
felt it should be included on his web site, and talking a bit about my journey up to then
(thinking that “He’ll be too busy to reply.” Much to my surprise, later that same day he sent
me a reply and gave me some encouragement on my journey.
I want to take this opportunity to thank you for the eulogy you wrote for the Triode Guild web
site, and to add my hearty agreement to your views. I, for one, have no idea where we’re
going to find someone to fill his shoes. Kudos to the people maintaining his web site; I hope
that something can be done to preserve his writings, both for their humor and the fact that he
made me “think” about searching for the grail when it’s been in front of me all along (e.g., my
ST-70).
Forward to my next thoughts: through Positive Feedback I also discovered Listener
magazine, which also carried a column by Harvey. They seem to be publishing on a very
regular schedule. I hope that Positive Feedback isn’t going to stop publishing. I personally
buy your magazine at my local bookstore and haven't seen a new issue since the end of
2000.
I’d appreciate hearing from you on this. The truth is important and I believe that Positive
Feedback and Listener are about the only alternatives to mainstream audio reviewing that
are left.
Please keep up the fight.
Fred Petersen
Via the Internet
(And yet here we are on the Internet, Fred! We’re keeping up the good fight from a place
that Gizmo understood all too well—the Net! Stay tuned; we’ll be easier to find, and will be
read by far more people online than we ever could have been in print.)
letters
The following email came from Jim Susky, cc:’ed to PF, and is printed for reader edification.
To: Mike Dzurko, ACI
From: Jim Susky
Copies: Mssrs. Gardner and Robinson
Positive Feedback Magazine
Mike,
Congrats on the largely positive review by PF. I have time now to make only one quick
comment.
Did you not encourage Mr. Gardner to use your in-line RCA male/female R/C network
between preamp and power amp? I used this (with the 85hz pole) when I implemented a
Sapphire/Titan system in 1998. Mr. Gardner apparently ran the Sapphire full-range filling in
the bottom with the sub. I wonder whether this may have impaired the sub/sat blend making
the sub constantly audible?
I used the R/C network, and found it a simple matter to remove the electric-bass-like “purr”
by tweaking the Titan level and crossover frequency using plucked stand-up bass on Holly
Cole (can’t recall the album—Don’t Smoke in Bed?) I was able to achieve a successful blend
in both my basement and in the basement of my friend whose money I was playing with (I
used a mid-80’s Berning EA230 for the Sapphires).
Anyway, congratulations again, Mike. If I weren’t chasing a bi-amped horn-based system
with pro-audio drivers, I’d probably have a pair of Jags at home by now. Maybe later.
Sincerely,
Jim Susky
Anchorage, Alaska
Via the Internet
To Mike Pappas
c/o Positive Feedback
letters
Mike:
Reading your article in the latest issue of Positive Feedback about running the power amps
on 240-volt power reminded me that I owe you a “thanks” for a recommendation in this
regard a long time ago. There was a CES in Chicago that I attended, 1992 I think, when you
were still working for Crown. I talked to you about the Crown Macro Reference amplifier, and
you told me that it would sound better on 240 volts. My amp at the time was running on a
dedicated 30 amp, 120-volt circuit. When I had put in the 30 amp run I had run it with 3
conductor plus ground, so it was easy to convert to 240 volt. It did make a very definite
improvement in the Crown Macro Reference.
I still have the Crown Macro Reference, although it is now sharing its 240-volt circuit with a
PS Audio P600 Power Plant, which I also reconfigured for 240-volt input. The Power Plant
feeds the rest of my audio and video equipment.
Every power upgrade I have made over the years starting with two dedicated 20-amp
circuits to my audio closet in 1981 has resulted in a “not subtle” difference, as you indicate in
your review. Thanks again for the long-ago tip.
Bob Tate
Via the Internet
Mike Pappas responds:
Hi Bob,
Ah! Good to hear from you! Glad you like the 240 trick! It’s one of my best ones! Thanks for
the kind words, and for reading PF.
Mike Pappas
Via the Internet
Send your comments to either editorpf@attbi.com or audiomusings@earthlink.net
BACK TO TOP
cjwoodeffect
Yes, Polarity is Absolute—But Only Your Ears Know For Sure!
by Clark Johnsen
The topic of acoustic polarity, also known as Absolute Polarity, has cropped up again recently. No
surprise—since 1962 it’s lingered in the professional literature, where most researchers claim that
polarity matters greatly. But today, who cares?
For that sorry state of affairs, you can blame the commercial audio press. For whatever reason,
hardly a whiff of this vital phenomenon ever appears in those precincts. Ultimate Audio, with two
feature articles, became by default an exemplar of polarity awareness—quite so, as ultimate
audio cannot be achieved without it! A personal disclaimer: I have often called polarity the sine
qua non of correct audio practice. As author of the only book on the topic (The Wood Effect:
Unaccounted Contributor to Error and Confusion in Acoustics and Audio, ISBN 0-929383-00-1),
which explains everything, I naturally applaud the renewed attention. And I remember how
Michael Gindi, an Ultimate Audio contributor, once toured the Stereophile Show chanting, “If you
can’t hear the Wood Effect, you can’t hear!” I expect he still stands by that, though nary a peep
recently.
Oh, the Wood Effect. Discovered by Charles Wood at the Defense Research Laboratory in 1957,
it was first reported in 1962 in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. “Wood used as a
signal a sinusoid partially clipped during half of each cycle. The resulting sound had a different
timbre when the flat-topped portion was presented to the ear as a rarefaction, than it did when
leads were reversed and the flat-topped portion was presented as a compression.” There you
have it, ladies and gentlemen: An asymmetric sinusoidal signal, presented those two dissimilar
ways, with no other distortion, was proven to sound very different each way. Let’s see, what else
in the sonic realm generates asymmetric signals? Well, ta da! That would be musical instruments!
Which explains how polarity permeates our entire audio world, albeit through negligence,
because we hear normal and inverted polarity (more accurately, compression and rarefaction) so
very dissimilarly, ,yet rarely are they differentiated by us in playback.
The abstract to The Wood Effect says it best: “Masked by random combination with other
distortions in the music reproduction chain, an unsuspected major contributor has lain hidden:
Aural sensitivity to ‘phase inversion’ — the Wood Effect.”
“Music normally creates compression waves. Electronics, however, often invert that natural,
positive polarity to unnatural, negative rarefaction, thus diminishing physical and aesthetic impact.
The term Absolute Polarity uniquely describes the correct arrival to the ear of wavefronts from
loudspeakers, with respect to actual musical instruments.”
“Wrong polarity, when isolated, is obvious to everyone. Its present neglect results from habitual
disregard for phase response, especially in loudspeakers.”
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/cjwoodeffect.htm (1 of 9) [8/25/2002 2:50:12 PM]
cjwoodeffect
Phase accuracy has never much mattered to speaker designers (I might have continued),
producing what Richard Greiner has termed “the crossover catastrophe,” referring to high-order
crossovers that blunt the polarity sense. We must also endure a haphazard engraving of polarity
on delivery media, which causes variances from disc to disc, from side to side, from cut to cut,
and even within a single cut. Thoroughly permeated by all that confusion, many people throw up
their hands in despair and declare that polarity cannot matter. But they are wrong, and therein
hangs a tale. Polarity, in its pure state, as with one musical instrument recorded on one channel
(designated. a monaural phase effect, or MPE), is perfectly audible, and provably so.
Reproduced incorrectly, it becomes what I call “the muffling distortion,” because our ears detect
an inverted leading transient and suppress the impulse response. Thus the pluck on a guitar
string, so striking in real life, becomes dull, muted, and inexpressive. A musician might say, “You
can’t hear the fingers, man.”
So? So, to repeat, Absolute Polarity, which earns caps by defining the only true absolute in audio,
requires that the loudspeaker (whichever way the recording may be) generate a compression
wave whenever the actual musical instrument does. Live music has punch, but music often lacks
that aspect when heard over an audio system; that’s your polarity distortion.
But how to explain? How does impact so often become expact? How sound becomes... muffled?
Without a protocol as to how any recorded medium should store positive polarity—a one or a
zero, an inside or an outside groove excursion, don’t ask the AES!—the randomness among tape
recorders, studio toys and mastering gear is transferred onto delivery media in similar fashion
and left for correction by... what? Only our ears! Pretty weird, huh? You actually have to listen to
tell which way is right? No meters, no nothing to assist? God! What’s wrong with those audio
engineers? Where are they when you really need them?
To those of us who hear polarity, and we are legion, this whole state of affairs seems ludicrous.
Over a low-phase-distortion audio system, no one ever misses the right call. Never! For example,
everyone who crosses my own threshold gets it by the second try. Later, granted, people become
dissatisfied with the situation and begin to berate the recording industry and the electronics
manufacturers, who rarely provide compensation for polarity. Nor is the press exempted from
obloquy, along with our vaunted high end “designers,” who largely ignore polarity. Those listeners
who know about it, however, mostly blame the press for not informing them earlier, and for being
more interested in promoting new gear for sale, at the expense of basic principles.
Readers should be grateful therefore for any assistance at all; and this phenomenon of Absolute
Polarity apprises them of a major improvement, available without purchase of anything new.
Better sound for free, as I have proclaimed for years. How often do you find that? (Although one
could do worse than to invest in the Remote Phono Polarity Control from Lewis Labs. The wired
version sells for $400, the wireless for $650. Phone: 305-667-2601).
But as to why I’m on the case again, there are problems in those Ultimate Audio articles by Mrs.
Herron and Fredell—and elsewhere too, notably in an e-zine, in a piece authored by Doug
Blackburn, outstanding for its wrong-headedness. These writers (and many others, too) confuse
small-case polarity with Absolute Polarity. Also, they use “polarity” interchangeably with “phase.”
Phase could mean any degree, while polarity denotes precisely the 180° condition. Third, they all
seem to think that the Absolute inheres in recorded media, whereas in truth it occurs only at the
final impingement point: your ear. To quote Mr. Herron: “Absolute polarity can be lost... and again
restored in many places in the recording and playback chain.” No, Keith! You mean, simply,
polarity. And not “lost,” either: polarity never disappears, it only reverses itself, time and again.
cjwoodeffect
Then Mr. Fredell: “Remember, a musical instrument has one polarity—the absolute polarity.” No,
Lars; an instrument has only its own polarity. It falls on us to recognize the Absolute at our ears,
for right reproduction. Not to beat an almost-dead horse, but here’s Sedrick Harris, too, in
Ultimate Audio (Fall 2000): “Note: The absolute polarity of this recording is 180° wrong.” No! The
Absolute is achieved only case by case; it is not written into law regarding any groove or any
gear. Never mind that Harry Pearson, Robert Harley, and scores of others who should know
better have made the same mistake, readers by now should recognize their common error, which
allows confusion to reign.
Confusion reigns perhaps nowhere more so than in Doug Blackburn’s peculiar column on
Soundstage (October 1999). Let the record show, I once entertained Doug and his droll wife
Tracy at The Listening Studio, then back home for dinner, and we got along just fine. Afterwards,
he hardly spoke to me again, and published an article about the Vibraplane that, to my mind,
quite misrepresented it. Later he wrote a long-winded article opposing polarity without once
acknowledging my book or its arguments. I do not take that personally, but since I am about to
disrupt his party, the question might arise.
Mr. Blackburn begins his tale auspiciously enough: “When the scientist selects a test with hidden
variables, the test may end up being invalidated later.” Quite right, but then: “The experiments
that prove polarity is audible have been incorrectly performed for decades.” Very well, how? “In
every case I’ve seen, these experiments are conducted by reversing the connections somewhere
in the audio signal chain.” All right, what’s wrong with that? “None of those methods are adequate
for evaluating the audibility of polarity reversal.” And why not? “When you reverse the
connections at a loudspeaker... you also reverse the direction the audio signal is applied to wire
in the loudspeaker.”
There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. No one who performed these experiments “ever seems
to have evaluated the audibility of reversal of direction of signal travel in wires... All of them made
the same mistake—assuming that polarity reversal is the cause of the change in sound they
hear.” So the trick’s in the metal! “This information would seem to imply that switching polarity
could very well be inaudible.” How to respond to what I would call errant nonsense? Well, for one
thing, I am conversant with wire-direction anomalies. I keep one set of cables hanging around,
not because they sound good (they don’t), but to demonstrate the aural effect of reversal, which
in this case is fairly dramatic—but nothing like polarity. Doug is correct about wire directionality;
where he errs is in attributing the whole of polarity audibility to that phenomenon.
Other objections to his thesis quickly arise. For instance, what if the reversal is accomplished with
an internal switch? Very little wire within a switch! Ah, but Blackburn argues that “reversing the
direction the audio signal is applied” to any wire produces his effect, which means that even
switching cartridge leads, or bits in the digital domain, will change the performance of all wires
following. Likewise, switching even the internal loudspeaker leads right at the drivers—after all,
there are still the coil windings in which the signal may be altered by those nonlinearities we
(wrongly) associate with polarity. Don’t forget, “reversing the direction the audio signal is applied
to wire in the loudspeaker” explains the entire phenomenon. Whatever expanse of wire may be
involved following the switch point, we are assured that only it must be blamed for what we hear.
Let’s inspect that claim more closely. Just what does the writer mean? It’s not “hot” and “cold”
that are actually switched. Ground remains grounded, nor do electrons change their general
direction of travel with audio polarity reversal. Wires know nothing about acoustic compression
and rarefaction wavefronts. In any event, they represent the opposite sides of a sine wave slope,
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both of which they pass with equal ease. With signals continuously fluctuating, as musical
instruments comprise a mix of both modes, are we to suppose that wires somehow differentiate
these? That would be the result required by Blackburn’s astonishing, but ultimately insupportable
analysis.
I cannot imagine why he feels the need to deny a perfectly obvious and simple physical principle,
thus doing Soundstage readers a severe disservice. Perhaps his confusion arises from that
common misapprehension: “You really need to use recordings that are known to be polarity
correct.” Once again: There are no standards for “polarity correctness” on tapes, records, or CDs.
None. Nada. It is a fantasy that leads you astray.
Another fantasy?
The estimable Keith Herron, in his article “Is Absolute Polarity Absolute?” (Ultimate Audio, Fall
2000), begins very logically, too. “Is absolute polarity audible? Absolutely!” But then immediately
we are told, “But what are you really hearing when you flip that polarity switch—or reverse those
speaker wires?” Uh oh! Could it be... something else again? Yes, as it happens. “Did adding the
phase inverter change the sound? You bet! But it also changed the measurable distortion
products.” And beyond that, “Will the speaker cone go in, exactly the same way it goes out?”
Those arguments have been heard before, and the only proper reply is, so what? We learn to live
with electronic distortion, and in fact some speakers—ribbons, for instance— don’t even have
cones, yet reproduce polarity effects clearly. Mr. Herron concludes his sadly obfuscatory article
on this somewhat weasely note: “It just might be that distortion products in the recording process
cancel or add differently with those in the playback process. Is there anything absolute about
this? Absolutely not!”
The final pitch
Just a couple things to wind up. The fact that ever-popular high-order speaker crossovers
perilously blunt the polarity sense was ignored in these recent articles. And, while Lars’ laudable
call for panel (or remote control) polarity switches should be heeded, many such, for whatever
reason, barely reveal the polarity condition, even in the vaunted digital domain. The best way to
teach yourself—pace, Doug Blackburn—is to reverse all four (or eight) speaker wires, tediously
back and forth, to learn the condition, then play it from there. Your rewards will more than
compensate the effort, believe me! Remember, no one ever promised you that audio would be
easy.
Finally, I must dispute Lars’ list of polarities by CD label, which he first published several years
ago in Fi. While perhaps useful as a rough guide, such happy consistency rarely obtains, except
perhaps for some very small labels. Major labels split pretty much 50/50, as the laws of statistics
demand whenever no control is exerted over a binary event. To whatever extent Lars may be
right, his evaluation applies only to the opening bands; subsequent ones can vary willy-nilly.
That very confusing 50/50 split was the central revelation of The Wood Effect, remaining as true
today as ever, sad to say. For a superlative corroboration of that principle, I offer Lars’ list itself:
Its 88 entries for label polarity are tellingly divided 43/45. Eternal vigilance is ever the price of the
true Absolute.
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JUST ONE WORD: AURIOS
Aurios, pronounced as in the famous Nabisco cookie, are isolation devices from Vistek, not
otherwise an audio company (www.auriosmib.com/800-830-1575). Regardless of all the
favorable Net chitchat, Aurios are very, very good, at $300 the set of three. A captured-ballbearing, hard-metal design, Aurios claim lateral isolation down to 1Hz, which, if true, puts them
into expensive Vibraplane territory; and as most of my readers already know, horizontal vibrations
are more injurious, and harder to eliminate, than the vertical.
Two performance examples. In my s**tbox system at home, where tweaky-type improvements
(except CD carving and degaussing) are hardly noticeable, thank God, the happy effect of Aurios
under my Jolida CD player is inescapable. And in my two-bit home theater room (okay, four-bit),
placing them under a lowly Panasonic DVD player results not just in cleaner sound, but in an
increased ability to (get this!) perceive a wide stereo image from each end of the sofa. That one
I’ll have to think about. The Aurios guys also make very unlikely claims for their product’s utility
under speakers. I haven’t heard them that way yet, but I know many people who swear by them
there.
On the downside, Aurios require an extremely level surface, they provide no vertical isolation,
and stiff cables are a no-no. However, trimming shims are supplied, and the vertical element can
be controlled with a proper shelf and/or supplementary feet. Or you can upgrade to the
Professional Aurios ($600/set), which allow any cable stiffness you like, incorporate vertical
isolation, and don’t require leveling, so you win all around.
While Aurios are not exactly cheap, I know of nothing at less than thrice the price that gets you
there. Until you’ve experienced effective horizontal isolation from the vibration environment, you
may not know what resolution and detail are.
FORMAT WARS: THE END OF RECORDED HISTORY?
In our last issue I began a lengthy rumination on Napster and such. It got left “To be continued”
because I was unable to digest the vast amount of recent information and merge it into my
thinking before deadline. In the meantime, much of what I wanted to say has appeared
elsewhere, so I’ll cut right to the scene before the chase. ‘Way back in ‘98 (Positive
Feedback,Vol.7, No. 4) I boldly asserted that, as a long-term item, DVD is dead. That was
because DVD cannot (even nearly) contain HDTV: “DVD has become a foundling, a mere interim
format. Unload it on the home-theater suckers, to replace their laserdiscs and tapes, then switch
‘em to something fully widescreen, high-def and digital, that’s the plan.” Prescient words, those, if
I may say, and they echo my epochal 1988 entry in Fanfare: “And there is the tragedy of digital
audio. Its framers were unaware of how well early LPs sound on modern players, so they chose
their numbers carelessly, and moreover hitched masters, players and discs alike onto the foot of
a rapidly rising technology curve. Just wait; everyone will discover the error of their ways and
make amends. And soon we shall have CD Mk.II (already in the prototype lab) and CD Mk.III
(already on the drawing board), then phoneline CTS (CompuTeleSonics).”
Hey, was that good? I predicted DVD-A and SACD and MP3, failing only to imagine wireless net
and Napster. But it’s not about sound at all, none of it. As I explained in Part I, we do not yet
know the contents of our CDs, nor of our LPs; we do not even really know old 78s! But here we
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go, salivating over one new format after another, as directed by the recording industry and its
lapdog press. Oh, how they rub their hands in glee over their accomplishment, knowing full well
that the justification for new formats is not better sound (or image) per se, but that we should all
be made to buy replacement collections.
Induced anxiety and contrived rivalry are nothing new on the scene: Records would kill sheet
music, radio would kill records, video would kill the radio stars, 33s would kill 45s, home taping
would kill music, VCRs would shutter movie theaters. Funny thing, all those businesses are now
divisions of each other. Contemplation of that fact one night led me to this glittering apercu.:
Format Wars Are Phony Wars. Yes! Look at that word, “phony.” In Britain and the United States
both, it means not:, as in not really, just sounds like. Phony. The Phony War, they called it, Over
There in the European trenches. World War II (at least until 1941...).
Oh, the groundwork has been laid ever so skillfully once again. As stated, the popular DVD
format does not contain sufficient bandwidth for HDTV, the (government-mandated) video
medium of the future. Therefore we will need a new-type disc, or something, to handle High-Def.
But over the decades, the music and movie people have become wedded to a business model
that demands selling artifacts, not art. Now that must change somehow. Napster caught the
recording industry napping. As it happens, that phrase is a terrific misnomer; they themselves do
practically no recording nowadays, instead they manufacture and distribute and market. Twenty
years ago, CDs seemed an amazing windfall, cheaper to make than LPs yet commanding twice
the price. Today, digital encoding is giving them headaches. Pity. If the recording industry had
just stuck with vinyl, they never would have had the Napster problem!
Today we approach The End of Recorded History, at least as we have known it, because what if,
what if—and this will not be pleasant news—Napster and its adversaries should reach one of
those “accords” on how music shall be delivered over the Net, to each party’s keen satisfaction.
And then it takes off! The industry finds itself making more money than ever! Hah! Soon, with net
technology commanding the major market share, companies might start rethinking the
bothersome business of manufacturing and distributing the shiny discs which most people, let’s
face it, play intensely for a time, then nevermore. Wouldn’t it make much more sense, given the
perishability associated with pop music’s sell-by dates, to accomplish these exchanges entirely,
exclusively electronically? No vexing shrink-wrapped packages, ever again?
To make matters even worse (for us), certain interested parties are developing codexes that
eliminate even the one-time copy provision permitted (but not required) by law. (To get the
details, go to www.toad.com/gnu/whatswrong.html). This truly scary scenario is due to be played
out by 2008, by which time we shall all have become accustomed to wireless delivery, because
quite plainly, despite all the legal ballyhoo, the attraction of Napster is not that the product is free,
but rather, available on demand. No parking, no checkout lines, just sit at home—a delivery
method perfectly tooled to this generation’s version of instant gratification. Complete realization of
that scheme would mean that most CD plants (given their reliance on pop program) would close
and the last vestiges of alternative product disappear, including such minor-league stuff as
classical music, jazz, and bluegrass, along with grand recording systems like DSD, for which
quality the new downloading technology will have no use. With 95% of buyers tickled pink by
MP3, who needs anything better? And who needs retailers either, those parasites! The Towers
shall come tumbling down! One physical format however will survive, to bring discriminating
listeners uncompressed, high-quality sound. Yes, vinyl shall outlive CD! Call me a futurist, or an
ironist, if you will, but still, always watch out what you wish for. It might happen!
Oh, just one more thing
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While I have predicted here the effective demise of the CD and the DVD, what if, a few years
hence, there were a disc capable of holding, say, 400 times the information currently possible?
Wouldn’t that alter the situation? Oh, but surely that couldn’t happen! Perhaps a visit to
Constellation 3D of Concord, Massachusetts, is in order. (Hey! That’s not far from me!) There,
according to New Scientist, they are developing the FMVD (Fluorescent Multilayer Video Disc),
able to hold (get this!) 1000 gigabytes—in industry parlance, one terabyte. Call it the Titanic in
High-Def, with the best sound quality Mark Levinson could imagine, times twenty. That might
change things. Napster himself, caught napping!
A GRAMOPHONE EVENING IN THE RITZ
Today I’m at the Peabody Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. “Witch City” it’s called, although
Salem was in fact the first shipbuilding capital of America, bolstering the great China trade that
made New England prosperous. In a state that boasts the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the
MassMOCA and the Gardner and the Clark, the Peabody is a maritime museum par excellence.
Recently the Peabody modernized its exhibition practice with what it calls The Art Odyssey. The
unaware visitor seeking a seagoing experience passes through silently-unfolding double doors, to
be greeted by a huge rear-projection video screen displaying color filigrees, the hidden sound
system playing, in close rotation, excerpts from the music of Mozart, Africa, Kiss, and more. The
Art Odyssey encompasses areas of all three floors; on the third, a babble of voices is heard upon
entering, as if from invisible space, people chattering about art and life and what-not, with
different chat groups as one walks along. Overhead, one espies multiple clear-acrylic 16-inchwide hanging domes with odd contrivances inside. These prove to be our spectral sound sources,
each unit focused on the space directly beneath. The taped conversations are relentlessly trivial,
however, and largely female too, alas—a twitter of high-pitched voices adding nothing significant
to appreciation of art on the wall. It’s an “installation,” as they say, but worse than docents in
explicating or enlarging upon what we view, and considerably more irritating. Maybe it’s all a
joke? Hey, the art’s not so hot, either.
Before long I take refuge in what I have come here for, an exhibit of dazzling new prints struck
from the original glass negatives of the Endurance expedition. What a story! Perhaps you haven’t
heard it. In the mostly British campaign to discover the South Pole, Robert Scott won, leaving Sir
Ernest Shackelton, explorer extraordinaire, only one route to triumph in the historic antipodean
race: the first crossing of the Antarctic continent, which he set out to do in 1914 aboard the yacht
Endurance, christened from his family motto, which prophetically consisted of that single word.
Reaching South Georgia Island, a Norwegian whaling outpost, he sailed on with thirty-five
intrepid men (including one stowaway) through thick ice floes into the Waddell Sea until being
blocked, at which point they were all stranded! The ship became their landlocked home for nine
months, while the men amused themselves and kept their sled dogs in shape. Then came the
dramatic ice heaves that listed the Endurance thirty degrees to port, then crushed her like a toy.
After that calamity, the men camped out with three upturned lifeboats, wood salvaged from the
ship, and a fortunate two tons of provisions, eking out a meager existence for several months
more, during what proved to be the worst winter in the Norwegians’ memory, with precious little
summer either. Recognizing that they must move on, Shackelton had the men build sleds for the
lifeboats. With all the dogs already slaughtered for meat, they hauled the load themselves for a
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couple hundred miles to what seemed to be the coast and pitched tents again. Soon, however,
Mr. Wild reported feeling seasick, and it was discovered that they were camped on a thin layer of
ice floating over two thousand fathoms of roiling black water.
To reach actual land, Shackelton led the party onwards to Elephant Island. There the men
regrouped, living off penguins and the occasional fat seal. Apprehending that their only hope of
rescue was to send a small party in the sturdiest sailing dingy back to South Georgia Island,
Shackelton chose his minimal crew shrewdly and shoved off. Five hundred miles of open sea
under a mostly overcast sky were covered with only a sextant for guidance, at no-one-knowswhat cost to the human spirit. Yet the little party managed to reach the island, though heavy
storms forced a landing on the south coast opposite the outpost. Shackelton, accompanied by
just one man, two axes, and ninety feet of rope (think: Survivor), set out across the interior
mountains to reach civilization. Three times they ascended thousands of feet, only to find sheer
drops on the other side. Finally they straggled, desperately, raggedly, into the whaling village.
“Who the hell are you?!”” was the greeting they no doubt were accorded. One can well imagine
the Norwegians’ astonishment. “Shackelton here,” he replied, the record shows.
After quickly retrieving the three left on the south shore, successive attempts were made, in
different ships, to reach Elephant Island, the fourth finally succeeding. By this time, Shackelton
had given up hope of finding his compatriots alive, but as it happened, the men were at lunch
when the vessel was first espied by one who had stepped outside. “I say,” he called back to the
group, “have we any means of making smoke? I see a ship...”
Amidst general blubbering, and who can blame them, the expedition was reunited. Not one man
had been lost in the two-year ordeal! They sailed back to Chile, thence triumphantly to England
and to the Great War which was just commencing, in which several of the party’s lives were later
sacrificed. But all was not lost: Their prodigious achievement had been documented the entire
way by staff photographer Frank Hurley. In addition to dozens of exposed glass plates (which he
judiciously soldered into a tin box after the going got rough), Hurley had three rolls of film to use
in a Brownie, which were shot very sparingly. He had also brought along the very latest in
photographic technology: color plates. The Peabody exhibit I am at today therefore includes a set
of backlit color transparencies of fairly astonishing vividness. Not only that, Hurley shot motion
pictures. Yes! The Endurance expedition can be seen in full cinematography, including the brutal
moment when the ice finally crushes their ship, and her masts and rigging topple. There you see
it, captured for posterity, the same sight those seamen saw of their unhappy prospects back in
1914. Lucky for us, they had that solder.
But of all Hurley’s excellent portraits of individuals and of their work and pastimes, and of the
stark Antarctic scenery, the picture I shall remember best is the one entitled, “A Gramophone
Evening in the Ritz.” The Ritz was their name for the social cabin in the landlocked Endurance. In
this shot we see people seated around a windup gramophone and a pile of perhaps sixty discs
(how many more in the cabinet below?), everyone listening intently. Although the photograph was
probably posed, one must wonder, what was that music?
Whatever, we do know that the men saved the gramophone and the records, trekking them along
during their overland escape; beyond that, no information is given. One must suppose that the rig
was played until the very end, as it had become the intrepid expeditioners’ only physical
connection to home and hearth. What music they heard would be interesting to learn, but that the
men savored those recorded concerts, besides playing much whist and chess, cannot be
contested. Primitive as the technology was, can any of us living in comfortable homes today claim
to enjoy our time with exotic, high-fidelity, high end audio systems any the more?
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BACK TO TOP
auric
Auric Illuminator, Audio Systeme Desk, and more!
by Dave Clark
It seems like every day or so (okay, that’s a slight exaggeration) someone comes out with
another CD surface treatment. The market is awash with sprays, creams, and gels of all possible
formulas. We have been graced here with several to review: Auric Illuminator, CD Clarity, and
Digital Juice (more on this one and Walker Audio's VIVID soon). Just to complicate matters,
we’ve also received the Audio Systeme Desk device.
Auric Illuminator ($39.95 as a kit, www.audience-av.com) is a slightly thick, bluish cream that is
applied to both sides of the disc with the supplied polishing cloths. In addition, a black pen (not
the same as the one that comes with the Audio Systeme Desk) is applied to the outer and inner
edges of the CD. According to the manufacturer, Auric Illuminator, “Will help your disc player to
retrieve all the available data on your discs at the right time. Auric Illuminator allows the laser
pickup to track the disc more accurately. It also improves discrimination of the exact end and the
exact beginning of the reflective and non-reflective areas on the track.” Nice and creamy with a
slight “alcohol” odor.
CD Clarity is also applied on both sides of the CD. Though no cloth was included, I used those
from Auric to good effect. CD Clarity claims to reduce or eliminate static charges that result in
“reduced background noise, and improved focus and soundstage! Digital harshness will be
reduced. The sound will be more natural, and musically more correct.” No odor, but the solution is
blue and watery like a window cleaner.
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/auric.htm (1 of 7) [8/25/2002 2:50:14 PM]
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Another spray, Digital Juice Spatial Enhancer, is said to improve the spatial effects heard within
the soundstage. Smells and feels like furniture polish. More to follow later as this is evolving.
The Audio Systeme Desk ($495, at www.fatwyre.com) allows you to “true” the outer edge of a CD
at a specified angle. You place a CD facing up on the platter, clamp it securely, turn on the motor,
and slowly move the arm toward the CD. The arm is limited in its arc, so will only cut so far. It’s a
bit messy and noisy, but fairly foolproof in execution. The unit comes with a black pen, and while
the CD is still spinning, you can easily paint the beveled edge by holding the pen to the beveled
edge. This is much easier then doing this while you turn the CD in your hand. I have on an
occasion run the pen across a CD’s surface! Yikes!
To add even more complexity, one can combine edge-cutting with any of the sprays, and can use
a green pen or a black pen. No, make that a green, a blue-green, and one of several black pens.
The green pen is the one from Audio Prism, CD Stoplight. The blue-green pen, which was
supplied with the CD Clarity, I found too messy and WAY too toxic in odor. It is also not readily
available, as it is in short supply, and is not normally included with the CD Clarity. Word has it that
this is the color to go with, so perhaps another time.
Clearly there were too many possibilities for any single reviewer to deal with, so we arrived the
decision to limit the number of treatments, and to deal with them collectively. I had seven CDRs
burned with the same three tracks (one jazz, one rock, and one classical selection), set one aside
as a control, and (with one exception) treated each remaining disc with only a single
manufacturer’s recommended procedure. The only remaining task was to lure enough reviewers
to the same place at the same time to accomplish the collective listening, so I announced a
barbeque at my house, and told the group that in order to eat they would have to evaluate the
differences they perceived in the seven discs. Give me your notes and then you get your food!
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Only I knew which discs were which, so this was a single blind test. Six listeners took part, in
addition to myself. (I did not comment, nor did I take notes.) The discs were treated as follows:
Disc 1: Beveled with the supplied black pen on outer edge.
Disc 2: Auric Illuminator with supplied black pen on outer edge.
Disc 3: Beveled with Audio Prism (green) pen on outer edge.
Disc 4: Beveled with no pen.
Disc 5: CD Clarity only.
Disc 6: Digital Juice only.
Disc 7: Control, no treatment.
Each track of each disc was played until the group felt that they had a grasp on its sound,
although cut 2 was eliminated after three playings, as several listeners objected to listening to
rock music. The discs were played in the above order, except that the group decided it should
hear the control disc as a reference, so that one was played first. All volume and other settings
remained consistent. All discs were burned on the same brand of blanks with a Pioneer PDR509
CD recorder. We tried to be as scientific as we could! The results:
CONTROL DISC (No treatment)
Person A: (No comment.)
Person B: OK. Slightly thin. Bass not especially deep. Slight grain.
Voice slightly nasal on track 2. Winds slightly shrill on 3.
Person C: Very natural, glare on trumpet, weak bass. CD bright and shrill. Good articulation.
Person D: Cut 1, good resolution on brass. Cut 2, thin voice, questionable recording. Cut 3, good
imaging, detail, no harshness.
Person E: Cut 1, trumpet a little recessed when playing with other instruments. Not much bass
punch. Cut 2, obnoxious music, untrained voices, not much impact. Cut 3, I prefer more
aggressive sound.
Person F: (No comment.)
DISC 1 (Beveled with black pen on outer edge
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Person A: Cut 1, less differentiation, more congealed, instruments less clearly delineated. More
like a recording timbrally, more bite on horns, bass a little more plummy. Cut 2, better bass, more
forward sounding, harmonically less organized. Cut 3, more locked-in. Constricted, fuller bass,
not sure if there is more pace or not.
Person B: Sweeter, smoother, less thin, bass perhaps deeper, room more audible on cut 2, voice
less nasal, background quieter (especially noticeable on 3).
Person C: Smoother trumpet, deeper and tighter bass, more natural percussion (air). More
listenable, rough edges mostly removed.
Person D: Cut 1, clearer sax, trumpet, soundstage. Cut 2, no comment.
Cut 3, again clearer woodwinds, percussion.
Person E: Cut 1, seemed a little louder overall, trumpet a little more piercing, (previously) good
bass had more thumpiness, good. Cut 2, drum has more energy, voices still suck. Cut 3, more
texture to clarinet, percussion more realistic.
Person F: Cut 1, sounded slow, pace was off, as if under a drug-induced stupor. (Cut 2, no
comment.) Cut 3, a slight but irritating harshness has been detected. Prefer the control.
DISC 2 (Auric Illuminator)
Person A: Cut 1, louder than disc 1, more spatially open, instrumentally distinguishable, still
harmonic brass bite but a bit softer, closer to live than 1. Cut 2, bass less plummy than 1, guitars
more guitar-like, screechy and yowly vocals a bit polished and obscured. Cut 3, instruments
distinguished, greater clarity, good choice for instruments.
Person B: Bass possibly a bit deeper than disc 2 but nowhere near as sweet. Still quite thin, but
some improvement. Voice still nasal on track 2.
Person C: Less of everything that disc 1 offers. Slight improvement over control.
Person D: Cut 1, harmonically better. Cut 2, snappier, sounds louder.
Cut 3, pace.
Person E: Cut 1, slightly softer presentation than disc 1, lower double bass notes well defined.
Cut 2, too obnoxious to audition, these guys should be flipping burgers. Cut 3, need more
assertive sound.
Person F: Cut 1, the tempo has been restored. Otherwise no significant difference. Cut 2, cool.
Kick drum and bass line are slightly better defined. A touch more impact, very slight. Cut 3, no
significant difference.
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DISC 3 (Beveled with green pen on outer edge)
Person A: Cut 1, sweeter, less instrumental differentiation spatially, transients subdued, more
compressed, brass less bright, harmonically pleasant. Cut 3, good sense of rhythm and
movement, less bass than disc 1 and maybe 2.
Person B: Better than disc 2, but still thin (cut 1). Cut 3 perhaps not better than disc 2.
Person C: Overall, very comparable to disc 2.
Person D: Smoother, more laid back, less distinct.
Person E: Cut 1, nice blending of instruments, very cohesive sonics.
Cut 3, good sensation of lower percussion effects, well blended.
Person F: Cut 1, nada. Cut 2, voted out, I was the only dissenting opinion. Cut 3, nothing.
DISC 4 (Beveled)
Person A: Cut 1, good bass transients, less horn bite, good tone, soft brass bite. Cut 3, less
differentiation of macrodynamics, better horn bite here.
Person B: Not bad, but disc 1 still best. Most of the shrillness is gone, but still not as smooth as 1.
Person C: Smooth presentation, good air.
Person D: Cut 1, harmonically light, good trunpet. Cut 3, fair separation.
Person E: Cut 1, snare drum has nice snap. Cut 3, nothing to say.
Person F: Cut 1, I find nothing musically significant about this CD at all. Note: by this time I found
my ability to be concerned with this to have stopped.
DISC 5 (CD Clarity)
Person A: Cut 1, softer attack, good macrodynamics, tone less exceptional, more light weight.
Cut 2, no comment. Cut 3, good rhythm, less attack in horns.
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Person B: No shrillness, but the sound is a bit flat and instruments are less differentiated.
Person C: Very smooth presentation, lots of air, good dynamics, bass is softer, however.
Person D: Cut 1 good, rich, good pace. Cut 3, decay not good.
Person E: Cut 1, a little understated in the bass. Cut 3, good clarity on percussion.
Person F: n/r
DISC 6 (Digital Juice)
Person A: Cut 1, louder, deeper bass, second-best brass bright, good tone, faster, more open.
Cut 3, open, rhythm good, good attack.
Person B: Not bad, better than disc 5. Shrillness is gone and instruments are nicely delineated,
but still not as smooth as disc 1.
Person C: Similar to control, no big improvement detected.
Person D: Cut 1 fair, good clarity. Cut 3, decay best.
Person E: Cut 1, trumpet a little more prominent than some of the other discs. Cut 3, flute flutter
tonguing seems clear, trumpet passage nicely prominent.
Person F: (No comment.)
Before the treatments of the discs were revealed, the participants were asked to name their
favorite. The results: three out of six expressed a clear preference for Disc 1, the one beveled on
the Audio Desk Systeme and treated with its accompanying black pen, while Disc 2, the Auric
disc were their second choice. Two other listeners preferred Disc 2 with Disc 1 being close
behind. And one had no clear preference. Perhaps the best would be to combined the two—
Audio Desk Systeme and the Auric Illuminator since they tended to be the favorites.
Can it be concluded from this that the Audio Systeme Desk and Auric Illuminator are the “best” of
these treatments for CDs? Perhaps, since the listeners who preferred their effects were more
assertive in their preferences, and they did rate as the top two. The only general conclusion that
can be taken away from our experiment is that, as in all things audio, you can’t please everyone.
No big surprise in an arena in which subjectivity rules.
Although the barbeque was fired up and ready to go, we did spend a little time discussing our
collective experience. The consensus was that it became very difficult to discern subtle
differences between one disc and another after only a very short time, and that this was
something that should be remembered in any situation in which sonic comparisons are being
made.
auric
BACK TO TOP
tweaksswartz
The Art of System Tweaking
by Clay Swartz
Tweaking a system is absolutely essential to getting the most out of it. A $20,000 system
that is well tweaked will usually outperform a $100,000-plus system that has not been
tweaked. Many times, I have listened to expensive systems that I expected would sound
very good, but go away disappointed. The fault is not bad equipment, but a lack of care and
knowledge about how good an audio system can sound.
One exception to this was my visit to The Audio Gallery in Lake Groove, Oregon, where I
was treated to the best sound I have heard anywhere. The system included Avalon Diamond
Speakers, Rowland electronics, a Burmester CD player, and Cable Research cabling. The
level of detail was amazing. The system did almost everything perfectly, its only slight flaw
being a lack of low bass. Yes, the system was very expensive—about $115,000 including
room treatment—but for the first time in my experience, a really expensive system lived up
to and exceeded expectations. The room was fairly large, and had been heavily treated with
DAAD traps by Acoustica Applicata. The speakers were probably ten feet from the back wall
and six feet from the side walls. The mono amps were on the floor between the speakers, on
spiked feet. An isolation stand was used for the electronics. Speaker cables were raised off
the floor. Gary, the owner, said that the room was responsible for much of the sound quality.
I brought two discs that were the same, except that only one had been treated (see my
article in the first issue of Positive Feedback Online). The improvement on the treated disc
was immediately apparent. Since Gary had a fluorescent light, we tried using it on some of
his discs. The improvement was, again, immediately apparent. I also tried a set of some
mpingo feet that I had been playing around with, and that had done wonders in other
systems. Gary’s Avalon feet easily beat the mpingo feet. The really scary thing is that even
more tweaks could be used, for even better sound, although this was the most tweaked
system I had ever heard in a store. This was truly a wonderful listening session, put on by
people that care about sound.
I will now describe the entire process of tweaking a system, any step of which will be likely to
improve its sound. Keep in mind that tweaking is not an all-or-nothing process. Fully
tweaking a system will probably take months, even years. The first consideration is the
room. If you have a small room, give up on the idea of getting strong, deep
bass. Uncontrolled bass turns sound into mush. It is better not to go too low in the bass,
which creates massive room interactions unless you have a room and equipment that can
handle it. There are various room treatment products, like corner tunes, tube traps, and
acoustic absorbing material. In general, the biggest problems are in the corners of the room
and the edges between walls, ceilings, and the floor. A perfectly dead room—an anechoic
chamber—seems like a good idea, but it creates a very unnatural listening space, and
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tweaksswartz
requires a lot of volume and power for the sound to have any life. We are used to hearing
reflections off the walls and ceiling. The problem is that the walls and ceiling in most listening
rooms are far too close to each other to create live-concert types of reflections. Every room
is different in its sonic character, and a great deal of experimentation is needed to balance
the need for detail and clarity with the need for a live, room-filling sound.
A major area of concern is electrical power. If it is not too expensive, it is best to run at least
two dedicated circuits to your equipment. If this is going to cost more than $500 dollars,
however, your money is probably better spent on power line conditioners. Even with
dedicated power lines, conditioners are needed for the best sound. Nevertheless, I find that
it is best to plug your amplifiers directly into a dedicated circuit. High-quality power chords
are price-effective tweaks. A good power chord can make a component sound like you spent
twice the amount of money, though I feel that after $150, a point of diminishing returns is
reached.
The next issue that needs to be addressed is speaker placement. Speakers almost always
sound best when they are well into the room. The bigger the speakers, the more they need
to be away from the walls. I would suggest starting five feet from the back wall and at least
three feet from the side walls. It is also best if there is at least six feet of space behind the
listening position. To create a large soundstage, the speakers should be separated as much
as possible, but not so far that the center fill of the soundstage is lost. It is also a good idea
to have them equidistant from the side walls. Seating is usually best at a point that forms an
equilateral triangle with the speakers. Tweeters should be at ear height. The speakers may
need to be toed in to get good imaging. This is particularly true of physically wide or non-linesource speakers. It is best if there is nothing between or behind speakers other than sound
treatment. It is also best if nothing projects from the side walls in front of the speakers. Most
audiophiles have to compromise in the last two areas, because of room limitations or to
lower the cost of interconnects or speaker cables. This also happens when the system does
double duty as a video sound system. Spikes should be used under speakers when their
final positions have been determined. Again, hours of trial and error are needed to get the
best results.
Equipment placement is important. Components should be placed on a sturdy, non-resonant
surface, and isolated from any vibrations by the use of isolation feet, sand boxes, isolation
platforms, destructive interference devices, and many other devices. Isolation feet are a
must, and may be combined with other devices. I do not like air-bag isolation, because it
does not combine well with mass loading. There are new, bearing-based isolation devices
that have received good word of mouth. I find that this is not a good method. It requires a
very level surface and no heavy or stiff cables. It is also susceptible to sliding and does not
like mass loading. My favorite setup is a sand box (Bright Star Audio) with isolation feet
between the component and the sand box. Isolation feet can make incredible improvements
in the sound of a system. I was at a store that had a modified receiver system in use, and
the modified DVD player had Sorbothane-covered lead feet. I replaced these with the
mpingo feet I happened to have with me. I knew there was going to be an improvement, but
I was not ready for the degree of it. Even with changing the feet under only one component,
the system sounded like an extra $3000 had been spent. Be aware that what works best
under one component may not be best under another, and experimentation is necessary.
The next tweak is mass loading of equipment and speakers. This is among the most
tweaksswartz
important and cost-effective tweaks. I have a 25-pound lead sheet on top of each of my
components. I separate the sheet from the component with rubber lab stoppers. A
commercial mass-loading device is available from Bright Star Audio. I have 100 pounds of
lead bricks on the base of my speakers, and 75 pounds of lead bricks on top of each
speaker. My subwoofer has 125 pounds of lead bricks on top. I find that mass loading is
essential to get the best sound from a system. It helps every speaker on which I have tried it,
even with speakers as well built and expensive as the Avalon Ascents. On components, it
helps damp internal and air-borne resonance.
I recommend the use of Shakti Stones and Onlines. (The Onlines and Stones are reviewed
by Dave Clark and myself, "CD Tweaks, HDTV and the Audiophile, and Shakti Onlines,"
elsewhere in PF Online, Issue 1) At the same store I tried the mpingo feet, I put an Online at
the speaker end of both speaker cables, and was again surprised—the improvement was
nearly as large as with the mpingo feet. Only once have I run into a situation in which the
use of the Onlines did not make a clear improvement. When a friend was using a tube amp
and passive preamp, the Onlines were a definite improvement, but when he went to a solid
state amp and preamp, the Onlines made the system sound more analog-sounding, but with
a slight loss in detail and dynamics.
The next-to-last tweak is raising the speaker cables off the floor. There are commercial
products that do this, or you can make your own. It is easy to see if this is worthwhile in your
system with the help of two friends. While listening, have each friend lift the speaker cables
off the floor. I think you will hear an improvement. If you do not, you have lost nothing except
a little time. As long as we are talking about cables, it should be mentioned that they should
be arranged not to interfere with each other. Do not run power chords parallel to signalcarrying cables, and try to keep the cables going to different components separated as much
as possible.
Finally there is the five-step disc treatment I discussed in "CD Tweaks, HDTV and the
Audiophile, and Shakti Onlines." It can be used on CDs, DVDs, and SACDs. This treatment
is a necessity. You have no idea what is on your discs if you do not do it. Any of the steps
produces a definite improvement. Together, they are a revelation. Some choose to not do
the beveling because of the high cost of the machine or the debate about possible future
problems.
With your system ready to do its best, it may be a good idea to upgrade your interconnects
and speaker cables. These are very personal choices, because each cable has its own
character. Experimentation is needed to find the ones that fit your system and your taste.
BACK TO TOP
shaktistones
shakti
innovations
On-Lines and "Stones"
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shaktistones
This review is overdue for several reasons. First, the manufacturer initially
sent only two sets (a total of four On-Lines), second, when placed as
directed they didn’t seem to do much of anything, and third, it has taken me
this long to write up what has happened since.
DAVE CLARK'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Reimer Wind Rivers.
ELECTRONICS
Clayton Audio M100
monoblock amplifiers.
Taddeo Digital Antidote
Two. E.A.R. 834P phono
stage. Blue Circle
BC3000 preamp
w/Tunsgram tubes, and
BCG3.1 power supply.
SOURCES
EAD T1000 transport
and EVS Millenium II
DAC with Audient
Technologies’ Tactic and
Audi, JPS digital cable.
Linn Axiss turntable with
K9 cartridge and Basik
Plus arm.
CABLES
JPS Superconductor+
interconnects, digital,
and NC speaker cables.
Sahuaro Slipstream,
Blue Circle BC63,
Clayton Audio, and JPS
Kaptovator AC cables.
I initially tried them on interconnects, one at each end, one at one end, one
at the other end, as well as one in the center. No go. If this was doing
anything, it was a case of a remedy searching for a problem. If they were
controlling or eliminating EMI, as Shakti claims, how was I to know? If I use
them and hear no difference, does that mean that my system does not
suffer from EMI? I talked to Ben Piazza about my results, and he offered to
treat my system personally, to see to what the Shakti products (Stones and
On-Lines) could do.
Ben arrived with enough Shakti products to treat the neighborhood. He had
boxes and boxes, and when I looked at him incredulously and asked "How
many is enough?" his response was, "We’ll know that when we’re done!"
This was good for him but bad for me, because by the time he was done I
had eleven Stones and thirty-six On-Lines in my system. Ben spent the
better part of eight hours playing the same damn song over and over and
over again, as we first placed a Stone or On-Line here, then there, then
here again. Imagine the horror of putting an On-Line in some spot, playing a
song, taking the On-Line off, playing the song again, putting the On-Line
back, playing the song again! After which Ben would either say, "Great,
leave it there" or "Okay, that didn’t work for me, what did you think?" I would
either agree or ask to do it again.1 If we both agreed, it was on to "Great,
now let’s try one here," and the process started all over again. By the end of
the day I was wasted, but was it worth it!
The effect of the first few Shakti products was not as apparent as when the
effect became compounded. Each built on the others’ ability to eliminate
EMI in the component on or under which it was placed. Music became more
relaxed, with greater clarity. Space and ambience increased. The soundfield
became considerably more open and defined. At a certain point, the effect
became quite startling as another Stone or On-Line was added. Shazaam!
ACCESSORIES
PS Audio P300 Power
Plant.
Dedicated 20 and 15
amp ac circuits.
EchoBuster room
treatments. BDR cones
and board, DH cones,
Vibrapods, Mondo racks
and stands, Townshend
Audio 2D and 3D
Seismic Sinks, various
hard woods, etc.
shaktistones
I now have On-Lines
across all binding
posts (amps and
speakers), on the
RCAs of the JPS
interconnects (they
rarely worked well at
both ends, but which
end was most effective
was not universal), and
on all IECs and male
AC plugs. There are
also On-Lines in the
middle of the speaker
cables, as well as in
the middle of some,
but not all
interconnects. There
are Shakti Stones under the amps, under the power supply for the preamp,
above and below the DAC, as well as on top of the preamp, the PS Audio
300, the transport, and the loudspeakers. Yes, I said loudspeakers. Ben has
found that the drivers and crossovers can be affected by EMI too, so there
they sit. I would say that the place to start is with your source and all AC
cables and connections. The biggest bang for the buck is there, especially
with digital.
Funny how you think it all sounds good till you try something like this.
Adding this many Shakti products elevated my system several notches.
These are a must for anyone who feels that they have it all. Until you "Shaktiize" your system, however, you may never know how it really sounds. As far
as my system is concerned, they are here to stay.
Dave Clark
Retail Stones $230/each, On-Lines $99/pair
shaktistones
Shakti Innovations
TEL: 310 - 459 - 5704
web address: www.shakti-innovations.com
BACK TO TOP
swartz
CD Tweaks, HDTV and the Audiophile, Shakti Onlines
by Clay Swartz
Local audio enthusiast Brad Judah is extolling a five-step tweaking process for CDs, SACDs, and
DVDs. None of the five steps are of his creation, but he has added some refinements. The first
step is beveling the outside edges of the disc with the Audio Desk Systeme CD lathe made by
Glass Reiner of Germany. First, the data side is beveled. Then, for CDs only, turn the disc over
and bevel it. DO NOT BEVEL THE SECOND SIDE OF DVDs. The beveling process has not
been around long enough to tell if there are any long-term problems. There has been concern
among some audiophiles that it exposes some of the optical surface of the disc to oxidation.
Among people who have been doing this for over a year, the only problem that has been reported
has been that if the second sides of DVDs are beveled, there can be a problem playing some
parts of the disc. This is not an oxidation
problem. The main problem with the tweak is the
high cost of the lathe, reportedly around $650,
with replacement blades over $100. This will
probably stop many audiophiles from using it.
(Brad Judah is selling the Audio Desk Systeme's
CD lathe for $599: Brad Judah, 1344 N. Clark
St., Cornelius, OR 97113. Phone: 1-800-5145136.)
The second tweak is cleaning the playing surface
of the disc with a treatment solution. The best
one we have found is Esoteric Mist (available
from Ben Dolp, 66965 Fryrear Rd., Bend, OR
97701. Phone: 541-383-3196). The solution
should be rubbed into the surface of the disc
thoroughly before it is wiped off. The wiping off
should be done with a soft cotton cloth. This
tweak has been around since the early days of
CD. Most of the other disc cleaners will probably
work.
The third step is to put colored transparent ink on the inner and outer edges of the disc. Through
the research of Dave Herron, Brad Judah, Ben Piazza of Shakti Innovations, and myself, the best
color seems to be a blue-green shade with a xylene solvent. Unfortunately, the best marker that
we have found is no longer made because of xylene concerns. Look for a solvent-base marking
pen with a blue-green, transparent color. Non-solvent-base colors do not bond with the surface
as well, and rub off. If you cannot find a blue-green pen, one layer of a medium blue and one of a
green may be used. A notch should be cut in the marker head, so that it will not slip off the edge
when you are coloring it. I first reported on this tweak about nine years ago.
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swartz
The fourth step is degaussing the disc. The Absolute Sound and Positive Feedback reported this
tweak about eight years ago. Brad has added the use of a large, high-strength magnet under the
disc to intensify the magnetic field. You put the permanent magnet on a surface and cover it with
a soft cotton cloth. Put the disc on the cloth, then run a commercial-strength demagnetizer above
the surface of the disc in a circular movement for about thirty seconds. This can be done with
cheaper demagnetizers, but they will quickly burn out because of the strong fields produced. If
you watch the light reflecting off the disc, you will see the reflective character of the disc change.
The last step has come up fairly recently. In the back of Stereophile, there was an ad for a CD
treatment involving a fluorescent light and colored paper. When Brad told me about this tweak I
was ready to laugh my head off, but he said he had tried it with just a compact fluorescent light
and it seemed to work. Before I tried it at home, I was at Frank Curl’s listening to the new MSB
Ultimate DAC in his magnificent-sounding system, and he demonstrated the process on a
number of discs. It improved the sound of each by a fair degree. Brad feels the colored paper
may just be a way to charge more for the product. I can say that a plain fluorescent bulb seems to
work very well, whether it is done after all the other steps or before. Truly a cheap tweak, give it a
try. I have no idea why this works. It needs to be done before each playing for optimum effect.
If you have not done these five things to a disc, you have no idea what is on it. After treatment,
discs are more dynamic, more detailed, less veiled, cleaner and clearer. A good CD starts to
sound as good as an untreated SACD. The process has saved two DVDs of mine from resale.
They were the McGarrigle Sisters’ The McGarrigle Hour and Sessions at West 54th Volume 1.
Before treatment, both discs sounded deadly dull. The sound was so boring that I would quickly
lose interest in listening to them. After treatment, The McGarrigle Hour actually became
absorbing to listen to. It simply had more life. The Sessions at West 54th became listenable, but
still a little dull. Before treatment, Orff’s "Fortuna" from Carmina Burana, on a Telarc CD, sounded
confused and bloated . After treatment, the whole soundstage was clearer and there was a much
better sense of dynamics, pace, and enunciation. This process has worked very well on every
disc with which I have tried it.
I have bought the Panasonic TU-HDS20B HDTV receiver, and I am very happy with the picture
on my Mitsubishi HD1080 55-inch, widescreen, HDTV-ready monitor. With a good signal, the
picture is better than theater quality. However, the news from HDTV-land for audiophiles is not
good. HDTV receivers are being made mainly for the receiver or all-in-one system market. The
Panasonic’s digital outputs go only into Dolby Digital or DTS digital inputs. You can hook the
digital output to a standard DAC and get better sound as long as there is no Dolby Digital or DTS
signal. If these signals are fed through a standard DAC, some pretty bad, possibly systemdestroying sound can come though the system. I can find no way to turn off these outputs. The
analog outputs seem only to be of good-quality-receiver sound. Most audiophiles would like at
least one output to the TV and one to the stereo. My player has only one analog output that
works all the time, and another that works only when a standard NTSC resolution is picked for
video. To record in regular or Super VHS, the output must be turned to the lower NTSC setting.
This is needed for the recorder, but it would be nice if you could watch a higher-definition signal
on the TV at the same time.
Most of the HDTV sources available are from local over-the-air TV stations. Unfortunately, I have
found that digital signals are even more finicky than analog signals for reception. I only know of
two high-definition channels on satellite, Channel 199 and 509 (HBO) on Direct TV. Channel 199
runs a HD loop at times. Many of ABC and CBS prime time shows are broadcast in HDTV, where
available. I must admit that even the regular digital TV signals broadcast by almost all local TV
swartz
stations are usually superior to the regular analog. A problem with digital TV is that the signal will
not let you digitally change the picture to fill the screen the way it can with an analog signal. This
means that you have bars on each side of the picture on TV broadcasts. The bars are not good
for your screen, and keep me from watching too many standard-aspect shows in the digital
format. One thing that bothers me about the newer surround-sound formats is that they make it
nearly impossible to avoid running your main channels through a processor. I liked running Dolby
surround separately from my front channel for better sound.
One thing that significantly improved the sound of my HDTV receiver was putting Shakti Onlines
on the two main chips (read the aM Shakti Online review). I received numerous pairs of the
Shakti Onlines for evaluation. I was looking forward to this, because I like the Shakti Stones so
much. The Onlines are small black oblong blocks, 3 x 5/8inches, with Velcro on the bottom.
There is also a self-gluing Velcro strip,
which you attach to the cable, then use
it to attach the Online. They come in
sets of two, for about $99. The Onlines
can be used on speaker cables,
interconnects, digital cables, power
chords and digital chips. Some
placement experimentation is needed
to get optimal improvement. I suggest
using masking tape to temporarily apply
them.
I tried them out by adding one (or one
pair) at a time. Each time I did this
there was an improvement in the sound. Then I decided it was time to bring my friend Marv over.
We started by playing my system without any Onlines, then we put one on each speaker cable.
The improvement was substantial. I then put one on the amplifier power chord. Again there was a
similar improvement. I then added one to the preamp power chord. Another significant
improvement. I then put one on each interconnect from the preamp to the amp. Marv’s first
comment was, "Is that the same cut?" I assured him it was. At that point Marv said that he
thought it could not keep getting better, so I added a pair to the interconnects between the Sony
S-9000 and the preamp. After about fifteen seconds of listening he looked over at me, smiled,
and said "Then again, I could be wrong." Yet another major improvement. I finally placed one on
the S-9000 power chord and yes, you guessed it, another improvement.
The improvements we heard after each Online addition were airier highs, a more palatable
midrange, and better, tighter bass. More clarity and better imaging were also noted. The music
was simply more involving. If a blindfolded audiophile was told he would be listening to two
different components, the second of which, unknown to him, was the same component with
Onlines being used, he would probably feel that the second component was worth hundreds or
even thousands more than the first. I took a spare pair over to Frank Curl’s house to try, and it
only took him about thirty seconds to determine he wanted them. They transformed his system. It
would now be hard for me to listen to mine without them.
I tried a pair on the video cables between my TV and the HDTV receiver, and the signal change
was enough to cause the TV to reset its picture. I noted subtle improvements in background
picture noise and higher color saturation. It is hard to test television pictures because they can
not be repeated before and after each change. I tried the Onlines on other video cables, again
with subtle improvements. The one thing in the video system that did make a big difference was
swartz
putting them on the digital chips in the HDTV receiver. The improvement in sound was substantial
and there was some improvement in the picture.
Big improvements in sound were also realized when Onlines were used on the DAC chips in my
MSB and Sony S-9000. They made big differences in my system even though it was already
heavily tweaked. The first place I would use them would be the power cords. You get two levels
of improvement per pair. I would then add them in this order: speaker cables, preamp-to-amp
interconnects, source-to-preamp interconnect. Adding an additional Online to a wire that already
has one brings about a small improvement. It is even reported that putting an Online on the
electronic ignition chip in your car will make the motor run smoother and give better gas mileage.
DVD Alert: The Welcome Back, Emerson, Lake and Palmer DVD really is a stinker. The cover
makes you think you are going to be listening to a bunch of ELP songs. I could stand the poorquality older video clips, but when they cut off a song after a minute, or talk over the song, it really
makes me feel cheated.
Shakti Innovations
www.shakti-innovations.com
BACK TO TOP
auroville3
Auroville
by Srajan Ebaen
Reviewing the reviewers
Recently, a long-time manufacturer and I exchanged a few e-mail riffs. We improvised like jazz
cats on diverse tangents, circling ‘round and ‘round the central motif—audio—and my recentlylaunched 6moons.com ‘zine. This dictatorial venture, with myself as main writer, editor, and
publisher, is accountable exclusively to the muse and my own questionable judgment. With what
strange, new, odd-order harmonies could one distort the same old reviewing song from an
unconventional perspective? My new pen pal brought up a reviewer rating system.
Crashing cymbals blasted through my upstairs cobwebs, the rim shot just about dislocating a
dental filling with its transient crispness. Rate reviewers? He didn’t outright suggest that I should
swallow my foot and bite down hard. The idea was more or less hinted at, but I could see myself
choking on some dusty boot leather if I followed through. Did he really think I was nuts enough to
stick my head out while the sharks were circling? Rate reviewers! Sign my own death warrant?
Then I thought about it more. After all, he was right, you know? There should be such a rating
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system, preferably with an 800 number and attached menu–“If you know the name of the party
under investigation, please enter the first three letters of the first name. If you’d like to file a
complaint after hearing the rating, press pound. Your call will be routed to the next available
interrogator. Please wait for the Inquisition to commence…”
If only one could avoid the mudslinging and accusatory agitation that the anonymity and freedomof-speech policy of a certain website occasionally gives rise to. Could such a prickly beast be
fashioned to serve as a valuable and kind-hearted feedback loop for the writers to learn more
about their audience? Who is deemed outstanding, and why? How are others felt wanting? Is
there an overall trend or pattern that ties popularity to distinct qualities? How can a writer broaden
his appeal? Lamentably, human nature is such that even sincerely delivered and well-meaning
criticism is misread for finger pointing.
Then an old proverb knocked on my cortex like a long-gone friend. I forget the details, but not the
overall admonition: Do not keep pouring concrete into a hollowed-out tree doomed to die.
Instead, plant a new seedling and water it well. What’s implied, of course, is that attention is a
powerful force. Its solar energy feeds weeds and roses alike. Turn it away from the weeds and
they’ll shrink of starvation. Focus it on the roses instead. This walks a non-violent yet effective
path of deliberate action. It avoids granting time, energy, and effort to the subject one wants
erased or at least removed from one’s life. It’s a path that extends a live-and-let-live invitation by
monitoring our habitual addiction to negatives—like flies stick to shite and pesky insects burn on
light bulbs. The extent to which negatives impact us is readily managed, and it doesn’t
automatically (or even necessarily) mean eliminating the adversary. It simply means to focus
elsewhere. After all, the apparent offender might perform a vitally important service for others that
we’re merely too dense to comprehend. Who are we to render high and mighty judgment?
Shrewd words to live by if applied with intelligence. Ignoring a shark doesn’t necessarily mean
he’ll ignore you. But as I’m told, audio isn’t a life-threatening disease, it just seems that way. I
could now begin to think of the reviewers I read, and why.
Sam Tellig
The master of efficiency. Saying more with less. More there there. I’d read him even if it weren’t
about audio–which it often isn’t. His writing is conversational, witty, self-depreciative and
anecdotal. It’s easy, yet substantial. He’s opinionated and unafraid to take a stand. He screws up
on occasion and delights in it. He championed low-power SETs when the official party line
decried them as tone controls. He condones tone controls to risk public persecution. He thinks
that price matters.
You can agree or disagree with Tellig because you always know where he’s coming from. That
takes guts, clarity, and consistency. Also, he practices a life’s-too-short-to-waste-bad-ink policy.
He goes after what interests him. If it doesn’t perform to his liking, he returns it to the
manufacturer with a short explanatory note. I should know—it’s happened to me twice in my past
life as a national sales manager.
Chip Stern
He’s got the passion, baby. His crib’s stacked to the rafters with music. He whacks a full-blown
drum kit in a New York apartment with gusto and abandon. He calls various guitar amps his
brides, and knows all their in and outs. He’s diligent in chasing the dragon’s tail of subtleties, and
auroville3
agonizes over finding the perfect expression to describe them. You just know he sweats the
details. His music reviews and Stereophile quarter notes reveal colossal chops. The guy knows
his music by heart. His deep love of the subject matter is as tangible as an addict’s need for the
next fix.
Art Dudley
He’s got perspective. His writing remains lucidly transparent to life beyond audio. I read his Naim
reviews even though Naim isn’t my game. I read them to find out what he’ll say, and how. At the
end, I have a very clear idea of what it sounds like. He’s irreverent without being pompous like
the late, likeable Gizmo. He knows what he likes, yet can give a fair, balanced account of
something he doesn’t. His opener for the Shigaraki DAC write-up was an instant classic.
“Consumer Alert!” What a brilliant piece of prose. No pretentiousness whatsoever. Clear, concise
writing that’s fun, informative, and entertaining.
Ken Kessler
In person, he might be a bit full of himself, but it’s rather well deserved, so it slides off my oily
mink coat. He’s profoundly good at what he does. I admire his sheer skill. He’s polished, suave,
cosmopolitan, and well groomed. Like Tellig, he’s an economist, but he adds a certain elegance
of prose. Unlike Tellig, he has a penchant for the expensive, yet is gifted with the requisite
experience to weigh it properly. He’s prolific. When I think “working writer”–highly paid if audio
paid decently–he’s the one that first comes to mind.
Jim Saxon
My virtual penman of choice. Humorous, off the charts, exploring unconventional angles
conscientiously enforced by playing both sides of the retail/writer fence. He’s fun to read, and
mostly unpredictable. He brings normal life back into audio, and expands the narrow focus that
strangles so many others. Through him, non-converts can relate to the hobby and see
themselves in it. Too bad he’s found a home. If etiquette didn’t forbid it, I’d send a grizzled
headhunter down south to have him jump a moon or two.
And that’s it
There are others, of course, yet for the purposes of today’s rant, these five gents are all the standins required to demonstrate why I read reviews. I know exactly what polishes my huckleberry. I
read to be entertained, first, foremost, lastly, and in the middle. Then I read to learn about new
stuff, to stay in touch with the greater goings-on in the industry. I read to come across tweaks and
setup tricks I’ve never thought of. Sometimes, I simply enjoy the finely tuned, innate rhythm of a
well-conceived cadence. It’s akin to admiring a perfect bow on a handcrafted sailboat, or the
curve of a lover’s neck.
By inference, you can now extrapolate why I don’t read reviews. It’s not to agonize over what to
buy, like a Consumer’s Guide devotee. What I despise most are paint-by-numbers reports, the
kind with so little personality invested that the author’s credit at the end might as well be
interchanged with that attached to hundreds of other reports. If I needed extra toilet paper, I’d
have my computer print out last year’s tax return. What lubes my chain is the human-interest
angle, the people behind the product, the personality behind the pen. I relish sudden detours and
how cleverly and unexpectedly they return to the main highway. But what overwhelms all other
auroville3
characteristics is overt, enthused, contagious passion. Even repeated missteps on the part of
such writers are forgiven, the very moment they occur. That’s why crimes of passion are judged
less harshly than coldly premeditated ones, isn’t it? Let’s face the music—what kind of real or
imaginary crime could an audio writer possibly be accused of, in earnest?
What does rattle my chain are outright technical violations of the language. For every Clive
Barker or Norman Mailer, there are the rest of us also-rans. Still, we should be expected to
master at least the bare bones of the craft–it leaves less to pick on. This is hardly ever an issue in
print. Behind-the-scenes copy editors massage content to minimum spec before it ever sees the
light of day. But on the web, it can run rampant indeed. True, professional copy editing is costly to
procure, and a skill only few possess. Still, the onus remains on the publisher. If he can’t afford a
proofreader and copy editor, he must practice selectivity. He can’t just accept content
indiscriminately, to fill his server and puff up his chest. My five pfennig on the subject, and aimed
sparingly.
But more importantly, how about you? Why do you read reviews? What’s important to you? Don’t
tell just me or your lonesome, let your favorite writers know. I remember playing the clarinet,
performing as well as competing. The differences were profound between playing before judges
with their pencils sharpened and an audience handing me the keys with a “take me somewhere”
gesture. And both differed yet again from playing with only myself for a witness.
Though more or less invisible, writers also perform for an audience. Like music, response is vital,
be it applause or the friendly backstage dissing from one’s fellow band members. Think about
your favorite reviewers. Why do you like them? Then let them know, in private or a public chat
room. It’s part of the endlessly revolving circle of give and take that enriches everyone. It’s a lot
more satisfying and nurturing than going after perceived weeds with a howitzer or poisoned gas.
Should you subscribe to the latter path, don’t be surprised when the occasional live grenade of
hissing anger flies back at you.
Trust me, it’s not for the money that audio writers spend countless hours laboring over words.
Unless you’ve sat down and put pen to paper, repeatedly, consistently, with deadlines to meet
and obligations to honor, you don’t quite appreciate the discipline involved. You may heartily
disagree with a published effort. Still, much effort was involved just getting it there. Why shit on it?
Pass on. Better yet, rise to the innate challenge. Prove to yourself and the world that you can do
better. Hand in an unsolicited submission and see what happens. Just opening yourself up to
private rejection or blunt criticism will serve as appetizer for the gut buster of public discord and
verbal violence that’s repeatedly heaped on writers that truly deserve better.
When I huddled in front of my Indian teacher Osho many years ago, to receive my new and
present name, which was to signify an attempted break from the past and serve as reminder to
grow into a human being, he extrapolated the name’s meaning as a future road map to ponder
and orient myself by. One of the things that stuck with me was his personal admonition of
creativity as an active collaboration with the Great Spirit. To value one’s unique gift, one had to
develop it. This required putting it out in the open for all to see, through an ongoing act of courage
and confidence. He compared the effort of gestation, not only of a creative endeavor but the
process of birthing oneself, to the casual knife slash that can forever ruin a masterpiece painting.
How much labor and time is involved to create? How little effort does it take to destroy or ridicule?
Osho called such destroyers creatively impotent, needing to disguise their flaccid dicks through
acts of sabotage and violence. Looking at a recent on-line brouhaha involving this topic, I’m
inclined to agree. Now you can shoot me. Just aim poorly so I don’t lose my head. A small limb
auroville3
should do, no?
Visit Srajan Ebaen at his site www.6moons.com
BACK TO TOP
aurioville2
Auroville
by Srajan Ebaen
No ledge to stand on
“What you don’t know won’t hurt you.”
“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
“A wise man knows how little he knows.”
“And Abraham knew Jezebel and sired many generations.”
These quotes and sayings have more to do with audio than you may suspect. For starters, the
word “know”—in the Old Testament—is code for carnal knowledge. It properly suggests that to
truly know a person or a thing, one has to be most intimate with it. Once you are intimate with
your subject—a person, an art form, or a profession—you are bound to make a startling
discovery, namely how much more always remains to be known. How precious little grasp you
have over what seems possible. How the totality of this potential will perennially elude you, simply
by definition. After all, how can the part ever comprehend the whole? How can the objective
observer understand what’s apparently outside of him, eternally separated?
Eventually you begin to suspect that what you know, limited as it may be, could well be
contaminated. Knowledge creates assumptions, which in turn grow into cancerous beliefs. Those
aurioville2
lead to consequences in attitude and action that can lack true responsiveness or responsibility to
the moment, to this occasion. When this engrained mechanism becomes unbearable in its
predictability, we might be tempted to dump all our so-called knowledge. We might long to return
to what Zen calls Beginner’s Mind: a perceptional space unfettered by clutter, empty but open,
humble yet curious, careful yet daring.
To demonstrate the effects of limited audio knowledge, let’s rattle off some common truisms.
Silver is bright.
So are metal dome tweeters.
Class A circuits are superior to all others.
Horn loudspeakers suffer cupped-hands colorations.
Spades are superior to bananas because of larger contact area.
Phase and time coherence in loudspeakers is a nice concept but inaudible in practice.
Tube amps always introduce euphonic distortion.
Bearing-based isolators don’t belong under speakers.
You get the drift? Our assumptions, whether based on isolated experience or hearsay, deeply
condition our thinking and actions. Power cords make no difference. Power cords make all the
difference. It doesn’t matter what beliefs we subscribe to—no sooner does an observation of
authentic but momentary observation turn into a generalized truth, to be applied to all future
moments, it is degraded into a fallacy, a prison that confines us to ever-shrinking spaces behind
ever-more-ominous bars.
That’s because decisions and actions based on hard and fast rules tend to reinforce each other,
by design and quite automatically. We avoid what could threaten the house of cards that is our
conclusions. We revisit ad infinitum what upholds them, and each confirmation adds glue to how
much we know. Our padded cell conducts less and less fresh air.
A publisher I once wrote for wouldn’t even try bearing-based isolators underneath loudspeakers.
He could plainly see how absurd the whole notion was. Loudspeaker drivers move back and forth
to create sound. To allow the speaker itself to move in relation to the floor obviously interfered
with that process. It couldn’t and wouldn’t work. I had tried it, and knew how well it could work,
even though I hadn’t the foggiest idea why. Still, he wouldn’t even experiment. His so-called
knowledge prevented him.
For all his self-congratulatory smarts, he really boxed himself into a corner. An old German
proverb quips that what the farmer don’t know he won’t eat—don’t try to feed sushi to a
meat’n’potatoes guy.
More important than how much you know is: Would you rather live in a well-decorated but solitary
aurioville2
prison with a shingle that reads “A deep knower of things” but you’re fed a monotonous staple
diet, or would you dig a messier but revolving-door pad whose address is on Ignoramus Lane,
and has all sorts of wild and wondrous characters visiting you, unannounced, who hand out
exotic and confusing gifts? Audio is a very subjective art. It is filled with pitfalls that can cause
even learned engineers (who, in all fairness, know a lot more about their subject matter than we
ever will) to stumble. A manufacturer friend recently confided his shock at discovering how
tweeter-mounting plates affected performance based on material. Metal sounded better than
plastic, and thick inert metal better than thin, all using otherwise identical transducers. Tweeter
motion, even at maximum SPLs, is minuscule. How could it possibly flex the plate it was mounted
to? Does it matter?
If all you’re concerned with is demonstrably better performance, do you have to understand why?
My friend couldn’t explain it. Nothing in his solid science background pointed at a clear cause.
Still, his ears knew. He trusted them, and now has a better product for his customers. In Sufism,
a colorful character named Mulla Nasruddin is often used to illustrate certain core points of the
teachings. One day Mulla, crossing a river bridge, observes the sacred zikr ritual performed by a
Dervish down below on an island. Mulla is enraged. This fool had gotten the holy ritual all
screwed up. He hustles down to shore, jumps into a boat, paddles vigorously to the beach and
reprimands the ecstatically whirling fakir, who thanks him profusely for setting him on the straight
and narrow. Pleased with himself, the Mulla paddles back to shore, only to hear shouting a few
moments later. Turning around to divine the source, he observes a flustered Dervish running atop
the waves in great haste and yelling, “But Mulla, you forgot to show me how to breathe properly.”
If breathing is as natural as sleeping—despite the popular self-help books to the contrary—then
approaching the world with an open mind and a child’s curiosity should be equally so. But our
breathing does become more labored as we grow older, and our innate innocence that is more
interested in tasting than cataloging experience calcifies as well.
Integrated amplifiers are inferior to separates.
Only thick cables carry enough current to produce good bass.
Ribbons are unreliable and beamy.
Electrostats are transparent but not very dynamic.
Loudspeakers are the most important component.
The source is the most important.
The room is.
No, the listener’s mind space.
Power line conditioners curtail dynamics.
Supertweeters are ridiculous, human hearing ends at 20kHz.
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Power supplies are the most important amplifier part—how heavy is yours?
To achieve realistic dynamics, you need at least 200wpc.
We’re all guilty of this. It’s human nature. But can you admit, if even only quietly and for one brief
moment, how much juicier it would be if we managed to stretch ourselves beyond these
boundaries and invited, nay pursued experiences contrary to our expectations, embarked on a
collision course with our so-called knowledge? Who knows what we’d discover? In fact, would
there be an end to discovery? It seems that what keeps us young at heart—quite possibly
younger in body, and definitely in spirit—is an embrace of life’s uncertainty, of not knowing, of
questioning our prior conclusions.
In audio, this could translate into experimenting with those subjects we’ve inadvertently or
deliberately written off. Of course, it would necessitate renouncing our expertness and accepting
a new identity. Of not being sure. Of vacillating. Of going from one extreme to the next, micropower tubes today, massive solid state tomorrow, who the hell knows what after? There’s no
need to buy any of this stuff, figuratively or literally. Audiophiles live in even the remotest of
outposts, and most, if not all, love nothing better than to show off their system. Couldn’t this be
great fun, a merry quest not to identify “the best,” but instead a quixotic adventure to sample the
most? We might encounter the occasional mind-blowing impossibility: a single-driver speaker
sounding inexplicably full range. A transistor amp more liquid than tubes. Horns without
colorations. A puny, inexpensive system that alters our blood chemistry for repeatable ecstasy.
Truly, age isn’t a function of the number on your driver’s license. It’s a function of spiritual well
being. You could be thirty, with such narrow horizons that talking to you feels like conversing with
an ancient mummy. You could be wrinkled and shrunk, and laugh at the world that skydivers are
good until the last drop, with a parachute that works like a mind—only when open. If you
sympathize with this notion and know someone like that, an elder with the enthusiasm, passion,
and crackling fire of a child, think about how this could translate into approaching music and
audio.
Listening to Rap for a change? Elevating your cables off the synthetic carpet to see whether you
can hear a difference? Watering your grounding rod with a covert outdoor leak? The discovery is
the journey, not getting there. Proper Aurovilleans are really auro villains, constantly raping
sacred cows, blaspheming their own notions, and remembering thrice daily that this madness is
supposed to be toupee-lifting fun, not hair-counting torture.
Cheers. Now where’s the mirror?
BACK TO TOP
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/mysteriesgrant.htm
The Mysteries of His System
The Verses in His Life
A Love Story
Part Nine
by Barry Grant
LXVIII
“Cavafy,” Audie’s voice buzzed the voice coil of the rotary phone that sat on the cherry-shaped
cherry-wood night stand on his side of the bed. “Are you there?”
“I’m here Audie. How are you?”
“It’s a long story Cavafy, and it’s not over yet.”
“In other words, system problems.”
“The same. How’s business?”
“Always good.”
“How do you do it?”
“By listening carefully through the distractions.”
“Just breathe?”
“That’s it.”
“Why I called, Cavafy. Can you get tickets to THE Show next month? For Prue and me.”
“Johnson’s, and his mate’s. They’ll be in Tokyo."
“He’s not an allergist or holy man?”
“He’s Johnson. You like his stuff.”
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“Of course. Are you going?”
“You know I never go. The noise. And I can’t leave the rabbits.”
“Yes, of course. Prue and I send our love.”
“I love you, Cavafy,” Prudence said as she lay stretched across the bed, her head in Audie’s lap,
reading the annual retreat issue of the Women Writing Women newsletter.
“Tell the goddess I bow to her.”
“Cavafy says he bows to you.”
“You are a silly man.”
“Keep listening, Cavafy.”
“Keep listening, Audie.”
LXIX
“We’ll get an entourage.” Audie said to Prudence as he returned the handset to its cradle.
“An entourage?”
“Johnson. His readers think his articles reveal the true nature of systems. He is a sort of holy
man, though he’s not the mysterious Johnson who spoke at the Antinomian Audiophile Society
meeting. Remember, I asked Edith about him? After she tossed down those three mulled
scotches, all she would talk about was love.
“Audie, who would think we are Johnson and his mate because our badges say so? It would be
easier and no less thrilling to masquerade as ourselves.”
“Prue, you know you are most yourself when you pretend to be someone else.”
“Oh, Audie.” Prudence grinned and pulled Audie’s brow to her lips.
“Hey, I’ll read you some of Johnson’s philosophy.” Audie brushed his lips across Prudence’s soft
cheek. He gently lifted her head from his lap as he scooted off the bed.
“What was the one with Johnson’s position statement?” Audie asked himself as he examined the
table of contents of an issue of the magazine that published Johnson’s work. He hadn’t read the
magazine in months, but he continued to seat each new issue successively on the shelves that
stood astern his silent system.
“‘Yes, the cover with Mother Theresa, her head tilted like that dog on record labels. How did the
editor get permission to use the picture? Maybe the magazine donated a system to her hospice.
‘Sound Reproduction and the Good,’ that’s it.”
“Listen, Prue,” Audie said as he resumed his former position, the palm of his free hand resting on
Prudence’s soft cheek, his fingers cupping her chin.
“‘Judgments of difference imply a standard. Standards imply a hierarchy. A hierarchy, properly
constructed, is a ladder to the Good. In the domain of listening, the Good is the perception of the
true sound of unamplified instruments, pure, full, timbral and dynamic sound.'
I’ll skip a bit here. ‘The enemy of listening is also the enemy of morals: relativism, pragmatism,
“taste.” Reviewers who call themselves “bass freaks” or “soundstaging freaks” are themselves
freaks with freakish standards. There is only one sound, entire in itself, and that sound is
absolute.'
I’ll skip more. ‘The true listener continually strives to overcome ego. Only by shedding ego can we
truly hear. Without the muffling distortion of ego, we can perceive true differences as they are
present to our ears. Recognizing differences is training in virtue, is virtue.’”
“Poor man,” Prudence said, tightening the flesh of her chin across her jaw bone. “All sounds are
beautiful. We can enjoy them without philosophy or training. What does that man Cake say,
‘Everything is a delight?’”
“Cage. Prue, I know, all things are perfect in themselves. But doesn’t ego obscure true
perception?”
“No. Love sees through everything. True love is joyous recognition.”
“Prue, you are amazing! I love you,” Audie said, brushing Prudence’s soft cheeks with his late
day growth.
Audie paused. He sat up. His mouth fell open as if as his mandible had suddenly grown heavy.
His breath became shallow and sharp. “Why do you love me?” he asked Prudence swallowing
the words as he spoke them.
“You are perfect. . . for me!”
Audie sighed.
LXX
Audie and Prudence continued unpacking the produce they had purchased at Edith. Edith was
their friend Edith’s newest venture, a companion to her first store, also called Edith, that sold what
Edith called Harmonically Correct Furnishings for the Home. Audie and Prudence had bought
their bedroom set and other furnishings at Edith. In her new store, Edith (she never used
adjectives to describe her stores or herself) sold what she called Star Balanced Fruits and
Vegetables.
Audie and Prudence had read Edith’s food philosophy paper several times, but, despite their high
level of general intelligence and their familiarity with Edith’s other endeavors, they could only
discern that it had to do with Taoism, organic farming, psychotronics, and cross-breeding of food
strains based on the Zodiac. Maybe, Audie once joked to Prudence, philosophical insight comes
from consuming the food, just as cannibals (so they believed) acquired strength by eating their
enemies’ body parts.
Edith’s Tomatoes were the most profound realization of her hermetic philosophy. Stammel-red
tomatoes streaked with mauve and amethystine. Italien Tomatoes whose ochery gold meats
glistened under pale, translucent skin. Aggie-sized tomatoes, their fuzzy purpureal skin ticklish as
a bee’s hide. Tomatoes, ferruginous and laky, shaped like human hearts cleaved by a blunt
scalpel. Every bite of their flesh, every drop of their viscid juice, revealed a secret essence of
aftertastes, foretastes, nuances, and overtones as endlessly complex and surprising as the
sounds of Lamb’s Faraway Wind Organ.
LXXI
“Audie,” Prudence said as she laid a brilliant bed of verdure, ruby, and canary lettuce leaves in a
large oslamode bowl. “Do you think we will find Mr. Bell at the show? Do you think he will even be
there? He didn’t answer any of our letters or calls.”
“Prue,” Audie said as he plucked a particularly virid leaf from the bowl. “Our only clue is his flyer
with an announcement on the back for A Show, which occurs at the same time and place as THE
Show. I’ve never heard of A Show. We are lucky Cavafy could get us tickets to THE Show. But. .
.”
“If we find him, we can help him. Some people who read his message would say he is crazy, but I
think he is just unhappy and very lonely.”
Audie reached over to the kitchen cork-board and unpinned a half-sheet of pink paper with a thick
black photocopy line across the bottom. “He might be having a breakdown. He seems to argue a
sort of contextualized psycho-political critique of certain modes of sound reproduction, but it’s
hard to tell what he means.”
“Read it again, Audie, please. Maybe we missed something.”
“OK, but I don’t think so.”
Audie read the following:
Mono Is The ONE!!!
BewARE of False Communicatiorrs!!
Alert! Citizens. Alert! The enemy is at our door. The beast slouches
ever closer. Hang on to your Hats! Here he comes! Loooooook
OOOOOOOOUT!!!!!! Only YOU can stop him. Buy MONO. MONO
is the ONE! The true, the whole sound. The oneness of Humankind
is MONO! The brother (and sister too) hood of Humankind Unities
in MONO. You know already the Devil stereo: Mommy on the right.
Daddy left. And YOU suffocated in the muddle. The stranfuscating,
pernicious FALSE mommy daddy family of sound. Only MONO is
the true sound for the ONE true generation ONE sound Mankind.
Beware the so-called “multi-channel system”. It may promise truth ,
but how many times have we heard these promises brothers (&
sisters!)????? How many times have we been SOULED up the
rivers by teknologissts and teknocracies and teknicians who
promise reform and untiy only to find that we have lost our
Souls!!!!??? So-called multi channel is pernicious reformism,
promising again at true universality true oneness, but ersatz, wrong
entirely in seeking THE WAY. Its realism is FALSE. ILLUSION!!!
Subwoofers! HA! They are called low. FOR A REASON!! Promises
and paybacks of UNity in multiplicity. We must change brother (and
sisters too, dear sisters). we must transform ourselves inside
outsides. Only as we become WHOLE in each ourselves can we
make a ONE TRUE FREE VEGETARIAN WORLD at peace with
each other and with our brothers (and sisteres) of the animal
kingdom. MONO Is The ONE!!!!! You must start now!! OR
else!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Peter Bell, MMD, Founder & Director
One World Free Vegetarianism Foundation
“Poor man,” Prudence said, arranging gorgeous lateritious, aureate, and violaceous slices of fully
maturated fubsy tomatoes in a golden section on the bed of motley lettuce (Edith prescribed this
arrangement for its “toward effect.” Prudence liked the way it looked.) “He is unhappy and
confused. He sounds like those men in your magazines who write about dubes.”
“Tubes, Prue. We will do our best to find him. And maybe,” Audie said, almost holding his breath
as he spoke. “While we look, I will find a new system.”
“Oh, Audie,” Prudence said, throwing her arms around her beloved and pressing his face
between her soft breasts. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could find Mr. Bell and a new system
too?”
Audie sighed.
BACK TO TOP
plinius
Moving forward: Spending time with the Plinius SA-102 amplifier,
8200 integrated, and CD-LAD preamplifier.
by Ed Morawski
I was quite happy with my system, until multiple equipment failures took away my listening
privileges. While dealing with the long wait, I decided to replace everything, and set about
auditioning equipment. Thinking that perhaps a simpler system would cause less trouble, I
decided to try an integrated amp. I had heard good things about the Rowland, but that was a little
pricey. I listened to a Gryphon Callisto 2100 and liked it, but it was also out of my price range.
The name Plinius just kept popping up. This New Zealand company has developed quite a
reputation for sound, looks, value, and customer happiness. The Plinius 8200 had the right
pedigree, and was fairly reasonable at $3000, so I went for it. Mine arrived in silver and had
impressive quality and low-key good looks.
The 8200 has plenty of inputs (all RCA) and two sets of very good quality, gold-plated speaker
binding posts.Using my Empirical Audio Clarity7 spaded speaker cables and Empirical
interconnects, I connected my Cary CD player to the Plinius and let it warm up for a few hours.
Man, my rack looked empty! The amp (like everything else these days) has a blue LED power
indicator that flashes briefly when the amp is turned on, and another indicating whether or not the
amp is muted.
My first listen was to Keiko Matsui's Deep Blue. I have listened to this CD many times, and know
it very well. It is soothing yet dynamic, restrained yet thrilling. Within the first few notes, I knew the
Plinius was something special. The midrange came alive, with a lush fullness I had never heard
from my Muse monoblocks or Bryston 4B-ST. And the highs, well, they were etched in space,
with definition I didn't think a redbook CD was capable of. Each piano note hung sharply in the air
until it gradually dissipated in anticipation of the next. And then there were the incredibly low-level
triangles and chimes I had never noticed, so subtle as to be almost inaudible, but now clearly
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plinius
heard.
After many hours, I am still in awe of the 8200. I listened to Norah Jones, Loreena McKennit,
Vanessa Mae, and Rachmaninov. The 8200 reproduced vocals, piano, violin, and brass with
equal fidelity and effortlessness. Does this come with a price? In my system, I began to detect a
looseness in the very lowest bass. I put on Madonna's Like a Virgin, and it seemed okay, brilliant
in fact. Then I played Loreena McKennitt's The Visitor, and on track five, "Greensleeves," and
especially track six,"Tango to Evora," I detected an irritating boominess at the bottom, which I
had not noticed before. The Bryston went back into the system, and using the 8200 as a preamp,
I played the same CD. The boominess was mostly gone, but so were the phenomenal midrange
and the highs I loved so much.
A few people suggested that I should give the new Plinius SA-102 power amp a try. I was able to
arrange a very generous trade-in allowance, and in just a week the beast arrived. The beautiful,
silver SA-102 is huge! Weighing in at ninety-some pounds, it measures over 9" tall, 19 1/2" wide,
and almost 16" deep. Of course, it wouldn't fit in my rack, so I was forced to sit it on the floor for
the time being. It really is a well-made piece. Huge but attractive cooling fins flank both sides,
with handles on front and back. There are two switches on the front, one for mute and one for
switching from to pure Class A. The rear sports a ground lift switch and a configuration selector.
The SA-102 can be set for XLR inputs in stereo or bridged and RCA stereo or bridged. Since I
was using the 8200 as a preamp, I set it for RCA stereo.
After connecting the 306/200 and leaving the SA-102 on for an hour, I switched it to Class A and
sat back. The SA-102 automatically reverts to AB after thirty minutes of standby to save energy.
The amp is hardly even warm when in AB. Well, the SA-102 definitely cured the boomy bass
problem! The bass was incredibly tight and well controlled. My speakers are self-built, two-way
towers utilizing Scan Speak 8545 6.5" Mid/Bass and 9500 Tweeters. I don't need much bass in
my small (10 X 11') room, but now I was hearing lower bass than ever before.
plinius
If the 102 was this good with the 8200, how would it sound with a good preamp? My dealer
suggested the Plinius CD-LAD or M16. I couldn't immediately arrange a trade on the 8200, so I
put it up for sale and kept looking. Luckily it sold quickly, and I was able to locate a demo CDLAD locally, and it arrived the very next day. The sleek silver CD-LAD perfectly matched the SA102. Although the owner's manual doesn't say, the "CD" designation apparently refers to this
preamp being optimized for CD use. It defaults to the CD input when turned on. The unit includes
XLR inputs (one for CD) and XLR outputs, as well as two sets of RCA inputs (Line 1 & Line 2)
and two sets of RCA outputs. The remote is a very sexy block of aluminum with full control of
everything, including balance.
I mated the CD-LAD to the SA-102 using Stealth CWS balanced interconnects. 306/200 was
connected with Empirical RCA interconnects. I had been warned that the CD-LAD was not
broken in, so I left it on for a day. Of course, I did play around a little to check the controls and
make sure it was functioning. The balance control can be bypassed, and that's the way I left it. By
the following day I was anxious to do some serious listening. This time I wanted something
different, so I pulled out Burmester's CD 03, which has a diverse and esoteric collection of wellrecorded music and is a real treat to sample. One of my favorites on this CD is track six, Hans
Theessink's "The Planet,” which features husky vocals with some weird and wonderful steel
guitar. I sat in total awe as it filled the room. The guitar was real, and it was here and now. You
could hear each vibration of the steel strings exciting the air, bursting forth in rich harmonics and
trailing off into silence as the next one began. It ended too soon, but the next track was even
better. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's "Allegro Molto" from Scheherazade is one dynamic piece of
orchestral music! I'm sure my neighbors must have stopped to listen. Every instrument was truly
portrayed as the room shook and then quieted, only to rise again with absolutely no distortion, no
shading, and no coloration.
The next track on the Burmester CD, "Bach Orgelwerke 1,” is a real burner, and the room really
shuddered. I could feel the pressure of the lower notes while the mids and highs soared cleanly
and elegantly through the air. By now, though, the SA-102 was making the room noticeably
warm. Even the CD-LAD was pretty hot—apparently this uses Class A circuitry as well. I guess
my air conditioning bill is going to be a bit bigger this year.
The SA-102 seems capable of anything I throw at it. There is not a hint of harshness, brightness,
graininess, or any other artifact of electronic reproduction. Its pairing with the CD-LAD is a match
made in heaven. The Plinius preamp doesn't seem to add anything, but sounds far superior to its
cousin, the 8200. I am fanatically happy with the Plinius gear. I look forward to many, many years
of sonic nirvana. Ed Morawski
Plinius
Audible Technologies Limited
plinius
TEL +64 6 354 8583
web address: http://www.pliniusaudio.com
e-mail address: info@pliniusaudio.com
US Distributor
Advanced Audio Technologies
TEL 716. 741. 6063
e-mail address: advancedaudio@mindspring.com
BACK TO TOP
platus
Doctor Platus’ Phenomenal Prototype Platform
by Dave Glackin
Saul Sokolsky of The Audio Enthusiast in Palos Verdes, California called to tell me that he had
just heard an audio device like no other he had ever heard, and that I had to hear it but he
couldn’t tell me what it was. My first thought was, “Oh no, not another audio device. How many
things does the audiophile world need, and what are we still without? How many more truly
significant improvements can be made, and how many ‘improvements’ have already been
relegated to the dustbin of history?” But Saul inveigled me to get myself forthwith to his homecum-dealership, noting that I wouldn’t be sorry. And he was right. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Dr. David Platus is President of Minus K Technology in Inglewood, California (www.minusk.com).
He manufactures leading-edge vibration isolation platforms that are intended to all but eliminate
building and ground vibration in situations involving very sensitive analytical techniques. Typical
applications include measurements made on the subatomic level. Atomic force microscopes
(AFMs) reportedly achieve their lowest noise level ever when isolated with the Minus K platforms.
The world’s leading AFM maker has reportedly built a Minus K platform into one of its
instruments. The Institute for Human Brain Research in Sweden is reportedly using Minus K
products in their highly sensitive low-voltage fluorescent die imaging, which measures neural
activity in the brains of animals. A company that wants to suspend and isolate a 10,000-lb.
granite slab has reportedly come to Minus K for help. More recently, Minus K was asked to
isolate a 70-ton item.
The application that most impresses me is that the Jet Propulsion Lab here in Pasadena is using
three of David’s platforms to isolate its 4300 lb. Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) test structure.
This spacecraft is intended to use optical interferometry to measure the distances between
objects in deep space with unprecedented precision. The technique uses spaced optical
elements, the relative position and orientation of which must be known with nanometer precision.
The Minus K device was the only isolator that met the specifications for the test structure. Also in
the space biz, David’s platforms are being used at Ball Aerospace & Technologies to isolate the
Cryogenic Telescope Assembly (CTA) in thermal vacuum tests. The CTA is the eyes of NASA’s
Space Infrared Telescope Facility, a mission I almost wound up working on in 1978 when it was
first being planned.
For many years now, people have been telling David that he should develop a platform for audio
applications. Your humble reporter is the first member of the audiophile press to have heard what
one of David’s platforms can do, and IMHO, the results of our two listening sessions warrant the
development of a platform specifically designed for audio applications, so read on.
Upon entering Saul’s home for the first listening session, I met Dr. David Platus, and was
somewhat startled to meet his doppelganger, his twin brother Daniel. David proved to be a very
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platus
engaging, serious, and obviously capable individual. He unveiled a modified version of his “Small
Biscuit” isolation platform, which is 16.2” X 16.2”, with a height of 8.5” and a weight of 60 lbs. The
natural frequency of this unit is adjustable down to 0.5Hz or less, which is quite impressive. When
adjusted to 0.5Hz, vibrations both vertical and horizontal at 5Hz are attenuated by a factor of
approximately 100. Ballast weights needed to be placed on the top because the turntable we
used in this audition was lighter than the minimum intended load. This is neither an active nor an
air flotation device. Its isolation is achieved purely by mechanical means, using a principle called
“negative stiffness” (hence the company name Minus K, see the web site for details). David and
his brother ministered to the unit for a bit, until it would “float” properly with the intended load. In
this initial audition, the Small Biscuit was used only under the turntable. For this session, the
vertical frequency was set at < 0.5Hz, and the horizontal frequency was 1Hz. The standard Small
Biscuit was modified to have stiffness in the yaw direction (rotation about the vertical axis), since
yaw movements are undesirable in a turntable. (Incidentally, this was a manually adjustable unit.
On the Minus K web site, you’ll also see servo-system-controlled units.)
The associated equipment used in this session consisted of an Immedia RPM 2 turntable with a
Clearaudio linear tracking arm, a Transfiguration Spirit cartridge, a Herron tube preamp, tube
monoblock amps by Bill Chater, and the Nestorovic Reference Epsilon loudspeakers, the ones
that make liberal use of concrete inside the cabinets. The turntable and electronics were on a
Merrill stand. For those of you who don’t know him, Bill Chater is widely recognized for
electronics designs that have appeared for years in the pages of Audio Amateur, and he is also a
violinmaker par excellence. The listening room at The Audio Enthusiast is large, comfortable, and
well suited to testing audio components, with a wide range of equipment to choose from. In the
interest of saving time, we listened to the unit floating, and then listened to it locked down, still in
place under the turntable. The right way to perform such an audition is, of course, with the unit
floating, and then with the unit removed entirely. The results of this session were so startling that
that is exactly what we did in the second session, some weeks later.
The second session was done with a larger and heavier BM-1 Biscuit, with a top plate dimension
of 24” X 22.5”, and a height of 8.5”. The vertical frequency was approximately 0.5 Hz, while the
horizontal frequency was slightly higher. This unit was also modified to have stiffness in yaw.
Associated equipment in the second session was an Amazon Model 1 turntable with a Morch DPhttp://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/platus.htm (2 of 4) [8/25/2002 2:50:20 PM]
platus
6 tonearm, a Koetsu Urushi cartridge, a Hovland preamp, Nestorovic Alpha-1 monoblock amps
(upgraded to NA-1s), and Nestorovic Type 5 loudspeakers. The turntable and electronics were on
the same Merrill stand. For these auditions, we used the “Take Five” cut, 33 rpm version, on the
Classic Records reissue of Dave Brubeck’s Time Out, the Sheffield direct-to-disc recording of
Harry James’ The King James Version, the Chesky Records reissue of Rimsky-Korsakov’s
Scheherazade, and the Alligator reissue of Sonny Boy Williamson’s Keep it to Ourselves (only
because I did not have the Acoustic Sounds reissue handy). While the differences heard with the
platform floating and locked down in the first session were startling, the differences heard in the
second session, with the platform in place and then removed, were even more startling.
With the Minus K platforms in place and floating, there was a purity, transparency, and sense of
harmonic rightness that was mesmerizing. Instruments sounded much more like real instruments
and voices sounded like they were in a real acoustic space with real air around them. The ability
to see into the soundstage was greatly increased. The improvements in the bass were perhaps
the most captivating of all. This is the biggest improvement in turntable isolation that I have ever
heard. Speaking of bass response, I am extremely familiar with the Classic Records reissue of
Time Out, having heard it on many systems. The acoustic bass on “Take Five” has always
sounded plummy to some degree, sometimes more, sometimes less, but never as fleshed out as
I thought it should be. That’s not to mention the drums, which have always sounded muddled.
With the Minus K platform in place, I felt like I was finally hearing the acoustic bass line and the
drums on this record as they were meant to be heard. For the first time in my experience, the
acoustic bass sounded like a bass, and the drums were fully fleshed out, with phenomenal detail.
This unmistakable improvement grabbed our collective attention like nothing else in these
sessions. Saul Sokolsky, who is also very familiar with this record, concurred that he had never
heard it sound nearly this good.
Time will tell, but my impression is that this product, when adapted to our marketplace, may
become the best vibration isolation product out there, bar none. It has tremendous potential for
use under turntables, tube electronics, CD transports, and many other kinds of equipment.
Remember, you heard it here first. The next step is to insert a platform into my reference system
for extended tests, with a larger top plate to accommodate my VPI TNT. When this unit is past
the prototype stage, a shootout with a Vibraplane might be entertaining (if not back-straining).
David has substantial work to do to convert the prototype to a consumer unit. First, 8.5” is too
high for audio applications. Second, it could benefit from more intuitive controls. Third, it needs to
be modified to handle the wide range of component weights that will be encountered. Finally,
there is cost. As you might imagine, these babies ain’t cheap, but the standard, manually
adjusted units are not horribly expensive by high end audio standards. Dr. Platus is making
significant progress, and has stated that a relatively low-cost Biscuit will be on the market by
around September 2002. If he succeeds in meeting that goal, I plan to be the one to bring you the
news first.
Contact:
Dr. David Platus, President
Minus K Technology
TEL: 310. 348. 9656
e-mail: minuskdp@aol.com
web address: www.minusk.com
platus
BACK TO TOP
maltzscd1
An Eye for Electricity and an Ear for Mods: Addressing Power and Parts in
Amps and Digital Front End
by Greg Maltz
I had never enjoyed my system more than I did just prior to sending it away to be modded. Why, then, did I yank the
cords and ship it out? One explanation is that I became obsessed with the idea that an aspect of the midrange could
improve, particular tones could flow more openly, dynamic nuances could achieve better pacing, and the soundstage
could stretch yet deeper. But I fear it had nothing to do with these specifics. Simply, I succumbed to a nagging voice
that told me I'd better address every single part in the signal path and in the electric current as comprehensively as
possible. So into the original boxes went my Avatar and my SCD-1, all 120 lbs. of them, and I shipped them off, having
checked earlier that those doing the mods would be able to handle it in a reasonable time frame. The modders were,
for the SCD-1, Richard Kern of Audiomod (www.audiomod.com), and for the amp, the manufacturers themselves,
Kevin Hayes and Kevin Carter of VAC (www.vac-amps.com).
SCD-1 Parts Upgrades
With an audio board and chassis highly praised by the press and engineers alike, the SCD-1 uses unexceptional Sony
stock parts. Richard Kern began experimenting with Caddock and Vishay resistors and high quality capacitors,
including REL, MIT, and Black Gate. He also tried using Hexfred diodes in the power supply. For me, Richard
recommended his Caddock-based modification without the high-speed diodes. The parts used for this mod are listed
below.
Resistors Caddock MK-132:
2x 30 ohm
2x 100 ohm
4x 221 ohm
4x 475 ohm
2x 1.74k ohm
2x 2.00k ohm
2x 2.21k ohm
8x 10.0k ohm
2x 33.2k ohm
Resistors Vishay VSH Bulk Foil:
2x 390 ohm
2x 560 ohm
Black Gate Capacitors:
2x 1000 uf 50 volt standard type
REL Capacitors:
2x 0.0015 uf 600 volt
8x 0.0022 uf 600 volt
2x 560 pf 600 volt
MIT Capacitors RTX type:
2x 0.1 400 uf volt
Richard and I phoned and e-mailed each other often. The beauty of modding the SCD-1 (or 777ES), he said, is that the
parts replaced are used in both CD and SACD circuits. Improve one and you improve the other. This was something
Steve Huntley (another modder) of Great Northern Sound quickly discovered and shared with Richard. Both CD and
SACD use the same analog low pass filters. Relays are used to switch resistors in or out of the low pass filter, for
CD/SACD mode and standard and custom settings. An interesting side note: all the parts in this path are affected by
the "custom" switch on the back of the unit. The standard factory setting shunts more treble to ground, effectively rolling
it off -3dB at 50kHz, while the custom mode puts a resistor in series with a 560 pico farad capacitor to ground, allowing
the response to be flat to 50kHz. (Note: the custom switch only works in SACD mode.)
Richard walked me through much of the work he did and its audible effect on the unit. For example, using Black Gates
on the audio board in place of the Sony stock 1000 uf capacitor helped liven the sound and improve the pace and
dynamics, particularly of the bass. The Black Gate is a Japanese capacitor with graphite coating, which lowers the ESR
and improves dielectric absorption. Compared to the stock parts, the six REL polystyrene capacitors per channel
provide better separation, depth and width. Caddock resistors, when used in Richard's SCD-1/777ES mods, provide a
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maltzscd1
smooth, liquid, laid-back quality, while Vishays lend themselves to sparkling treble and rip-roaring pacing.
Richard quickly swapped out the Sony stock parts and soldered in the higher-quality parts. He tested the unit for about
two days, allowing the mods to burn in before shipping it back to me. He was so quick that it would be at least a week
before the amp (which I had to ship to the other side of the country) had completed its own four-day burn-in process
and was on its way back to me. So into my friend's system went the modded SCD-1, upstream of gear which itself was
highly modded and tweaked:
●
ARC SP-10 Mk II v6 (heavily Percy/Nunes modified & all Amperex 7308 NOS)
●
Magnepan MG-20R, 1999 Magnepan crossover (to bass only)
●
(2) Genesis 12M subwoofers (run directly from pre-amp) crossed over at 35 Hz
●
Custom Morris Zwerman passive crossover separating: HK Citation II (heavily modified by Charlie Kittleson of
VTV) on the T/M section; and NYAL Moscode 300 (heavily modified) on the bass section
●
John Garland Signature 7 interconnects, speaker cables, AC power cords
●
PS Audio Multiwave P300
Before I had any chance to listen to the modded SCD-1 in this system, my friend was reporting to me how smooth,
detailed, and laid back the unit sounded. In stock form, the SCD-1 is quite forward. But no early report could have
prepared me for what I heard when I had a chance to audition the modded unit in person. Ladies and gentlemen, this
was not the same machine anymore. The music was fluid and velvety on CDs that once sounded strident. SACD had
all the air and detail that I appreciated before sending away the unit, but now the sound was further back and very
smooth.
We listened to a variety of SACDs, from Willie Nelson to Isaac Stern to Louis Armstrong. In each case, the musical
smoothness of the SCD-1 was a thing of beauty. But was it too polite? For the grand finale, we listened to "All Blues,"
from Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue. While highly detailed and velvety smooth, the tenor sax solo by John Coltrane simply
lacked balls. My friend said it best: "Not an offensive sound can come out of that thing." Well when it comes to Coltrane
solos, some sounds are supposed to be at least somewhat strident, and I was starting to regret having the unit modded
with Caddocks. The Vishays may have been a much better choice, I told myself. I had yet to hear the unit in my own
system, so I tried to hold off on making a judgement.
As the sound of Coltrane’s sax played in my memory and I toyed with the idea of boxing up the SCD-1 and sending it
back to Richard for further modification, I got a call from my friend. While playing an SACD, the left channel output of
the SCD-1 went dead. After troubleshooting, this was the only conceivable explanation. As it turned out, this may have
been a blessing in disguise. The unit was double-boxed and shipped back to Richard. He immediately identified the
problem with the left channel—a shorted REL cap that he promptly replaced in both channels in case they were both
from a faulty batch. He also added InfiniCaps in place of a stock feedback capacitor he had previously left unmodified.
He swapped Vishays for all the Caddocks and soldered high-speed Hexfred diodes across the power supply. This was
the mod I suspected would be perfect for me, as I had been wary of the Caddocks’ laid back sound signature from the
start. I wanted to hear the Caddocks in my system, but the nature of the updated mods, judging from Richard's
descriptions, more closely approximates my audio preferences and I would just have to sit tight, wait for my gear to
arrive, and let my ears judge for themselves.
Meanwhile, Back at VAC
I say that my Avatar integrated amp was modded too, but perhaps this is not accurate. It was "re-voiced." The
modifications had been predetermined using a painstaking process that parallels all product development at the
company, according to Kevin Hayes, President of VAC. "Once the basic electrical design is completed, in some cases
more than 1,000 hours are spent in the process we call ‘voicing,’" Hayes explains. "During this time, small changes in
maltzscd1
the physical arrangement of the parts are tested,
different types of capacitors and wires are auditioned,
and even various chassis materials tried. The
differences often elude the linear test bench
instrumentation but are plainly audible to the human
ear. This often frustrating work and attention to detail
is required to bring a design to its peak of
performance."
So it is no surprise that VAC’s Avatar is itself an
exercise in attention to electrical detail. VAC’s Kevin
Carter explains that the Avatar is unique in that it was
the first time such an amplifier had received special
attention to the way all circuits were grounded. "In the
Avatar," Carter said, "24 ground wires converge on a
single binding post in the rear of the unit. Why?
Because we found you lose musical information if you don't carry each wire back from the circuit board individually."
This is at the heart of the detailed, crystal-clear sound of the Avatar. Circuits not grounded individually can muddy the
sonics, Carter explained. Little did I know, during the two years I owned the Avatar, that the reasons I had selected it
over the competition had everything to do with this attention to electrical detail.
VAC has been offering its special edition Avatar upgrade for nearly a year, and I was strongly tempted, but could never
bring myself to send it away for the mods. But with the SCD-1 gone, it was now or never. The Avatar upgrade often
involves the addition of remote control, but I opted for the basic upgrade, not wholly dissimilar from Richard’s mods to
the SCD-1. Kevin Carter explained that there are several component families that change to yield overall
improvements, specifically a more open sound with bass improvement: "There are several component families that
change to make the improvements," Carter said. "All of the audio path resistors are upgraded to Dale RN65D resistors,
the audio path capacitors are replaced with InfiniCap SETIs, and the main high voltage caps with Matsushita TSU caps.
We also add some additional high voltage bypassing to the line stage and amplifier front end." He emphasized that
"The point of the changes is to make improvements in the overall sound of the Avatar, not to replace the components
with ‘tony’ brands. We use the parts that work together to make the best sound, rather than using the ‘best’ audiophile
parts. This is a very important point. Some manufacturers openly boast about parts quality, but that isn't the solution to
the problem of good sound; most of us use excellent quality parts. The solution is the correct combination of parts to
give excellent sound. It's hard work and sometimes frustrating, but experience, perseverance, and a good vision of the
outcome make it happen."
Carter explained in a phone conversion with Positive Feedback that prior experience using various parts helps, but so
does intuition and judgment in engineering. Improving any one part, or group of parts, could be a step backward without
addressing the parts’ relationship to the design, because the overall gelling of the parts may not be appropriate. "We
don’t know enough to predict all the specifics of how different parts interact ahead of time. We have to go through the
empirical process of swapping in various combinations, listening and going through the steps of voicing." After
determining which combination is significant enough to offer an improvement, VAC will offer special edition
versions/upgrades of their existing products. Subsequent determinations and implementation warrant the development
of new products altogether.
A Pair of Fatmans
To reap the full benefits of the improvements within the Avatar and SCD-1, I knew it would be necessary to address the
electric current flowing to each of them. I live in a building where the condo association has strict rules about altering
the wiring of the individual apartments, but this did not stop me from addressing power once it left my wall. I had
already schooled myself on the audible effects of the PS Audio Power Plants, having used a P300 initially and then
upgrading to a P600 (after realizing my gear was placing too much of a burden on the lower-powered unit). But the real
epiphany about power came when I had a chance to compare several different cords, including the PS Audio Lab
Cable, the Mapleshade Double Helix, John Garland’s latest cord, and the Custom Power Cord Company’s Model 11.
Incredible differences resulted from swapping these cords in, ranging from slight alterations in imaging and pacing to
gross changes in system volume and tone!
Of these cords, the Garland won, providing a liquid quality to the music and improved pacing over the runner up, the
Lab Cable cord. This was distressing to me, as I owned the Lab Cable and found the quality of the Garland a significant
improvement. Meanwhile, other cords were rumored to be ideal with the SCD-1. I wanted a cord that would not hinder
my amp or front end in any way. After a great deal of hand wringing and research, I decided on the Electraglide
maltzscd1
Fatman, said to go the extra mile in revealing the true sound of components. The cords feature extraordinary attention
to detail and hand-assembly by Electraglide owner Scott Hall, who uses "huge silver ribbons" in the design.
As fate would have it, these cords were the first to arrive, as Hall charitably delayed a personal vacation to finish them.
The Avatar and SCD-1 were en route via FedEx second day, and all I could do was look at these two Fatmans and
wonder if all this attention to electricity would pay off. I desperately wanted to hear nine new SACD acquisitions, which
had arrived while my gear was away. But I knew the only chance to hear the new titles would be during burn-in. And
before I could even address that, I would need shipment to go off without a hitch, and would also need to set up my
system. This presented unique challenges, including floating the 60-lb SCD-1 on MIB Aurios and finding a way to keep
the unit floating with the immense Fatman attached. After burn in, it would take many more hours of listening to very
familiar material to get a handle on the specific changes to the system.
The next day, the rest of my gear arrived in perfect condition. The Avatar gleamed like new. The parts swapped out
from the SCD-1 were neatly returned in a plastic baggie, including the defective REL cap. I painstakingly returned the
units to their shelves atop the Aurios and hooked up the Fatmans and interconnects. I switched them on and let them
warm up for half an hour before dropping Dai Kimura’s Shunme SACD into the spindle, fixing the brass weight down on
top of it, pushing the play button and easing back into my black leather listening chair.
I heard the familiar series of mechanical murmurings and the welcome click after the TOC had been read. My ears
perked up. Would I forever wish I had left well enough alone? Would all this attention to parts and power yield no
audible difference? A slight improvement? Or would the sound catapult me into bliss? Tune in for a detailed report in
the next exciting issue of Positive Feedback Online.
BACK TO TOP
auroville
Auroville
by Srajan Ebaen
REALITY? PERHAPS
The vicious whooshing of the helicopter blades made my skin crawl. The irregular detonations of
cruise missiles and the violent impact of cluster bombs wreaked havoc with my gut. The smoking
skeletons of derelict buildings, the festering carnage in the streets, the mangled body parts and
the heart-wrenching cries of the survivors, the choking stench of death and mayhem—I came to
in a sweat, feeling momentarily disoriented.
A BAD DREAM?
Of sorts. I had drifted off during one of those hyper-realistic modern action flicks. The reality was
even worse than the dream. Why was I putting myself through this crap? Real veterans would
give an arm not to remember any details whatsoever. They sure as hell wouldn’t volunteer to
enjoy surgical closeups of soldiers turning cannon fodder in bone-chilling, gory glory on high
resolution flatscreens while virtual reality soundtracks assaulted their scarred nervous systems
from all conceivable angles.
Just kidding—I needed a gripping intro to catch your attention. Relax, I don’t do home theater,
just good old-fashioned two-channel music. To be sure, I’m not dissing the movies, I simply prefer
to see select ones at the theatre. Frankly, the whole home theater craze eludes me. If that means
I’m not with it, so be it. I presume you can sympathize. Why else would you have logged onto this
website devoted to music-making equipment, right?
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auroville
REALITY? IT’S MINE FOR SURE
Welcome to Auroville, the new asylum for the hopelessly addicted, not-with-it carryovers from a
time when entertainment was meant to nurture and elevate the spirit, not blow it to smithereens. I
am somewhat of a veteran, not of the trenches of war but of audio retailing and manufacturing. I
served a four-year tour of high end audio retail duty in the Bay Area, followed by years of working
as sales manager for Mesa Engineering, Meadowlark Audio, and Soliloquy. I also started to write,
first for SoundStage! and GoodSound!, then EnjoyTheMusic.com. Coincident with the launch of
this website, I started my own webzine 6moons.com (www.6moons.com) in June 2002. I will
continue to submit this semi-monthly Auroville column for my friends and fellow music lovers at
Positive Feedback Online. I’m also once again working with Soliloquy, no longer in sales but as
their website maintenance manager and in-house creative and technical writer, producing sales
materials and helping with ad campaigns and review loans.
These activities give me first-hand exposure to a lot of audio gear. Much of it is considerably
more expensive than I can afford. Before I somehow ended up in the industry, I stood on the
outside, just like you, pressing my nose against real and imaginary audio shop windows. I fogged
those windows, blurring my vision with my own ignorance. And I was always wondering about
whether spending more money would make better sound, and if so, how much better?
A year ago, I wondered the same thing sauntering past a closed door on the second floor of the
New York Hilton during the 2001 Home Entertainment show. A few guys were guarding this
entrance like it was the Queen’s private bedchamber. I recognized Luke Manley of VTL. We
shook hands and exchanged a few pleasantries. (That’s what your usual industry envounters
amount to, brief moments during show events, traditionally terribly hectic for any exhibitor.) I
asked what was behind the door. By way of answering, he let me slip in. Joe Reynolds of
NordOst was holding court in front of a captured audience, about thirty heads strong. He
explained how, as an industry first, requiring considerable logistics, Nordost, Clearaudio, VTL,
Burmester, Conrad Johnson, Wisdom Audio, and Edge Audio were collaborating to recreate
Harry Pearson’s dream system, the one he describes in poetic detail in The Absolute Sound as
one of the very best audio systems on the planet. In fact, the former editor of TAS had personally
signed off on this installation just one day before, proclaiming that the system we were about to
hear was a fair match to his own setup at Sea Cliff. This endorsement by the Grand Poobah of
High End Audio, pickled in $250,000 worth of fever-pitched expectations, tugged on me despite
years of being jaded by hyperbole. Hope, springing eternal, reared on its hindquarters and
pricked up its ears, waiting for the stylus to drop or the laser to lock. Alas, the very name
Nearfield Acoustics should have clued the presenters to the likelihood that three rows of listeners
ten heads wide were counterproductive to their ambitions. Plenty of traditional and virtual ink has
already been spilled about this. Hope eternal suffered hip dysplasia. It didn’t rear, but kinda
collapsed and sat on its butt. For me, this was a doubly spoiled experience because of the
obvious effort involved. And while I was disappointed by the sound, I couldn’t help but wonder
whether I’d feel any different had I left slack-jawed. Can any audio equipment be worth such
excessive cost?
Following CEDIA 2001, many months later, emails and phone calls raised this issue again. An
equally over-the-top multi-channel setup involving arrays of Nearfield Acoustic Pipe Dreams and
Halcro amplifiers had left showgoing friends of mine not just cold but in actual revolt. They called
the results mediocre at best. I received enough such reports that I doubt much to the contrary
actually occurred, save for those attendees whose hearing was affected by industrial design and
the whole concept of trophy hi fi. My personal experience, from eight years of attending CES and
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sundry other shows, as well as some of the finest retail show rooms in the country, create a
similarly dark picture: the more it costs, the worse it usually ends up sounding.
MORE REALITY, THE BITING PART
I don’t believe that this is an innate truism as much as that the requirements to make such
ubersystems strut their stuff tend to either be neglected due to ignorance, or are simply not
fulfillable despite the best intentions and expertise. There are many reasons for this. Take truly
full range speakers. To design them properly requires immense and very stout cabinets. They are
a bear to build and expensive to ship, never mind purchase. Once delivered, their size and weight
creates challenges, drastically minimizes options on where to put them, and often affects
soundstaging. Never mind that speakers with 20Hz bass are exceedingly fussy about setup
precision and hardly ever integrate properly without cut’n’boost EQ. If you’ve got the scratch but
not the room, or the room but an interior designer with opposing notions, don’t even go there. In
fact, some of my favorite systems involve superior two-way monitors and subwoofers. The
inherent freedom of placement choices, the ability to control monitor and bass gain
independently, and to account for room gain and stiffness with the subwoofers, not to mention
effectively bi-amping the system using the sub’s internal amp and thereby relieving the main amp
of high current bass duties, spell better overall performance, and for far less money.
MORE REALITY, THE LIBERATING PART
As any speaker designer will tell you, it’s much easier to design a good two-way than a three-ormore-way. Crossover complexity is the bane of our precious audio signals. It also makes life
harder on amplifiers. Paralleling output devices makes them more powerful, but amplifies not only
the signal but noise and distortion. One of the cures, negative feedback, isn’t unlike
chemotherapy in that it introduces its own potentially fatal liabilities. And on it goes. Keep it
simple instead. For a given budget, you’ll obtain fewer but better components. You’ll definitely get
performance that integrates appropriately into your space rather than becoming the insatiable
monster that consumes more and more of your worries and resources in a fruitless attempt to
patch up deficiencies.
Consider power distribution. It’s the audiophile equivalent of rubber on the road, the existential
point of contact. I’ve reviewed and listened to quite a few power conditioners. I now consider
them vital components in their own right, in certain respects senior to the others as they influence
all of them simultaneously.
Keep cables away from carpet containing nylon. Treat all electrical contacts with contact
enhancer. Make sure that the channel-to-channel path length of your speakers is precisely
identical. Ditto for their distance from the side and front walls. Those two measurements should
be different from each other, but the same for each speaker. Don’t overlook resonance control
and room tuning devices. Lead-filled Ziploc bags can be awfully effective if not the last word in
decor appeal, while efforts from Walker Audio, Vistek, Combak, Symposium, and Golden Sound
cover all the fronts. In short, dialing in whatever you have will often go much farther than
replacing a component for the flavor of the month. That, more often than not, is a short-lived
fantasy perpetrated by crafty marketing guys like yours truly, fueled by slick ads and a review
machinery that is lubed by nothing more than novelty.
YET MORE REALITY, IF YOU’VE SEEN IT FIRST HAND
auroville
In Blade Runner, Rutger Hauer’s philosopher-cum-warrior android uses the final moments before
his chip expires to share his dreams with the outwitted Harrison Ford bounty hunter. He speaks of
battle ships on fire, and of the foreboding outer colonies, telling the cop about sights off limits to
human eyes. In a similar sense, I’ve seen and heard very pricey components and compared them
to far less costly ones in ways that, for purely practical reasons, are off limits to most prospective
buyers. The lure of the unknown, of the potentially better or more exotic, is progressively
undermined. After many years of chasing, you finally come to realize that the differences grow
more minute by the day. Battleships on fire alright. Instead, the real magic lies in how well a
system is assembled and how carefully it is tuned, not how expensive it is. Beyond a certain
point, money really has precious little to do with it. Incidentally, that point isn’t in the six or highfive figures, but much closer to what I presume is home for most of us, components for a couple
of thousand dollars each, or less.
Take it from this veteran, technology has advanced so much that the differences between the
mega-priced eye candy and the affordable stuff are first and foremost the former’s overkill build
quality. So many circuit topologies have been tried and perfected that what really distinguishes
components is often merely skin deep. Very few companies build CD transports or DACs, which
means that no matter what digital gear you buy, it’ll contain more or less the same parts, making
implementation more important than actual hardware.
As always, speakers remain the last frontier—literally, as they transform an electrical signal into
mechanical motion. They interface with a three-dimensional physical environment, and are thus
prone to non-linearities that the other components in the chain don’t suffer from. Speakers are
still rather primitive, Model-T-Ford devices. The trick remains finding a designer whose
compromises appeal to your personal priorities, not in believing that throwing excessive funds at
the problem will make it go away.
ERGO
While the subject of high end audio pricing is worthy of far more than one short column, it seems
fair even in this context to pronounce as insanity components that, in certain parts of the world,
could feed and clothe an entire village for a year, or in our society exceed the cost of a truly
decent car. You may still be curious about such exotically-priced components. I was. Having
walked down that dim alley many a late night, I can tell you that if you had the same opportunity,
you’d likely end up believing as I do: Most of it is merely trophy hi fi for those unfortunate enough
to not know how to spend their money wisely.
BACK TO TOP
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Delivering on DSD: An Inquisition into Inaccuracy
by Kelly Tang
(Harbeth images supplied by Winter Tree Audio www.wintertreaudio.ca)
I recently celebrated my first anniversary of an exclusively-SACD lifestyle. For sure, the novelty of
my initial exposure to SACD has subsided since it first rocked the foundations of my listening
room (and blew off the ceiling). This by no means implies that I have grown blase about the
paradigm upshift afforded by SACD over CD. On the contrary, I now take SACD for granted as
the new performance baseline from which to further improve system fidelity. For sure, there is no
chance of any post-DSD regression to PCM 16/44.
Having tweaked my Marantz SA-1 thoroughly over the last twelve months, my attention has
turned to assessing the amplification and speakers. The DSD experience raises musical
reproduction to such lifelike peaks that, for me, SACD playback no longer bears comparison to
other hi-fi experiences, but tempts the listener to judge it alongside the actual musical event. In
this league, amplifiers and speakers must either prove capable of preserving intact the fine
analog of reality which is the DSD signal as it moves downstream, or falter as tenuous vessels,
unfit to bear the full glory of SACD.
The debate surrounding audio realism is a contentious one, which has certain parties brandishing
test bench equipment, while others flap their golden ears. With components sporting such
dissimilar sonic characteristics, each sounding equally "musical," which is most accurate? Here, I
should qualify my personal perspective of musical accuracy, which is primarily from the podiums
of the orchestras I conduct. From this vantage point, the unique tonal personality of each
instrument stands out defiantly against that of the others. Each instrument also dominates its own
spatial territory. Additionally, the unique artistic intentions of individual musicians can be sensed
distinctly, in constant counterpoint with those of other musicians. I judge any hi-fi system the
more accurate which allows me to experience a greater, "living" sense of these tonal
differentiations and stylistic tensions.
SACD-Ready Speakers?
Large speakers have always sounded unacceptably muddy and sluggish to me, inspiring a
fervent fetish for bookshelf speakers and their clear articulation and agility. From Rogers
LS3/5as, Celestion SL600s, and Pro Ac Tablettes to Silverline SR-17s, my lineage of speakers
forms a parade of midgets. Although deep bass and thunderous SPLs are nice to have, I adhere
to the philosophy that a three-quarter cut of prime filet mignon is far better than a whole meatloaf.
Two years ago, I fell for the charms of the Sonus Faber Signums. Not only did these little Italians
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gush with mini-monitor attributes such as immediacy and vivid imaging, they also offered bass
extension and dynamic power transcending their size. Most of all, I was smitten by the walnut
panels’ ability to "sing" along with the music. Familiarity, however, exposed this attractive
resonating quality as an unnatural hue overlaying the tonal shades of the music. Furthermore, the
Signums’ superlative imaging is attained via a simple crossover which proved incapable of
smoothing the tweeter/midrange transition, creating a
ringing mid-treble glare. Finally, the Signums’ big sound
is wrought by excessively porting the tiny cabinet, at the
cost of a mild, boomy wildness around 40Hz.
The Signums typify many brilliant and passionate
audiophile designs, which achieve outstanding
performance in one sonic parameter by mangling others.
This made me wary of adopting speakers that would
simply swap one set of compromises for another. At this
point, my audio buddy and neighbor Jules, a Sony
executive involved in promoting SACD, suggested that
the studio monitor genre might offer the accuracy that
SACD required. I checked out the PMC and ATC lines,
but my interest was particularly drawn to the established
UK manufacturer Harbeth, one of the last enduring
expressions of the venerable BBC discipline of monitor design. Harbeth’s approach fuses modern
technology, materials, and performance standards with a venerable tradition of designing studio
monitors that convey the Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth.
Harbeth’s lilliputian HL-P3es, a redesign of the classic BBC LS3/5a for the new millenium,
seemed just right for a mini-monitor fan. Harbeth’s dealer in Singapore, the perennially gracious
Jimmy Goh of CD Acoustic, kindly offered a pair of HL-P3es for home audition. Out of mischief, I
also trundled along a larger model, the Harbeth HL Compact 7es Mk IIs, to convince myself again
why small bookshelve speakers always sound superior. As anticipated, the P3es beautifully
capture the winsome, lifelike qualities of the discontinued LS3/5as, while offering a more neutral
balance, a larger soundstage, and better bass extension. Turning from David to Goliath, I noted
that one very uncompact Compact 7es Mk II could easily swallow five P3es. Although solidly built
and beautifully finished in natural wood veneer, their appearance is unfashionably plain. With no
sloped baffle for time coherence, no resonance-smoothing hexahedron shape, and an alarmingly
broad frontal profile, the Compact Sevens more closely resemble the boxes they were shipped in.
Using the rap test (involving knuckles, not Fatboy Slim), their panels felt lightweight compared to
the ship’s-hull solidity characterizing expensive high end cabinets. Most of all, the un-ecological
bulk of the speakers gave me the shudders. Just by their looks, I simply knew the Compact
Sevens would sound blurry, boxy and boomy.
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Listening proved to be a totally different
matter, for the Compact Sevens sound
nothing like they look! As expected of larger
speakers, musical climaxes explode with
unfettered conviction, but the surprise is
how this power is manifested within images
just as pure and uncolored as those
produced by bookshelf speakers of high
caliber. Listening to the Birdland SACD by
M. Sasaji and the L.A. All Stars (an
outstanding direct-to-DSD big-band
recording), the flavor of each instrument
"tasted" startlingly distinct and separate from
the others, like the ingredients in a fresh
multi-layered sandwich. Alan Shaw,
Harbeth’s CEO-cum-designer, attributes this
to his radical SuperTunedStructure™
cabinet design, which dissipates panel
resonances through "lossy transmission."
The superiority of this innovation is strikingly
apparent compared to conventional heavy
enclosures, which store energy, thus
bleeding musical timbres into each other in
a sonic osmosis, like what happens with the
contents of a squashed day-old sandwich.
The SuperTunedStructure™ allows music to
breathe as naturally and freely as in a planar
speaker, but without the attendant mylar
"clanging." As with the silent aluminum honeycomb panels of my vintage Celestion SL600s, the
Compact Sevens’ soundstage seems to float as a living, autonomous entity, while the boxes
aurally vanish.
Lossy transmission is hardly the only trick in Alan Shaw’s bag. Just as exciting is Harbeth’s
patented Radial™ driver, utilizing a lightweight and rigid compound formulated through cuttingedge government-funded research. Alan is not joking when he describes how his Radial™ cone
overcomes the blurring sonic effect caused by the flexing of conventional polypropylene cones.
Grooving to the Tower of Power Live SACD through the Compact 7es, the depth into which
subtle layers of performance detail can be perceived is in a distinct class above equivalentlypriced speakers using conventional cone material. I heard gradations in the touch and plucking of
the bass guitar and could identify the type of strings used. I sensed expressive fluctuations in the
athletic tonguing of the winds. I also perceived the diverse angles from which the snare was
struck and poetic trends in kick drum intensity.
Radial™ technology’s most impressive quality is its uncannily realistic portrayal of the human
voice. In her new Delos SACD of opera arias, it was unnervingly palpable how mezzo-soprano
Marina Domashenko’s vocal presence was presented in its natural forcefulness and fluidity. In
comparison, more traditional cone material gives the impression of listening to music through a
sluggish, honky membrane. The integration of the Radial™ mid/bass driver with the equally
revealing SEAS tweeter is the very epitome of coherence and seamlessness. This is achieved
through a sophisticated crossover individually tuned for each unit, another Harbeth hallmark.
Despite these newfangled features, the Compact Seven’s pedigree is strongly rooted in the
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venerated BBC studio monitor ideal of "sounding right." From my work in recording studios, it has
often struck me how vibrant, lifelike, and elementally "correct" good studio monitors sound,
compared to hi-fi speakers. Drawing on Harbeth’s wealth of expertise in this rigorous discipline,
the Compact 7es Mk IIs successful transplant studio monitor standards of spectral accuracy and
phase coherence to domestic listening situations. Nowadays, upstart speaker design gurus
disdain rigorous technical measurement in favor of more euphonic criteria determined by
subjective listening. In contrast, this Harbeth demonstrates that impeccable specifications,
meticulously engineered, empower a speaker to act as a flat sonic mirror, reflecting the musical
image in its exact proportions, and allowing instrument timbres to sound convincingly true to
themselves. It makes your garden variety, voiced-by-golden-ear speaker sound like a warped
funhouse mirror that parodies and disfigures the shape of the music.
The Compact Sevens continue the British tradition of secret weaponry, exemplified by the Q
ships of WWII (harmless looking freighters concealing formidable firepower to surprise enemy U
boats), or those innocuous-looking briefcases and umbrellas that fire deadly missiles, devised in
Q’s workshop for James Bond. Beneath their nondescript exterior, Harbeth’s insidious warships
pack potent, progressive audio technology to blast infidel competitors out of the water. Finally, a
Goliath to slay cocky little Davids! In the USA, their $2469 price pits them against some
flamboyant competition. While the Compact Sevens’ account of themselves may seem selfeffacing in such glamorous company, it modestly steps aside to let through a truthful and
complete account of the music.
Ray Ban Amplifiers, Anyone?
Listening to the Compact Sevens for one month confirmed that they are indeed ideal speakers for
SACD. They succeed admirably in bringing to fruition the realism latent in the SACD format. But
was my amplification equally "SACD-ready?" (My "preamplification" could hardly interfere with the
signal less, since I don’t use any. A single-input Audio Synthesis Passion balanced attenuator,
fully decked with Vishay resistors, provides passive volume control.) A Plinius SA-100 Mk. III has
endured as my power amplifier for the last three years. It replaced an 11-watt Cary 300SEI, which
sounded like heaven during quiet, intimate passages, and hell during massive musical climaxes.
My Plinius has withstood numerous speaker, source, and cable upgrades, simply because I had
found no worthy successor to surpass its sensible balance of transparency, musicality, authority,
and price. It took Stu McCreary’s comments about the Bel Canto EVO 200.2 (in a previous issue
of this periodical) to really throw me off balance. Who would believe that a digital amplifier
sporting Class T technology could provide the flowing nuance of single-ended triodes allied with
solid-state dynamics, while inaugurating a new class of transparency and neutrality? To add
outrage to absurdity, imagine this dream also runs as cool and efficient as a CD player and costs
only $2395!
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When sizing up an amplifier, the first thing we do is to scan for its unique signature. Is it warm
sounding? Does it add sparkling highs, a glowing presence, or perhaps a large soundstage? You
will be stumped if you scan the EVO 200.2 in this fashion, because you won’t have a single blip
on your radar. You might even feel it sounds bland, the way it eludes any attempt to characterize
its influence. While I initially missed the assuring warmth of the Plinius, I soon realized that the
SA-100 was actually "plumping" the music, as muscular solid-state amps tend to do. With the
Plinius, everything, even delicate string quartet passages, sounded full and heavy.
It is important to understand why the EVO’s Class-T technology confronts audiophiles with a
foreign paradigm in evaluating amplifiers. We have come to accept that all amplifiers cast their
individual tints on the music. Choosing an amplifier usually involves finding a pleasant coloration
that blends well with the music, a flavor one can live with. In fact, such additive effects as "a
creamy midrange" or "a beguilingly limpid presentation" are often touted as the selling points of a
particular product. One might even be led to suspect that some audiophiles are more enamored
of the sound of their amplifiers than of the music! All sonic tints, however, no matter how
pleasing, degrade realism by blurring the distinctions between diverse tonal colors in music,
making all instruments and voices sound more homogenous, more like The Amplifier Itself.
Circuits also influence the rhythmic dimension of music by transforming the transient behavior of
the signal. The musical pace can be perked up in some cases and subdued in others. These
influences will mask variations in performance styles, making it seem that one dictatorial
performer, The Amplifier, is interpreting the music in one fashion.
The EVO 200.2 is refreshingly free of spectral or transient discoloration, more so than even the
mighty Plinius or any MOSFET or bipolar amplifier I have heard. This suggests that Class-T
topology is an ideal mode of amplification for SACD. More expensive amplifiers may impress with
a stronger character, but the Bel Canto simply vanishes, affording finely-resolved perspectives
into the subtleties of performance: the shape and size of instruments, the materials they are
made of, and the space each claims for itself. Stu is spot-on regarding the SET/Class-T
connection. The EVO restored that seamless expressive fluidity, that wholesome coherence, and
that eerie sense of peering into the performance that I used to enjoy with the Cary 300 SEI.
Gladly, it did not soften dynamics or illuminate timbres like the Western Electric 300Bs used to
do, lovely as that was. An aura of surrealism surrounds the Bel Canto EVO 200.2. You enjoy the
hearty tangibility of solid-state Class-A designs, but don’t suffer the sweltering heat, the
extravagant power consumption, and the transistor wear. You experience the direct aural
presence of SE triodes, but encounter neither the glow of tubes nor the need for their
replacement. With this miraculous paradox in view, the paltry price of the EVO 200.2 seems
simply unreal. But, like enjoying direct intimacy without any intermediary protection, the Class-T
experience itself is real, raw, and utterly ravishing when the music is so.
The strengths of the EVO 200.2 augment those of SACD and the Harbeth Compact Sevens with
devastating synergy. Fed with an SACD source, the Bel Canto and Harbeths conspire to
intimately reveal the unique expressive individualism of each performer in a recording. Playing
the Miles Smiles SACD through the SA-100/Signum system, this legendary quintet merely
sounded coordinated. The EVO 200.2/Compact Seven combo penetrates far deeper into the
essence of this great performance, showing bassist, pianist, drummer, saxophonist, and
trumpeter reveling independently in his own style, asserting his musical will, artfully taunting and
tugging at the other musicians in an intriguing interplay of musical antagonism.
At moderate playback levels, fine systems today have no problems in conveying satisfying tonal
and spatial separation of instruments within the soundstage. However, during demanding,
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powerful orchestral climaxes, deeply-layered soundstages all too often become bulldozed forward
into a hard, two-dimensional shield of sound lining the front of the speaker plane. Strings, brass,
woodwinds, and percussion coalesce into a single, infernally guttural and undifferentiated sonic
wall. I have heard this happen even with reputable large speakers driven by mega-watt
amplifiers. It is this common shortcoming that the Harbeth/Bel Canto combo triumphantly
addresses. Listening to the Telarc SACD of Mahler’s 5th Symphony, performed magnificently by
Benjamin Zander and the Philharmonia Orchestra, I felt profoundly refreshed by the way each
instrument breathed in its own space and maintained its natural tonal character, even during the
most searing and ear-splitting passages. Not only did violas sound distinct from cellos, and oboes
from clarinets, I could aurally delineate the parts played by individual trumpet and trombone
players. This is remarkable, as the instruments in brass choirs usually fuse into a dismaying
metallic hash. The experience was so real during particularly explosive passages, I half expected
the Harbeths’ SuperTunedStructure™ enclosures to split open, and musicians to spill out, still
playing their instruments.
With my prejudices about large speakers and digital amplifiers demolished, I fancied that the Bel
Canto/Harbeth combo might banish another recently-acquired belief of mine, which is that CD
playback is no longer viable in the context of current high-end developments. If this combo makes
SACD sound this realistic, might it perhaps render CD sound good enough? As I played through
the six CDs still present in my home, the verdict was clear. The truthfulness of this combo starkly
exposes the full extent of how toy-like, lethargic, pulverized, and frozen 16/44 PCM sound really
is.
My Hi-Fi, My Prison Cell
Some audiophiles depend on amplifiers and speakers to artificially "musicalize" the sound of CD,
like dousing tasteless food in more palatable gravy. Who can blame audiophiles for wanting hi-fi
that sounds pleasant? In some circles, audio design has become a wily alchemy, concocting that
magic brew of tubes and circuits that makes any input signal sound irresistible. It seems ironic
that purist audiophiles, who obsess over solder quality and tighten their binding posts till they
crack, would also embrace designs that transform the signal in such radical ways.
To be sure, there is a certain comfort offered by systems exhibiting strong euphonic
characteristics. No matter what recordings you play, you can be assured they will sound warm
and lush. All musical styles will sound like variations on one theme: The Sound of The System.
One can slip safely into this comfortable Sound like a favorite pair of slippers or an old sofa, and
expect no surprises. For listeners who need such consistency, a neutral and truthful system will
pose a bewildering, fluctuating nightmare. Each recording will transform their listening rooms into
a bizarre new acoustic venue. Strange instruments will shock them with alien timbres. Hordes of
unpredictable musicians will intrude into their sweet spots, each with startling ideas to express.
For these reasons, some audiophiles will still cleave to expensive, colored audio components,
even in an age where greater musical truthfulness is available at much, much less.
There are prison inmates who, even upon being released, do not feel inclined to leave their cells.
After decades of incarceration, prison has become the only world they can imagine themselves
inhabiting. In the same way, audiophiles who have lived so long with components that glorify
coloration may choose to remain domineered by these musical tyrants, and remain blissfully
caged within colorless listening paradigms demarcated by rose-tinted hi-fi systems.
Bel Canto
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www.belcantodesign.com
Harbeth
http://www.harbeth.com
Wintertree, Harbeth’s North American distributor
www.wintertreeaudio.com
POWER CONDITIONERS
Tice Powerblock IIIC, Tice Line Enhancer, PS Audio Ultimate Outlet, two Quantum Symphonies, one Symphony
Pro.
CABLES
Harmonic Technology Pro Silway II interconnects, Oval Analysis Pro 9 speaker cables. Shunyata King Cobra (to
SA-1), Shunyata Black Mamba (to EVO 200.2), Audience Powerchord (to Ultimate Outlet) power cords.
ACCESSORIES
Symposium Rollerblocks/Ultra Platform (beneath SA-1), DH Cones/Squares/Pads (beneath EVO 200.2), Target
R6 speaker stands, Shakti Stones/On-Lines, AC Enacoms.
BACK TO TOP
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Digging Into DSD
by Kelly Tang, Ph.D, Assistant Professor in Composition & Musicology, NTU, Singapore
After nearly two decades, CD has made remarkable headway in extricating itself from the pulsecode-modulated mire of its origin. Employing high-tech DACs, savvy filter designs, and cleaner
power supplies, current "affordable" players like the Linn Ikemi or the Electrocompaniet EMC-1
exhibit fluidity and warmth, circumventing the serrated "edge" that was the trademark of digital
audio. It is ironic that these initial stirrings of musical life had to be wrought by farming the
outermost boundaries of CD’s capabilities, but there is only restricted leeway for technical
wizardry within the rigid enclosure demarcated by 16 bits and 44Khz. The onslaught of
groundbreaking digital wonders in the nineties has fizzled to an awkward stasis in the new
millennium, stalling the hopes of digi-philes that one day, up-sampling, 24-bit processing, or some
other miracle cure would transcribe their CD libraries into quasi-analogue.
Despite the blaze of incredulous accolades inspired by the first SACD players, I was not eager to
migrate to any format that would render my painstakingly-assembled CD collection obsolete. I
secretly wished that SACD would wither and die. By mid-2000 however, it had become apparent
that progress in CD player design had hit an impasse. In a largely stagnant market, the trickle of
new high end machines had only diminishing improvements to offer. As it turns out, the
"convergence" of high-end CD performance celebrated three years ago in Stereophile, was
merely an early indication that the 44 kHz/16 bit well was fast drying up.
As a professional composer, I work regularly with symphony orchestras and chamber ensembles.
I also produce live rock concerts on occasion. From the perspective of live music, CD playback
seems doomed never to outgrow that endemic glare that blurs kaleidoscopic timbral colors into
pale monochromatic shades. CD’s cramped dynamic range still suffocates climaxes, while
expressive flow remains frozen by an antiquated sampling rate. Most dismaying is that
unshakable lethargy that deflates even the most inspired performances. This left me no recourse
but to reluctantly drag myself to a Sony SCD-1 demo, as to a long overdue visit to the dentist. A
few moments of DSD magic was all it took, before the aching bane of 44 kHz/16 bit PCM was
extracted from my life forever. In the world of SACD, stringed instruments writhe, scrape, and
strain as they do in an orchestral performance. Grand pianos produce tones so weighty and
expansive, they resonate within the gut of the listener. Brass chords radiate a naturally metallic
halo. You feel the size of woodwind instruments and sense the materials they are made of.
Timpani explode and resonate with irrefutable authority. SACD is the entirely more visceral
experience musical reproduction I had always dreamed of. Within two weeks, my entire CD
collection had been sold to finance a new Marantz SA-1.
After nine months with the SA-1, it became clear that you cannot simply "plug’n’ play" SACD.
Vinyl adherents declaring that LP still sounds more musical probably get that notion from sloppy
SACD setups. The workings of SACD are as digital as those of CD. If not delivered from vibration
and power line interference, SACD will manifest the worst traits of digital audio.
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/tangdsd2.htm (1 of 3) [8/25/2002 2:50:24 PM]
There has been a growing
trend towards ball bearing
devices for isolating SACD
mechanisms, and my SA-1
rocks and rolls atop
Symposium Rollerblocks.
These surpass even the
respected DH and Black
Diamond cones and shelves, revealing a transparent perspective into SACD’s life-sized,
panoramic soundstage. Supporting the Rollerblocks is a Symposium Ultra Platform, which adds
ultra impact and depth by absorbing vibration through its "constrained layer sandwich." A bristling
fortress of mains filtering stands guard over my power line. The mainstay of these defences is the
King Cobra power cord from Shunyata Research. Encapsulated by three-layers of noise-eating
"stardust," it fleeces away copious amounts of interference from the AC and drains out internal
hash generated by digital circuitry, providing an immaculately unsoiled sonic backdrop against
which the vivacity of DSD can leap out. Those wondering how any power cord could be worth
$2300 must witness the King Cobra’s singular ability to resurrect music from digital death.
The King Cobra engendered an intolerance for any residual noise, prompting me to enlist the
latest "High Current" IIIC revision of the venerable Tice Powerblock ($2000). Tice does not seem
to have made waves in the press lately. Therefore, I was surprised when the new Powerblock IIIC
surpassed trendier products by unleashing such overwhelming dynamics, such an expansive
soundstage, and such substantial, fleshed-out images from SACD. I never imagined filthy AC
could rob digital of such vital qualities! Judge AC conditioners not by the noise they make in the
press, but by the noise they suppress on your power line. I already had a Quantum Symphony
line conditioner ($300), which exhibited an uncanny ability to animate DSD from within. I could
not resist adding a second Symphony, and later, the turbo-charged Symphony Pro ($600), just to
quadruple the fun! Quantum technology supposedly "organises the chaotic flow of electrons" in
the AC. However strange this sounds, just remove the Symphonies and observe how the music
promptly "turns off," like a disinterested lover!
At this point, a slight fog was still seeping through, misting up the extreme rear of the soundstage.
This called for a filter with a radically different approach from the devices already in use. PS
Audio’s new Ultimate Outlet (20-amp version) incorporates a "Balun" choke that swallows all
common-mode noise in its vicinity. This potent design virtually vaporized that residual mist,
allowing a much further and deeper into the roots of DSD recordings. The amount of air behind
the performers was simply dizzying to behold. Significantly, the combined effect of these AC
filters did not bog down musical vitality, but freed it up, bringing a more natural sense of flow to
the music.
I used to find it incomprehensible that people would rough up their discs with cleaning fluids until I
heard a CD treated with the Auric Illuminator. Digital audio images tend to sound gritty, as if they
were pulverised at the molecular level. By improving optics, the Auric coating realigns the
dispersed sonic fragments, restoring coherence to the sound image. The gel works superbly with
SACD, pulling into sharper focus the wholesome, solid imagery latent within DSD recordings.
However, don’t use it on Sonopress hybrid discs, as they will haze in reaction to the gel.
Consequently, a "micro-coarseness" is always conspicuous with these untreated discs, compared
to Auric-coated SACDs.
Such an elaborate concatenation of tweaks may seem untenably paranoid, but each accessory
plays a crucial role in illuminating a different facet of DSD’s beauty. Judiciously configured, SACD
playback reproduces music so viscerally real and convincing it elicits a disorienting sense of aural
vertigo. This holds equally true for direct-to-DSD recordings as for the many magnificent vintage
analogue tapes transferred to SACD.
As the growing ranks of new Super-Audio-philes have been discovering, SACD yields ready and
bountiful sonic rewards in response to good tweaks, whereas tweaking CD is akin to scraping the
bottom of the barrel. At its highest pinnacle, CD only serves to provide a faint whiff of the musical
vistas yet to be harvested in SACD. CD is like paddling in your backyard swimming pool, while
SACD plumbs the fathomless depths of a vast ocean. Bored of treading water? Try Deep Sea
Diving, or, in short... DSD!
BACK TO TOP
draudiocom
"I Don’t Drive Stock!"
Modding & Hotrodding the Sony SCD-1 SACD player, part 1: The
Audiocom Superclock and Superclock Power Supply
Background to modding and hotrodding
It seems like only yesterday that Sony/Philips released the ground-breaking SACD format to the general
public, but it’s now been over two years since the format hit the streets. In that time, DSD and SACD have
done more to stir the pot of fine audio than anything in many years—and all to the good. As I noted back in
the fall of 1998, when I first heard DSD sound at Mobile Fidelity (see PF Vol. 7, No. 6), the format was
stunningly good, a true quantum leap past the ever more tiresome limitations of standard CDs. I felt that if
Sony/Philips were able to deliver what I was hearing at the consumer end, audio was in for one helluva good
time!
The question of whether DSD could be delivered optically was answered in part at CES 1999. Winston Ma,
Mike Pappas, Lila Ritsema, and I attended Sony’s invitation-only demonstration of their prototype SACD
playback system, based on the SCD-1. Mike and I were mightily impressed at the capabilities of SACD, even
through a playback system that wasn’t known to us. (All Sony, as it turned out.) Mike made his classic
comment, "David, I have seen the future of audio!"—and we waited to see how the consumer release would
sound.
Through the good offices of David Kawakami, Sony shipped a review SCD-1 to Positive Feedback in the
summer of 2000. There were few SACDs at that time, mainly demo discs, but what I had confirmed that Sony
was delivering something revolutionary in its "release to manufacture" of the format. As a matter of fact, I
would end up delivering a verdict of "mic feeds and master tapes for the masses!" A true breakthrough: a
format that allowed us to mass produce recordings that brought us into the control room and allowed us to tap
into the console bus. Earlier formats—open reel tape, audiophile grade LPs, Direct to Disc—all delivered very
fine reproduction in varying degrees, but were generally producible in only limited quantities. With SACD, we
have retained the virtues (and challenges!) of optical disc reproduction, while losing the disheartening
limitations of 44.1kHz/16-bit reproduction: harshness, lack of extension and ease in the higher frequencies,
increasing phase error with increasing frequency, relatively poor imaging and soundstaging, and timbral
inaccuracy… that sort of thing! (Disagree with me? Get thee to a fine open reel recorder or a state-of-the-art
turntable with good LPs and meditate!)
In other words: standard CDs have been superseded by a remarkably superior format, and by a wide margin.
Going to the next level
The question now is: can that which is superior — SACD — be made even better?
Well, either that’s a rhetorical question, or this is going to be one helluva short article…
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draudiocom
The answer is "yep!" Which shouldn’t surprise or upset any of us too much; any card-carrying audiophile has
some knowledge of the fact that most stock audio gear can be modded/hotrodded to achieve higher levels of
performance. The Sony SACD players are certainly no exception to this rule. As a matter of fact, David
Kawakami of Sony’s DSD project made this quite clear to me at CES 1999. In sum, his comments were that
Sony is not a "high end" audio company (though the build quality of players like the SCD-1, the 777ES, and
the XA777ES is really quite spectacular), and that there was room for improvement in the implementation of
the SACD standard. Components, internal wiring, power cabling, connectors… all were singled out as targets
for upgrading. And none of these would come as any surprise to those who have designed, built, or modified
audio gear — even if the modifications were as straightforward as new power cables/interconnects.
External mods are easily attainable by anyone with the willingness to invest some time and money in
experimentation.
Internal mods, on the other hand, require an experienced hand, or (more usually) professional assistance,
and require some careful thought before proceeding. The reasons for this are simple:
1. Internal mods will void warranties. I am not aware of any audio warranty that will not immediately
leap off the nearest cliff the moment that modifications are made to internal componentry. In some
cases, this includes the simple opening of the chassis by "unauthorized personnel." You need to be
aware of this important aspect of modification, and be sure that you’re willing to forego warranty
protection.
2. Working inside the box can be dangerous to your health. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you
can easily suffer injury or death due to the lethal voltages involved. Leave the work to professionals if
you are inexperienced or technically inept. (And there’s no shame in admitting that.)
3. Working inside the box can be dangerous to the health of your audio equipment. You’re not the
only one that can be hurt when modding your gear—you can do some serious damage to your gear,
as well. Nothing like a "whoopsie!" with a soldering iron... or dropping a PCB… or removing the
WRONG component… or damaging a trace. The possibilities are numerous and sobering; if I haven’t
scared the newbies out of the arena, then I’m not doing my job.
For all of these reasons, you should proceed with caution, and consult with an expert when considering the
modification of your Sony SACD player.
So… who are these "experts," anyway?
Glad you asked! At the current time, I am aware of four professionals engaged in modifying various models of
the Sony SACD players.
Richard Kern
Audiomod
4390 S.E. Mark Kelly Court
Oak Grove, OR 97267
503. 659. 6599
rkern70055@aol.com
www.audiomod.com
Ric Schulz
Electronic Visionary Systems (EVS)
1112 Pilger Road
Boulder Creek, CA 95006
408. 399. 9708 (phone/FAX)
draudiocom
ricevs@worldnet.att.net
www.tweakaudio.com (general)
http://www.tweakaudio.com/EVS%20modified%20SACD%20players.html (SACD specific)
Allen Wright
Vacuum State Electronics
Based in Germany; no address available
++49 89 477415 (phone/FAX)
allen@vacuumstate.com
www.vacuumstate.com (general)
www.vacuumstate.com/son.htm (mods for the Sony XB-940 SACD player only at this time)
Dan Wright
ModWright
1935 N.E. Cramer St.
Portland, OR 97211
503. 351. 9743
modwright@yahoo.com
www.modwright.com
I have heard good reports about all of the above professionals. Two of the four are located right here in the
Portland area (Richard Kern and Dan Wright), and have exceptional reputations locally. Either can be
approached with confidence, in our experience. Allen Wright is well known to European audiophiles, has
published in Positive Feedback before, and has a fine reputation. Ric Schulz is not so well known to me, but
those who have posted experiences with his EVS DACs and SACD upgrades on audioasylum.com seem to
be pretty satisfied with the results.
For those of you wishing to contact the USA distributor of Audiocom directly, you can reach him at the
following address:
Kyle Takenaga
Reference Audio Mods
16230 Stone Hill Court
Riverside, CA 92503
(909) 689-2504 or (909) 776-0841 (ask for Kyle)
(909) 688-5524 (FAX)
sales@referenceaudiomods.com
www.referenceaudiomods.com
You can also visit the Audiocom UK website at www.audiocom-uk.com.
Doing the deed
I had been hearing a great deal about the new modifications available from Audiocom for the SCD-1 and SCD777ES. Many of my audiobuds over on Audio Asylum's (www.audioasylum.com) Hi-Rez Highway bulletin
board (www.audioasylum.com/forums/hirez/bbs.html) had either already tried the Audiocom mods or were
contemplating them.
The temptation was pretty strong for me to try the mods. Given the intriguing reports that Positive Feedback’s
Jim Treanor had written (see Jim’s report on the Audiocom mods elsewhere in this issue), I made the decision
to turn the voyage into a PF project, and report the results in these pages.
And what a luxury I had! With two of the three USA Audiocom modders in the area and within driving
draudiocom
distance, I suffered an embarrassment of riches! The closest of the Audiocom modders (less than a 15 minute
drive!) looked to be Richard Kern of Audiomod, so I gave Richard a call. Not every audiophile is pleasant on
the telephone—take my word for it—but Richard
turned out to be a very decent and experienced
fellow. We discussed strategies and arrangements
over the phone, looked at pricing, then I decided to do
the Audiocom Superclock. To keep things
comprehensible, and to minimize the variables
involved in reporting the results, I decided to do one
upgrade at a time and listen to the results before
proceeding to the next step. This ought to keep my
impressions separate, and allow the reader to
ascertain which mods to install, or what point to take
the whole process.
The Superclock ($360 installed; s/h separate) is a
replacement for the master digital clock used for
synchronization in the SCD-1/SCD-777ES. A high
precision digital clock with audiophile grade support
chips, the Superclock looked like a serious piece of
upgradery. With a claimed internal jitter rate of an
extremely low 5 picoseconds, the Superclock was the "most bang for the buck" according to Richard, and was
the best place to start the modifications to my SCD-1. I authorized the purchase of the Superclock, and
awaited its arrival eagerly.
Upon its arrival in late November, 2001, I bundled up my SCD-1 and dropped by Richard’s shop. It turned out
to be a very comfortable basement space, complete with a decent listening room. (Sony SCD-1 with most of
the Audiocom and Kern mods aboard, directly feeding an Audio Research VT-100, which in turn talked to a
pair of Avalon Arcus speakers. Good sound!) Richard showed me the Superclock, which was on its own PCB
for insertion to the SCD-1. (See accompanying photos at bottom of page.)
Alas! The first two Superclocks had defective transistors aboard, necessitating return trips. The third
Superclock was correct, though, and Richard was able to do the installation in about three hours. I picked it up
immediately thereafter, and headed for PF Central.
The sound
Though Richard had a pleasant system, there’s nothing quite like hearing a component in your own listening
room. I placed the SCD-1 back in its accustomed place, and let it warm up for a day before sitting down to
assess the changes that the Superclock had made. (See Ye Olde Editor’s current listening room setup.)
Referring to my notes from these listening sessions (in italics), and commenting on same:
The Audiocom Superclock brings a clarity to SACD and CD reproduction that is truly remarkable.
Extraordinary detail is revealed due to the ultra-low jitter rate (claimed by Audiocom to be in the neighborhood
of 5 picoseconds!), and yet the playback is never etched or over-the-top. Shimmer and "air" is even more
clearly revealed on SACDs... a blessed thing! HF extension seems effortless....
If I sum up what struck me about the Superclock mod in a word, it would be articulation. The level of nuance,
the definite impression of improved clarity is really striking, and leads to "downstream blessings." By this I
mean that improved articulation and clarity lead directly to noteworthy gains in imaging (things are placed
more definitely in the field of reproduction) and soundstaging (the presentation of the music is both somewhat
wider and deeper than before). The trueness of timbre—the lack of smearing that is the bane of audio
reproduction in this realm—is much better.
draudiocom
This was immediately noticeable when playing the glorious FIM SACD, River of Sorrow. The percussives, the
plucking and pizzicati were very fine before, but now they were so definite that you’re tempted to pick your
teeth with them. Bowing was now more tactile; plucking, more shot-like and surprising.
Of great surprise to me was the fact that bass response is also noticeably improved: it is tighter, cleaner, and
more clearly presented, with no sign of bloat.
Indeed! My first impressions are no less real now than they were weeks ago; the bass response with the
Superclock is superior to the stock SCD-1. The only thing that I would add here is that bass also seems to be
a bit deeper than before, as well. (The Linn Komris have made this ever clearer over time.) To have both
more profound bass and greater control is the basso equivalent of the philosopher’s stone, and is not to be
missed!
The cohesiveness of tone and texture is improved; orchestral strings, brass... or that Rickenbacker guitar on
Greatest Hits by the Byrds!... are timbrally truer than before.
Imaging and soundstaging are greatly improved with the Superclock. Left and right are somewhat wider; front
to back layering is enhanced. On good recordings, placement of instruments and movement are quite
discernible.
Everything is clearer, cleaner; good stereo recordings allow you to place instrumentalists more definitely.
Superior SACDs from companies like Opus 3, First Impression Music, Analog Productions, Vanguard, and
CCnC lock into place with greater precision, and increased honing of timbre. Telarc’s smashing SACD, Music
of Hohvaness, renders the harp’s soundboard in a way that I’ve never heard before. (Try, for example, track
11.) Certainly no CD sounds this way—and the modded SCD-1 performed with astounding clarity. Ditto on
brass, piano, and orchestral; it didn’t seem to matter what type of music was being played.
In other words, the improvements in these areas are general, and will be noticeable with all SACDs.
And to anticipate a question that I would surely hear from our readers: the improvements listed also held true
for standard CD playback, allowing for the lower level of resolution inherent in that medium. I believe that
these modifications will provide a return on the investment on both sides of the aisle in the SCD-1, and
certainly take its CD playback up a notch or two.
I am also noticing that load times seem to be improved by several seconds on SACDs... though this varies
disc by disc... and that CD load times can save 8-10 seconds. Quite pleasant, that... though the slower load
times never bothered me.
I have checked my timings here, and can say that the load times vary from SACD to SACD. Some of the
variations may be related to the proliferation of multi-channel discs; I can’t say for sure. There does seem to
be variable improvement in the load time, but don’t do the mods with stopwatch in hand. You may or may not
see the same results that I did.
So far, I would have to say that this is a "must-have" upgrade for owners of SCD-1s. The price is only US
$260; Richard Kern charges $100 for the installation. The improvements that I've gained pale to insignificance
the loss of warranty... I'm glad I did it!
To summarize the improvements of the Superclock, and quoting my comments on audioasylum.com: the
Superclock mod excels in articulation...the ability to delineate detail with the SCD-1 (which is no slouch to
start with). Consequent improvements are seen in related areas: imaging (more definite), soundstaging (a bit
wider, noticeably deeper), and timbral trueness (reduction of smearing). Bass is tighter and more effortless;
highs are more extended; macrodynamics are noticeably wider.
The Second Phase…
draudiocom
… of this project was to add Audicom’s new dedicated Superclock power supply for the SCD-1. This
furthers the improvements attainable with the Superclock upgrade by adding another PCB with a dedicated
transformer and components. This power supply takes a direct tap from the main power input, runs it to the
dedicated transformer, then outputs (via 99.999%
copper twisted pair) to the Superclock board.
Richard Kern did the installation work again for me.
The results were another improvement, though in a
different direction. To quote from my listening notes at
the time:
The dedicated Superclock Power Supply is a hefty
unit, about palm sized, with a hefty transformer and
support components (including some Black Gates).
The most noticeable characteristic appears to be in improved silence..."black" becomes "blacker," thus
allowing quiet to be really quiet. It's especially noticeable in the microdynamics of smaller ensembles, or
tactile passages (pizzicati, for example) using guitar, violin, or harp. Saliva on reed is much more evident; the
shimmer on pure DSD percussives stands out from a greater silence.
It’s the improved silence that is so notable with this modification. I’ve since confirmed by extended listening
the impression that the Superclock with dedicated power supply seems to have a lower noise floor. If you are
looking for improved nuance in SACD playback, this is unquestionably a significant step in the right direction. I
would not want to do the Superclock upgrade without the dedicated power supply as well, and recommend
very strongly that you do both at the same time. The one without the other is a waste of opportunity!
In Conclusion
What else can I say? The Audiocom mods to the Sony SCD-1 have provided real and gratifying
improvements to the performance of my player. SACDs have never sounded this good in my listening room! If
you are willing to take the risks inherent in having the surgery done, then I recommend that you contact one of
the audio craftsmen listed above for more details, and current pricing. I think that you’ll be delighted with the
results.
Coming in our next issue: upgrading the SCD-1 to the Black Gates and Vishays! Stay tuned….
For those interested, I have included Richard Kern’s price structure as of January, 2002. Prices may change
without notice; call or email for the latest pricing. Quoting from Richard Kern:
Audiocom's Super Clock upgrade is a $260 part that replaces the stock oscillator on Sony's digital board. This
add- on board lowers jitter to such an extent that the sound is improved in all respects. The labor to install this
mod is $100.
The Sony modifications I offer come in three different types. The first modification I offer replaces 32 resistors
in the audio board with Vishay vsh type resistors, I also replace 10 capacitors in the low pass filter section
with REL polystyrene capacitors and I replace two Electrolytic capacitors in the power supply with Black Gate
caps. The total cost is $460, labor $200 and $260 parts. Parts for this mod are stocked at all times and the
turn around time is 48 hours.
The second modification is the same as the first, except I use Vishay’s best S-102 resistors in the audio
section. The total cost is $700, labor $200 and $500 parts. The resistors for this mod are not stocked, but I
can get them in a few days. These Vishays have the best transparency and detail I have found.
The third modification is the Audiocom modifications from the UK. Check out their web site at
draudiocom
http://www.audiocom-uk.com The mods are listed on their web site and my prices for the modifications are as
follows:
1. The complete modification cost is $2435 for the parts. My labor to assemble the complete kit is $450.
2. Audio Board capacitor replacement. $465 parts $120 labor.
3. Audio Board resistor replacement. $840 parts $120 labor.
4. Audio Board regulator replacement. $290 parts $60 labor.
5. Audio Board OP Amp replacement. $190 parts $45 labor.
6. Power Supply capacitor replacement. $475 parts $60 labor.
7. Power Supply regulator replacement. $175 parts $60 labor.
Audiomod listening room
Kern at his workbench
Opening the SCD-1
Opening the SCD-1
The SCD-1 inside
Kern de-soldering board
draudiocom
Close-up of SCD-1 inside
Board ready for installation
Kern adds Superclock
Board after installation
BACK TO TOP
MoFiDSD
In Which PF Does MoFi, hears GAIN 2 & DSD, and returns to
River City very impressed!
(From the PF archives of significant articles, 1998)
On Friday, September 25, Positive Feedback visited Sebastopol, California, the headquarters of
Mobile Fidelity. At the invitation of MoFi, Scott Frankland and Ye Olde Editor attended a
presentation of the new DSD-based GAIN 2 mastering system. MoFi will debut GAIN 2 with its
reissue of the Tom Petty Full Moon Fever in the next few weeks, according to MoFi’s Director of
Public Relations, Karen Thomas.
Anticipation and curiosity have been increasing in audiophile circles over the past year
concerning higher resolution digital standards. Both DVD-based 96 kHz/24-bit PCM and the
2.8224 MHz/1-bit DSD have emerged as the alternatives for the next generation of digital sound.
Both offer significant advances over the current 44.1 kHz/16-bit CD standard. The question has
been whether one or the other system would become the market "standard," or whether both
might co-exist—a question that has yet to be answered.
Proponents for both standards exist. Companies like Classic Records, Chesky Records, Cardas
Audio, Theta Digital, Muse Electronics, Cal Audio, Ayre Acoustics, conrad-johnson, and
Resolution Audio have committed to 96/24. On the other hand, DMP and Telarc have announced
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/MoFiDSD.htm (1 of 16) [8/25/2002 2:50:28 PM]
MoFiDSD
their preference for DSD.
To the DSD list you may now add Mobile Fidelity and its GAIN 2 mastering system.
Why DSD? "We listened carefully to the alternative designs in 96/24," explained John Wood,
MoFi’s Director of New Technology, in a telephone interview with Positive Feedback. "Every
96/24 system was good—much better than we currently have — but we still felt that there was
some coloration in current implementations. When we checked out DSD, we felt that we had
found what we had been looking for."
Tim de Paravicini and Ayataka Nishio chat at
the lobby of Mobile Fidelity just before the conference
But there was much more to GAIN 2. In order to assure a first-rate source for mastering, MoFi
had commissioned the noted analog(ue) artist Tim de Paravicini to completely rebuild their
Studer A-80 ¼ inch reel-to-reel, and bring it up to his very high standards of performance. Digital
received an equally royal treatment: Ed Meitner, the gifted digital designer, was chosen to do the
A/D and D/A side of the system. Sony’s Ayataka Nishio, the chief designer of Direct Stream
Digital (DSD), worked closely with the MoFi GAIN 2 group to integrate DSD smoothly into the
new mastering chain.
With such an intriguing collection of talent and technology, PF immediately accepted an invitation
to attend a round table discussion and listening session at MoFi on September 25. (Who could
resist?!)
MoFiDSD
Karen Thomas, MoFi's Director of Public Relations
Upon arrival on Friday morning, Scott and I met de Paravicini and Nishio. Over bagels and
fixings, plus some superior coffee from Karen Thomas (credit where credit is due!), we chatted
about Tim’s achievements with MoFi’s Studer, which were apparently quite spectacular in the
analog(ue) domain. Tim’s enthusiasm and passion for the work there was obvious. Nishio was
pleasant, urbane, and reserved; only later did we get a chance to discover the mind behind DSD.
The President of MoFi, Lori Beaudoin, came in to greet us all. John Wood and Shawn Britton,
MoFi’s Mastering
Engineer, also arrived, together with Ed Meitner, bringing us up to complement.
Lori Beaudoin and Ed Meitner just before conference time
Once everyone was ready, the group moved into MoFi’s conference room. There Lori Beaudoin
opened the proceedings by formally introducing the members of the MoFi group to PF. She made
it clear that MoFi was not in the business of establishing audio standards or "pushing a
format—that’s not what we do. We look at them, we assess them, and then once they’re
established we decide if there’s anything we can do to improve them to bring better quality sound
MoFiDSD
to consumers."
John Wood, Ed Meitner, and Ayataka Nishio
at the conference table
John Wood outlined the history of MoFi’s interest in improved digital audio over the past several
years. "We knew that high density digital audio was on its way." Pioneer’s high resolution DAT
machine made an impression as far back as three years ago.
So did "the buzz with DVD audio. So Shawn and I started thinking about what we could do to
better the system. We initially wanted to start out with the analog portion of the system, and we
wanted to see if there was more information that we could extract from the tapes. We ran into Tim
at one of the shows and talked to him; he said he thought he could deliver something that would
be pretty extraordinary. We weren’t really sure if he was fibbing or not! (general laughter) But we
went ahead and commissioned him, and he went to work."
"At the same time, we met with Nishio-san and David Kawakami, and read some articles about
Sony’s DSD, and we decided that we wanted to investigate this technology. Shawn and I went
out and checked one of Sony’s show demos at the HiFi Show in San Francisco, and were
impressed with what we saw and heard. So we decided to move forward with some
experimentation with the Sony DSD system."
Shawn Britton noted that "we literally ran into Tim de Paravicini in the halls at the same show. We
talked to him about his tape machines—we knew of his reputation, of course—and asked him if
he would be willing to not only modify our tape machine but also build the repros with the
incredible high frequency response that we would need. Given the fact that DSD would reproduce
an astounding frequency response, we thought that we’d better talk to someone who could give
us the frequency response that we would need."
"Right! And make damned sure that we extracted everything that we could," continued John
Wood. "Another thing was that we weren’t really sure what the ‘outer limits’ were with 15 ips
quarter-inch tape."
MoFiDSD
MoFi’s Mastering Engineer Shawn Britton
and PF’s Scott Frankland following the discussion
Shawn Britton made the point that "Most of the gear that we’ve had and had built for us were
designed around a frequency response of 20-20K. That’s pretty much how people have been
designing things for a long time—never pushing it. When you see the demo that Tim does for
you, you’ll see the result. We have some rather astounding frequency response now!"
"As far as DSD goes, we met up with Nishio and David Kawakami and were really interested in
pursuing it," John continued. "David was kind enough to send a system over so that we could
demo it. We did—and we were really impressed! I saw David again at Winter CES, and he was
going to see Ed Meitner … "
"Oh, that guy!" said Shawn. (general laughter)
MoFiDSD
"… and see if we could woo him." John continued, "From what we knew, Ed had previous
experience with the delta sigma stuff, so that was why we were interested in him."
"As a sidebar to this, there was only one down-converter machine in the world for taking pure
DSD signal and converting it to 16/44.1. Nishio had that in Japan. We sent him tapes right after
CES. The DSD downloads to a tape called an AIT, which we sent to Nishio; he down-converted it
and sent back a sample to analyze. Shawn and I analyzed it; it was very promising."
"Meanwhile, we played with the DSD, and kept running different kinds of program material
through it. Tim was working on the analog repro system, and we kept thinking, ‘Jeez, we’d sure
like to get more information out of these tapes!’ Shawn kept calling Tim and saying ‘Tim! Tim!’"
"We made the connection with Ed, and Ed’s working on an A/D and D/A—so we approached him
and asked if he could do something for us. And that’s how this all started."
Shawn Britton interjected some notes about DSD as a mastering engineer. "We found that DSD
captures more of the ambient detail, more of the room. That’s what we were struck by. And we
found that the Super Bit-Mapped (SBM) Direct, the down-converted format that Sony has
developed, and we were impressed. We had the DSD system here for comparison, and we have
some of the best A/D converters for the PCM stuff that have ever been made."
"We were pests! When you get excited about a new format or new gear, you want it! That’s why
we wanted to press ahead with this new technology; we knew that we could have 16-bit/44.1kHz
with improved resolution right now!"
John Wood then passed the baton to Tim de Paravicini. He spoke of his background and
experience beginning with studio work in the ‘60s with rock and roll bands, then going on to
Japan with various projects for Luxman in the ‘70s.
MoFiDSD
Tim de Paravicini waxes eloquent;
Karen Thomas checks his technique!
"Throughout this period, I looked at all the recordings being made, from the early ‘51-‘52 when
tapes first started to be used for recording music. I came to the conclusion that there was an
awful lot of mythology in what people had believed tape recorders can and cannot do, and where
is the weak link, and so on. So I went sifting through virtually all the tape recorders made,
whether it was Telefunken, Studer, Phillips, Ampex, and looking at their record and repro
capabilities. And I very quickly came to the conclusion that people had been assuming that they
couldn’t record very well but that they could play back this master tape, and you’re going to get
perfection. And I said, ‘I’m sorry, but that is wrong.’"
"I did these checks and found that most of these recorders could actually record quite well; what
they couldn’t do was pull it back off the tape! Even tape machines as early as ‘51-’52—the early
Ampexes—could record signal below 20Hz quite well… say better than 10 dB down at 10Hz…
and go out and get information beyond 20K. It may not be ruler flat, but they could put information
out to 30+kHz; whatever the microphones and all the rest of the system could provide it with. But
what all these machines suffered with—and Studer was a good example of this—was
cheapskating on the playback electronics. It’s a much harder task to get playback right."
"… Anyway, I’ve been building since the ‘70s tape recorders with very wide performance." Tim
discussed the work he did at that time, rebuilding cassette recorders so that they would have
better frequency response. "Even into the ‘80s people making tape recorders didn’t understand;
were they trying to save ten cents to throw a ton of (good) shit out of the window? How much cost
cutting have they got to do? Or is it just plain ignorance? And I came to the conclusion that most
of it was just ignorance; they didn’t understand what they were trying to achieve. With very little
extra cost they could make their machines do a hell of a lot better performance."
MoFiDSD
"In listening qualities, most tape recorders have what I call ‘severe phase distortion’ in the low
frequencies. So the rhythmic properties of tape no longer sound correct." Tim analyzed the
mistakes made in the mastering of the Sgt. Pepper’s CD—problems in the roll-off and phase
inaccuracies in the lower frequencies causing problems in pace and rhythm. He especially
emphasized errors in phase: "If the phase properties are badly skewed, the rhythmic properties of
this music sounds wrong. So that’s one of the things that makes you think, ‘It doesn’t sound like a
master tape!’"
Tim de Paravicini’s standard for analog(ue) reproduction is the mic feed, "… the line-in quality."
He stated that his 1" tape machines were able to attain that standard; his ¼ inch machines were
almost as good.
"All I wanted to get electronics that—with new heads—could just pull these tapes. And when you
listen to some of these old tapes you’re just awe-struck; you’d think they were done yesterday.
The point is, all these re-issues of records that most companies put out are never going to solve
the problems, because they haven’t addressed how to get this information out of what’s in that
material (the tapes). Once you find it, you realize that is the line sound that these guys were
hearing in the ‘50s and ‘60s and putting down on tape. The machine could engrave it quite
happily."
The discussion then shifted to a consideration of Ed Meitner’s A/D and D/A designs for the GAIN
2 chain.
MoFiDSD
"We did some delta sigma work way back with dbx," Ed remembered. (PF Associate Editor Mike
Pappas recalls this system from his days with Otari in the early ‘80s, and considered it to be the
best sounding of the early digital systems they tested at that time.) "Compared with what delta
sigma is today, it was kind of primitive. But it showed the possibilities."
"The problem in those days was that there wasn’t any really any storage medium that could store
the amount of information delta sigma would generate. But we played with it, and we modeled,
and that’s when it started."
"When Tom Jung (of DMP) and David Kawakami (of Sony) phoned me and said, ‘Hey, you want
to do some work on DSD?" I said ‘Hey! Great! Why not?!’ This is more interesting than carrying
on with 44.1 or 96/24 or whatever."
Meitner briefly summarized the work that he had done in developing the A/D and D/A interface,
then—with time being very limited at that point—the discussion shifted to Ayataka Nishio’s work
with DSD.
Nishio responded to one question by confirming that Sony’s plans for the Super Audio Compact
Disc (SACD) were for a two-layer disc. The top layer would be for a new form of Super Bit
Mapping: "Super Bit Mapping Direct." It is a full 16-bit PCM digital word system compatible with
standard CD players, produced by down-converting a DSD master to SBM Direct.
The lower layer would be the DSD high-density layer, with a capacity of 4.7 gigabytes. Nishio
made it clear that not only would DSD support two channel stereo at 192kHz per channel, but
that the DSD SACD specification would also included six channels of equally high resolution
sound for home theatre/surround sound. Text, graphics and video would also be supported on
the DSD layer.
MoFiDSD
The DSD bitstream sampling rate is 2.8224MHz, giving a sampling rate of DC-100kHz per
channel on all channels, with a dynamic range of 120 dB.
When asked about the availability of editing tools and a storage medium for DSD, Nishio
confirmed that Sonic Solutions is developing a version of SonicStudio for DSD, and that storage
via tape and hard disk is "not a problem." He outlined the many advantages of DSD, including its
simplicity of concept and the avoidance of filtering and requantization. The unique dual layering of
SBM Direct and DSD should provide consumers with maximum performance without the loss of
44.1kHz/16-bit format compatibility.
John Wood and Shawn Britton re-iterated the fact that despite the future possibilities for SACD,
the combination of DSD mastering and down-converting to SBM Direct at Mobile Fidelity would
happen now. Consumers wouldn’t have to wait to begin to benefit from the advantages of DSD;
GAIN 2 will bring it to them now. (The first release in the new GAIN 2 series will be a particular
favorite of Ye Olde Editor’s, Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever. Bring it on!!
The Studio: Listening Notes
The MoFi/PF group then moved to the mastering studio to listen to GAIN 2/DSD/SBM Direct.
MoFiDSD
First, Tim de Paravicini demonstrated his newly re-built Studer A-80 ¼ inch 15 ips/30 ips
analog(ue) front end. The Studer was connected to both an oscilloscope and to a phase detection
array, so that we could monitor output (via VU’s), and proper phase (via ‘scope and array).
The remarkable Tim deP Studer
Scott Frankland and I then witnessed an extraordinary display of open reel performance. Tim ran
the unit through a series of frequency tests: first from 1kHz down to 10Hz (!), then from 1kHz out
to 44kHz (!!) The VU’s indicated no less than 0 dB at any point, and no more than about 1 dB at
any point (!!!) Phase remained proper at all points. As far as we could see, minor fluctuations
seemed to remain within the limits of the open reel medium itself.
MoFiDSD
This represents a truly remarkable achievement: an open reel machine that is within a dB from
10Hz – 44kHz is utterly extraordinary. It holds the promise of being able to deliver every nuance
from master tapes to the balance of the GAIN 2 mastering chain, without compromise. But—how
did it sound? Did listening confirm the promise of the measurements?
In spades!
Tim and Shawn cued a Coltrane master tape. Scott and I were allowed to sit in the mastering
engineer’s sweet spot. The mastering chain went from the Studer, through the custom panel, to
outputs wired to a pair of Nelson Pass’s fine amplifiers. The cabling was by Sahuaro Audio; the
power line conditioner was the Sound Application CF-2; the speakers were the top-o’-the-line
Egglestonworks with custom stands.
The sound was nothing less than the finest that I’ve ever heard from an open reel machine! (And
yes, I’ve listened to other Studer A-80’s before.) The noise floor was imperceptible; the signal-tonoise ration had to be excellent. Scott and I were both quite struck by the ease of the music as
we listened—it simply flowed from the speakers like water.
MoFiDSD
Let the reader note: The danger of listening to music at this mountaintop level is that it can make
it hard to go back to the valleys.
(On the other hand, one should calibrate one’s ears to the highest standard available—it keeps
you from raving over the mediocre.)
Given the world-class quality of the GAIN 2 Studer machine, Scott and I were eager—and
fearful—to hear what effect the Sony/Meitner DSD A/D & D/A, together with SBM Direct would
have on such glorious sound.
A rare beast: The Sony DSD station in the studio at MoFi
Mobile Fidelity made the mechanics of the comparison easy by setting up their I/O controls in the
studio so that Scott and I could soft-touch our way back and forth among "Studio" (the Studer),
"DSD" (feed the Studer to the DSD electronics and Meitner A/D and D/A), and "D/A" (feed the
Studer to the SBM Direct down-converter). All digital feeds would happen in real-time. The three
selections were level-matched to within .1 dB for valid listening comparison.
MoFiDSD
Ed Meitner’s custom A/D and D/A for DSD
at Mobile Fidelity
Scott and I listened to the master tape for a few minutes… then I leaned forward and hit the
"DSD" button.
Did I hear a change? Maybe I heard a change—maybe not—time to toggle back to the Studer.
Listen again very carefully to the sound of the brush on snare drum… switch back to "DSD"…
nope, sounds right. Go back to the Studer… listen to the saxophone, savor the feel of saliva on
reed, place it in space, then go back to "DSD." That sounds right too. Go back to the Studer,
listen for soundstage depth, imaging… go back to "DSD" and listen carefully for shifting
placement of vocals, drum kit, back wall… no, that sounds right too!
Scott spent some time going back and forth; each time we listened for different elements of the
recording. Each time, careful listening showed that DSD was putting us so close to the master
tape that I was finding it virtually impossible to fault any aspect of what I was hearing.
I must emphasize the extraordinary nature of this result. Scott and I were free to switch back and
forth. We are both very experienced listeners. We were not comparing "vinyl with digital"; we
were listening to a master tape on (arguably) the finest open reel machine of its kind in the world,
a Studer whose remarkable performance characteristics had just been demonstrated to us. The
source Studer was fully capable of playing back 10 Hz – 44 kHz to within a dB, and was phase
correct across that range. The room was extremely quiet; there were only six of us present (no
terrible "show conditions" to intrude on the assessment of the sound).
I would not be willing to stake a nickel—much less my life—on being able to exegete the
difference between the Studer source tape and DSD. While high-end audio, like football, is often
a "game of inches," I would have to say that Scott and I found ourselves so close to the
analog(ue) source that we were unable to characterize the minute differences, if any, that we
might have been (?) hearing.
Which puts the whole experience into the realm of the truly outstanding…
When we switched to the SBM Direct loop, we did notice some losses in the listening experience.
I would characterize them as a foreshortening of the depth of the soundfield, a loss of the sense
MoFiDSD
of presence and atmosphere, a slight shift in imaging towards left and right, and an increase in
harshness of sibilants. The sense of "rounded sound" was no longer there, and the remarkable
ease of the master tape, held astonishingly well by the DSD feed, was, to a great degree,
surrendered.
Not that the SBM Direct was "poor"—it was just lesser. It is by far the best SBM that I’ve ever
heard, which is something notable; I have to confess that I had not been impressed with SBM at
all until now. The DSD-based SBM Direct moves SBM to an entirely different level, and makes it
quite acceptable as the basis for the GAIN 2 system.
We had a further chance to listen to SBM Direct when we compared a "standard issue" of Tom
Petty’s Full Moon Fever with a brand new copy of the MoFi SBM Direct version.
No contest. The SBM Direct won hands down, and going away. More depth, more spaciousness,
better timbre on the luscious sound of Petty’s Rickenbacker, less "tizziness" on the sound of
cymbals in the drum kit, more fully developed bass… superior in every way.
In Retrospect…
The listening experience at Mobile Fidelity was a fine opportunity to meet a unique and gifted
group of people, and to hear the results of the work that they’ve done. Many thanks to Lori,
Karen, John and Shawn for inviting Positive Feedback to this unique demonstration.
The guys: Shawn Britton, Ayataka Nishio,
Ye Olde Editor, Ed Meitner, John Wood,
Tim de Paravicini, Scott Frankland,
after a helluva good morning
GAIN 2 will clearly be an improvement over the current GAIN system; MoFi fans have nothing to
worry about. The combined work of de Paravicini, Meitner, Nishio/Sony, and the management
group at MoFi has produced a definite step forward in the quality that we can expect in the future
from their new GAIN 2 system.
It is very important that the reader should note that MoFi has also made it clear that they have not
ruled out parallel work with 96/24 PCM reissues; they simply want it to be better than it currently
MoFiDSD
is. To that end, MoFi is working with Theta Digital to see if 96/24 can be brought up to the same
level of transparency as the DSD standard.
In other words, the next high-density, high-resolution digital standard may not be a zero-sum
game.
And what of the future of digital?
The listening that Scott and I did at MoFi confirmed the suspicion that I’ve had for over four years
now: the problems that audiophiles have with digital have nothing to do with "digital." The fault
lies with the 44.1 kHz/16-bit standard—often very poorly implemented, with mediocre audio
engineering/mastering aiding and abetting the crime.
After the listening session with DSD at MoFi, as well as spending a great deal of time with my
current evaluation of the first of the 96 kHz/24-bit PCM DVD units at PF, it is clear to me that
digital audio has far greater possibilities than we have realized so far.
We must move to the highest possible density and resolution before we will begin to see the
strengths of digital match its mere convenience. Positive Feedback therefore supports the
movement to 96 kHz (or higher!)/24-bit PCM and SACD at the earliest possible moment, and
calls for re-mastering and reissues of all of our great stereo masterpieces before the analog(ue)
masters decay and are lost forever. Our audio archives MUST be preserved for the next century.
High density digital, properly implemented, has the capability of doing just that—and with a
transparency and faithfulness to the master tape that is breathtaking.
It’s time for something better.
BACK TO TOP
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/onthemarginsdavis.htm
On the Margins: Gaining, at last, a Sense of Proportion
by Tom Davis
I can mark the beginning of my becoming an "audiophile," just as I can mark its ending. The
ending began when Julia and I quite unexpectedly bought a house in October of 2000. Built in
1955 "high modernist" style, it wraps a north-facing glass wall around two decks hugging springfed Stone Creek. That glass wall stretches the length of a radically open floor plan, running down
three levels and turning in an "L" in order to follow the creek. All that glass is, of course, an
audiophile nightmare. Signing off to buy the house, I’ve come to realize, was also closing what
had begun when I bought issue 39 of The Absolute Sound at the newly opened Davis-Kidd
Bookstore in Nashville in the fall of 1985. It took me that long to gain a sense of proportion.
A sense of proportion follows from the ability to judge the degree to which something matters
within a larger context. Imagine this context is the richness of life. A sense of proportion would
allow you to first locate and then discriminate the specifics of how different activities (or things, or
people) contribute to the way life can be rich. Having such a sense would assume that you were
clear about just what "being rich" means. If you weren’t clear about that, then you’d have no way
to judge the relative contribution of this or that to how life can be rich. But now let’s say that you
think certain activities (or things or people) are intrinsically rich. That is, that they are done (or are
had, or are related to), not for the sake of something else, but just for their own sake. At this
point, the problem in having a sense of proportion changes. It’s not just that you need to know
what "being rich" means, but now you need to assess the difference between the way this or that
intrinsically rich activity (or thing, or person) contributes to the encompassing richness of life.
And right here we get tempted to think, "Well, I’ll just aim to do (to get, to relate to) all those
intrinsically rich things." Setting that fantasy aside, how do you judge between two activities you
think are both intrinsically rich? Take, for example, listening to sound and listening to music. An
audiophile thinks both these activities are intrinsically rich. Can they be? What kind of "sense of
proportion" is operating in these different, if related, activities. (Notice, however, how the relation
is only internal, moving from music to sound, not from sound to music; one can think sound itself
intrinsically rich and not be concerned about the claim of music at all, but can you think music
intrinsically rich and not be at all concerned about sound?)
When you sit down to listen, if your sense of proportion is attuned first and foremost to how sound
is intrinsically rich, then your sense of what matters will mistake that other sense of proportion
rooted first and foremost in the claim of music. I both knew, and yet still resisted, this basic point
for a long time. I had to resist it to continue being an audiophile. I kept insisting that sonic
difference could entail musical difference. And it can, but only if your sense of proportion is
already musical. That’s why musicians are satisfied with junky stereos. Their sense of proportion
is rooted in what the music is doing through the equipment. Listening to the equipment strikes
them as weirdly misplaced. Showing them just how much better the sound is on your audiophile
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/onthemarginsdavis.htm (1 of 4) [8/25/2002 2:50:30 PM]
stereo just makes the sense of misplaced emphasis all the stronger. It would be comical, if in the
end it didn’t become so pathetic.
When I first saw that long wall of angled glass in our new home (the
roofline angles slowly up, the glass is floor to ceiling, result: no
curtains), I was still an audiophile. I thought, "How are the Audio
Physic Tempo IIIs going to work with all that glass?" Then I looked
down at Stone Creek meandering by, barely six feet away. I
suddenly found myself with the hint of a different sense of
proportion. By early December we had put in a new furnace, bought
new furniture, tore out the "low maintenance" ivy landscape and
begun the long process of putting in a "neo-Japanese" garden
ourselves, stone by stone, plant by plant.
Of course I set up the system I was left with, the one I’ll lay out in
this piece, after I sold everything and then "downsized" to help
come up with the down payment. I knew all the glass would affect
the sound, but would it also affect the music? Well, yes. I had
worked almost sixteen years to train my ears to listen for the
difference sound can make for music. But I also realize that my
sense of proportion was changing. Music was now becoming part of
the way "making a home" was giving me a new sense of how life
can be rich — and within that larger context, the difference that
sound itself makes just didn’t seem as important. It didn’t feel like
something intrinsically valuable.
Yet it still had relative value. Changing a sense of proportion doesn’t
mean junking all those years of analytical listening. It meant letting
them help me find the right place for the stereo in this new home.
The key to "downsizing" turned out to be the amplifier. I went with
David Berning’s ZH-270. What interested me was Berning’s attempt
to combine the best of digital and analogue in a very simple (two source switch, Noble pot, that’s
it) "integrated" amp (for details go to www.davidberning.com). Yet you can also play with sound
by varying feedback. I went for the "medium" position (less sterile and also less fat than the
greater and lesser feedback positions). Perhaps you remember my chief musical interest is how
the singing voice inflects emotion to make sense; to hear nuance here, you need lithe, quick
definition. And, thankfully, Berning’s amp provides exactly that, not just with voices, but also with
its deeper-than-you’d expect bass reproduction. It mates very well with the 90 dB (but 4 ohm)
Tempo IIIs. But again, what about all that glass?
The Tempo IIIs are very well balanced
between a very open upper middle
range (the most sensitive region for all
that glass) and a more or less honest
mid-30s low-end. Their midrange is
articulate without a hint of sterility. But
the openness of the house design and
all that glass creates an echo chamber
that enforces a brittleness to the upper
midrange that I know is not native to
the Tempo/Berning combination from
briefly listening to this combo in my old
apartment before moving to the house.
The Berning is key here because of its
ultimately humane transparency, what I
have to call the sheer grace of its
resolution. And while it can’t save
hyped recordings, it does allow me to almost relax with tracks that verge on being too hot, like the
opening cuts of Dar Williams’ The Green World. Honestly neutral recordings are, well, as
honestly neutral as this listening room will permit.
Now if I was still purely an audiophile, I can readily imagine myself thinking at this point that what
I really need is a "rounder, wetter, more mellow speaker" to "fix" all that glass. Or at least, say,
some "tone control" cables. (Since I use the SONY SCD777ES as my sole source, digital tone
controls are out.) But nothing will "fix" the openness of the house design (indeed I’ve already
taken out a wall, added by the last occupants to make the place "cozier"). And, slowly, my "other"
sense of proportion has settled into place. When I sit nearfield, most if not all of the glass effects
"go away." Using a pair of easily moved quarter-round tube traps to dampen the first reflections of
the speaker next to the glass wall helps, but mostly it’s just a matter of letting a different sense of
proportion take over. Satisfied that my "downsized" system can adequately resolve vocal detail to
let me begin to relax into this or that inflection, I’ve come, six months into "making a home," to
just let myself listen to music. And working in the garden helps.
So what was my last "fix," the last one
to actually make a difference worth
noting with my new sense of
proportion? It was adding the JPS AC
power cord to Equi=tech’s fully "tricked
out" ET1.5RQ-FM balanced power line
conditioner (see technical details at
www.equitech.com). This Equi=tech
unit is the only active power line tweak
beyond the PS Audio power regenerators that actually makes an
honestly noticeable difference in bass
articulation and soundstage reproduction. And even though I knew both how good the Equi=tech
stuff is and that JPS’ power cords have always made a difference in the past, I have to admit that
I was surprised all over again by what a difference a simple power cord change makes toward
"just relaxing" into the music (and if I keep repeating this business about "relaxing into the music,"
it’s because, once you get beyond a certain level of detail retrieval, it’s the single most important
factor in sound reproduction).
It was after I added that JPS cord and had my "See, these tweaks still do make a difference"
experience that I even considered dropping my name off the masthead of Positive Feedback and
leaving high end audio behind. I had achieved a sense of proportion that makes my life very full.
(If in the future I decide to "downsize" again, the component I’d build an even smaller system
around would be the Berning amp. I don’t know how much longer whatever’s left of the high end
will have folks around with the design talent, ears, and integrity of David Berning. What music
comes my way late at night in the future will do so by way of the interpretive art of his amp.) Did I
really "need" high end audio, with all its follies and foibles, any longer?
Since that time I have reconsidered, and have decided that I would like to continue exploring the
aesthetics of audio and music—but I will do so on my terms, and without losing that all-too-critical
sense of what’s really important in life. Positive Feedback may be the only place where it is
possible to seriously explore audio possibilities without becoming entangled in the flotsam and
jetsam of obsession; look for me here in the future, as I am moved to write from time to time.
BACK TO TOP
theaudioanalyst
the audio analyst
by Greg Weaver
Flirtations with the "Dark Side"
Okay, I admit it! Lately I have been flirting with, and have been somewhat smitten by, the "Dark
Side" of our hobby—the compact disc. With the arrival of my ModWright Perpetual Technology P3A, I no longer find it necessary to shut down the digital playback system after only an hour or so
and replenish my spent musical spirit with a vinyl fix. However, as a self-respecting, die-hard vinyl
advocate, it is my duty to remind you that a good analog front end still kicks the stuffing out of the
best digital rigs out there. I’m not trying to pick a fight here, but there really is no debate. When
done properly, the LP is musically superior to the CD.
I recently sold my Linn LP12 Valhalla and replaced it with an Oracle Delphi Mk III, complete with
numerous upgrades. The newer Mk V spring set improves considerably upon the original
suspension. The stock, felt-padded feet have given way to the heightened clarity and resolve
offered by a troika of McCormack aluminum cones. A hard Goldmund Relief Mat, quite similar to
the new Oracle Mk V hard mat, provides a more effective transfer of stylus-induced resonances
to the platter. Let me tell you, analog fans, this new rig quite handsomely bests the venerable
Linn. In the furor of wondering what this new table was really capable of, I decided it was time for
a new cartridge.
Entering New Territory: The ClearAudio Virtuoso Mk II Moving Magnet Cartridge
Having for some time lusted after a number of megabuck carts like the van den Hul Frog or the
ClearAudio Insider, but not having deep enough
pockets, I thought it might be appropriate to try a
more affordable unit from one of those
manufacturers. As chance would have it, a brief but
informative meeting with Robert Suchy of ClearAudio
at CES 2001 put an end to my quest. "Why not try
our new Virtuoso Mk II?" he asked. "It’s the best
moving magnet cartridge we make!" With that kind of
endorsement, why not, indeed?
The family of moving magnet cartridges from
ClearAudio includes the Alpha, the Beta ($350), the
Beta-S ($450) and culminates with the Virtuoso Mk II ($850). It is an unusual specimen to my way
of thinking as, like all of its lesser and greater siblings, it has a stylus profile of 4 by 40
micrometers. I’m used to the better-known and more pronounced elliptical shapes of the Shibata,
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theaudioanalyst
line-contact, fine-line, van den Hul, and hyper-elliptical designs. Most of those stylus shapes have
profiles of something like 3 or 4 by 65 to 80 micrometers. A little searching revealed that that
Clearaudio’s stylus shape dates back to a late-1960s Japanese design purchased by Peter
Suchy, Robert’s father, and still championed to this day.
The Virtuoso Mk II offers a fairly high output of 3.6 mV, and boasts a channel separation of
greater than 30dB and a channel-to-channel balance of less than .3dB! Since this is a mediumcompliance cartridge with both a vertical and horizontal compliance of 15 cu, it was a perfect
match for my low-mass Magnepan Unitrac I, a carbon fiber unipivot arm. Since the cartridge’s
compliance and the tonearm’s effective mass integrate to form their own resonant system, it is
very important to match the cartridge to its host arm quite closely. In this case, the combined
mass of my arm (7 grams) and the Virtuoso Mk II (10 grams) yielded a system resonance just
below 10 Hz, putting it nearly dead center in the target range of 8-12 Hz.
A couple of other things struck me as fairly unique about the Virtuoso Mk II. For one, its cantilever
is fashioned from aluminum. At this price point I would have expected the use of boron, which
most cartridge manufacturers accept as a more sonically neutral material. In addition, the
recommended tracking force is fairly heavy, suggested as from 2.0 to 2.5 grams. Heavy tracking
alone doesn’t bother me, especially since I have the use of a Wally Tractor Alignment Gauge.
The Wally Tractor is made specifically for the model of tonearm it is to be used with, and is quite
simply the most accurate and easy-to-use overhang gauge ever put on the market. Tracking at
too light a weight, especially with a misaligned cartridge, can do considerable harm to your
precious vinyl.
Setting VTA with the Virtuoso was a bit maddening at first. Most cartridges offer their best
performance when adjusted so that the cartridge body is more or less parallel to the record. This
alignment left me thinking I was still missing some of the Virtuoso Mk II’s performance. Only after
remembering that ClearAudio importer Joseph DePhillips had mentioned that the best angle for
this stylus profile is a few degrees above parallel was I able to dial it in for the best balance of
tonality, space, and dynamics. The Virtuoso seemed even more particular about VTA adjustment
than any of the other carts I had on hand. A quick email to Michael Fremer verified that he, too,
had found ClearAudio carts to be a tad more VTA-sensitive than many other brands.
Moving Magnet Magic
theaudioanalyst
Once mounted and
aligned properly, the
Virtuoso Mk II was
off and running.
What a
thoroughbred! Right
out of the starting
gate it was fast,
clean, detailed,
smooth, and
superbly balanced. I
have yet to hear
another cart in my
system with the
octave-to-octave
balance of the
Virtuoso. The
seamlessness of
timbre is completely unlike anything I’ve heard from moving coils. This complete tonal
cohesiveness had a magically seductive effect, similar to that felt on first hearing a pair of
speakers in which the drivers have been seamlessly integrated. There is almost liquidity to the
sound. There are no boundaries, no defined bass, midbass, midrange, or treble. They ebb and
flow seamlessly into each other. There was no excessive bloat in the bass or mid bass, no
overemphasis in the midrange, and no stridency in the upper reaches. There were no recesses in
the lower treble to emphasize presence and no rolloff in the upper treble to camouflage glare and
stridency.
When compared head-to-head with the four moving coil designs I had on hand, the Virtuoso Mk II
outshone them all in categories where the MC designs normally have a distinct performance
edge: low-level detail, microdynamics, and resolution. Sounds buried way down in the noise floor
were retrieved and served up clean, crisp, and clear. The muted timekeeping foot tapping of
drummer Chris Layton on the superb Absolute Analog reissue of Couldn't Stand The Weather
(Epic 25940) has never been better resolved. In the title track, the band repeatedly stops and
restarts several times before cutting loose into the body of the tune. During these pauses,
Layton’s ever-so-low-key foot tapping is so readily apparent and clearly outlined in space that you
can almost tell what brand of shoes he is wearing.
Microdynamic shadings, like those perceived when the explosive breath created forming words
beginning with "P" assault the microphone, literally explode into and briefly pressurize the entire
listening room. Listen to the lyrics found just under a minute into "Black & White" from Sarah
McLachlin’s Surfacing (Arista/Classic Records RTH-18970) to get a feel for this. The Virtuoso’s
ability to resolve and articulate the subtlest of queues and nuances is simply the best I’ve heard
in my system, by far. In these respects, this cart’s performance reminds me of the sense of ease
and effortlessness so clearly recreated by a Delphi/Graham/Frog combination in the Joseph
Audio room at the Chicago Stereophile Show.
Low bass was a special treat. From the lowest harmonics of the piano to bass guitar runs to bass
drum strikes, the Virtuoso Mk II holds on and goes deep. Pitch definition is exceptional, even as it
shows its ability to plumb the deepest of depths and offer serious weight. An excellent example
can be heard following John Entwhistle’s bass work on the MCA Heavy Vinyl reissue of Who’s
Next (MCA 11164). With the cuts "White Lightning and Wine" and "Sing Child" from the Nautilus
release of Heart (NR3), I was treated to the "flavor" of individual drum skin tones. If you’ve ever
theaudioanalyst
had the chance to sit close to a live drum kit when it was being worked over by someone who
both knows what they are doing and tunes their kit before doing it, you know just what I mean.
Whether playing organ symphonies or classic rock anthems, blues classics or jazz masterpieces,
bass definition was accurate, clear and clean.
The demands exacted by female vocals and piano works tend to expose the most strategicallyconcealed weaknesses in any cartridge, but with both, the Virtuoso Mk II continued its A+
performance. It never lets you forget that the piano is a percussion instrument. The gentle
musings of Ivan Morevec, the idiosyncratic thundering of Glenn Gould, or the virtuosity of
Vladimir Horowitz were all accomplished on a heightened emotive level, rendering all the bloom
and power of this enormously versatile instrument. The piano nearly comes to life on tracks like
the Byron Janis reading of the Liszt Todtentanz on the Classic Records reissue (RCA LSC 2541).
Piano keys, whether vigorously struck with explosive attack or ever so lightly brushed into a
whisper, were presented with all the emotion and sensuality with which they were conceived. As
for female vocals, with Patricia Barber or Julie London, Sarah McLachlin or Ricki Lee Jones, Tori
Amos or Ann Wilson, the Virtuoso bore the artist’s unique voice in all her individuality. It has an
uncanny ability to render the detail behind the nuance. It almost permits you to "see" subtle
breaths taken, lips moistened, or tongues pressed against teeth for enunciation; every inflection
was seemingly unearthed.
The male voice is presented wonderfully as well. Listen to cuts like "Daylight Again" from the
1977 release by Crosby, Stills & Nash (Atlantic SD 19104). The three distinct voices were
reproduced with chilling body and power, adding that much more to their superb harmonies. The
robust, charismatic voice of Stevie Ray Vaughan, all too often overlooked in favor of his obvious
guitar mastery, is astonishingly emotive on cuts like "Tin Pan Alley" and "The Things (That) I
Used To Do," again from the Absolute Analog Couldn't Stand The Weather.
The delicious bronzy flavor of well-recorded cymbals was recreated without getting spitty or
"white." Delicate cymbal brushings, triangle strikes, and upper-register harmonics from strings
and brass were detailed, clear, and solid without getting aggressive, unless that was an attribute
of the recording. This ability to delicately unravel inner detail in the upper frequency limits is easily
appreciated on the 1977 Steely Dan masterwork Aja (MFSL 1-033). It also contributed
significantly to the cart’s ability to accurately render images in both size and location, as well as to
portray realistic space. Returning to the 1977 release Crosby, Stills & Nash, the foreground of the
soundstage in the cut "Fair Game" is sprinkled with a myriad of percussion instruments like
maracas. These instruments each take a definite place within the soundstage, and never budge.
With the 1972 Solti/Chicago Symphony Orchestra performing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9
(MFSL 2-516), the Virtuoso Mk II offered the most articulate and deepest sense of layering I’ve
ever experienced from this record. It has an uncanny ability to present a realistic sense of the
liveness of the room as vocals and instruments decay. In the opening of Rush's "Witch Hunt"
from Moving Pictures (Mercury/PolyGram SMR 1-4013), numerous subtle sounds populate the
soundstage. Nothing here was misplaced, nothing wandered, and nothing was slighted. The
opening tom roll was breathtaking, revealing not only left-to-right positioning but front-to-back
queues as well. In this respect, the Virtuoso Mk II is second to none in my experience.
Whether recreating torturously complex passages like the opening from Prokofiev's Scythian
Suite (Mercury SR 90006), or resolving delicacies like massed strings, it was wonderfully
competent at unraveling dense and often overwhelming layers of material. It had little trouble
placing those layers in near vise-like precision throughout the soundstage, and was hard pressed
to offer even the slightest hint of congestion or indistinctness. Only occasionally, under extreme
dynamic taxation, did the upper registers suggest just the slightest hint of hardness and loss of
theaudioanalyst
image-location lock. This is a common stumbling block for many fine cartridges. This, along with
a slight but perceptible reduction of large-scale (macro) dynamics, were the only shortcomings I
was able to unearth in my time with the Virtuoso Mk II.
The ClearAudio Virtuoso Mk II is very neutral and extremely musical. It offers a degree of inner
detail and microdynamic shading I’ve only found previously from moving coil designs. It is both
engaging and truthful, not necessarily a forgone conclusion with a pricey cartridge. It is articulate
and resolute without being clinical or etched. It offers remarkable extension at both frequency
extremes and superb control over both. It is neither particularly forward nor recessed in its
presentation. Most importantly, it offers a mastery of tonal balance unlike anything I’ve ever
before experienced under $2500. In short, the ClearAudio Virtuoso Mk II is one of the finest
sounding cartridges I’ve had the pleasure to hear, regardless of design or price. Highly
recommended.
ClearAudio Virtuoso Mk II cartridge
Retail $850
Clearaudio Electronic GmH
Spardorfer Strasse 150
91054 Erlangen Germany
www.clearaudio.de
Musical Surroundings
5856 College Ave.
Oakland, CA 94618
www.musicalsurroundings.com
GREG WEAVER"S SYSTEM
LOUDSPEAKERS
Von Schweikert Research VR-4 Generation IIs/IIIs.
ELECTRONICS
Monolithic Sound PA-1 and PS-1, each powered with the HC-1 power supply. Source Component Electronics’
Harmonic Recovery System. Pass Labs Aleph 3 (mid/treble modules) and Hafler P1500 Trans-Nova (woofer
modules).
SOURCES
Oracle Delphi Mk III with upgrades and a Magnepan Unitrac 1 tone arm. Cartridges from ClearAudio, Denon, Linn,
Monster Cable, Ortophon, and Sumiko. Pioneer Elite PD-41 transport, Perpetual Technology P-1A/ModWright P3A combo with a Monolithic Sound P3 power supply.
CABLES
Harmonic Technology Magic Link One and Pro Silway Mk II interconnects, bi-wired with Magic Woofer and
Tweeter One loudspeaker cables, Cyber Link Platinum digital cable, and Magic Power and Pro AC-11 power
cords.
ACCESSORIES
AC power conditioning by Monster Cable and Quantum Products, Inc.
theaudioanalyst
BACK TO TOP
audiocomtreanor
The "mostly" Audiocom modification of the SCD-777ES
by Jim Treanor
Disclaimer
I don’t envy professional reviewers, or anyone who reviews more than one product of the same type. If the first
product reviewed is hailed as the entrance to sonic Nirvana and the second is deemed even better—especially when
the writer uses some of the same adjectives to characterize that second product—some readers may question the
reviewer’s credibility, perhaps even his or her sanity. I’m not a reviewer, much less a technical wizard, but having
played one on the Audio Asylum stage for what is now my second entry into the realm of SCD-777ES mods, I can
offer only this defense: it’s a matter of context. If you start out your driving career in a Yugo, then move on to a
Corolla, you’ve achieved something akin to paradise—until you get behind the wheel of an Accord. Then if someone
gives you a lucky lottery ticket for your birthday, and out of curiosity you head for a BMW showroom....
The Audiocom Mod
The Audiocom "mod" (www.audiocom-uk.com) is a comprehensive parts upgrade to the Sony SCD-777ES that
involves no circuit modifications. Developed to reduce noise and enhance "quickness," the upgrade replaces audio
board and power supply capacitors with Black Gates, voltage regulators for the digital and analog supplies, the stock
OPA2064 op-amps with OPA 627s, and stock carbon film resistors with Vishay VSRJ bulk metal foil resistors.
Since the basic ($480) mod performed last spring by Richard Kern on my 777 incorporated Vishay bulk metal foil
resistors (albeit not the premium-grade VSRJs) and I had other system priorities contending for disposable income, I
opted to have Richard do the full Audiocom mod less the premium-grade Vishays. I have also, at Richard’s
suggestion, retained the Rel capacitors he installed as part of his original mod. The cost of the Audiocom mod was
$1256 for parts and $330 for Richard’s labor, for a total of $1586. Opting for the premium-grade Vishays would have
increased the cost approximately $900. As I’d come to expect from my earlier experience with his basic 777/SCD-1
upgrade, Richard’s workmanship and attention to detail were flawless.
Delivery and Installation Time
The mod kit arrived from the United Kingdom six weeks after I placed my online order to Audiocom. I delivered my
777 and the parts to Richard on a Wednesday morning and picked up the modded and checked-out unit two
mornings later, sans one of the Audiocom regulators. Audiocom should have shipped a plus-7-volt regulator, but sent
a minus-7-volt part instead. I decided to pick up the 777 and begin burning it in with one of the original Sony
regulators reinstalled pending arrival of the correct part. Richard e-mailed Audiocom and received the appropriate
regulator a week and a half later.
Richard Kern’s Basic SCD-777ES Parts Upgrade
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Since the baseline for this review is the Audiocom mod’s
performance relative to the basic Kern upgrade performed
on my 777 in March 2001, it’s appropriate to summarize
here both the composition of that upgrade and the
substance of a detailed review I posted online in April 2001.
The basic Kern upgrade replaces stock components on the
777’s audio and power supply boards with higher-grade
Vishay resistors and Black Gate and Rel capacitors. Like
the Audiocom mod, it involves no circuit modifications.
With the Kern mod installed, the 777’s soundstage breadth
and width expanded from previous best-case wall-to-wall to
through-the-side-walls in some instances, and images
remained rock solid all the way to the rear corners, which
had sounded somewhat diffuse pre-upgrade. More air was
evident between instruments, voices, and vocal choirs.
This, in combination with a more timbrally accurate vocal
and instrumental presentation, effected a more realistic illusion of three-dimensionality all across the soundstage.
Bass was heftier, quicker, and more corporeal, with better attack and decay than pre-upgrade, providing an
authoritative foundation for everything from symphonic music to jazz and massed choral to solo vocal performances.
Midrange became more detailed and precise, but neither euphonically warm nor ice cold. The top end was likewise
more detailed, but not zingy or tizzy. These effects were discernible whether playing SACDs or Red Book CDs, and
represented a significant improvement in performance over that rendered by the stock SCD-777ES.
System Changes Since My Review of the Basic Kern Mod
Since my review of the basic Kern mod, my system has changed in the following ways: (1) My original four-corner
ASC Tube Trap array has been supplemented by Super, Studio, and Tube Traps, so that traps now occupy eighteen
positions in my listening room, providing better absorption and diffusion control, (2) A PS Audio Ultimate Outlet
(connected to the wall via a PS Audio Mini Lab Cable) now cleans the AC to my captive-cord hybrid amp; and (3)
Kimber Select KS-1021 interconnects have replaced Kimber Silver Streak interconnects. Parenthetically, the
improvements wrought in overall system performance by these changes have enhanced my respect for the efficacy
of the basic Kern mod in both SACD and Red Book modes. (click here to read more about Jim's system)
Evaluating the Audiocom Mod
All "pre-Audiocom-mod" reference listening was done with the aforementioned system changes in place and, where
appropriate, burned in. The SACDs and CDs used to evaluate before-and-after-mod performance are listed below,
with a legend indicating the mastering provenance of each where that is determinable.
Advised to burn in the mod for 400 hours before
commencing serious listening, I cheated and sneaked
in several aural peeks along the way. Between 95 and
120 hours, output (not unexpectedly) turned brash,
congested, and brittle, then smoothed out and
seemed to improve progressively. But the real "hit"
occurred at about 320 hours, when music suddenly
burst out of its electronic cocoon in an explosion of
color, dynamics, and spaciousness that all but
mandated a diaper. The soundstage says it all. While
it’s almost obligatory to salivate over overall width and
depth (and, yes, that’s impressive), what really
matters is just how the area within the soundstage’s
apparent boundaries is populated. Or isn’t. Does
discernible space separate instruments and/or
performers? Is that space "allocatable" to the cues
that convey vocal and instrumental timbre, size,
composition, palpability, dynamics, attack and decay,
venue acoustics, and the subtleties of inner voicing?
audiocomtreanor
Or is it cluttered by noise that we may not "hear" until we perceive its absence, but that muddies both the sonic and
virtual visual presentation?
The Audiocom mod supplies breathing space aplenty. The result is, on the one hand, more stable and palpable
imaging and, on the other, greater instrumental and vocal "presence," which is manifested in more natural timbre,
lightning-quick attack, more pronounced (and detailed) decay, more perceptible ensemble layering and composition,
more discernible nuance (the stuff of which art is made), and air, air, and more air. You hear everything that is
plucked, struck, sung, blown, tapped, brushed—even grunted, dropped, or kicked over—with startling clarity, body,
air, impact, cohesiveness, liquidity, plangency, bloom,
rhythmic flow, and authority, or, as appropriate,
delicacy. And not just on SACD or the better CDs
(e.g., the Reference Ports of Call and Copland 100 or
the Naxos Elgar/Payne Symphony #3). The marvelous
acoustic of the Concertgebouw is nearly there in
Ashkenazy’s passionate reading of Rachmaninoff’s
Symphonic Dances (why, he laments, couldn’t this
1983 DDD have been mastered in analog?), which
leaps out with rhythmic drive and dynamic impact in a
valiant effort to thumb its nose at the Nyquist theorem.
The spatial illusion conveyed by the best SACDs is
more than holographic, partly because of the extent
and palapability of the soundstage. I noted in my
review of the basic Kern mod that the front-to-rear
imaging at the soundstage’s outer boundaries (which
in some cases transcended the side walls) was
precisely defined. The Audiocom mod both extends those boundaries and renders them more fluid and corporeal.
With the best CDs, the illusion is indeed holographic (more so than with the basic Kern mod), if not quite as fluid as
what SACDs project.
The Audiocom mod also calls into question the sometimes-voiced criticism that SACD is soft and undynamic. Spin
the Latin American Symphonette or Blues in Orbit, for example, and you’ll find no holding back, no unduly-rounded
edges (leading or trailing), no truncated dynamics, no lumpy bass, no blunted top end. Only those whose listening
palette craves super-crispness may walk away undernourished.
The Audiocom mod is heartily recommended to SCD-1 and SCD-777ES owners who don’t mind voiding their
warranty. This mod unleashes the power and reveals the musical soul of great—and even not-so-great—recordings.
Evaluation Program Material
SACD (Master: A=analog; D=DSD; S=Soundstream PCM)
Virgil Thomson, The River/The Plow That Broke the Plains (Vanguard VSD 501) A
The Film Music of Jerry Goldsmith (Telarc SACD-60433) D
Nancy Bryan, Neon Angel (Analogue Productions APO 2013 SA) A
Duke Ellington, Blues in Orbit (Mobile Fidelity UDCD 757) A
Carl Orff, Carmina Burana (Sony SS 6163) A
Modest Mussorgsky, Pictures at an Exhibition (Telarc SACD-) S
Gottschalk/Gould, Night in the Tropics/Latin-American Symphonette (Vanguard VSD 500) A
Dave Brubeck, Time Out (Columbia/Legacy 65122) A
Pyotr Ilyitch Tchaikovsky, 1812 Overture (Telarc SACD-60541) D
Ludwig van Beethoven, String Quartets, vol.7 (ASV CD DCA 9117) D
Musica Sacra (Opus 3 CD 19516) A
CD (Master: A=Analog; A20=Analog remastered at 20-bit; A2496=Analog remastered at 24/96; P=16-bit PCM;
P176=Mastered at 176.4kHz sample rate; H=HDCD; H24=24-bit-mastered HDCD)
Manuel de Falla, El Sombrero de tres picos (Decca 289 466 991-2 DM) A2496
Ports of Call (Reference RR-80CD) H24
audiocomtreanor
James Horner, Sneakers (Columbia CD53146) P
Edward Elgar/Anthony Payne, Symphony No. 3 (Naxos 8.554719) P176
Howard Hanson, Suite from "Merry Mount" (Delos DE 3105) P
Sergei Rachmaninoff, Isle of the Dead/Symphonic Dances (London 410 124-2) P
Aaron Copland, Copland 100 (Reference RR-93CD) H
Dave Brubeck, Time Signatures, vol. 2 (Columbia/Legacy C4K 52945) A20
Irving Fine, Symphony 1962 (Phoenix PHCD 106) A
Turtle Creek Chorale, Testament (Reference RR-49CD) H
Malcolm Arnold, Arnold Overtures (Reference RR-48CD) P
Getz/Gilberto (Verve Master Edition 314 521 414-2) A20
Maurice Ravel, Bolero (Telarc CD-80171) S
BACK TO TOP
tweaks
Tweaking that works, well usually!
by Dave Clark
Over the years I have done a lot of system tweaking. Why, you ask? Well, I used to have
both a fair amount of free time and limited resources for component upgrades (now I have
the money but no time—go figure), and tweaking became the most effective means of
alleviating my boredom with the status quo. I found myself trying any tweak or accessory I
could afford or build on the cheap, in an attempt to maximize our system's performance and
occupy my time. The results have varied, from a waste of time to improvements that negated
the need for major component upgrade. What I discuss here are the ones that, for us at
least, make a real difference in the quality of our system's musical reproduction and are
relatively inexpensive. Have fun! My only warning is that some may involve violating a
product's warranty or place you in a position of being electrocuted. We assume no
responsibility for your actions, so proceed at your own risk.
●
Dedicated AC line. A dedicated line of at least 20 amps is probably the most cost
effective and greatest improvement you can make to your system. Expect results
that far exceed those of any line conditioner or power cord. Improvements will be
realized in all areas of system's reproduction of the musical signal, pretty much
eliminating hash and grain while turbo-charging your components. Have an
electrician do the work. I ran a 20 and a 10 amp circuit to the system myself, only
because I had the resources to do so. The 20 amp circuit feed the amplifiers and the
10 amp circuit feeds sources. I used premium Eagle plugs and 10 gauge Romex
wiring, but have recently upgraded the sockets to those from Jena Labs (cryoe'd
Hubbles). The two circuits are grounded to a common earth ground consisting of a
10-foot rod sunk into the soil. Total cost: less than $200.
●
Floating AC grounds on all components except the preamplifier. This tends to make
the sound subtly cleaner by eliminating the addition of AC noise into the system.
Since all components share the same ground, any noise generated by one
component will be shared by all the other components in your system. This is
especially so in areas where electrical codes allow the AC ground and neutral to be
joined at the box. Use cheater plugs, or for those who want to go the distance, snip
the ground prong on any three-prong plug or disconnect the ground wire inside the
plug. Definitely a do-at-your-own-risk tweak, as you place yourself in a position of
possible electrocution, not to mention the violation of manufacturers' warrantees.
Cost: free, assuming nothing blows up and you do not end up in the hospital.
●
Shun Mook grounding scheme for your components (24-gauge solid copper wire).
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tweaks
While floating the AC grounds reduces contamination through isolating your
components electrically, they are still linked together through the signal ground in
your interconnects. We used an approach championed by the folks at Shun Mook
and Original Cable Jacket, which is to only ground the preamplifier to a copper rod
sunk into the earth. In this case, all compnents are "floating their grounds"–that is,
none of your components are grounded via their third prong to the wall AC ground
socket, including the preamp as described above. To do this involves several
options. The copper rod can be hollow or solid (they suggest hollow, as do I), and the
wire used to connect the preamplifier to the rod (try solid copper wire either 18, 22 or
24 gauge measuring exactly 7' 9" in length—seriously!). Here's what you do.
Purchase an eight-foot copper grounding rod or hollow copper pipe (used for
plumbing purposes) along with a grounding clamp. Sink the rod seven feet into the
ground near a window or wall outside your listening room. Using either sprinkler wire,
battery jumper cable, or 8-gauge stranded cable, attach one stripped end to the
grounding clamp and run the rest into the house by whatever means you can live
with. I used the sprinkler wire (constructed of eight 22-gauge insulated solid copper
wires that open up into a nice "flower" arrangement) through a small hole in the wall
adjacent to our system. Using 22-gauge solid copper wire with alligator clips at each
end, connect your components or whatever to the stripped ends of this grounding
cable. These cables are to be attached to any spot on the cabinet or case where the
alligator clip can grab hold. Start with the preamp first, take a listen. Add other
components, one at a time, as need be. Play around here. I have found that some
components need this and others do not. Things can be better grounding some and
not others. Results are a reduction in noise and potentially troublesome ground
loops. By the way, if you try mixing this idea with the one above, you may create
more problems than you solve—like serious ground loops and other problems. Cost:
less than $20.
●
Specialized after-market AC power cords for all components. All cords sound
different, and one is not necessarily better than another. Each cord will force a
component to react to its electrical characteristics, resulting in a behavior change in
the component. This change is heard as an alteration of the signal being reproduced,
so you need to find a cord that causes your components to behave in a manner that
is sympathetic to your tastes in musical reproduction. A higher-priced AC cord will
not necessarily guarantee superior performance over one costing substantially
less—there are now so many options for the cnsumer from cords priced well under a
$100 to those well over several thousand . But design, materials, and especially
component interactions are more important than price and manufacturer's hype. In
examining one high-priced cord, I was shocked to discover that it was nothing more
than regular stranded copper wire in a fancy jacket. Holy Belden! Buyer
beware—you could do this for under $50! Cost: How much you got? Hey, get some
cool wire at a surplus store—or even try some Romex—and build your own! You’ll be
surprised how good (and well, sometimes not so good) these homebrewed cords
sound compared to the muy-expensivos being sold out there in "audio land."
●
On the other hand, if you can find them, try the Highwire Audio AC Wraps.
Developed by Don Palmer of Highwire Cables to suppress RFI while at the same
time tuning stock captive power cords. This will elevate their performance to close to
that of a specialty AC cord. The Power Wrap needs to be placed at the center of the
stock AC cord and moved no further than 3/4" either way to tune the cord. Don has
tweaks
identified several fundamental ringing modes that can cause an AC cord to resonate
due to current flow. The Power Wrap is designed to mitigate this to a substantial
degree. Its placement will determine which main modes and harmonic modes are
suppressed. The modes and frequencies that are suppressed will determine the
sonic signature of the AC cord. Three sizes are available to fit almost any cord, even
those of a specialty nature. I have tried these with mixed results, as have other
audioMUSINGS reviewers. System and component dependent! They really work well
on the Harmonic Technology AC-11 cords, turning a sow’s ear into a silk purse.
Cost: $50.
●
Or try the Original Cable Jackets on AC cords. Helps to reduce RFI and EMI in
cables. Used primarily on the AC cords for digital gear, though results are dependent
on the type of after-market AC cords you are using. They also work on signal cables,
especially ground wires from turntables. But here is the clincher—try them on the
phone cords that connect the phone line to your phone or whatever! Or try them on
the AC cord from the refrigerator—both recommended by, yes again, the Shun Mook
guys. Subtle reductions in noise with an improvement in detail, clarity, and those
desirable musical cues that make everything sound more real. I pretty much hear
what is claimed from the manufacturer and other reviewers. They look pretty too!
Cost: under a $100 each.
●
Permatex Dielectric Tune-up Grease for all AC connections, including fuse contacts.
Causes a smoothing of the sound, with less noise and grain or grit. Silences are
more silent, with the highs becoming more articulate and delicate. Why it works, you
take a guess. I have heard that perhaps the grease reduces arcing between
contacts, which can be heard as noise, masking details and placing the music on
edge—though this was claimed by another to be a bunch of hooey. So you got me.
But it is easy to misinterpret added noise as added detail, so be open to a smoothing
or "relaxing" of the sonic tapestry. Much less expensive than other tweaks, $1.99
versus $50 for a similar product from A.R.T., so this is about as cheap as it gets!
Available at most automotive parts supply houses for under $5. Easliy removed from
the blades on plugs, but once inside a wall socket—well, better leave well enough
alone!
●
Correct or reverse AC polarity on all components, as determined by either multimeter measurements or through listening. Subtle but telltale improvements in detail
and musical cues, perceived as an increase in soundstage and localization
information. Music is more real. Depending on the component, you may also notice
less grain and grit as a result of a lowered noise floor. Cost: free. Read The Wood
Effect by Clark Johnsen for a thorough explanation, or back issues of Positive
Feedback. Cost: free.
●
Routing of all signal and electrical connections to reduce potential interactions.
Common sense results in avoiding any potential interference from either high or lowlevel signals. At least keep interconnects and speaker cables away from each other
and from AC cables. If they need to cross each other, then do so at 90 degrees. If
they are to run parallel to each other than space at least 6 inches apart. Quieter and
neater too! Cost: free.
tweaks
●
Suspension of signal wire with wood supports, or anything for the matter. My father
made these from Australian redwood, and they are very similar in appearance to
those being used by the man with the golden hair. Tends to be a little too tweaky for
most, and I am not so sure what I hear, but what the hey, they're cheap and easy to
build, and do the job of keeping the cables off the floor and apart from one another.
Actually, I do hear a subtle—and I mean subtle—improvement centering on image
specificity and again the musical cues leading to reality. Supposed to keep the cable
away from static charges in the carpet and microphonic disturbances from vibrations
in the floor. Cost: depends, build them for a few bucks, or buy some other product.
The "Suspenders" from AudioNut are a real value!
●
Anti-Static foam woven in between wiring throughout a passive preamplifier (packed
tightly), underside of lid on DAC and at key points throughout the transport
(especially around the drawer mechanism). Improves upon the solidity and
palpability of images, with an overall reduction of noise. May act as a shield and a
means of damping resonances, which, depending on whose camp you belong to,
could be the opposite of what we want to accomplish, a la Michael Green. Cost: $20.
●
Blu-Tac or like compound on underside transport drawer. This stuff is used to anchor
items around the house so that, in the event of an earthquake, the family treasures
are saved. Available at most hardware stores, at least in Southern California. Adds
silence to the transport, with a greater sense of stability and blacker blacks. Also, the
drawer now closes with a whump, not a clump. Also try it on circuit boards, on chips
and what not in your components. Especially beneficial on the clock in your DAC or
CD player. Cost: $4.
●
CD Stoplight and CD Blacklight from AudioPrism—thopugh there are so many
"preferred" colors out there right now, try one of each. CD Stoplight, the fabled green
pen, is used on the inside and outside edges, and the raised rim at the center of
CDs. An easy and effective way to enhance the performance of the digital medium.
Increases detail and musical cues due to less laser scatter, as shown by actual tests
that imply a reduction of sampling errors. Are other "colored" pens just as effective?
Maybe so, let us know what you come across. I do question the use of the color
green. AudioPrism states that green absorbs the stray laser light because of the
relationship of the two colors. Okay, but if we are trying to absorb or eliminate stray
light, why not use a black pen? Am I missing something here? Black absorbs all
light—which is the pen color used by Audient and Audio Desk Systeme. Cost:
depends on what you buy. CD Stoplight is $15 or a generic version for $5.
●
Tape degausser for CD treatment. Along the lines of the Bedini Clarifier, but at $30,
a substantial saving for something with several times the effect. Unlike the Bedini
unit, the degausser's effect lasts through the entire disc, due to the fact that the field
it generates is ten times that of the Bedini. The effect of degaussing on the disc is
easily demonstrated for those with an open mind and keen ears. Yes, it is subtle, and
may be of little consequence in the long run, but an improvement is there to hear. A
cleaner, more detailed presentation, with less tizz in the highs and an enhanced
soundstage. I must admit to this being somewhat disc-dependent, and it's harder to
discern after listening to CDs for an hour or so. There are times that I hear no effect
whatsoever. So, I don't use this on all discs, or all listening sessions, but only when I
tweaks
choose to get the whole picture. Why not use it all the time? I don't know, really,
maybe it's because I am not into rituals, or am too lazy to stand and wave the
degausser around a disc for several seconds. Most of the time it does make a
positive difference, so give it a try. And try it on cables, too! Same method as above,
but hold it about 3 inches away, moving at a steady but not slow speed down the
length of your cables. Works on interconnects, speaker, and AC cables. Seems to
remove a hint of grain and, get this, may even break in the cables faster! Cost: $3
●
Placing components on some form of "foot" to decouple it from the shelf or surface it
is sitting on. Okay, there are as many different feet, cones, or whatever as there are
snowflakes—each being unique and special. Which one will work for what
component only you can decide. They all do something, but whether you will like it or
can even hear it to appreciate it, only you can decide. With so many variables
coming into play, what works here may not work there. I have used to very good
effect the following: Black Diamond Racing #3 and #4 cones, DH Cones (all sizes),
Blue Circle Cones, Vibrapods, Aurios MIBs, Daruma 3II bearings, and just pieces of
different hard woods (oak, maple, mahogany, etc.). The problem is each will impart
its own "sonic signature" and as such it becomes more of an issue of "tuning" the
system. Included here are other "isolation" devices like Townshend Sinks which do
not have as much of a signature, but are just as, if not more so, effective in
"isolating" a component from whatever. Costs run from a few bucks to well into the
hundreds. Best bet is to either borrow or buy a few of each and play around.
BACK TO TOP
single
A direct coupled, active loaded, parallel feed output SE 45
amplifier
Design by John Tucker, with contributions by Mike LaFevre, John Camille, and Kim Jenkins.
(reprinted from Valve, October 1997)
Here’s a truly delightful amp circuit for owners of truly efficient speakers (see the schematic
shown below).
The protoype of this circuit, built at the first amplifier builder’s class after VSAC ‘97, left all in the
room at it’s debut rather smitten, particularly John Tucker, who currently uses this circuit as his
front line amp on his Exemplars.
The midrange is balanced, smooth, and very real. Bass articulation is phenominal, you would
never expect this sound from a puny 45. Top end? How ‘bout -1dB at 46kHz, and black as can
be?
Downside? Well, it’s only 1.6 watts, so you better have some pretty efficient speakers (although
Kim Jenkins seems happy with this setup on Whamos).
And it’s not a forgiving circuit, if your front end sucks, you’ll know it. This amp reveals a great deal
of information.
Also, doing it right means it isn’t a super cheap project. For best performance you’ll want to use
nickel core parallel feed output transformers, and proper plate loading chokes. The choice of
manufacturers for these items is pretty narrow (said with a big grin). The name of this amp gives
about 90% of the circuit’s description. Note the use of an active load on the driver stage. This
load is quite similar to the one used in the Afterglow circuit, and in concert with the parallel feed
output arrangement, accounts for the amp’s superior speed and bass response.
You might try this load, with the proper adjustments as outlined in the note on the next page, as a
load for your other projects. Try it on the first stage of the 5963 output stage in George Wright’s
line amp, or on top of the mu follower in the S.E.X. amp (put it in in place of the 20K resistor).
The 45 is running at a classic operating point, 250V plate-to-filament, with -50V grid bias, yielding
a 34mA current draw. Note that these voltages are translated up by the plate voltage of the direct
coupled driver stage, so actual measured voltage on the plate of the 45 is more like 400V above
ground. Man, I get all tingly just writing about this amp.
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/single.htm (1 of 4) [8/25/2002 2:50:34 PM]
single
Better get started on my own copy!
Doc B.
Direct coupled parallel feed output SE 45 amplifier and power supply - one channel
shown.
single
Direct coupled parallel feed output SE 45 amplifier parts list (for two monoblocks).
Designator
Description
Value
Tol. Pwr. Vlt. Qty
C1,C2
Electrolytic Capacitor (Radial)
100 mfd
10%
450V
4
C3
Metallized Polyester Capacitor
1 mfd
10%
630V
2
C4
Metallized Polyester Capacitor
1 mfd
10%
250V
2
C5
Electrolytic Capacitor (Radial)
220 mfd
10%
200V
2
C6
Poly or Oil
10 mfd
10%
400V
2
D1,D2
Fast Recovery/Soft Start Diode
1N4948
1000PIV
4
D3
Diode
1N4007
1000PIV
2
L1
Filter choke
10H 270 ohms
.90mA
2
L2
Plate Load Choke (Brooklyn BCP 15)
40H 550 ohms
.50mA
2
Q1
Transistor, PNP
MJE350
2
Q2
Transistor, PNP
MPS4250
2
P1
Wirewound Potentiometer
50 ohms
R1
Metal Film Resistor
249K ohms
R2
Metal Film Resistor
R3
.5W
2
.1%
1/4W
2
681 ohms
.1%
1/4W
2
Metal Film Resistor
60.4 ohms
.1%
1/4W
2
R4
Metal Film Resistor
174 ohms
.1%
1/4W
2
R5
Metal Film Resistor
100K ohms
.1%
1/4W
2
R6
Metal Oxide Resistor
10K ohms
.5%
3W
2
R7
Metal Oxide Resistor
13K ohms
.5%
3W
2
R8
Wirewound Resistor
4.4K ohms
.5%
10W
2
single
R9,R10
Carbon Film Resistors (PS bleeders)
270K ohms
.2%
1/4W
2
F1
Fast Blow Fuse
1 amp
250V
2
S1
SPST switch
3A 250V
2
T1
700VCT, 50mADC 6.3V, .5A 2.5V, 1.5A
min.
2
T2
300H 5K primary (MagneQuest EXO- 45
or 46)
2
V1
Medium Mu twin triode 5965
2
V2
Low Mu Triode 45
2
Aside from the parafeed iron, most of the parts spec’d are fairly non-critical in terms of manufacture. I changed Smoothplate’s spec for the PS bleeders from metal film to carbon film, because
I’ve found they seem to hold up to big startup voltage swings a little better.
Note that the power trans specs are the bare minimum required. Bigger may work better.
Brooklyn BCP-15 plate loading chokes are available for $100 the pair, and Magnequest EXO-45
(5K:8) and EXO-46 (5K:16) parallel feed output transformers are available for $150 the pair with
M6 steel laminations, and $250 the pair with Permalloy (nickel) laminations. For a real treat, we
also have a couple of pairs of the Permalloy EXO-46s with pure silver secondaries and Teflon
coated ‘touched by God copper’ primaries, for $650 the pair. Call 360-697-1936 to order any of
these goodies.
BACK TO TOP
DIYAUDIO
DIY Audio: the Journey
by Kevin Haskins
I once walked from Millinocket, Maine to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. It was a long journey,
about 1100 miles. The distance is not as great by automobile, as the roads are straight and
the path well-documented. I chose to walk instead, preferring a simpler and kinder means of
translocation. Walking gets you much closer to the earth. You become a part of what you
travel through. The trip required months of planning and research, and more than a little of
my scant income. It took about three months of saving to pay for the trip and another three
to complete it.
I had no reason for leaving from Millinocket or arriving at Harpers Ferry. I had no friends,
relations, or business at either location. Rather, I had business at places in between. It
struck me as funny how many people understood the reason for my journey, and how many
did not. For those who understood, there was little that needed to be said. For those who
didn’t, likewise. Spiritual events have certain things in common, one of which is the
misunderstanding of those looking in from outside. Music is a spiritual event, a reflection of
our emotional and intellectual being and the expression of a journey. The recreation of it
through technology is an attempt to write down its legacy. Like other spiritual matters, this
road is fraught with peril, open to misunderstanding and ignorance.
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DIYAUDIO
As with my hike from Millinocket to Harpers Ferry, I often get strange questions about audio.
Why is the recorded event worth so much effort? Why is it more important than the
resources and time that could have been spent otherwise? I don’t have an easy answer.
Many people understand and many don’t. Like the trip from Maine to West Virginia, there are
many paths to take. Which one you choose says as much about you as the trip itself.
Choosing a way of reproducing the musical event is as much a choice as that between
walking and driving. Both will get you there, but you’re not likely to experience the same
thing. One will get you there faster, the other is much more fraught with difficulties and
challenges. When I had completed my walk through the mountains of the Northeast, I was
thirty-five pounds lighter, fit, lean, and intellectually sharp. After a long drive, I’m usually
ready for only a shower and sleep.
Building your own audio equipment is much like taking a long walk. You have to research
and invest much more planning and preparation than when "driving." It carries certain risk,
and many people won’t take the leap simply because of the barriers. Like walking, however,
building your own audio equipment has many rewards. It can get you closer to the land you
travel across. Like walking, DIY audio is laborious and sometimes trying. You don’t get
instant gratification. You often expend a lot of effort to make minimal progress. Nevertheless,
at other times your effort is rewarded with experiences that the asphalt-bound traveler will
never understand.
In the months ahead, I’d like to talk about the path between here and there, covering some
of the terrain in the world of DIY audio. There are lots of adventures to be sought. I’ll cover
the territory in a broad and sweeping pattern, giving you the opportunity to see a number of
projects that are available to those with the inclination. In the process we will build a
complete audio system—source, amplification, cables, and speakers—along with covering
some of the joys and frustrations of traveling this path. I’d like to cover items that are
applicable in a wide variety of audio systems. Some readers, I’m sure, will want to take the
entire walk, building a complete system, but many will just want to walk through particularly
interesting areas. Others may just want to observe.
Many of the decisions in audio are based on personal preference. The path I’ve chosen for
this journey is based upon many factors. One is the availability of certain components and
my familiarity with the kits that I build and sell. Since DIY audio is a business for me, the
specter of conflict of interest is going to arise. I make no claims of being objective. Just know
that the sales of projects I cover stand to benefit my pocketbook, and know that objectivity is
not a standard to which I cling. I will cover things that I don’t sell, mainly because this gives
me an excuse to buy them, and I will try to give honest opinions on the pros and cons of my
products and those of others. No piece of equipment is perfect. What works for me may not
for you, so take my opinions for what they are. If it matches your inclination, read along, and
join me on a walk from here to an unknown destination.
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/diyaudio.htm (2 of 2) [8/25/2002 2:50:34 PM]
BACK TO TOP
kismet
Kismet 3: the Last Generation
by Fabio Camorani
In the more than five years that have passed since the publication of my article on the Kismet amplifier
(Glass Audio 6/96, “Kismet, a simple 2A3 SE amplifier”) I have never stopped developing the design: I
tried to improve it, exploiting the experience gained from my top designs. The Kismet is now in its third
generation, probably the last and ultimate. But never say never....
I repeat the maxim published with the original article:
"Everything beautiful has a limit. Everything that goes beyond that limit is bound to be ruined.”
(From the Papyrus Insinger, ca 100 BC)
Philosophy
Before describing the Kismet 3, I would like to explain my audio philosophy. First I’d like to remind you
that the purpose of audio is MUSIC. If audio is merely an end in itself, I see no interest in it. If you don’t
like music, if you don’t like live concerts, if you are interested in technology only, please don’t read this
article.
An audio system is the way to listen to music at home, but too many people listen to their systems and
not to music. So, first of all, go to as many concerts as possible. Then buy LPs and CDs! This is not so
obvious. Many people (“audiophiles”), even with expensive systems, have only a few test discs. They
play a disc and listen to the system, trying to hear defects, then spend time searching for
improvements. This is very common behavior, and not only among rich audiophiles.
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/kismet.htm (1 of 6) [8/25/2002 2:50:36 PM]
kismet
There is a very important difference between music at concerts and music at home. The latter is a
reproduction, while the former is a production. From this point of view, any live music event is
unreproducible, unique, enclosed. On the contrary, at home, you can repeat any LP or CD all the times
you wish. A concert is imperfect because it is different every time you repeat it, while at home any
repetition is perfect because it is always the same. In a live concert there is perfection in a imperfect
event!
Reproduction is totally different from production. It’s impossible to reproduce live music at home
through an audio system, so we must look for aspects common to production and reproduction. In other
words, we must choose what we want from a reproduction. We can’t talk about reproducing reality, but
we can talk about “believableness” and how to reach it. I think that the only common aspect between
the two kinds of music is emotion. It is, in my opinion, the only thing that really matters. Emotion may be
totally different from person to person. Agreeing with my Audio Master, Mr. Kiyoaki Imai of Audio
Tekne, Inc. of Japan, I think that there are only two results: RIGHT sound or WRONG sound. When I
listen to music from an audio system, I can hear within a few seconds if the sound is right or wrong. I
can hear it because I go to concerts and because the right sound is instinctual. Women can easily
distinguish whether the sound is right or wrong because they are not conditioned by audio and by
audiophile standards. Women can’t explain why the sound is right or no rightt, but they hear the
difference.
Why do so many audiophiles have more than one system, or “need” a different system? And why do
many audiophiles stop the music and turn off the system after a short time? Because the sound is not
right. When we go to concerts and like the music, we never become tired of listening! Please visit my
web site (www.audionautes.com) for further info.
Kismet 2
I developed the second-generation Kismet in 1977. The mods were two: the working point of the 2A3
and the biasing. These were very important mods; in fact, they changed the result of a few orders! First,
I have to explain why I modified the working point of the 2A3. The original working point was 275V and
60mA, with a 3Kohm load. It’s a very good point, with low distortion and sufficient power, and I used it
for a long time without any problem. Using Chinese triodes after more than 5000 hours, distortion and
power remained the same. So, why did I make the change? I had to test a pair of NOS RCA 2A3s, and
could test them only in my Kismet amp, having no curve tracer at the time. I put them into the sockets
and turned the amp on, and after making a few measurements (the main purpose of my test was to
verify the matching), I listened to them. I was very surprised—with a warmup of only a few minutes, the
NOS RCA 2A3s were better than the Chinese ones. You may think that it’s obvious, RCAs are better
than Chinese triodes, of course, but there was something strange. After this test, I installed a pair of
brand new Chinese 2A3s and listened to them, and they, too, were better than the “old” pair! No
differences in distortion and power, square response, etc., and I found the same results using another
Kismet amp. This was the starting point, and the second-generation Kismet was born.
What happened? I spent time thinking about it, and talked to Kiyoaki Imai. He teaches: Do not exploit
the device at its maximum. If you use a tube at its maximum, it will be under stress, and you can hear
the difference, even if you can’t measure it in terms of distortion or output power. If you use use devices
far from the limits, not only will they survive longer, but their performance will be the same for their
entire lives. Starting from this, I researched a new working point, and after a lot of hours spent on the
curves of the 2A3 triode, found a very good one. The output power is lower, but the distortion is much
lower, while the anode power is only about 12.5W! The only “limit” is the high load, 5Kohm. To tell the
truth, I think this is a strong point, and not a limitation. 5Kohm is a top-quality load for the 2A3 triode,
but it’s difficult to design a very good 5Kohm transformer. Once this problem is solved, you will hear
music! With this working point, you will listen to more music, and for a longer time.
kismet
The other mod of the second-generation Kismet was the biasing. I chose fixed bias for this version. I
think that this typology has a more correct sound, and gives more balanced results with this design. It’s
a little more risky, because if the connection is wrong (positive biasing) the power tubes are gone. More
attention is needed.
Kismet 3
After more than two years with the second-generation Kismet, a problem had to be solved. The 5Kohm
output transformer of the Kismet 2 was a custom design of very good quality, it bevame unavailable.
Since I had to find a new device, I thought it was a good time to make a few improvements to the
design. As I mentioned at the beginning, the best way to reach music is through fully transformercoupled amplification, from source to speakers. When a limited budget won’t let me use transformers, I
use the SRPP circuit, so I changed the first stage of the Kismet to an SRPP circuit. It requires one more
double triode, but is worth the effort by far.
The double triode was chosen after the experience gained from my top-of-the-line, fully transformercoupled preamps. I chose the 5687. It’s not a very linear tube, so I do not think it is good for common
cathode circuits (RC or transformer-coupled), but it’s very good in SRPP, since SRPP is a very linear
circuit of its own. Of course, its low impedance is very important. The gain is really low, so be careful
and use high gain preamplifiers with high voltage output swing.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, I also designed a new power supply. It’s not really new, as I
changed the values of the capacitors, nothing more, but it mean everything! Have you ever tried to use
small capacitors? The smaller they are, the better, but using this approach with a power supply may
cause several problems. First is noise and poor energy, but with the new working point of the output
tube, the current is lower and a smaller capacitor is required. Starting from this, I tried to lower the
values of all anode power supply capacitors. With small values, the bass is faster and has more
harmonics—in short, there is more music. There is also less distortion, of the kind you can’t measure
but hear as unnatural, and a sound you can call RIGHT.
Schematic and suggestions
kismet
Only a few comments. First of all, don’t waste your money using very expensive passive components. I
made lots of tests, discovering that almost all very expensive parts are not balanced. They may have a
few very good characteristics, but not in every aspect of audio reproduction. This means they are not
good, in my opinion, and do not have the right sound. They do not have music. They are good for
business only.
I use carbon resistors—standard types 1 and 2W are good enough.
I use good quality, general-purpose, industrial electrolytic capacitors for the power supply and cathode
bypass. In inexpensive amps I don’t bypass electrolytic capacitors with polypropylene/polyester caps of
small value. It’s a critical technique with standard amps (such as the Kismet), and it’s not easy to use if
one wants balanced results. For the capacitor between the driver and the output stage, use ERO
MKT1813. For the right sound, don’t use silver, but pure copper cables only, litz if possible.
As I wrote in my previous article on the Kismet amp, the RCA 2A3 is the best 2A3 I know. Its price is
too high for the original purpose of the Kismet, but it’s up to you. A matched pair of Golden Dragon
2A3s is my suggestion. I prefer to ground the centre of the secondary winding supplying the heaters
because it’s a cheap solution, and the 2A3 usually is not noisy. (This is the same solution I used in the
Kismet 1.) If you have noise problems, use a pot.
kismet
Regarding the double triodes, the Sovtek 6922 is the choice for good gain (even if still a bit low), but
NOS 5687s made in the U.S.A. (Sylvania and Philips ECG are rather common, and cheap) are a very
good choice. If your preamp has high output voltage capability, please use 5687s. If you want to use
6922s, use 680 to 820ohm cathode resistors.
You probably know that SRPP may be critical about the filament’s power supply. If no precaution is
taken, the tube might be damaged after a few hours. That’s why I did not referred the filaments to
ground, but to A. The Russian 5U4G is a must. And the output transformer? I solved my problem using
a standard Tamura trans, model F-475; don’t worry about the maximum DC current of the primary
winding (you can set it for 45mA if you prefer). I love some Tamura transformers, and think they are
simply perfect for the right sound. No further comment is needed.
Kismet 3i
Then a question was born in my mind: What preamp is now perfect for this special power amp? This is
not only from the output voltage capability point of view, but above all for the right sound. The perfect
solution was to design an integrated amplifier, and the Kismet 3i was born. I changed the double triode,
and after a few tests decided to use the 12AV7 (or 5965). It is perfect for this purpose, in particular in
SRPP. The total gain is now enough for an integrated amplifier. Of course, you can also use it for the
Kismet 3 power amp version, and I suggest this solution, even if the gain will be high. I don’t like high
gain circuits, because they have problems, such as noise. I like “right gain” circuits, with the gain just
high enough for the purpose and not higher, but in this case, the 12AV7 (5965) can be used anyway.
The ALPS Black Beauty is a wonderful pot and it is perfect for this application. I made no more mods.
Conclusion
The Kismet 3 (and 3i) is the third and possibly the last generation of this amplifier. Everything about this
amp is designed for music, and not for impressing audiophiles. I hope you enjoy it.
Don’t waste your money on very expensive parts. Buy LPs and CDs! And go to many concerts.
Remember that you must listen to music, and not to your system. Good listening.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank Mr Kiyoaki Imai, my audio Master (www.audiotekne.com).
Fabio Camorani, 34, is a regular contributor to the Italian publications Costruire Hi-Fi and Fedeltà del
Suono. He received a degree in electronic engineering at the University of Bologna with a thesis on
OTL-OCL tube amplifiers. He works as Production Director for Air Machine fitness device, but has his
own audio business, AudioNautes (www.audionautes.com). He lives in Forlì, a small town on the east
coast of Italy.
Kismet 3 parts list
R1, R1’
150 kW
1W
carbon
R2, R2’
1.2 kW
1W
carbon
R3, R3’
1.2 kW
1W
carbon
kismet
R4, R4’
47 kW
1W
carbon
R5, R5’
1.8 kW
5W
carbon
R6
150 kW
2 W
carbon
R7
47 kW
2 W
carbon
R8
1.5 kW
2 W
carbon
C1, C1’
100 mF
16 V
electrolytic
C2, C2’
0.47 mF
250 V
MKT1813
C3, C3’
22 mF
350 V
electrolytic
C4
10 mF
350 V
electrolytic
C5
47 mF
350 V
electrolytic
C6
47 mF
100 V
electrolytic
C7
100 µF
100 V
electrolytic
C8
47 mF
100 V
electrolytic
C9
4700 µF
25 V
electrolytic
C10
100 µF/o:p>
25 V
electrolytic
C11
0.01 µF
400 V
MKP
C12
0.01 µF
400 V
MKP
L
10 H
200 mA
75 WDC
Z
45V zener combination
T out
Tamura F-475
T power secondary:
220-0-220V, 200mA
5V, 3A
40V 30mA
1.25-0-1.25V, 2.5A
1.25-0-1.25V, 2.5A
12.6V, 1A
N.B. The schematic shows only the left channel, but the power supply is common. The components of
the right channel are indicated with the sign ‘ (like R1’, R2’ etc.).
BACK TO TOP
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/marigovtsdots.htm
marigo audio
labs
VTS Tuning Dots
Two VTS Dots on the woofer
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/marigovtsdots.htm (1 of 6) [8/25/2002 2:50:37 PM]
DAVE CLARK'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Reimer Speaker Systems
Tetons.
ELECTRONICS
Clayton Audio M100
E.A.R. 834P phono
stage. Blue Circle
BC3000 preamp
SOURCES
EAD T1000 transport and
EVS Millenium II DAC
with Audient
Audit, and Taddeo Digital
Antidote Two. Linn Axiss
turntable with K9
cartridge and Basik Plus
arm.
CABLES
JPS Superconductor+
interconnects, digital, and
NC speaker cables.
Sahuaro Slipstream, Blue
Circle BC63, Clayton
Audio, and JPS
ACCESSORIES
Audio Magic Stealth AC
conditioner. Dedicated 20
and 15 amp ac circuits.
Shakti Stones and OnLines. EchoBuster room
Audio 2D and 3D
hard woods, etc.
As a long-term audiophile, I have gone through
many amps, preamps, cables, speakers, and whatnot in the quest to create
as musical a system as my pocketbook allows. If you are reading this, no
doubt you are in the same boat, though of course, what floats my boat may
not float yours. Recently I have been on the pursuit of "opening up" the
sound here. I have come to realize that while our system synergy is about
as good as it’s going to get, things could be a bit better. Call it audio
nervosa if you will, but I am always tinkering, much to Carol’s concern. After
a listening session I can frequently be heard saying "God, this sounds really
good! But what if I changed this, that, or the other?" Carol will then look at
me with that expression, "Can’t you just leave it alone?" or "What are you
going to do this time?!" That’s me, never satisfied. Where has this led me?
To Marigo’s VTS Dots, which have been one of the most effective and
dramatic steps I have taken to improve my system’s performance. I know
that I am coming across like a lunatic reviewer who has stumbled onto
another "tweak of the week," but I swear, these little dots really work.
There are two things to get out of the way. First, the VTS Dots should not
be considered a tweak, though no doubt many people will take them as
such. To quote Ron Hedrich, designer of the Dots, from a conversation we
had about this, "What is a tweak? Is a missing technology that can be
permanently incorporated into a system—one that yields across-the-board
sonic improvements, in all parameters, in all systems, regardless of
performance level—really a tweak?" Second, Marigo Audio Lab and its
Dots have been around for quite a while, so even if you consider them a
tweak, they aren’t a tweak of the week. Marigo was established by Hedrich
back in 1989 to design and manufacture custom audio components. He has
combined a love of music and over thirty years of experience as an
audiophile with a rigorous technical background in physics and aerospace
engineering to create a line of cables and resonance-control products. The
Dots may not look like much, but there is some serious effort and science
behind what they do.
What you get is a package of green, white, brown, or black dots that vary
from silver-dollar size to ones that will fit on the head of a pin. Different
colors and sizes reflect different applications. Bigger Dots go on bigger
things and smaller Dots go on smaller things. All are backed with an
adhesive to hold them in place. The first task was to treat the baskets on
the four woofers and two midrange drivers in each speaker. Carol and I
applied twenty Dots per woofer and ten per midrange, totaling 180 Dots
altogether! After marriage counseling half way through this ordeal, bass
clarity and definition were readily apparent. The Dots allow stored energy in
the basket to be released, resulting a more pistonic-like action by the
drivers. Less wasted energy translates into less distortion and better music.
Next up were the bags of 3mm Green VTS Tuning Dots ($69 for a set of
24) for the woofer and midrange speaker cones. These are applied just
inside the surrounds. The idea is to add one Dot at a time till the life is
literally removed from the music, then go one Dot back and you have the
magic number. It won’t take many Dots to get to that point, and the
instructions are very clear as to where to start. Results will vary from
speaker to speaker, or even driver to driver, so it cannot be readily
predicted what will work. I ended up with four on the external woofers, two
on the internal woofers, and one on each midrange driver. On the woofers
they were arranged at the 12, 3, 6, and 9 o’clock positions. When I installed
the JPS Kaptovator power cords on the Clayton amps, however, this was
too much of a good thing, so I am now using only two Dots, at 3 and 9
o’clock, on the external woofers. This offered a better musical balance. The
other drivers stayed the same. With four Dots, the bass was too lean and
analytical, and it lacked warmth. Going to two brought up the warmth factor
while retaining the tighter, more defined bottom end. The improvements
were not subtle. They brought great transparency without losing musicality.
You could say that this is because the Morel woofers have flaws, but I
would have to disagree. Each woofer retails for $108, and is as about as
well-engineered as a woofer can be. The Dots are again, through
constrained layered damping, removing resonances that are clouding the
ability of the drivers to make music. Could Morel make drivers to solve this
problem? No doubt yes, but at what cost? The Dots offer an easy solution,
and one that allows the user to "tune" the system.
On to the tweeter flanges, I applied two of the 3mm White VTS Dots ($69
for a set of 24) per driver. These helped to clean up the high end, allowing
greater image specificity and an airier top end. It was not as much of a
revelation as the Dots on the bass and midrange drivers, but still an
improvement. On the whole, in
fact, using the Dots on my
speakers wrought a greater
improvement than any cable or
component swap I’ve made in
recent years.
I also used the 3mm White Dots
on the digital chips and voltage
regulators inside the transport and
preamp, but at this point I was
hearing such a fantastic
transformation it was hard for me
to put my finger on what the
additional Dots were doing.
Cleaner and more articulate,
without doubt. Next I Dotted the
tops of all the electrolytic capacitors in the transport and preamp with the
2mm Green Dots, as well as using two 2mm White VTS Dots ($69 for a set
of 24) the Tungsram vacuum tubes in the preamp. Once again, a touch
more clarity, presence, and naturalness was evident in the music, but again
the improvements paled in comparison to those of the driver Dots. Consider
Dotting at this level to be the icing on the cake. Last was the application of
the 32mm Black VTS Tuning Dots ($79 for a set of 12) to the window
behind the listening seat. This is a very large and thick arched picture
widow measuring four feet by eight feet. The Dots were applied in groups of
three, at the bottom corners, at the point where the arch begins (half way
up both sides), and at the apex of the arch. Improvements in soundstage
dimensionality and image clarity were readily apparent, as well as the
removal of a slight harmonic smearing. This was not mind-blowing, but
certainly audible.
If you want to hear the best from your system, this is the last step. The VTS
Dots bring greater clarity, dynamics, inner detail, midrange bloom, bass
slam, and articulation, along with such an improved sense of openness that
they represent a major paradigm shift in resonance control. Their use does
not preclude the use of other resonance products (feet, cones, stands,
etc.). It’s just that using the more conventional products is merely
scratching the surface. You must treat the whole system, and in a more
precise manner.
There are several downsides to the Dots. One, most are small, and a pain
to apply. Two, you need to buy a variety of Dots to do a job properly, and
while they are not expensive individually, the price can add up quickly.
Three, it does take a lot of time to try them here and there, finding out how
many to use and where they work best. This is much easier when you have
assistance. And finally, you will find yourself having to explain why there are
Dots all over the place, but I can only say "Buy some now!" I did, and will
never go back. A tweak? Well, they can make such a major improvement in
a system that who cares what they are called? Dave Clark
I’ve complained about reviewing tweaks
before, so I won’t whine now, but when Dave Clark sent me Marigo’s VTS
tuning dots I thought for sure that he’d gone over the edge! (No, wait a
minute, the Prism tape was over the edge.) “I’m supposed to do what”? I
told Dave on the phone. “Take my equipment and speakers apart and stick
dots all over the place?” Actually, it turned out not to be as hard as it
sounded. If you have tube gear, you’re always taking the lid off, pulling
tubes in and out or adjusting something, so what’s the big deal?
VTS tuning dots come in a variety of sizes, thicknesses, and colors. The
variations represent specific applications. Each dot is designed to dissipate
vibration from components through constrained layer damping, and there
seems to be no end to the number of places you can stick them in an audio
system. There are dots for speaker cabinets (though I couldn’t bring myself
FRANCISCO DURAN'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
ProAc Response 2 with
Osiris 24" stands.
ELECTRONICS
Monarchy SM-70 (ran as
monoblocks), Antique
Sound Labs MGSPM25DT monoblocks,
Canary CA-301Mk-II
amplifier, and Reference
Line Preeminence lA
passive and Canary CA601Mk-II preamplifiers.
SOURCE
Audio Electronic CD-1
(temporary) CD player.
Two.
CABLES
Superconductor+
interconnects and a
double run of JPS
Ultraconductor speaker
cables.
ACCESSORIES
Balanced Power
Technologies BPT 4SE,
Brick Wall Series Mode
Surge Supressor, Audio
Prisim Quiet Lines and
Noise Sniffer, Vibrapods,
Black Diamond Racing
Boards and cones, Final
Labs Daruma-3II
Isolation Bearings,
various ferrite rings,
Target rack, Yahama KX380 cassette deck,
custom made wooden
cable lifters by Mr. Clark
senior, and all the NOS
tubes I can afford!
to place them on the beautiful rosewood finish of my speakers!), circuit
boards, vacuum tubes, integrated circuits, and so on. Marigo also sent
along some VTS Dynamic Driver Bands, which are small green strips
meant to be stuck around driver baskets. Marigo even makes large dots to
tame unruly vibrations in windows.
Marigo sent some pretty good instructions with these products. There were
diagrams for placement of the dots everywhere you could think to place
them and then some. They were relatively easy to install. I even stuck some
on hard-to-get-to capacitors with my pocketknife and an old pair of
tweezers. The baskets of my drivers are either coated with some sort of
plastic or actually made of plastic. Wrapping the bands around the baskets
proved fruitless because they didn’t stick, so I didn’t listen to that tweak.
Sticking the dots on the drivers proved to be pretty easy, though.
After all my whining, did these things make my stereo sound better? Yes,
they worked really well. Did they reveal details never before heard? No.
The biggest and most consistent improvement that I heard was an overall
shift in timbre. With the dots installed, vocal and instrumental timbres
sounded more natural, less like I was playing CDs through my stereo and
more like there were actually people singing or playing instruments. It
wasn’t dramatic, and it still sounded like canned music, but I really liked
what I heard. This is definitely the kind of change I want. I’m not so
concerned with bringing out more detail. The added resolution often brings
about unwanted brightness. I want more natural timbres and textures,
which is why I have switched over to tube equipment recently. I’m tired of Hi
Fi and trying to get the last drop of detail out of my discs. I want music!
I tried the dots on my speaker drivers first. I wasn’t really sure how many to
use, so I started with one on each mid/bass driver. It wasn’t until I got to
three per driver that I heard a difference of the sort I mentioned above. This
was worth my effort, so I kept going. The second place that I thought the
dots would be beneficial was in the Audio Electronics CD-1 CD player that
is on loan here from Victor Chavira. This is a nice-sounding player, but it
can definitely stand some improvement, so one by one, in went the dots. I
put them under tubes, on top of ICs, capacitors, even voltage regulators. I
didn’t place a dot, listen, place another and listen again. I just placed them
in batches and listened. The outcome? Great. The sound became airier and
cleaner. Dynamics were less pinched, a characteristic that seemed to be
inherent to this unit. There was also a slight improvement in bloom. My
Canary CA-601Mk.II preamp wasn’t given as many dots as the CD player. I
put some on the coupling caps, some on the circuit boards, and of course
one under each of the three tubes. Oh yeah, I also put two somewhat larger
black dots on the toroidal transformer. There was less smearing of
transients and a slightly quieter background after the dots were installed. If
you don’t like the idea of Teflon rings around your tubes, the Marigo dots
are a great alternative.
I really liked the Marigo dots. Inserting them in just three components in my
system, I heard a very noticeable cleaning up of the sound. The biggest
improvements were more natural timbres and an increase in dynamics. The
VTS dots are really very inexpensive considering what they do, and
(honestly!) they were not very hard to install. The fact that they come with a
30-day money back guarantee should also appeal to the skeptical. If a guy
like me, who has a jaded opinion of tweaks, can use these little babies and
come away smiling, there is definitely something positive going on.
Francisco Duran
VTS Dots
Retail (so many sizes means too many prices - check the Marigo website)
Marigo Audio Lab
web address: www.marigoaudio.com
e-mail address: rhedrich@marigoaudio.com
BACK TO TOP
audes
audes
Studio loudspeakers
as reviewed by Steve Lefkowicz, Jim Grudzien, and Victor Chavira
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/audes.htm (1 of 5) [8/25/2002 2:50:38 PM]
audes
STEVE LEFKOWICZ'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Sound Dynamics 300ti
and Linn Kans (original
version).
ELECTRONICS
PS Audio 4H preamplifier
and B&K ST-140 (105watt version) amplifier.
SOURCE
Linn LP12, Ittok tonearm
and Talisman S movingcoil cartridge. AMC CD8
CD player.
CABLES
All interconnects and
speaker cables are
Nordost Solar Winds.
ACCESSORIES
Sound Organization
stands and shelves.
Monster Power HTS2000
power line conditioner.
Just what the audio world needs, another
under-$1000, two-way, stand-mounted monitor. Wake me up when this is
over. There must be hundreds of similar speakers to choose from, without
even counting all the mid-fi crap available at the electronics superstores.
Why would anyone want to try to hit the market with another? Well, a funny
thing has happened since the fall of the Soviet Union. Without getting all
political (this is an audio publication, after all), several companies in the
newly (economically and politically) liberated former Soviet states quickly
learned a few things about free market capitalism. Build a good product at a
fair price, and if you market it correctly, you’ll make some money, maybe
even earn a living. Audes of Estonia is such a company. They have been in
the U.S.market for a few years, developing a reputation for building pretty
nice speakers at competitive prices. The Audes Studio Monitors retail for
$995, probably the toughest loudspeaker market segment in audio.
I mostly used the 15-watt Antique Sound Labs MG-SI15DT-S (KT-88) to
drive the Audes. With speakers of 87dB sensitivity, a low-powered tube
amp was perhaps not the best choice, but it suited my listening habits pretty
nicely, and I much preferred the sound of vocals with this amp than with my
more powerful solid state B&K ST-140. I did switch back and forth between
the two amps many times. Sticking to simpler, less densely packed music,
like folk, jazz, small classical ensembles, and the like, the Audes Studios
had an exceptionally satisfying sound. Although they produce respectable
bass for their size and price, they do so only when not taxed by having a lot
of other things going on in the music. The bass line in Patricia Barber’s
Companion CD was nicely done, the bass line in the B-52’s first LP wasn’t.
What’s the difference? There’s more going on in the B-52’s music, and the
Audes don’t seem to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.
Another example of this is Rickie Lee Jones’ first LP. In "Chuck E.’s In
Love," the individual instruments are nicely portrayed, and Jones’ voice is
clear, open, and subtly dynamic, but when you flip the LP over and listen to
"Danny’s All Star Joint," things aren’t quite so nice. The bass line becomes
ill defined, and loses both power and dynamics. Jones’ voice sounds weak
and congested, and the instruments blur together. This isn’t a power thing,
because it also happens with the B&K.
And so it goes. Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin (Kuijken,
Harmonia Mundi 1999603) was crisp and clear, tonally accurate, and
wonderfully transparent. So were Anner Bylsma’s Bach Solo Cello Suites
(Pro Arte 3PAL-3001), and William Christie’s Pieces de Clavecin (Harmonia
Mundi France HM B 1026). Many other recordings of solo instruments and
small ensembles sounded exceptional, but moving to rock or large-scale
classical music wasn’t quite so successful. The Audes made almost all the
rock I played sound thin and confused. Bass seemed to just fade away,
dynamics got compressed, and pace either slowed down or got confused.
audes
These are not speakers you tap your foot to, as the Linn crowd would say.
Music that thrives on dynamics and PRAT (pace, rhythm and timing) is not
served well by the Studios. Ricky Martin’s Sound Loaded should make you
get up and dance. It’s all about energy, excitement, passion, and sexiness.
The Audes Studios didn’t portray that. The more my wife gets me into Latin
Music, the more I realize that full-range, dynamic sound is more than just a
sound effect. If the music is intended to have a big sound, the inability of a
system to reproduce it simply sucks the music’s life right out.
If that sounds harsh, let me point out that not everyone listens to music like
this. If you go to a typical audiophile’s home (or worse, a typical audiophile
society meeting) and mention Ricky Martin, Marc Anthony, or any other
famous Latin Music performer, you’re likely to get dismissed as not being
“serious.” In my opinion, a good system has to play whatever I want to
listen to, whether it’s Bach or the B-52s, Mozart or Martin, Respighi or The
Residents. I have no room for either people or equipment that editorializes
about my musical choices!
If small-scale classical, jazz, or folk music is your bag, then by all means
audition the Audes Studios. They will give you a delightful time. But if you
tend to listen to full orchestral, rock, or any other form of music that tends
towards the dynamic and complex, you’ll be better served elsewhere. Steve
Lefkowicz
JIM GRUDZIEN'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Definitive Technology
Pro Monitor 100.
ELECTRONICS
Denon AVR-3801
receiver.
SOURCE
Arcam DiVA CD72T CD
player and a Pioneer DV414 DVD player.
CABLES
XLO/PRO 100
interconnects and
When I first heard the Audes Studio Monitors
at CES, I wasn’t impressed. Perhaps it was the electronics, the acoustics,
or something else, but they were harsh at the top. Nevertheless, something
told me to listen again. The next day, they sounded much smoother and
more robust. These speakers have a 6 1/2" woofer and a 1" soft-dome
tweeter (SEAS), and are front-ported, which allows them to be placed close
to the back wall without overloading the room with bass. Their frequency
range is 49-20k Hz, and they are rated at 8 ohms and 87dB sensitivity.
They are bi-wireable, have a rather flimsy plastic front grill, and weigh a
hefty 31lbs. apiece. They look a little different. Each has two slabs of solid
oak, one on each side of the cabinet, which extend below and behind the
main housing. They look nice. The stands are also oak, and are very
attractive.
When I first hooked them up they sounded very veiled and unclear, but this
went away within 24 hours. One of my favorite review discs is Big Bad
Voodoo Daddy’s This Beautiful Life. The instruments (cymbals, bass, and
piano), while realistic, were somewhat lightweight, and lacked the depth
and fullness that I’ve heard with other speakers. The vocals were a little
harsh and edgy at the top, but the mids were very pleasing, and seemed
audes
Ultralink Audiophile
Reference Series
speaker cables.
accurate. The horns that I love so much from this group were right on,
possessing that great brass bite. Israel Kawakawiwo’ole’s Facing Future
CD provided an altogether different listening experience. His delicate,
sweet voice was somewhat distant, and lacking in detail and clarity. The
same went for his ukulele playing, which lacked the warmth and
smoothness that I know this disc can reproduce in my system. Mary Black’s
No Frontiers, on the other hand, was extremely engaging. It seemed as
though she was right there with me in the room. Her music and voice are
light and delicate, and were complemented very well by the Audes. Her
voice got a little harsh at the top on a couple of crescendos, but was mostly
easy to listen to. The acoustic guitar on the track "Fog in Monterey" was so
real that I could have listened to it all day. James Taylor’s Hourglass CD is
well recorded, and a good piece to judge the reproduction of male voice.
On the track "Little More Time With You," my three-year-old began to clap
and dance to the music. Also noticeable was the rich, deep bass (which
seemed much deeper than 49Hz), and smooth, well-balanced vocals.
Music that is light in weight is ideal with these speakers, but when full
orchestration or deep bass is predominant, they lack the punch and depth
that I love. However, that costs much more money. They do, however,
sound much deeper than 49Hz much of the time. Their soundstage is goodsized, and they image nicely. I found them to be involving and easy to listen
to, though they lack some of the clarity and detail I’ve heard with other
speakers, such as the Ruark Prologue IIs ($2000) or the ATC 7s ($1100). I
prefer a more full range speaker, but if you’re in the market for a minimonitor for under a grand, these are worth a listen. Jim Grudzien
VICTOR CHAVIRA'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Magneplanar 1.6 and
B&W DM 302.
ELECTRONICS
Kora Explorer integrated.
SCE Harmonic Recovery
System.
SOURCE
NAD T541 CD/DVD
player.
You should know up front that I’m not
a fan of mini-monitors, though the Audes Studios aren’t exactly minis. Each
speaker is about the size of a microwave oven, and just as heavy (31 lbs).
The Studios are part of the Audes Credo line.
For the purpose of this review, the Studios were compared to the
Magnepan 1.6s in my main system. The Studios were broken in from
previous use. I moved the speakers into various positions until I located the
best balance of bass and midrange clarity. The first thing that struck me
about them was their generous bass. My CD by Buena Vista Social Club
bassist Orlando “Cachaito” Lopez sounded fully developed, in contrast to
the truncated bass response of many speakers in this class. The Studios
lacked only a small measure of definition and scale when compared to the
larger and more expensive Magnepans. As is characteristic of standmounted box speakers, the Audes rendered well-focused images, but,
unlike many similar speakers, they created a soundspace of considerable
dimension, and did not minimize musical events. Eddie Palmieri’s new CD
audes
CABLES
Nordost Quattro-Fil
interconnects, Blue
Heaven speaker cables,
and El Dorado power
cords.
ACCESSORIES
Monster Cables HTS
1000 AC center.
Vibrapods, Lovan
Trisolator, and Echo
Busters.
La Perfecta II, on Concord, is a grand musical event. Palmieri’s percussive
piano mated perfectly with the Audes’ punchy sound. Soft dome tweeters
are generally more pleasing to me than their metal dome counterparts. The
one-inch unit in the Studio does an admirable job in the sensitive upper
regions. Cymbals and cowbells shimmered with overtones. I could easily
distinguish between the wooden guiros commonly used in Latin Jazz
versus the metal guiros typical of salsa and merengue.
I found the Audes Studios to be enjoyable speakers of considerable value.
They produce surprising amounts of bass and punchy, room-filling sound.
For $995 with stands, they represent an honest entry into the pricey world
of hi fi. With some patience and five hundred more dollars, though, the level
of refinement available grows exponentially. Ultimately, the Studios trailed
far behind the Magnepan 1.6s. Even without taking into account the large
panels’ bipolar wave launch, the Maggies’ execution of fine details and
instrumental timbre is unparalleled at its price. If I wanted to appreciate the
artistry of Jim Hall and Pat Methneeliminatey playing acoustic guitars, out
went the Audes and in went the Maggies. If I needed to quickly form an
impression of a new component, the 1.6s were called up for duty. At $995,
however, the Audes Studios are definite contenders. Victor Chavira
Audes Studio loudspeakers
Retail $995 pair
Audes LLC
TEL: +372 33 95651
web address: www.audes.ee
e-mail: audes@estpak.ee
US Distributor:
AUDES USA INC.
TEL : 732.921.1241
web address: www.audesusa.com
e-mail address: info@audesusa.com
BACK TO TOP
lammll2
lamm
LL2 preamplifier
as reviewed by Larry Cox and Francisco Duran
LARRY COX'S SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
ATC SCM 20.
ELECTRONICS
Majeel Labs Pristine S10 amplifier and the
E.A.R. 802 preamplifier.
SOURCE
Pioneer DV 525 dvd
player.
CABLES
Quattro Fil interconnects
and speaker cables
made from Belden 1219A
Straight up, I’m discovering, is how I like my
audio, warts and all. I want music without any additives, even when it
doesn’t sound nice. This is why I love the Lamm LL2 preamp. What I get
with this preamp in my system (along with my new Audio Note CD 3 CD
player) is music, sometimes distorted, sometimes flat, sometimes noisy, but
always sounding like music, even when recorded poorly.
The LL2 looks like a laboratory instrument. Like a Model A Ford, you can
have it in any color you want, as long at it is black. Two handles for rack
mounting, simple white lettering, and a few chrome toggle switches are all
that adorn the front. The toggles choose the direct input (which allows you
to bypass the active parts of the preamp), line one, or line two, with another
toggle for the tape loop, and a mute switch for the power up and down
cycles. There is a visually identical deluxe version with an upgraded power
supply and polysterene caps paralleling the film caps. The LL2 on hand
here is the basic unit, retailing for a somewhat lofty $3990; the deluxe unit
is a few hundred dollars more. The preamp uses two 12AU7s, two 6DJ8s,
and a 6X4/6202 tube for voltage rectification. The first four tubes will be
easy enough to replace, the latter, I expect, can be replaced through
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/lammll2.htm (1 of 5) [8/25/2002 2:50:39 PM]
lammll2
wire.
Lamm.
ACCESSORIES
API Power Pack and
ACPEAM line
conditioners. BDR cones.
The LL2 provided a "just the facts" presentation. While that might sound
underwhelming, it is the highest praise I can express. I heard more of the
texture of instruments than I do with my E.A.R. 802 preamp, with an Air
Tight ATC-3, and with a Reference Line Preeminence 1A passive preamp.
The texture and richness of instruments was extraordinarily revealing, and
while not always nice, it brought me closer to the experience of real music.
Not Technicolor, but actual colors and textures were presented, spot on.
ATC and Quad loudspeakers and the Lamm LL2 all have something in
common—they are musical but not euphonic. I can hear poor recordings
break up when these components are in my system. However, those
extraneous sounds are presented like artifacts, separate from the music.
Listening to music with ATC, Quad, and Lamm gear is like being at a party
with two very discrete conversations going on simultaneously. The music in
the foreground is easily intelligible, while in the background, effortlessly
recognized as separate from the music, is noise, recording quality, etc.
Imaging was spectacular, and made the placing and re-placing of speaker
positions easy. The music was so "in the room," it seemed like the speakers
were unnecessary bits of furniture which had no part in making music.
Images were always behind the speakers. Image depth was uncluttered,
with space around instruments and players. My E.A.R. preamp sends
performers a little further back from the speakers, though the images are a
little less clearly specified. While the imaging of the LL2 was a pretty
extraordinary experience, it remained a secondary concern, taking a back
seat to tonal balance. Frequency extension was laboratory correct. Initially,
bass seemed lighter in weight and depth than with my E.A.R. or the Air
Tight. However, repeated listening let me know that while the bottom end of
the other preamps were fuller, they were also slower and less distinctly
drawn. (As an aside, my speakers really need 250 watts to have control of
the bottom end, and the 100-watt Pristine S-A10 amp just doesn’t have the
power. Happily, we got a 200-watt ATC amp in for review, and with that
amp, the bass performance of the Lamm pulled ahead.)
In my experience, there is something unique about hearing music live that
is rarely captured by audio systems. Listen to almost any live music, even if
the music is not the sort you normally like, and it is of at least passing
interest. The same isn’t so with most home audio. With most home stereos,
if I have no interest in the genre of music, it is hard to muster any attention
for it. Not so with the Lamm/ATC match. Almost everything in my music
collection was interesting. CDs that were being marched off for resale at
Penny Lane received a stay of execution.
The Lamm presented music on the upper end of things with bite but no
etching, hardness, or silvery cleanliness. Hard to criticize. The midrange,
where musical life can be glorious or boring, was magnificent. Timbre was
so excellent that it, rather than transients, created the impression of a live
event in my room. At $3990, the Lamm will take a well-oiled wallet, but I’d
lammll2
think that the ability to have Frank Sinatra, Peter Gabriel, or Django
Reinhardt performing in your room nightly would be a great enticement. If
we were to have Golden Ear Awards or Recommended Component Lists,
the Lamm LL2 would be one of my top choices. Larry Cox
FRANCISCO DURAN'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Osiris 24" stands.
ELECTRONICS
Monarchy SM-70
amplifiers (mono).
Reference Line
Preeminence lA passive
line stage.
SOURCE
Musical Concepts’
Pioneer DV414 DVD
Epoch VII Signature
player. Taddeo Digital
Antidote Two.
CABLES
Superconductor+
interconnects and a
double run of JPS
cables.
ACCESSORIES
Panamax power
conditioning. BDR cones
and Vibrapods.
The Lamm LL2 arrived while I was recovering
from a car accident. In the shape I was in, I had to have help installing it
into my system. I also longed for a remote control! On the FAQ page on
Lamm’s website it states: "All Lamm models are equipped with internally
built power line filters of high quality." They feel that their equipment works
best plugged directly into the wall, but unfortunately I did not discover this
until after I had auditioned the LL2, so I listened to it plugged in to one of
my Richard Gray units. I would have gladly traded the internally built power
line filter for a remote, but no such luck. The looks of this unit strike me as
more "industrial grade" than luxurious, but don’t let its exterior fool you.
Inside this black box lurks the heart of a diva.
I first had the LL2 hooked up to one of my Monarchy SM70 amps. The
sound was fine—fast, clean and agile—but the more I listened to this
combo, the more I felt that the timbre was slightly off. The music sounded a
little thin. I felt that my Monarchy amp was a little to blame for this, so I
switched to my newly-acquired Antique Sound Labs MGSPM25DTs to see
what would happen. These little 25-watt, single-ended KT88 monoblocks
perform way beyond their pedigree, so I felt confident mating them with the
multi-buck Lamm. The verdict? No matter the amp, I still heard thinness
and a slight shift of musical timbre. Then, after running the LL2 with
everything including the TV on a daily basis for about two weeks, a change
occurred. The slightly thin, analytical character changed to a warmer, more
full, and more musical sound. This was more like it! I hate audio equipment
break-in stories, so I mention this because the last guy who passed this unit
to me said that it was already broken in. Maybe in your system, bubba!
Another possible cause for the thinness was the Norh CD-1 CD player I
was using at the time. Since the Norh has two tubes in its output stage, like
a good boy I turned it off every night after listening. It was only after leaving
the Norh on continuously (per their instructions on their web site), then
playing music through it, that the sound changed for the better. It is always
a good idea to follow the instructions (if they are in the box) as much as
possible. How much better or different the Lamm would have sounded
plugged straight into the wall is a matter for speculation.
The LL2 reproduces music in a clear and distinct manner. I heard very little
coloration with this unit. Because it is an all-tube design, I kept thinking that
it would sound overly warm and slightly euphonic. That was not the case.
lammll2
For instance, on my David Fathead Newman CD Chillin (Highnote
Records), the tenor, soprano, and alto saxes that he plays on various tracks
were clean and distinct. Each musician weaves together as a musical
whole, but individuals can be easily picked out of the musical soup and
followed with ease. The sound is clean but inviting. The LL2 let me hear all
the subtle changes in Coltrane’s playing that makes numbers such as" My
Favorite Things" sound fresh. Of course, I don’t need much coaxing from
any piece of gear for that one, as it is one of my favorites! The interplay
between Coltrane and McCoy Tyner with his interweaving piano was very
easy to follow. I got into the groove on this track.
Steve Rodby’s bass on any number of my Pat Methney CDs sounded
tuneful and taut. The LL2 handled the rhythm of the music well, reproducing
the lower frequencies in a fast and clean manner, and with ample texture.
This clean, dynamic signature also reached into the midrange and treble
regions. Guitars and cymbals sounded extended and clean, with a touch of
warmth and plenty of atmosphere as opposed to flat or bright. After my son
slapped on his Mortal Combat Soundtrack CD, I was glad the LL2 handled
the top end in this fashion. Even the high-pitched screaming of Judas
Priest’s Rob Halford had a clean, natural timbre. The top end was never
bright. Dynamics were also a strong point of this preamp. When a
percussion instrument is struck or a guitar strummed, there is no overhang
or slowness. With jazz combos or large orchestras, the LL2 proved wellbalanced and coherent. Stravinsky’s Petrushka on Naxos sounded vivid.
Just for the fun of it, I replaced the LL2 with my Reference Line passive. My
passive is a very clear and transparent sounding unit, but the music was
missing a slight amount of fullness, texture, and sweetness compared to
the LL2. Dynamics on the whole sounded a bit flatter than with the LL2,
which comes as no surprise. What was surprising was the quiet
background of the Lamm. It takes quite a preamp to even approach the
silent background of my passive, but the Lamm came close.
In my system, the Lamm LL2 reproduced music in a tight, very clean, and
very detailed manner. Expecting a lush sound from it, instead I heard a
sound that leaned the opposite way. If this is what you want in an all-tube
unit, the LL2 could be your cup of tea.
Francisco Duran
Lamm LL2 preamplifier
Retail $3990
Lamm Industries
TEL: 718. 368. 0181
web site: www.lammindustries.com
email address: lamm.industries@verizon.net
lammll2
BACK TO TOP
empiricalaudio
empirical audio
Holophonic interconnects
and Clarity 7 speaker cables
as reviewed by Ed Morawski and Carlo Flores
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/empiricalaudio.htm (1 of 6) [8/25/2002 2:50:40 PM]
empiricalaudio
ED MORAWSKI'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Alon Capri.
ELECTRONICS
Bryston 4B-ST amplifier
and a Muse Model 3
preamplifier.
SOURCE
Muse Model 5 transport
and 296 DAC.
CABLES
Synergistic Research
Kaleidoscope
interconnects,
AudioQuest Slate
speaker cables, and DIY
power cords.
I’m going to give away the plot—these cables
are great! Go out and buy them now. Yeah, they’re that good. Read the rest
of this while you’re enjoying your music.
Empirical sent us all their cables—interconnects, jumpers, digital, and
speaker. The construction quality of all the cables is absolutely top notch.
The Holophonic interconnects use the Eichmann Bullet RCAs, which are
very nice indeed. I decided to try the Clarity 7 speaker cables first. I was
hopeful, but expecting to be unimpressed. I had never found speaker
cables that made any impact on my system. I’d tried different
brands—nothing, though I heard an improvement from DIY CAT5 cables
that was so subtle I could barely detect it. When I first connected the Clarity
7s, I hit play on my Muse 8 transport and sat back to listen, figuring I’d be
struggling to hear some subtle nuance. I had been playing Keiko Matsui’s
Deep Blue to test some AudioQuest speaker cables. This is one of my
favorite recordings. I’ve played it maybe two hundred times, and know
every note intimately. When the music expanded through my room, I
actually didn’t recognize it, so I stopped the player and opened the tray to
check what CD was in there. It was still Deep Blue, but not like I had ever
heard it before. That first night it was like I was with a new lover. You know
that expression from reviews, about the lifting of a thousand veils? Well,
with these speaker cables I not only lifted the veils, I got married and kissed
the bride!
The Clarity 7s took my system to a whole new level. Clarity is the perfect
name for them. Vanessa Mae has a CD named Storm, released in ‘96 or
‘97, which I’ve had since it came out, but only recently was I able to even
hear the first few seconds of the first track. It took a better DAC, transport,
amp, and speakers to reveal a very low-level chirping. It sounded electronic
at first, then later I thought it was crickets. With the Clarity cables, I now
know the sound is birds singing! Here are some of my notes from that first
evening: “full,” “rich,” “immense 3D soundstage with great depth and width,”
“the music now has personality,” and so on. Instruments sprang to life on
many recordings. I’m sure they were there before, but I probably heard
them merely as indistinct sounds. Now there was a guitar riff here, a cello
there, a trumpet deep, deep, deep in the background.
With the Clarity 7s, music is absolutely crystal clear without being bright. It
is fully and totally formed, with each instrument standing out distinctly and
clearly. The whole audio range is improved. Not only is the bass tight, but
so are the mids and highs. Each note begins and ends precisely as it was
played, perfectly formed, with its own nuances and personality. The
imaging and soundstage are so incredible and airy that SACD or DVDAudio seem superfluous and unnecessary.
empiricalaudio
The following evening I rushed home and listened again, to make sure that
what I had heard was real. It was—the sound was amazing. Then I saw the
interconnects sitting there and said, “What the heck, let’s go all the way!”
Out came my Synergistic Research cables (with Active Shielding no less),
and in went the Empirical Holophonic interconnects, one pair at a time. With
the first pair between my Muse 296 and Muse 3 preamp, I immediately
noticed a slight increase in volume, but even more startling was the bass,
which sounded much more focused than before. Music had noticeably
expanded in dynamics and range. With the second pair between the Muse
preamp and my Bryston 4B-ST, it expanded one more notch, though more
subtly this time. Over the next few days, I listened critically for any sign of
fatigue or a lessening of the impact of the Empirical cables. Neither was
evident, in fact I enjoyed the music more and more.
Empirical’s web site lists some of the problems their cables correct: (1)
haze and lack of image focus, (2) bloated bass, (3) lack of soundstage
width and depth, (4) poor dialogue and lyric intelligibility, and (5) acoustic
instruments, particularly guitar, harp, and mandolin, just don’t sound live. I
wholeheartedly agree with all of these claims. There is no haze. The image
is totally focused. Bass is just slammin’. The soundstage is unbelievable.
As for dialogue and lyric intelligibility—well, on the Tribute to America CD,
Billy Joel does “New York State of Mind.” I’m not a big Billy Joel fan, but
now it sounded like he was in my room for a private concert. The song was
alive, the instruments were alive. Strings were perfectly reproduced, with
that shimmer of vibrating air you normally only hear at live concerts. The
piano was fantastic and the horn accompaniment dead on, but Joel’s voice
was just tremendous and, above all, real.
Do I have any complaints? The Clarity 7 speaker cables are very thick
(around an inch in diameter) and stiff, but I can live with that. Empirical sent
some power cords. I tried them, but could detect absolutely no difference,
although I was warned they may take 100 hours to break in! They also sent
a pair of Gecko jumpers, the only items I would have paid for before this
audition, because I thought they were a great idea to replace the PMCs’
metal ones. Well, they are so stiff I couldn’t get them on my speakers, and
believe me I tried for a solid hour.
For the final phase of this review, I removed all the Empirical cables and
reinstalled mine. Then I reinstalled the Empiricals, one pair at a time, in
reverse order. Using the first cut of Deep Blue as a reference, here is what
happened: (1) DAC to preamp. Immediately noticeable increase in
spaciousness. Piano notes were more focused. A fairly faint bongo drum in
the left channel also was clearer and more precisely formed. This drum was
audible before, but not until well into the track.
(2) Preamp to amp. Bass was improved in volume and structure. Presence
increased an entire step. (3) Amp to speakers. Imaging, soundstage,
dynamics all vastly improved. Piano notes now had that “tinkling” sound,
bass had real slam. It was like putting in a DVD-Audio or SACD disc.
empiricalaudio
Instead of the normal CD.
Finally, I removed my Muse 8 and replaced it with my venerable Pioneer
PD-65, and used Empirical’s Bitmeister digital interconnect to my Muse
296. Again the effect was not subtle. Not only had the Pioneer never
sounded this good, but it now closely rivaled the Model 8! Bass was
extremely strong, and the highs were well-defined and focused. I was
hoping this test would reveal the most cost-effective upgrading route with
Empirical. Of course, I now say buy them all, but if you can’t I would have to
say go for the Clarity 7 speaker cables first, and then the interconnects as
you can budget for them.
Empirical has ruined me. I can’t listen to my system any more—it sounds
like a tin can in a tunnel. I’m ordering the Empirical cables, and they’d better
get here fast!
Ed Morawski
Clarity 7 speaker cables
The point of a cable is to sound like nothing, to
be completely passive, to get out of the signal path. However, the majority
of cables color the sound and, outside of DIY, the price tag for those that
don’t is exorbitantly high. Unlike so many of his competitors, Steve Nugent
of Empirical Audio publishes the research he has done and the principles
his cables follow. His philosophy is to lower capacitance in order to lessen
magnetic field interference. This extends to his entire line—speaker cables,
interconnects, and power cords. Nugent also goes out of his way to
participate in online forums, providing product support and tips to
beginners, and entering into heated discussions about cable design
theories. This level of community participation makes Empirical Audio
empiricalaudio
interesting, and I was eager to hear these products.
CARLO FLORES'
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
PSB Stratus Bronze,
Sennheiser HD580,
Grado SR225 and SR60
headphones.
ELECTRONICS
Conrad-Johnson
Sonographe SA-250
amplifier, DIY headphone
amplifier, and an
Anthem Pre1L (w/Mullard
tubes).
SOURCES
H! Njoe Tjoeb CD player
(w/Amprex tubes), Arcam
Apha 9 CD player, Rega
Planar 3/Origin Live
RB250/Grado Gold.
Vintage Phillips receiver
(phono and tuner)
CABLES
TEK-Line power cords,
Tara Labs and Kimber
interconnects, and diy
speaker cable.
ACCESSORIES
Vibrapods, BDR cones,
and diy rollerblocks
The power cords and speaker cables are thick and unwieldy, and look very
well made. The Holophonic interconnects have a ribbed plastic covering
that I’ve never seen on a cable, and feature Eichmann bullet termination,
which, instead of a locking collar and a large conductor surface area, uses
a small gold point for the return path that is approximately the same size as
the center pin. As with all cable comparisons, I wired the entire system with
the Empirical products, listened for several weeks, then switched back to
my reference cords and tested each review cable individually. I only had
one pair of Empirical interconnects, so I switched it between the
source/preamp and preamp/amp connections while using my Tara Labs
Master Generation interconnects at the other junction. Reviewing products
whose entire design principle relies on their not having a detectable sound
is inherently difficult, and is even harder when the cables sound this good.
The Holophonics must be the most unassuming interconnects I’ve seen in
this price range. Flexibility was slightly better than the Tara Labs Air 3s, but
still a pain in the ass. When placed between the preamp and amp, the
sound was a touch crisper than with the Taras, which add a rounded quality
to instruments and image placement. The soundstage presentation was
midway between my feet and the speakers, the perceived depth slightly
ahead of the rear wall, and the width slightly past the edges of my
speakers. Frequency response didn’t have any glaring faults. I did get the
passing impression of a lean midbass, but upon replay would be reminded
of my speakers’ limitations. I heard absolutely nothing special with the
Holophonics until I switched back to my Taras or to Synergistic Research’s
Alpha Sterlings. At that point, the Taras sounded much more colored than
before. I have always acknowledged their warm sound, but never felt I was
missing out on any detail, and I enjoyed the large soundstage they impart in
my system. Compared to the Empirical cables, though, they now sounded
too rounded off in the upper registers, and their bass response went from
slightly warm to full. With the Holophonics, electric guitar carried the texture
that really only comes from the best products—Fenders sound like
Fenders, not Fender imitations.
Empirical Audio’s ultra-thick speaker cables make their interconnects look
like spaghetti. Everyone has used speaker cables that look like garden
hoses, but this cable has so little give that the analogy is an
understatement. If you’re thinking about bi-wiring, forget it. Nugent included
jumper cables terminated in spades and, I understand, isn’t a proponent of
bi-wiring. Once in place, the speaker cables retained their shape, and
looked intimidating hooked up to my PSB Stratus Bronzes and the
Silverline SR11s I was reviewing, but they’re a chore to install. They grew
on me quickly—I loved their sound by the time the first LP, Coltrane’s Live
at the Village Vanguard, was over.
I hope I’m not being hyperbolic, but my DIY speaker cables (designed by
Chris VenHaus) have competed with just about every speaker cable I’ve
empiricalaudio
thrown at them. Some had better this, smoother that, but nothing blew them
away, and the ones that came closest cost nearly as much as my amplifier.
Compared to the Empirical cables, however, my speaker cables sound
brittle and congested. The Empiricals have a massive, linear sound that
doesn’t seem possible from a speaker cable. Are they neutral? As far as I
can tell, they don’t emphasize any part of the frequency curve, but images
sound just a touch more real, and music is a tad more palpable, less
analytical, and more emotional. Radiohead’s Kid A is a fabulous album that
accomplished what I previously thought impossible: letting electronic
instruments sound organic and whole. With the Empiricals, there wasn’t any
more detail than with the VenHaus cables, but the sound locked together in
a way it hadn’t before. The Empirical cables rendered images that were
palpable and rich, large as life, and believable. I believe system synergy is
the basis for any improvement in sound, and the Empirical speaker cables
simply sounded fantastic with my Conrad Johnson amp and PSB speakers.
“Everything in its Place” was a classic trip instead of a conceptual
statement. “Discoteque” was jaw-droppingly good. I missed these cables
immediately after returning them.
I’m convinced that the reason we spend so much money on cables is that
there’s a special, emotional quality that certain combinations have. It’s rare,
and it can’t really be described using the standard audiophile terms, but
when it’s there you know it. I’ve heard it at fleeting moments with my
reference setup, and with a few components I’ve reviewed, and I definitely
have it with the Empirical cables. There’s no way I’ll call any cable this
expensive a bargain, but their performance makes them well worth their
price. This is the first time in years that I’ve been tempted to use cables
other than my references. In my opinion, the performance of the Empirical
Audio cables is at the level of just about any other company in audio. Carlo
Flores
Clartiy 7 speaker cables
Retail $999.98 six foot pair
Holophonic interconnects
Retail $399.98 a meter pair
Empirical Audio
web address: www.empiricalaudio.com
e-mail address: support@empiricalaudio.com
BACK TO TOP
AQ1001DT
antique sound
labs
AQ1001DT integrated
as reviewed by Francisco Duran, Dave Clark, and Victor Chavira
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/AQ1001DT.htm (1 of 7) [8/25/2002 2:50:42 PM]
AQ1001DT
FRANCISCO DURAN'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Osiris 24" stands.
ELECTRONICS
Monarchy SM-70
amplifiers (mono).
Reference Line
line stage.
SOURCE
Musical Concepts’
Pioneer DV414 DVD
Epoch VII Signature
Antidote Two.
CABLES
Superconductor+
interconnects and a
double run of JPS
cables.
ACCESSORIES
Panamax power
and Vibrapods.
The Divergent Technology rooms at the 2001
C.E.S. were an audio candy store, filled with rack upon rack of beautiful
tube equipment. To top it off, there were some pretty respectable speakers
in the form of the Reference 3A line. In the middle of all of this was an
amiable person doing business in an almost conductor-like fashion, Mr.
Tash Goka of Divergent Technology. A few months later I was sitting in
front of an integrated amp from one of Divergent’s product lines, the
Antique Sound Labs AQ1001DT.
Antique Sound Labs makes quite a lot of gear, in a variety of designs and
tube complements that would whet the appetite of any card-carrying
gearhead. The AQ1001DT is all business. Three covered transformers are
lined up at the rear. In front of the transformers are four KT88 output tubes.
Standing guard in the front are four 12AU7s. The sturdy black faceplate
holds the volume and input selector controls and on/off switch. Around the
back of the amp are three single-ended inputs labeled CD, Tuner, and
AUX1. I could have used another input. There are also six hefty gold-plated
speaker binding posts, giving you the option of four- or eight-ohm taps. A
detachable power cord socket and fuse holder round out the array.
One nice feature of this amp is the bias adjustment arrangement. The fiveposition knob (the first click being off) on the side of the amp clicks to each
corresponding output tube, allowing you to adjust each tube with a
screwdriver and your handy dandy voltmeter. Let’s not get lazy now, tube
amps take a little work. I didn’t take the AQ1001DT apart to have a peek
inside, but I can tell you that this is a solidly built amp, and it is very goodlooking, with its chrome chassis and black accents. I heard no hums, pops,
or buzzes while it was running, and believe me I put this amp through its
paces. Once the tubes were burned in the bias held steady, and this little
50 watter had plenty of power to keep my speakers rockin’. It sat where my
monoblocks usually sit, on an Osiris amp stand. I listen to solid state amps
most of the time, with only an occasional one-night fling with a tube unit. I
have grown accustomed to the virtues of solid state amps, these being
extension at the frequency extremes and a quiet background, but there are
times, especially with my ProAc speakers, that I miss the warmth, body,
and liquid sound that only a good tube amp can bring. Nevertheless,
whenever I listen to music through tube amps, the solid state spider makes
himself comfortable on my shoulder and proceeds to whisper in my ear
things like, “Where’s the bass, where’s the top end, and check out all that
background noise!” For the most part, however, this was not the case with
the AQ1001DT.
Whether it was the KT88 tubes or the circuitry of the amp, the AQ1001DT
reproduced the whole musical spectrum without overwhelming me with
background noise. Before I talk about the musical picture, let’s pick apart
AQ1001DT
the sound of this amp, starting with the bass. I was quite surprised by the
bass performance of the AQ1001DT. With most tube amps that I have had
in my system, a certain amount of weight and extension is always missing
in the bottom octaves. That did not happen with the AQ1001DT. Unless I
shifted my attention to it, the thought of bass rolloff never entered my mind.
Adjectives like “full,” “taut,” “extended,” and “fast” applied to the low end
performance of this amp. It was easy to follow bass lines in the music, Pat
Metheny’s Letter From Home CD being a prime example. I recently
received two new CDs from the BMG Jazz Club, Clarence Gatemouth
Brown’s American Music Texas Style and Keith Jarrett’s double CD,
Whisper Not. Gate was really swinging through the AQ. The horns were full
and rich. There was a smooth and coherent spread of sound in front of me.
The midrange was not too lush or euphonic, and ah, the guitars. The
texture and body of acoustic guitars was something no solid state amp
could match. From Russell Malone and Grant Green to Luiz Bonfa, the
sound of my favorite stringed instrument was thoroughly engaging through
the AQ1001DT.
I can’t neglect to mention The Eddie Gale Quintet’s CD, A Minute with
Miles, on Mapleshade. This is the best-sounding disc that I own. Through
the AQ1001DT, the sound of horns had a slick, polished clarity. The
trumpet was reproduced with as much realism as my system could muster.
Another newfound musical treasure is the CD Neighborhoods, by Ulu Dara,
which I recently discovered through the local public radio station. This is an
eclectic mix of blues, folk, and R&B, and there is some fantastic storytelling
going on, especially in the track "Red Ant." The music sounded, smooth,
clear, and detailed without being overtly hi-fi. The midrange of this HDCD
disc could have been recorded better, but the AQ caught the musical
picture quite well. The excellent midrange performance also extended into
the upper ranges. I didn’t notice any lack of extension or overt rounding off
of the uppermost octaves. The highs were round, clear, and extended. The
high frequencies were sweeter than with my solid state amps. They were
also not as flat-sounding, and sibilance was a tad tamer. This was icing on
the cake. What surprised me was that the top end of the AQ1001DT,
although sweeter, was more open, extended, and detailed than with my
amps. My Monarchys are slightly diffuse in the midrange. The AQ’s
soundstage is very layered but natural, depending on the recording, of
course. I could clearly hear way into the soundstage. Part of this is due, I’m
sure, to this amp’s quiet operation. On the Ulu Dara CD, the shaker sound
was downright eerie. When I walked around the side and back of my left
speaker I swore that I was walking around someone playing a shaker. I
have heard other amp/speaker combos do better, but these are the kinds of
musical experiences that are evoked by this amp. I was better able to hear
into the music, and small musical details were more easily heard than
through my amps.
Another thing about the AQ1001DT is that it is receptive to changes in
system configuration. I used it to evaluate power cords and the Balanced
Power Technologies Isolators that we got in. It also saw duty in my reevaluation of the Richard Gray Power Company units. Any such changes
AQ1001DT
were readily apparent with this amp, as was a fortuitous tube swap. aM
partners Dave Clark and the A.D. Banerjee swapped the four JJ 12AU7s
that came with this unit for some NOS RCAs, and sent me the NOS tubes
for a listen. Wow, talk about bringing this amp to a new level of
performance, in terms of overall musicality, background silence,
dimensionality, and inner detail. The NOS tubes made the top end
noticeably more open, detailed, and clean, and the mids and bottom were
more solid and real. NOS tubes are a must-hear with this amp if you want
to wring even more performance out of an already excellent product.
The AQ1001DT gave the impression in my system of a well-balanced set of
virtues. You know something is right when you don’t want to put your own
gear back in your system. It is nice when an amp pulls you into the music
and you just want to listen for a long time. I’ve never been one to fall for the
“goosebump factor” BS. The only time I get them is when I’m in my truck
rolling (or inching) down an L.A. freeway and a cool song comes on, but for
some reason, with this amp in my system, you guessed it, goosebumps
happened more than once. The AQ1001DT had the ability to connect me to
the music right after turn on and it didn’t let up.
Before I sign off I have to relate a little story to you. When it was time to
return this unit, I was asked to take it to Upscale Audio, which is a new local
dealer for Antique Sound Labs. When Victor Chavira and I walked into
Kevin Deal’s showroom, we were surprised to find a pair of Avantgarde Duo
speakers hooked up to Antique Sound’s little MGSI15DT and the new Ajoe
Tjoeb 4000 CD player. Here was a whopping $1200 of electronics driving a
$14,000 pair of speakers! Victor and I were amazed, even flabbergasted at
what we heard. Antique Sound Labs might not be as recognizable a brand
as the top dogs here in the U.S, but that shouldn’t stop you from auditioning
these fine-sounding, well built, and very reasonably priced products.
Francisco Duran
Can you get a $12,000 preamp-and-amp
combo for $400? No, but if you spend an extra $400, you can make a
$1200 integrated sound almost as good as a $12,000 amp/preamp combo.
How? Start with the Antique Sound Labs AQ1001DT integrated, a decent
but not really musical-sounding 60-watt integrated that offers a big, ballsy
sound lacking in refinement and subtlety. Then, replace the Chinese input
tubes with NOS tubes. Finally, toss the stock AC cord and substitute one of
higher caliber. (I used a PS Audio Lab, but the market is rife with specialty
AC cords, so go hog wild.) By doing the above, I was able to turn a not-sougly duckling into a captivating swan.
Let me digress with my initial take on the AQ1001. I was the third aM
AQ1001DT
DAVE CLARK'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Tetons.
ELECTRONICS
Clayton Audio M100
E.A.R. 834P phono
stage. Blue Circle
BC3000 preamp
SOURCES
with Audient
turntable with K9
arm.
CABLES
JPS Superconductor+
NC speaker cables.
Audio, and JPS
ACCESSORIES
PS Audio P300 Power
Plant.
Dedicated 20 and 15
amp ac circuits. Shakti
Stones and On-Lines.
EchoBuster room
Audio 2D and 3D
hard woods, etc.
reviewer to get the amp, and was certain it had been fully broken in. With
the amp on a Target stand, and using some Nordost SPM interconnects,
the AQ1001 had a wide but shallow sound field that was awash in twodimensional images. These images lacked body, air, separation, and life.
The music was "water-colored," without fine delineation or a defined space.
Can the stock AQ1001 deliver the goods, allowing one to enjoy the music?
The answer is a quantifiable "Yes," but only if soundfield and dimensional
palpability are not as important to you as drive and rhythm, which the
AQ1001 has in spades. No, if you want it all.
Bass was very deep and tight, with amazing slam for a 60-watt tube
amplifier. The AQ1001 was not the least bit shy about presenting music
with slam and bam! Music was exciting and fun to listen to, but not really all
that "musical." Subtle shadings and nuances were omitted. Lost was the
feeling that I was listening to real instruments or performers playing in a real
space. The sound was more hi-fi than real-more like a what you'd hear at a
rock concert than in a jazz club. This is not to suggest that the AQ1001 was
sonically tilted in any direction. No, it sounded neither dark nor light, nor
was it the least bit bass-heavy or bright. The mids were neither recessed
nor pushed forward. But again, the amp was not musical, especially when
compared to my amp and preamp.
Of course, I was comparing an entry-level integrated to two products
attempting to push the envelope, but I kept saying to myself, "Not bad for
$1200!" The stock AQ1001 is just not that refined. It is a fun product, but
not one I could enter into a serious long-term relationship with. HOWEVER,
for the fun of it, I borrowed some NOS 12AU7 tubes, and what an amazing
transformation! Images now existed in a airy atmosphere that was very
natural and alive. The NOS tubes really made things happen, and the same
goes when I dumped the stock AC cord and used a PS Audio Mini-Lab
Cable. Now things were cooking, so much so I was starting to feel a little
put off by the fact that here was a $1200 integrated, with $400 in upgrades,
putting my reference stuff to shame.
What the tubes and cable provided was everything that was missing before,
but without sacrificing any of the AQ1001's strengths. Air, depth, musical
subtleties, tonal nuances, and dimensional palpability were there, up the
yahoo. I mean, what's the deal? I could sell my Blue Circle preamp and
Clayton amps, buy the AQ1001, and with the leftover cash, go on a nice
European vacation! I was bummed, but then, the AQ1001 was now so
involving to listen to that I was too busy to be depressed.
The AQ1001 as delivered is a decent integrated that will serve you well if
you are not too concerned with musical naturalism, but if you are, the stock
tubes are not going to get you there. Changing the tubes and AC cord
moves the AQ1001 into a completely different league, allowing it to
compete with a combo costing many times more. Manufacturers of $1200
amps have to cut corners, and the choice of tubes is an obvious place to
start. Why put expensive tubes into an inexpensive product, especially
AQ1001DT
when most users are going to be tube-rolling anyway? When properly
outfitted, the AQ1001 is a giant killer, and gets my strong recommendation!
Dave Clark
VICTOR CHAVIRA'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Magneplanar 1.6 and
B&W DM 302.
ELECTRONICS
Anthem Amp 1. SCE
Harmonic Recovery
System.
SOURCE
Audio Electronics CD1
player.
CABLES
Nordost Quattro-Fil
interconnects, Blue
and El Dorado power
cords.
ACCESSORIES
Monster Cables HTS
1000 AC center.
Vibrapods, Lovan
Busters.
Antique Sound Labs is a Hong Kongbased company that has been making tube amps for many years. Their
products are currently imported to North America by Divergent
Technologies of Ontario, Canada. The 1001 is a 50 watt ultralinear pushpull amp with a passive attenuator that accepts up to three line-level
sources. The tube complement is four 12AU7s and four KT88s. The unit is
well constructed. With its tall black transformer towers, mirror-like chrome
base, and brilliant glass tubes, the AQ is attractive and should inspire pride
of ownership in its buyers. The unit also features nice touches like a
removable power chord, 4 and 8 ohm transformer taps, and solid metal
binding posts. A few words about setup and break-in. Whenever possible,
we request components that have been broken in to shorten the loan period
and increase the consistency of sound. Nevertheless, the AQ arrived fresh
from the factory, and when first plugged in sounded horrible compared to
my veteran Anthem Amp1. Since I was the only reviewer with a multimeter,
I set the bias to its specified 45 millivolts and reset it after several
weeks. With time, the AQ loosened up and began to show its true colors.
I listened to a wide variety of music through the AQ, and several recordings
stand out in my memory. The Lion King Original Cast recording is a disc
that my family enjoys listening to. The Los Angeles production is a true
audio spectacle, with left and right percussionists flanking the stage,
banging out contrasting rhythms on a vast array of hand drums and
gongs. The song "Endless Night" is a moving lament sung by the older
Simba to his absent father. The AQ captures the emotional essence of this
tender moment. The amp demonstrated its excellent manners in rendering
subtle dynamic contrasts. As the actor's voice soars from medium to loud,
the effect is truly moving, just as I remember during the live performance. In
my experience, tube components render the way a voice grows and
projects more convincingly than solid state devices.
Another recording that sounded great through the AQ1001DT was A Latin
Vibe!, a budget-priced Latin Jazz collection of vibraphonists from the
Concord label. One track on this disc is Poncho Sanchez' slow rendition of
"Morning." This laid-back tune was richly rendered by the AQ. Flute
sounded relaxed, breathy, and dimensional. Vibes rang with metallic
overtones. Horn players stepped out from behind one another and spread
about the studio floor. In a word, the AQ1001DT gives everything one
expects from a 50 watt push/pull tube integrated amp: warmth, body, and
superb responsiveness, with long arches of sound. The similarities between
AQ1001DT
the AQ and my Anthem Amp 1 are many. Both excel at portraying
performances in real space. The AQ, however, basks music in a clearer
light than the slightly off-white perspective of the EL34-based Anthem. Even
though both amps barely meet the 1.6s' minimum power requirements, both
serve up demanding material with satisfying levels of drama and scale. One
obvious difference between the AQ and the Anthem is the AQ's input level
control. This feature allowed me to effectively control the intensity of sound
as opposed to using the less efficient digital attenuator on my CD player.
The AQ's strongest attribute is its picturesque midband. Even with limited
break-in and stock tubes, the AQ presented a rich palette of musical
colors. The amp is well built, pleasing to the eye, and much more versatile
than my Anthem, and I haven't even touched on the issue of fine-tuning
with driver and power tubes. With so many favorable qualities, the
AQ1001DT is easily recommended. Victor Chavira
AQ1001DT integrated
Retail $1199
Divergent Technologies
TEL: 519. 749. 1565
web address: www.divertech.com
e-mail address: divergent@divertech.com
BACK TO TOP
hdl
walker audio
Ultimate High Definition Links
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/hdl.htm (1 of 4) [8/25/2002 2:50:43 PM]
hdl
DAVE CLARK'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Tetons.
ELECTRONICS
Clayton Audio M100
E.A.R. 834P phono
stage. Blue Circle
BC3000 preamp
SOURCES
with Audient
turntable with K9
arm.
CABLES
JPS Superconductor+
and Silver Sonic
Revelation interconnects,
and JPS digital and NC
speaker cables. Sahuaro
Slipstream and
Slipstream XP (digital
and Taddeo), Blue Circle
BC63 (preamp and
phonostage), and JPS
Kaptovator AC cables
(amps and Stealth).
ACCESSORIES
Audio Magic Stealth
Power Purifier (sources
except BC3000
preamp), Blue Circle
BC86 Noise Hound (amp
circuit) and Audio Prism
QuietLines (throughout
the house). Dedicated 20
There are some things in audio that defy reason. Small things can cost a
lot, yet big things that do much more cost about the same; or, small things
that do a lot more cost less, and big (or small) things that do nothing at all
cost even more, but rarely ever less. Why so? Well, sometimes it's an
honest reflection of the manufacturing costs, though there are other times
where it is simply a matter of what the market will bear with no regard to the
real cost to manufacture. Not to suggest that people are out to rip the audio
consumer off, but geesh, I know we frequently ask ourselves, “Should this
or that really cost THAT much?” “It’s nothing more than a piece of plastic,
metal or whatever!” "Come-on give me a break!"
Then there are the products that just make you scratch your head. We have
all experienced this with cones, cables, and other doodads. You place
something that looks innocent enough in your system and are shocked, first
by what it does or doesn't do, and of course, then by the price. You know
the drill—a set of rubber feet that costs the same as a set of new tires, yet
when you place them under a component, the music goes flat as opposed
to getting it down the proverbial street! Then you try a different product that
uses the same idea but costs less, and whoa—your system is off to the
PRAT races! This brings me to Walker Audio’s Ultimate High Definition
Links. Here we have the consummate audio dangle. It doesn't look like
much, is priced at a point that defies its appearance, and yet, when properly
utilized, makes you sit up and listen, ignoring the number of greenbacks
Walker is charging.
These things work, in spades (or greenbacks), and based on what Carol
and I heard, the price—$650 a pair—is reasonable (well, more on that
later). The HDLs are small devices, intended to prevent RFI and very highfrequency electronic noises (which are emitted from all electronics) from
being transmitted to your loudspeakers and hence out into the room via
mixed in with your music. The idea is that when the electronic glare, grain,
grit, grunge, yadda, yadda is eliminated, music becomes more natural
sounding. The soundstage opens up, becoming better focused and more
transparent. Harmonics become cleaner and clearer, and dynamics faster
and sharper, without harshness. The music emerges from a blacker
background. In the end, the greatest effect is that one enjoys the music
more. With HDLs, you get a sense of all of this. Simply the music reminded
me of a crystal-clear stream of cool and refreshing water. Nice to wash over
oneself after a day of wrangling with 30 eleven-year olds with IQs higher
than a kite!
Okay, much of what the HDLs do is subtle and yes we heard what is said
above, but in absolute terms the overall effect on music is not easily put into
words. Smoother, cleaner, more “natural” with no loss of detail or dynamics.
Okay that’s a good description, but truth is, it is more an issue of “feeling” or
reacting to the music, than a clear cut list of descriptors. What I can say is
that our system just sounds better with them than without. We relate better
to what we are playing regardless of format—analog or digital. What you
get is more music by making it easier to get into the music!
hdl
and 15 amp AC circuits
with Jena Lab cyroed
outlets. Tons of Shakti
Stones and On-Lines,
and Original Cable
Jackets (frig's AC and on
DSL phone line). Various
Marigo VTS Dots used
extensively throughout
the system and room
(window behind listening
seat). Echo Buster
acoustical treatments
and Shakti Hallographs.
BDR cones and board,
Blue Circle Cones, DH
Jumbo cones, Aurios
MIBs, Vibrapods, Mondo
racks and stands, and
Townshend Audio 2D
(speakers) and 3D
Seismic Sinks (transport
and preamp). Walker
Audio Ultimate High
Definition Links. Various
hard woods placed here
and there along with
numerous Peter Belt
treatments.
When the HDLs are fresh out of the box, you can expect a brighter, more
up-front sound, but after a few days of break-in, the HDLs show their stuff. I
can’t say much about system dependency, though I do see it as a potential
issue. They did work here. But no doubt the HDLs will have different effects
in different systems. In mine, they won hands down over the similar, yet
way less expensive ($99 a pair) Enacom units I had been using to good
effect. With the Enacoms, I heard less of the effect of the HDLs, plus a
certain amount of dynamic compression.
All of the parts in the High Definition Links are designed and built to
proprietary specifications for Walker Audio. The wiring and the spade
connectors are ultra-pure silver (I had to remove the spades as these plus
the spades on my speaker cables exceeded the space in my binding
posts). These are rather "tweaky" things, and despite being so simple, they
clearly are not just thrown together off a parts shelf. The units I had—the
Ultimate Links—come with hand, no make that ear, matched parts and also
benefit from cryogenics. What that means, I cannot say. I can say that
where the HDLs are placed does make a difference. No laughing, now!
Placing them between the speaker spades and the nut on the binding post
was better than between the speaker spades and the speaker end of the
posts. Carol was able to identify this point each time I moved them around.
I know that this was a bit anal, but we had to find out! People would stay
awake all night tossing and turning, wondering if they should be placed this
way as opposed to that way. Just follow the directions and be happy—they
sounded best when placed as suggested. Elsewhere, the results were less
than stellar. They worked, but just not as well. Get a life. Buy a dog. Play
fetch.
Naturally, the question you want an answer to is, “At $650 these are not
cheap Dave and since you do not have to pay full price, are they worth the
money?” "I mean, would you buy them?" Yes and no. Yes if you have deep
pockets and want the ultimate. But no because for $350 you can the get the
Mk II versions that get you really, really close to the Ultimate HDLs and for
a lot less. This makes the Mk IIs a bargain by comparison. The Walker
Audio Ultimate High Definition Links are the next step in realizing the
potential of your system—not a tweak, but the next step. Highly
recommended. Oh, and we bought the Ultimate HDLs. Dave Clark
hdl
Ultimate HDL used with a Shakti On-Line
Ultimate High Definition Links
Retail $650 a pair
Walker Audio
TEL: 610. 666. 6087
web address: www.walkeraudio.com
BACK TO TOP
aurios
media access
Aurios MIBs
Okay, here’s the skinny. Aurios MIBs really
work. They are by far some of the best isolation devices you can buy, so
buy some and enjoy. End of review.
I wish it were that simple, but there are some problems. The first: Whenever
your cherished amplifier, preamplifier, DAC, transport, CD player, or
whatever was being built by Joe Audioguru, he “voiced” its sound in certain
ways. One, the parts and circuit layout, two, the box it all sits in, and three,
what he thought reproduced music should sound like. If he heard too much
of this or not enough of that, he started to tinker, swapping this part for that
part, this value for that value, moving this here and that there, damping this,
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/aurios.htm (1 of 6) [8/25/2002 2:50:44 PM]
aurios
DAVE CLARK'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Tetons.
ELECTRONICS
Clayton Audio M100
E.A.R. 834P phono
stage. Blue Circle
BC3000 preamp
SOURCES
with Audient
turntable with K9
arm.
CABLES
JPS Superconductor+
NC speaker cables.
Audio, and JPS
ACCESSORIES
PS Audio P300 Power
Plant.
Dedicated 20 and 15
EchoBuster room
Audio 2D and 3D
hard woods, etc.
isolating that, changing the feet, making the box heavier, making the box
lighter, and so on. The result (we assume) is that the component sounds as
good as it can sound under the constraints unique to its manufacture. But
as I said, there’s a problem. When the designer voiced the component, it
was sitting on who knows what type of foot, connected to who knows what
other components, with the designer’s choice of wiring. His system is built
around what he thinks reproduced music should sound like, and it very
likely will not sound the same when you put it into your rig, sitting on your
stand, connected to your other components, playing your music.
Here’s the real crux of the problem-play a record or disc, and everything
starts doing the cha cha with the music. Each component has its own
resonant frequency, and it may not be what the other stuff in your system
likes to see. It’s called synergy, which is why we like to try stuff out here at
home to see if it plays well with the other children in the room.
So you buy a component, and as soon as the dust settles you start
experimenting with equipment supports in the hope of cleaning things up
and gaining the last iota of musicality and transparency. The assumption is
that you are isolating your components from vibration, but it doesn’t really
work that way. You see, cones, feet, and stuff like that do not isolate. What
they do is couple the component to the surface it is sitting on. In actuality,
they “tune” the component to a different resonant frequency than the one it
possesses when sitting on its own feet. Truth be told, you choose cone A
over foot B under a particular component because cone A tunes that
component to a frequency that is closer to your definition of what music
should sound like, and/or one that is more synergistic to those of your other
components. In most instances, using this cone or that foot results in a
sonic difference. For some listeners, different is better, but “different” simply
means “not the same.” Different can be better, but it can also be worse, or
just different. Cones and feet do serve a purpose, but try to remember that
the purpose is to tune and not to isolate.
On the other hand, air bladder devices (Townshend and so on) and rollerball type devices (Symposium, Daruma, the MIBs) will do a much better job
of isolating a component from its environment, which includes not only the
room it is in but the other components it is connected to. The Aurios people
claim that only when you fully isolate a component will you truly hear what it
sounds like, but here’s the rub. The Aurios isolate better than anything I
have tried, but if you put them under everything, it’s like having sex with the
lights on. Less can be better, at least when you get to my age! The MIBs
will isolate to a point at which you will hear your music as it has never been
heard before. The degree of transparency will be really quite amazing.
Unfortunately, using them throughout my system was too much of a good
thing. At a certain point, they began to impart a slight “metallic” coloration to
the musical framework, and more MIBs meant more coloration. The level of
transparency increased, but it was not musical, and not enjoyable.
Spectacular, yes, but musical, no. What to do? I determined where they
sounded the best, and in those positions I placed a piece of wood between
aurios
them and the underside of the component. I used maple pucks, though
depending on the sound you’re after, other woods would work as well or
better. (I know of another happy MIB user who heard that same “metallic”
quality in his system, employed Shun Mook mpingo pucks between the
discs and components, and is in musical heaven!) The wood apparently
helps by preventing the steel top of the MIB from interfacing with the bottom
metal surface of the component. I found that using the MIBs, with the wood
pucks, under the Clayton amps and the Taddeo digital device gave the
most improvement.
When placed in these locations, the MIBs allowed the system really open
up, both musically and sonically. Both components needed to have their
character “lightened up” a bit, and the MIBs did the trick. At first I thought
that the more massive the component, the better the MIBs would work, but
trying them under the massive Blue Circle BC3000 preamp was not as
pleasing as using a Townshend 3D Seismic Sink. I presently use
Townshend 3D Sinks under my transport and preamp, plus 2D Sinks under
the Reimer loudspeakers, and prefer them to the MIBs. With the MIBs I
heard less warmth and “naturalness,” even when combined with the maple
pucks. I will be reviewing the Townshends in another issue and do not want
to make this an MIB vs. Townshend review, but the comparison between
the two isolation devices made me the question the claim made by MIB that
the Aurios allow you to hear the “true” character of a component.
What, after all, is the true character of a component, and how would we
know it when we heard it? If a component sounds one way with Cone A and
another with Foot B (everything else in the system being the same), which
sound is the “true” sound? And does a true sound even exist, given the fact
that every time we change something-in that or any other component in the
system-the sound of the entire system changes? While the Aurios may
isolate a component from other components and the room, all the
components combined form a system. I will never know what my amps
sound like unless they are connected to other components that allow them
to play music, and each of those components affects the other whether they
are isolated or not. So, while the Aurios may isolate better than anything
else out there, they don’t really allow us to hear each component in
isolation from each other, except perhaps in terms of resonance.
My experience with the wood pucks raised the further question of whether
any device can truly isolate a component from its environment, and do so
without adding resonances and colorations of its own. I am sure that Aurios
has measurements to prove that the MIBs prevent the transfer of
environmental vibration to a component, but as I and others have
discovered, the MIBs impart their own sound. Even so, I recommend them
to anyone who is serious about music, with the caveat that they are not a
“magic fix,” and careful experimentation will be necessary to achieve the
best results. As always, there’s no free lunch in high end audio. Dave Clark
aurios
FRANCISCO DURAN'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Osiris 24" stands.
ELECTRONICS
Monarchy SM-70
amplifiers (mono).
Reference Line
line stage.
SOURCE
Musical Concepts’
Pioneer DV414 DVD
Epoch VII Signature
Antidote Two.
CABLES
Superconductor+
interconnects and a
double run of JPS
cables.
ACCESSORIES
Panamax power
and Vibrapods.
I'm going to start this article with the
conclusion: The Aurio Media Isolation Bearings work, and work well. They
are designed to provide isolation in the horizontal plane. Media Access
states that with coupling devices such as spikes and cones, vibration not
only drains out but travels back into the component you are trying to isolate.
With the MIBs, this is not possible. Paul Wakeen of Media Access was kind
enough to send us enough MIBs to float my entire system and then some. I
even tried them under my VCR.
The MIB instruction manual recommends three under each component.
With MIBs under everything in my system except the speakers, my system
became more grain-free and warm sounding than I thought possible. The
music also displayed less smearing and grunge. Transients were round and
polished. Instruments sounded more solid, and the space around them was
cleaned up. Music was more naturally atmospheric, especially with voice
and guitar. Then I got brave, and with six MIBs in hand, headed towards my
speakers. Instead of putting the MIBs under the spikes of my Osiris speaker
stands, I placed them between my speakers and the stands. The outcome
proved interesting. The MIBs continued to improve the sound in the
direction noted above, but the tonal balance changed. The sound was
cleaner, but it was also thinner and more analytical. Maybe the place for the
MIBs is between the speaker stands and the floor, but placing the MIBs
under my stands was just not possible, as the floor in my listening room is
extremely uneven. Or perhaps the Aurios were just bringing out the true
sound of my speakers!
Then I felt it was time for a little experimenting. I took the Aurios out of the
system and switched amps to a Parasound 1500 II. After getting used to
the sound of the amp, I put three Aurios under it. With just the three MIBs,
there was a slight but noticable improvement. Then put six, nine, twelve,
then finally fifteen MIBs under the amp. With each addition the level of
improvement was noticeable. Boy was I surprised. This raised the level of
performance of the amp to quite a degree. It became more full and sweet,
with a slightly rounded and very clean overall sound. Vocals were more
intelligible. There was better dimension, more air, and more detail. I could
now hear way into the soundstage. The rhythm and pace of the music
picked up a notch. Placing this many Aurios under each component is
impractical in more ways than one, but it was fun to try. It did not make the
sound brighter, as it has in the past when I tried this experiment with
various cones.
The Aurio MIBs did a better job of removing unwanted vibrations than
anything that I have tried so far. The big surprise, though, was that I didn't
have to strain to hear the benefits. Once you hear what the Aurios can do
for your system, it's hard to go back to the "bad vibes," so slap a few of
aurios
them under your components. You'll be amazed.
Francisco Duran
MANUFACTURER'S RESPONSE
Being somewhat of the "new kids on the block" to the realm of high-end
audio/video, we at Vistek were pleased to see that you found our offerings
so worthwhile. As engineers and technologists, we also applaud your
efforts to present the full story, both pro and con. We appreciate the time
and effort you expended in order to obtain the very best of the MIBs’
capabilities and your concise recounting of the journey. Careful setup does
pay handsome rewards!
We recognize that, though our Aurios technology breaks new ground and
offers an exciting level of performance, we cannot avoid certain realities of
physics. We only wish that the following statement excerpted from
Francisco's review was true: "With the MIBs, this [vibration] is not possible."
If we were to change that phrase to read: "With the MIBs, this [vibration] is
minimized," I think we could sleep better. We are continuing to develop our
technology, and hope that we can make physics work to our common and
greater advantage.
To that end, we are happy that you have joined us in this discovery
process, and expect that someday everyone associated with the
audio/video industry will fully understand and appreciate the need for
proper isolation solutions. Thank you again for your part in bringing our
story and products to light!
For the staff at VISTEK INC.,
Craig Goff
Product Manager
Aurios Division
The Aurios Media Isolation Bearings are like any other device that is added
to an already "tuned" system: it has to be integrated into the system,
utilizing its strengths and minimizing its weaknesses. There can be a
lightening of the tonal balance when the MIBs are installed. It may require a
change of speaker placement, interconnect, or speaker wire to regain the
preferred tonal balance.
With the MIBs, the lack of resonance-induced colorations allows a
component to be as transparent and as detailed as its circuitry will
aurios
permit. You've heard the statement that your music system can only be as
good as your source (meaning the software). Well, here's a twist to that
statement: Your source (now meaning your component) can only be as
transparent and detailed as it is isolated from vibration. At times, the
lightening of the tonal balance is just that-lightening of the tonal
balance. Resonance of the chassis that was present when the designer
"tuned" the component is now diminished to the point where you now hear
everything else more clearly. Now all you have to do is to tune for the lack
of resonance (which can be as easy as moving the speakers slightly), and
you get to keep the transparency, air, detail, dynamics, etc.
Thanks to Dave and Francisco for their time, effort, and perspective on the
use of the Aurios MIBs. This is only the beginning. There'll be more.
All the best,
Paul Wakeen
Media Access
Aurios Distributor
Aurios MIB
Retail $299 for a set of three
Media Access
TEL 800. 830. 1575
web address: www.mediaacc.com
e-mail address: paul@auriosmib.com
BACK TO TOP
47labsflatfish
47 laboratory
Flatfish CD player and Progression DAC
as reviewed by Francisco Duran, Dave Clark, Larry Fisher,
and Larry Cox.
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/47labsflatfish.htm (1 of 8) [8/25/2002 2:50:46 PM]
47labsflatfish
FRANCISCO
DURAN'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
ProAc Response
2s.
ELECTRONICS
Reference Line
Preeminence IA
passive.
Monarchy SM-70
amplifiers.
SOURCE
EAD DSP 1000 III
DAC.
Pioneer DP 54 as
a transport.
CABLES
Kimber Hero
interconnects,
Acrotec 1050
speaker cables,
and LAT digital
cable.
ACCESSORIES
Panamax PLC.
To say that the 47 Labs CD combo is unconventional in its design
and looks is an understatement. The Model 4713 Flatfish player/transport is a rather small,
rectangular, top-loading unit that is precariously perched atop three spikes. All of its controls
are on the top front, along with its hard-to-read display (that is, hard to read unless you are
looking down on it). The Model 4705 Progression DAC is a smaller rectangular box. The
cylindrical Model 4799 Power Dumpty power supply reminds me of a piston out of a big block
engine.Both the DAC and player can be powered by it. The 4713 features a “hard suspension
system.” Its platform and casing is a thick, machined aluminum board with the driving and
pickup mechanisms and critical circuits directly mounted to it, which helps to reduce vibrations
that can affect the sound quality. The same thinking went into the DAC and power supply.
Some of the unique features of the DAC are that it is a non-oversampling design, with no
digital or analog filters. The conversion is handled by a passive instead of an active device. It
boasts the “world’s shortest signal path” for a DAC, just 35 mm, along with the world’s
smallest number of parts—just 20—housed in a two-piece chassis made from a machined
aluminum block. The output, which is important to us passive-ists, is 2.1 volts. Neither the
player nor the transport/DAC combo had problems driving my system to quite high levels.
To play a CD with the Flatfish, you have to remove a threaded clamp and protective disc from
the top, put the CD in place, then screw the threaded clamp back down. Gee, what does that
remind you of? Too much trouble, you say? Just hit the play button, then see if you complain!
This is one sweet and clean music-making machine, with almost no grain, glare, or trace of
any digital artifacts. By now I’ve become very familiar with Alvin Youngblood Hart’s Big
Mamma’s Door CD. Many songs on this disc are just Hart, his voice, and a steel guitar. With
this well-recorded disc, I could hear every nuance of vocal inflection. Harmonic overtones and
finger plucks were laid out in front of me. The Flatfish reproduced this music with an organic
wholeness and warmth that reminded me of tubes, but without any coloration or euphonics.
Plucked guitar strings did not have too much energy or bite. Cymbals were well controlled, yet
did not sound rolled off. Vocals were in proportion and natural. Each voice seemed to come
out of a body instead of just a mouth.
I noticed plenty of air around the trumpet solo of track four of the Independence Day
soundtrack. Then, when the flutes came in, the music seemed to blend in naturally. Massed
voices on large-scale classical works flowed from the speakers. The music seemed to breathe
and have more life. My wife commented that it sounded like when we go to the Rio Hondo
Symphony. (The fact that my wife even noticed the sound quality was special. She rarely pays
attention to the things that go on in the Duran Audio Dungeon.) The Flatfish handled the
dynamics of an orchestra with ease. Trumpets and trombones were rich sounding, again
without being overly euphonic, yet with a solid state kind of authority. On Clarence Gatemouth
Brown’s CD Gate Swings, the horns sound rich and blatty with no stinging peaks. Every once
in a while when people come over, I like to play the Telarc CD Beautiful Hollywood just to see
the reactions when they recognize the various movie themes. The chimes on track two, "A
River Runs Through It", were about the most natural that I’ve heard. Most of the time they
sound too hot. The chirping and clicking sounds on my old chestnut, Planet Drum by Mickey
Hart, also took on a more pleasing tone. These small details were naturally placed in space.
On my Mobil Fidelity Getz/Gilberto CD, the vocals were very slick and virtually grain-free.
On went the Stones Voodoo Lounge, Steel Wheels, and one of their Greatest Hits
compilations, plus, what the hell, some Metallica and ZZ Top. Can the Flatfish rock and roll? It
47labsflatfish
does remove some glare and grunge, and most rock sounded slightly warmer than what I
normally hear. Hmm, warm rock? I thought it was supposed to be hot? Also, the dynamic
impact and edginess was slightly obscured. The hard edge of rock and roll music was
smoothed off to make it more palatable, although the music’s pace didn’t seem to slow down.
There were times when I would have liked a little more impact and depth to the electric bass
guitar. Don’t get me wrong, rock music was very listenable with the Flatfish. It just seemed to
lose a bit of bite. Maybe this music just wasn’t meant to be played too cleanly!
Before I sent the Flatfish on its way, I tried it with both the Progression DAC and my own
cherished Taddeo Digital Antidote II. With the DAC in the chain, I found the music to be that
much more refined and relaxed. Music took on a degree of added dimension. It was a lot
easier to relax and get into the music. I was not as easily distracted when I was listening as I
was before. As for the Taddeo II, it does work with this player. As good as the Flatfish is, the
Taddeo II improved its performance with a little more detail, air, and dimension. What struck
me was the way the Taddeo II filled out the midrange on this already excellent player. I did
find that the Taddeo II had the least effect on the Flatfish than on the handful of other CD
players I have tried it with.
The Flatfish CD player is a music maker of the highest degree. I really enjoyed listening to
CDs with it. It has a warm, sweet, detailed, and dynamic sound that really makes me think of
tubes. Although the Flatfish, Power Dumpty, and Progression DAC combination may be
expensive, you have the option of buying them piece by piece. With its excellent build quality
and innovative approach to digital conversion, not to mention its unique ascetics, the Flatfish
definitely stands out from the crowd. Francisco Duran
DAVE CLARK'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Reimer Wind
River.
ELECTRONICS
Clayton Audio
M70 monoblock
amplifiers. E.A.R.
834P phono
stage. Blue Circle
BC3 preamp
w/Amperex BB
tubes, and
BCG3.1 power
supply.
Taddeo Digital
Antidote Two and
the HRS unit.
The 47 Labs Flatfish CD player/transport and Progression DAC
have been reviewed in many audio publications. The overwhelming response has been that,
separately or together, they are winners. I would like to add that they are as organically
musical as any components I have auditioned. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not taking the easy
way out by simply agreeing with my fellow audiogeek reviewers. I did listen to the 47 Labs
units for several weeks before I came to this conclusion.
The Flatfish, used as a CD player, is a beautiful-sounding digital source. Very airy and open,
not the least bit fatiguing. Smooth and grain-free. It sounds very “organic,” very voluptuous,
more Marilyn Monroe than Pamela Anderson, if I may be a bit of a male chauvinist pig. The
sound holds together very well, with no single area calling attention to itself. Very classy. All of
these characteristics are typical of a 1-bit DAC, which the Flatfish is, though it has none of the
sonic tradeoffs of a poorly or inexpensively made product. On the other hand, the Flatfish is
more “rounded” and rolled off at the frequency extremes than my reference setup, and other
players I have heard here. Nor does it push the envelope in detail retrieval. The details are
there, but you have to listen “into” the music to hear them. The lower frequencies tend to be
soft and full. The Flatfish will not pummel you with deep, driving bass, though its low end
reproduction is quite captivating. The Flatfish was a joy to listen to, though it was a bit too
smooth and soft for my taste. Carol and I are both into something a bit more viscerally
stimulating.
I should note that I used Nordost SPM and Moonglo cabling, instead of my usual JPS
47labsflatfish
SOURCES
EAD T1000
transport and
1000 Series II
DAC with Audient
Technologies’
Tactic and Audit,
Nordost Moonglo
digital cable. Linn
Axiss turntable
with K9 cartridge
and Basik Plus
arm.
CABLES
Nordost Blue
Heaven and SPM
interconnects,
and SPM or
Hovland Nine
Line bi-wired
speaker cables.
Sahuaro, Blue
Circle, Custom
House, and
Clayton Audio AC
cables.
ACCESSORIES
Homebrewed ac
conditioner for
sources and the
Coherent
Systems
Electraclear EAU1 parallel
conditioner.
Dedicated 15 amp
ac circuit for
sources and 20
amp ac circuit for
amplifiers. Mondo
racks, BDR cones
and board, DH
cones, Vibrapods,
various hard
woods, etc. And a
bottle of Rancho
Sisquoc Merlot.
Superconductor+, to get as much detail and visceral excitement out of the 47 Labs units as
possible. The JPS stuff is very good—good enough that I bought it— but the Nordost cables
stress detail and the like over sheer musicality. I also tried various AC cords, cones, and other
tweaks to get the best possible sound from this gear, though it was not until I read another
review that I realized how to use the supplied spikes for the Flatfish.
Used alone, the Flatfish is spatially and harmonically a real winner. Adding the Progression
DAC tends to further this, resulting in an even smoother and more grain-free character. Way
more “liquidity” and naturalness, though, to my taste, perhaps a bit too much of a good thing. I
prefer more excitement, and more rhythmic drive. The DAC tends to push the music too far
the other way, making it slower, smoother, and with a less in-your-face presentation. While
still very musical, this combo is more for the laid back crowd that likes to watch, as opposed to
those who like to be an active part of an event. I did not audition the 47 Labs units with other
DACs or transports, as I could not imagine anyone using them as such. They are way too
unique to be paired with a component that is more conventional, either in terms of circuitry or
cosmetics. I see purchasers going for the Flatfish, then potentially upgrading to the DAC.
These components are far from inexpensive. Are they worth the money? The Flatfish offers
the biggest bang for the buck, though when paired with the Dumpty power supply, it exceeds
the laws of (perceived) diminishing returns. Looking at the Flatfish and reading about how the
circuit is of the simplest and shortest, using the minimum number of parts, one could easily
question the asking price. Add the Progression DAC and, well, Elvis has left the building. I can
see how some people might quibble about the slow loading time, the clunky toggle switches,
and tweaky nature of the Flatfish. I found the unit to require no more attention or patience than
a turntable. Visually and sonically, the Flatfish and the Progression DAC are works of art, and
as such, the issue of value will not deter those who prize such objects. Definitely worth an
audition. Dave Clark
47labsflatfish
LARRY FISHER'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Ryan Acoustics
MCL-3 speakers.
Klipsch subwoofer
(used very
sparingly).
ELECTRONICS
Melos SHA 1
preamplifier.
Adcom GTP-500
preamp/tuner.
forte 1a amplifier.
SOURCES
CAL Audio Icon
Mk II CD player.
Sota Sapphire
turntable with
Lynn Basik
tonearm, and
Sumiko Blue
Point cartridge.
CABLES
Homemade MIT
Zap Cord and
PBJ
interconnects,
Kimber 8TC
biwire speaker
cable. Custom
and homemade
AC power cords.
When I unpacked the Model 4713 Flatfish CD
transport/player, Model 4799 Power Dumpty power supply, and Model 4705 Progression
DAC, my first thought was, “This is pretty weird,” but, as anyone who really knows me will tell
you, that was a compliment. This system looks like it came straight out of a development lab.
The top plate of the CD transport/player, the chassis of the power supply, and the DAC’s
housing are made from anodized, industrial-grade aluminum. Areas for the control switches,
LED display, and laser sled appear to be milled out a solid block. A piece of acrylic came
attached to the CD transport/player to protect the laser sled. The fit and finish of the system
are first rate.
There is no CD drawer on the transport/player. A CD is placed on an acrylic spindle, and an
acrylic clamp, similar to the one used on some turntables, is used to secure the disc. A hardwired cord is used to attach the transport/player to the power supply, which is housed in a
cylinder. There is no power switch or LED. The DAC, with its black anodized top and
aluminum-colored bottom, reminded me of an electric pencil sharpener. All items have easy-toread silk screening. I’d give the Flatfish system a B+ in visual design, though I could see how
someone else might give it a lower rating.
As much as I liked the way the Flatfish system looked, I didn’t like its setup and operation.
When I first received the units, I connected them to our AV system for a quick listen. The
transport/player can function as a standalone CD player (with the power supply), so I thought
the setup would be easy, but the problem I ran into was the short length of the hard-wired
power connectors, which limited where I could place the components. When I moved the
system downstairs to the dedicated listening room, setting things up was a little easier, but
when I sat down to listen, I realized I couldn’t see the display on the CD player, since it was
above eye level and pointing at the ceiling. Another thing about the operation of the system
that left me less than enamored was the control switches. Every switch on the CD player is a
mini-toggle. Even though these are high-quality switches, using them can knock the CD player
off of its feet. Also, when trying to select a specific track by toggling a switch a number of
times, I’d often pass the track I wanted and have to backtrack to get to it. The system does
have a remote with standard features, but you still have to be standing over it to see the
display. One more item of concern is the display’s narrow viewing angle. Go off to the side
just a bit and you can’t read it at all. One thing I did enjoy is that the display can be turned off.
This is perfect for those late-night sessions when you’d rather not be confronted by a glowing
rack of components. I give the Flatfish system a C in setup and operation.
After my initial positive impressions of the Flatfish system were dampened, I wondered which
direction the sound of this system was going to take me. Once I had the Flatfish installed, I felt
like a kid at Christmas, tearing into his presents, ooh-ing and ahh-ing about what he found
before moving on to something else, though I was doing this with all sorts of CDs. I listened to
classical, jazz, chamber, rock, punk, country, pop, anything and everything I could get my
hands on. I do this to some extent with any new piece of equipment I put into my system, but
the Flatfish was making my system sound so good that only the thought of going to work the
next day made me stop. I could not find anything wrong with the sound that I didn’t attribute to
some other piece of equipment. The sound was finely defined, with three-dimensional
instruments hanging in a believable soundstage, and without a trace of harshness. I have
experienced finely-defined sound from my system before, when using high-definition cables,
but there was always an accompanying harshness. The well-defined soundstage has also
47labsflatfish
shown up a few times, but never with the degree of realism I was experiencing.
As test discs, I chose two CDs from performers or groups I’ve heard in intimate settings. I’ve
used these CDs for auditioning equipment in the past, and am very familiar with what they
sound like. The first song was a track off of Eric Reed’s CD It’s All Right to Swing (MoJazz
374637006-2), “Wade in the Water.” The drum intro to this song, which lasts about 40
seconds, consists of small rhythm runs and cymbal crashes. Normally I hear a very tight drum
kit, nice splashy metallic cymbals, and a variety of drum sounds. All I’ve ever wished for was
a little more weight. The Flatfish had me forgetting about weight. The second song to get
bounced back and forth between the Flatfish and my CD player was “Got To Have You Be My
Man,” from Rory Block’s CD Best Blues and Originals (Rounder 11525). Although I thoroughly
enjoy listening to this CD on my usual setup, the Flatfish separated Rory’s voice from the
other instruments, and took away the bit of harshness at the vocal peaks that I usually detect.
I couldn’t find any fault with the sound of the Flatfish system. Its ability to deliver the details,
large and small, without adding any harshness or distortion to the sound is what sets the
Flatfish miles away from my current CD setup. Its imaging, and the three-dimensional sound it
put out, were first rate. I’d love to have the Flatfish be a permanent part of my system, but I
can’t afford it. Highly recommended, if you have the stash. Larry Fisher
The name is perfect. I mean, who’d name a CD player after a
fish? Apparently, the same guys who created an external power supply that is many times
larger and heavier than the player, not to mention a player with the threaded CD spindle
mounted outside and on top, so that you have to clamp and unclamp each disc you play. To
complete the weirdness, external vibrations are damped by putting the very light-weight player
on stilts. Very odd. The stilts make the player awkward to use. While screwing and
unscrewing each CD, the player wobbles around. It is not flimsily made, in fact it is quite solid,
so nothing will happen, but the process is still awkward.
Wait, I’m not done kvetching. The display is placed on top of the player, along with the CD
spindle. So what, you say? Well, you can’t tell from your seat which track is playing without
47labsflatfish
LARRY COX'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
ATC 20.
ELECTRONICS
E.A.R 802
preamplifier.
Classe CA100
amplifier.
SOURCES
CAL Icon MkII CD
player. Oracle
Delphi MkII
turntable,
AudioQuest PT7
tone arm, Koetsu
Rosewood
cartridge.
CABLES
Silver Audio Silver
Bullet 4.0s
interconnect and
Beldon 1219A
speaker cables.
ACCESSORIES
API Power Pack
and ACPEAM line
conditioners.
getting up to check it out. Could be I’m just cranky, but I want to register my crankiness for
you. Oh, one more kvetch—you have to push “enter” for a command other than play. Thus, if
you want to skip from track three to track eight, you don’t just push “8,” you need to push “8”
and “enter,” and because of the location of the readout, you don’t know, until it happens,
whether your button-pushing activated the player. Okay, I’m done.
The overwhelming thing I’m left with after listening to this kludge-y little monster is that it
sounds as close to analog as I’ve heard from any digital source anywhere, at any time. Why? I
have no idea. This is the first CD player I’ve heard that warrants spending big bucks, and at
$4100 for the Flatfish and its “Humpty” power supply, this is expensive stuff. To me, this
player is worth substantially more than the Arcam Alpha 9. I didn’t have the Alpha around to
do a side-by-side, let alone a double-blind listening test, but the 47 Labs conjured up more
surprises than the Alpha, and the surprises were good ones. With a good system, you can
hear the recording’s limitations and distortions, and hear them as outside the enjoyment of the
music. That is how the Flatfish worked for me. I enjoyed more CDs that sound “bad” on my
normal rig—or if not bad, unenjoyable. With the Flatfish, the limitations were audible, but the
sound was musical underneath the unwanted stuff.
The Flatfish’s bottom end was certainly deeper than my Pioneer DV525 player’s. It was also
fuller and tighter. The sense of timbre was there along with driving bass, when appropriate.
There was that sense of filigreed delicacy that analog offers, from the bottom end to the top. I
REALLY LIKED THIS PUP. I wish it weren’t as audiophile-dorkish as it is, as awkward to use,
and mostly as expensive. It is all these things, and is probably hard to find. You should search
it out. This is one of those products—like my ATCs and my E.A.R. 802 preamp—that I’ve
purchased and feel I’ll never replace. A keeper.
I also had the companion DAC, which, I’ll confess, I didn’t have a lot of time to play with.
Okay, I had the time, but I so liked the player that I never really worked hard to hear the sound
of the DAC/player combo, in part because the DAC didn’t seem to improve much on the
Flatfish, if at all. Perhaps it is appropriate to weigh the other reviewers’ opinions on the DAC
over mine. Larry Cox
Thank you very much for taking time on reviewing Flatfish-Progression CD front-end. We
thoroughly enjoyed reading each review and agree almost all aspects of what you said. It is
an unconventional system to say the least and may need some get-used-to when you first set
it up, but once you are used to it’s controls and settings, you will be rewarded with a great
sound and music. On the other hand, you’ll never get used to a bad sound even if a machine
provides all the convenience in the world.
According to the designer, Junji Kimura, the clamping device, supporting feet, and
construction, all contribute to maximize its sound (I forgot to ask about the location of the
indicator!), and are designed that way intentionally.
There are customers who replaced their more expensive CD front-ends with the Flatfishprogression combo. 47 Labs is a small but a very intelligent company with revolutionary ideas
and products and I am very proud to be their distributor in the US.
47labsflatfish
Best regards,
Yoshi Segoshi/SAKURA SYSTEMS
4713 Flatfish CD player
Retail $3600
4705 Progression DAC
Retail $2700
Total system price with Power Dumpty
Retail $8100
Sakura Systems
TEL 508. 829. 3426
web address: www.sakurasystems.com
e-mail address: sakurastms@aol.com
BACK TO TOP
daruma
final labs
Daruma 3II isolation bearings
as reviewed by Larry Cox, Dave Clark, and Francisco Duran
Final Labs Darumas are ball bearing damping
things for placing under your audio gear. Final Labs, a Japanese company,
introduced a similar device back in 1990; the current iteration was
completed in 1995. Although the Aurios reviewed here an issue or two ago
have gotten more press, the Darumas appear to have been the first on the
block with this technology.
The devices are quite simple. There are two metal cups with a ball bearing
sitting in a rounded depression of one of the cups. Thus, the equipment
rides on top of the ball bearing, damping vibrations, or “earthing” them, as
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/daruma.htm (1 of 5) [8/25/2002 2:50:47 PM]
daruma
LARRY COX'S SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
ATC SCM 20.
ELECTRONICS
Majeel Labs Pristine S10 amplifier and an
E.A.R. 802 preamplifier.
SOURCE
Pioneer DV 525 dvd
player.
CABLES
and speaker cables
wire.
ACCESSORIES
API Power Pack and
ACPEAM line
conditioners.
Final Labs says, in the horizontal and vertical planes. Final Labs notes on
their web page that all audio equipment has mechanical vibration, so I
deduce that you could put them under your speakers as well as your
electronics. There’s no note on weight limitations, however, so go slow,
Infinity Beta users.
They worked quite nicely under my soon-to-be-replaced Pioneer 525 DVD
player, as well as my not-soon-to-be-replaced E.A.R. 802 preamp. Like
most damping devices, they didn’t change Madonna into a throaty, deep
voiced singer, but added a measure of clarity to the listening experience.
They gave greater precision to instruments and vocals. I also noticed that
the vertical height of instruments and singers became more clearly fixed in
space. On Quarteto Gelato’s debut, without Darumas in place, the sound of
the accordion was relatively familiar, a sort of mini-organ. With the
Darumas, the sound was of a more textured instrument. While many
vibration-damping devices add clarity, some give a hostile, bright, and
beamy sound. With the Darumas, these qualities weren’t immediately
apparent.
When the Darumas were here for review I also had the Theta Carmen
DVD/CD player and their Pro Basic III DAC, a far more resolving setup than
my lowly Pioneer. When placed under the Theta gear, the Darumas added
resolution to an already high-resolution sound. Images became clearer,
more effortlessly distinguished. All was wonderful. Only when I inserted the
Black Diamond Racing Cones under the Carmen did I notice that there was
a slight metallic ring to the Carmen with the Darumas. This ringing quality is
very low in level in a system that is pretty darn resolving.
Damping devices often turn a rough, denim texture into twill or gabardine.
What I got with the Darumas was more like wide-wale corduroy, a clearer
presentation of texture on texture. That amounts to an improvement for me.
The texture-on-texture differences weren’t as easily discerned with the
Black Diamond goodies. The BDRs seemed a little slower and softersounding. Which is correct? Heck if I know. This is a system matching
thing. I liked both, and think my preference might come down differently
with a different set of interconnects.
At a mere $99 per component, you could have Darumas under three
components for the cost of one set of Aurios. Unfortunately, I didn’t hear the
Aurios, so I can’t comment on their relative merits. I’d say your system
could well be served by all three. At $99, you could do more with the Final
Labs iteration. Try—you may buy. Larry Cox
daruma
DAVE CLARK'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Tetons.
ELECTRONICS
Clayton Audio M100
E.A.R. 834P phono
stage. Blue Circle
BC3000 preamp
SOURCES
with Audient
turntable with K9
arm.
CABLES
JPS Superconductor+
NC speaker cables.
Audio, and JPS
ACCESSORIES
PS Audio P300 Power
Plant.
Dedicated 20 and 15
EchoBuster room
Audio 2D and 3D
hard woods, etc.
The Daruma 3IIs came on the heels of the
Aurios MIBs. Similar in design, both products address the issue of
component isolation via bearings sandwiched between metal discs. The
differences are in materials and execution. The Aurios are hardened steel,
and use three balls, with the assembly held together through an ingenious
design. The Darumas, which use a single ball with aluminum discs at top
and bottom, are three separate pieces. There are couple of downsides to
the Daruma design. One, you can easily lose a bearing, and two, with the
softer aluminum, if you use a heavy component, grooves will form on the
surface of the bottom disc. The first is merely an annoyance, but the
second is more critical. Will impressions in the base reduce the Darumas'
ability to function as designed?
I liked the MIBs at $300 per set, so how did the Darumas at $99 compare?
To me, comparing them is like comparing a Mercedes CL500 to a
Volkswagen Passat. While both are excellent cars, they have been
designed to different price points and are not really in the same league. Or
are they? I own a Passat, and it gets me from point A to point B rather
nicely, though without the luxurious style of the CL500. The Darumas work
quite well at their intended application. The sound opens up, with greater
clarity and pace than with stock feet or other popular cones. Compared to
the MIBs, they offer less clarity and detail, though the MIBs may be too
brutal in this respect—they simply worked way to well in my system. (As I
write elsewhere, the MIBs added a subtle "steeliness" to the sound, though
I was able to overcome this by adding small wooden pucks between the
MIBs and the component. With this configuration the MIBs really worked as
intended.) But back to the matter on hand. The Darumas may not be as
"good" as the MIBs, but when one considers the comment above, this may
not be a bad thing.
Much of the difference can be seen in how easily components on the two
products can be set in motion. The MIBs not only allow greater movement,
but that movement is freer, with less sense of friction. Components on the
Darumas travel less, and do so with a greater sense of effort, perhaps
because the Darumas are made of a softer material. This may relate
directly to the fact that the Darumas have a "softer" effect than the MIBs.
The Aurios' steeliness is not heard from with the Darumas. Music has only
about 75% of the pace and clarity that it does with the Aurios, but with little
of the perceived coloration. A tradeoff to be sure, but not a bad one. Music
just sounds better. For the money, these are highly recommended. The
Aurios may get you down the road in greater comfort and style, but I did
enjoy my time with the Darumas.
The Darumas work as advertised—I know a rarity in todays' audio
market—by allowing more music and less vibrational noise to come
daruma
through. Try these on a DVD player and you will really be surprised. Yes
they are a bit difficult to get just right, though this is easily avoided by
leveling the shelf the component sits on. And yes heavy cables can pull
them off-center as well. But get it right and for $99, you can't really go
wrong. Highly recommended. Dave Clark
FRANCISCO DURAN'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Osiris 24" stands.
ELECTRONICS
Monarchy SM-70
amplifiers (mono).
Reference Line
line stage.
SOURCE
Musical Concepts’
Pioneer DV414 DVD
Epoch VII Signature
Antidote Two.
CABLES
Superconductor+
interconnects and a
double run of JPS
cables.
ACCESSORIES
Panamax power
and Vibrapods.
With all of the tweaks and
accessories that are written about in the audio press, it’s a wonder a music
lover (okay, gearhead) can decide what will work best in their system. How
many times have we read how the latest gizmo affects the soundstage,
tightens the bass, and is a big improvement over the last tweak that hit the
market? It’s enough to make me want to chuck all of my gear, go back to a
good old rack system, and concentrate on the music again. Well, maybe a
nice tube rack system.
It seems like the latest trend is things to put under equipment that
incorporate bearings in their construction. The Daruma 3IIs from Final Labs
are cups machined from light metal with a ball bearing sandwiched between
them. They are not fastened together like the Aurios, but move freely.
There are three units per set. The Darumas are finely crafted devices that
fit neatly under your components. It is said that greater benefits are gained
using them under your source components and tube equipment. Why use
such devices? To drain or “ground” excess vibrations that plague our gear.
I tried the Darumas under all of my equipment except my speakers, and
heard positive effects in each case. The musical benefits were more easily
heard when they were placed under my sources, but I also liked what they
did under my Monarchy monoblocks. Before I go on, though, I have a little
story. As I usually do with tweaks, I tried the Darumas under my VCR. They
worked in a big way, cleaning up the grain in the picture really well. Colors
were slightly richer, too. I also heard a slightly more full bass, smoother
treble, and slightly clearer speech. Tapes got a lot more enjoyable to watch.
With three Darumas under my CD player, the improvements were obvious.
The Darumas cleaned and polished dynamic peaks and transients, making
for a cleaner, clearer musical presentation. The improvements were across
the board with respect to types of music—rock, acoustic, you name it.
These little guys made it easier to hear small musical queues, as if a little
more air and space filled each recording. It also sounded as if I had gotten
a few more decibels of gain. My system was certainly more dynamic.
I did the old switcharoo a few times to see if I was crazy or had developed
that old reviewer’s disease, better-itis! You know. that sickness that makes
you think that just because something is new and in your system for the first
daruma
time that it is an improvement. I’m happy to report that I’m not crazy,
because when I took out the Darumas, music sounded flatter. Cymbals lost
a bit of their sweetness and smoothness. Music now sounded a tad less
dynamic and lost a bit of detail. The sound was less musical and involving.
These weren’t just a few audiophile tricks that went missing when the
Darumas were out of my system.
You have to have a bit of patience when you install these devices. My wife
and son can’t understand why I put them under both my DVD player and
VCR, because every time they use either device, it slides around. This is
the only down side I found with the Darumas. They try the patience of
normal people, but patience, patience, I say, the rewards are great. With a
little care and practice you can operate your equipment without everything
sliding around.
Before the Darumas, I used a combination of the Black Diamond boards
and the Vibrapods, but this combo doesn’t seem to be as musical. There
have been reports that using bearing-type devices under your gear causes
brightness and hardening. I did not experience this, just better music. This
is one tweak that I really liked. Highly recommended. Francisco Duran
Daruma 3II
Retail $99 for three
Final Laboratory
web address: www.finallab.com
e-mail address: mail@finallab.com
US Importer:
Venus Hi-Fi
TEL: 812. 320. 4004
web address: www.venushifi.com
e-mail address: info@venushifi.com
BACK TO TOP
mcintosh352
mcintosh
MC352 amplifier
as reviewed by Larry Cox, Dave Clark, and Victor Chavira
My dad had a McIntosh tube amplifier in the
60s. I remember that amazing blue faceplate, and the turn-on process.
After a couple of minutes of whirring and crackling, music came through the
speakers, and it was darned musical! When the transformer failed in 1970,
my dad tossed the amplifier in the garbage. I remember having a pang of
anguish. When I mentioned it to him he replied, "That’s the whole amplifier,"
that is, the transformer gave the amp its character. He bought a solid state
Dynaco integrated, and said it was much better than the Mac, meaning, I
guess, that it was more linear. I remember, though, that he listened to a lot
less music after that.
I recently spent some time listening to a McIntosh MC352 amplifier. At 350
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/mcintosh352.htm (1 of 6) [8/25/2002 2:50:48 PM]
mcintosh352
LARRY COX'S SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
ATC SCM 20.
ELECTRONICS
Majeel Labs Pristine S10 amplifier. E.A.R. 802
preamplifier.
SOURCE
Pioneer DV 525 dvd
player.
CABLES
and speaker cables
wire.
ACCESSORIES
API Power Pack and
ACPEAM line
conditioners.
watts and about 180 pounds, this is one large hunk of audio gear. When I
looked at this beast sitting in my living room, the brick #!-house metaphor
came to mind. The build quality is exemplary, probably the best I’ve seen.
For your $8000 you get attention to detail, great fit and finish, as well as a
bucket of watts. This is a first class product. McIntosh amplifiers still have
the bold blue dial, as well as the huge meters, which tell you how many
watts are pumping through your system. If you don’t want dancing meters
and flaming blue lights, they are defeatable. Though it is not delicate or
subtle, there is a distinct appeal to the bold and plain visual style of this
amplifier. I was somewhat overwhelmed by its size and weight, but I really
liked its looks.
I recently sold my Oracle Delphi (I kept the Koetsu!), and haven’t replaced it
yet, so all I had for a reference was my horrible little Pioneer DV 525 DVD
player, but I had just completed reviewing the Theta Pro Prime DAC and
Carmen DD/DVD player. In my system, the Theta duo had a full bottom
end, which compensated for the Pristine’s inability to really go low. I figured
I’d cheat and hook up the Mac amp with the Theta stuff. You’d think that
this collection of audio heavyweights would result in audio bliss, but you’d
be wrong.
The huge, powerful bottom end I heard with the Thetas in my usual system
disappeared. it was tamer and less full, though certainly not constipated.
The tight, fast bottom end I expected 350 watts to provide didn’t materialize.
Damn! The Chord SPM1200B, a mere 250-watter, had grabbed hold of the
bottom end of the ATCs and shaken it. Not so the Mac. Transients became
flaccid, attacks didn’t attack, dynamics were moving too slowly to be
noticed. Tonality, something I prize above everything else, was nothing
special. The overall sonic impression was un-engaging.
However, with the $200 Pioneer in place, the bass perked up, in fact it got
downright snappy, with a tautness simply missing with the Theta gear, and
missing from my reference system’s performance with the Pioneer. Who’d
have thought that the lowly Pioneer could exceed $5000 worth of Theta
gear? Certainly not me. The top end revealed recording quality, good or
bad. The midrange, while superior to the Theta’s, was not rich, full-bodied,
or "liquid." The sound was not open, but it was detailed, with very little "art."
I just wasn’t taken by the performance of the McIntosh amplifier, and I feel I
should have been. It may be that the mighty McIntosh just showed off the
pedigree of my Pioneer. If I still had my Oracle, I could have tested this
thesis, but I don’t, so I couldn’t. I should tell you, though, that I tried the
$5500 GamuT amplifier with the crappy little Pioneer, and had a remarkable
sounding system. The McIntosh grabbed the bottom end better than the
GamuT, but that is about the only way in which the McIntosh pushed the
GamuT aside. The GamuT was just amazingly detailed, tonally rich, and
sweet, sweet, sweet on the top. In fairness, the GamuT is the most
desirable amplifier I’ve heard in my system. I have mixed emotions about
the McIntosh. Larry Cox
mcintosh352
DAVE CLARK'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Tetons.
ELECTRONICS
Clayton Audio M100
E.A.R. 834P phono
stage. Blue Circle
BC3000 preamp
SOURCES
with Audient
turntable with K9
arm.
CABLES
JPS Superconductor+
NC speaker cables.
Audio, and JPS
ACCESSORIES
PS Audio P300 Power
Plant.
Dedicated 20 and 15
EchoBuster room
Of all the amps I have reviewed, the McIntosh
MC352 is definitely one of them, but how good is it? To let the rabbit out of
the hat, it is one of the best I have heard so far in the Clark system.
My first encounter with McIntosh was back when I was fifteen and babysat
for friends of my parents. They had an all-McIntosh system with AR 3Ax
speakers. For a teenager using an all-in-one system of long-forgotten
heritage, this was an eye-opener. Bass, dynamics, and just about
everything else were new to me. I had yet to hear music like this in
someone’s home—live, yes, but not through a pair of speakers in a living
room. I sat for hours just looking at those beautiful components, all lit in
blue, and listening to whatever station the tuner was set. No way in hell was
I going to cue up a record! The experience was the impetus for me to
venture onto the audiophile pathway.
Not much has changed in the McIntosh world since then. Looking like it
came from the 60s, with the classic blue meters and glass faceplate, the
MC352 is a big amp in all ways—size, weight, and power.
The amp exudes an elegance sorely missing in today’s "just-another-blackbox" designs. The MC352 is fully balanced from inputs to speaker outputs.
Two matched amplifiers per channel operate in push-pull with their outputs
combined in the "output autoformer" McIntosh has built its reputation on for
the past gazillion years. Each amplifier contains complementary balanced
circuitry, and the resulting double-balanced configuration cancels virtually
all distortion. The autoformers allow the amplifier to output the same power
into any load with the greatest purity.
My current amplifiers are the Clayton M100s, which offer 100 watts (when
set to high bias) and a class A topology. They are a step up from their
previous 70-watt incarnation as the M70s. The increase in power has
opened up the Reimers, allowing the music to be considerably more
dynamic and expressive, with an ease that is quite startling. Bass slam and
power have also dramatically improved, bringing music that features the
fundamentals to a whole ‘nother level. We were quite amazed at how just
thirty more watts could transform what was already, to us, a great music
system. It is now one that we, plus a few others, consider to be of reference
caliber. Is it perfect? No. A bit more transparency in the midrange and
treble would be most welcome, and perhaps a notch more dynamic
headroom. A bit less bloom in the upper bass and a more slam in the lower
mcintosh352
Audio 2D and 3D
hard woods, etc.
bass would also be nice. A matter of swapping cables, preamp, source, or
amplifier? Or is it simply a matter of what 350 watts can do?
In many ways, the Claytons and the MC352 are alike. Both amplifiers are
very powerful and dynamic, and both are extremely dimensional, with a full
and rich soundstage. Images are well delineated, and exist in an airy
space. Neither amp is the least bit grainy, lean, or overly analytical. Bass is
extremely deep and powerful. Tone is very much "right on," presenting a
room full of natural-sounding instruments. Does either sound like the real
thing? Only the real thing sounds like the real thing, but both of these amps
bring me awfully close, or at least close to what I interpret to be the real
thing from my memory of it, and for me, that is all that matters. Both
amplifiers offer the listener a very un-solid-state-like presentation, sounding
like the best of tubes mated with the best in transistor technology.
Inexpensive they are not, but I have heard many amps that cost
considerably more and offer less.
As good as the Claytons are, however, the McIntosh may have raised the
bar. Let’s be clear about this—350 very good watts is better than 100 very
good watts. In the case of the MC352, more wattage resulted in slightly less
"fullness," or warmth, resulting in an improvement in speed,clarity, and
openness. Images take on a greater sense of life, the "performers are here"
quality that is so sought after. Bass came across as a bit faster and less
full, without being any less extended. None of this is drastic in the least.
Differences were more apparent on one disc than another, with one amp
preferable in some cases, the other in others. The Claytons sounding
warmer and richer, the MC352 leaner and faster. All of this was more a
matter of taste than anything else—make that more a matter of sheer
power than musical superiority.
Now, it is possible that these differences are the result of different
topologies rather than a matter of sheer power, or perhaps a combination of
the two, but if I were a betting man, I would say that most of it was the
result of the increase in power. Why? At lower volumes, the two amps
sounded way more alike than different, but as the volume increased, the
MC352 pulled away.
I really enjoyed my time with the MC352, and found there to be nothing to
criticize in terms of its musicality. The amplifier performed flawlessly for
many weeks and never created the urge to switch back to the M100s for
musical relief. Nice.
Dave Clark
mcintosh352
VICTOR CHAVIRA'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Magneplanar 1.6 and
B&W DM 302.
ELECTRONICS
System.
SOURCE
player.
CABLES
Nordost Quattro-Fil
interconnects, Blue
and El Dorado power
cords.
ACCESSORIES
Monster Cables HTS
1000 AC center.
Vibrapods, Lovan
Busters.
This review is a rave. I can’t help it.
You would rave too, if you heard what I heard. Simply put, Mac + Maggies
= magical musical moments. Over the years, I’ve heard Magneplanars
hooked up to a wide variety of slick solid state amps, but none have
matched so perfectly with the 1.6s.
McIntosh Audio Labs is a classic American company. Since 1949, Mac has
remained true to its design aesthetic: bullet proof build, black glass,
chrome, and big blue meters. The 352 is their 350 watt stereo power
amplifier. Several things set it apart from the pack of solid state muscle
amps. First, the 352 sports output transformers, like a tube amp. In tube
amps, the trannies serve to lower the power tubes’ high impedances to
speaker-driving levels. In the 352, the patented McIntosh Autoformer
matches output impedance for a given speaker load. The 352 has taps for
2, 4, or 8 ohms. Sentry Monitor and Power Guard circuits protect the amp
and reduce distortion. The 352 is a double-balanced push/pull design that
achieves remarkably low distortion levels (.005%) across its power band.
Lastly, the 352 is a massive and visually striking piece of electronics.
The Big Mac (sorry!) was plugged directly into an AC outlet. Since I do not
own a preamp, I connected the variable output of my CD player to the RCA
inputs of the amp. Power was fed to the Maggies from the Mac’s 4-ohm
taps. The big blue meters were amusing to the point of distraction, so I
turned them off for critical listening. No break-in time was necessary, since
Macintosh sent us a factory-refurbished amp (although, with build quality
like this, I can’t imagine what would need refurbishing).
The most compelling aspect of the 352’s performance in my system was its
effortlessness. Music was discharged into the room with incredible speed
and authority. Bass response was unparalleled. Ron Carter’s Under Gray
Skies sounded better than ever, with each bass note clearly defined and
pitch perfect. Music filled the room with energy that was felt in the
floorboards as well as heard by the ears. The 352’s control over the
Maggies was complete. In the 1.6s, all sounds above 600Hz are produced
by the quasi-ribbon. With much of the critical midrange and all of the top
end produced by a single line source, it’s no wonder that the Magneplanars
are noted for their seamless musical perspective. The responsiveness of
the quasi-ribbon when connected to the 352 was truly exceptional. Notes
cut through the air with a precision and clarity reserved for much more
expensive speaker/amp combinations. Of course, big amps and big
speakers make for big sound. However, small-scale music was intimate and
engaging. Natalie Merchant is one of my favorite artists. Her voice was
drawn with a subtlety and warmth that is rare in high-stakes amps. Is 350
watts per side necessary to accurately render a classical guitar? Probably
not, but the 352 gets to the heart of music from the first watt to the 350th.
mcintosh352
The McIntosh/Magneplanar pairing was magical. The 352 is a remarkable
product for its power, extremely low distortion, transparency, and nonfatiguing sound. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to turn the meters back
on and enjoy the show.
Victor Chavira
McIntosh MC352 amplifier
Retail $4500
McIntosh Laboratory
TEL: 800. 538. 6576
web address: www.mcintoshlabs.com
e-mail address: feedback@mcintoshlabs.com
Manufacturer’s Response
The Larry Cox review is not very favorable, so I’m wondering if there was a
"hook-up" problem. Three years ago a review of the MC352 was done in
Germany. The critical comments were similar to Larry’s. I was in Frankfort
for the International Hi-Fi Show so I met with the reviewer to discuss the
problem. Come to find out, his speaker cables had the negative lead
grounded through test equipment connected to the output. Since the
MC352 is a fully balanced design, the output transformer has its center tap
grounded. His external connection shorted the negative half of the output.
This seriously effected the output of the amp. Only half the power output
was available and the output impedance match was changed. The sound
was bad. The speaker load must float and have no connection to ground.
The wiring was changed and then he was very happy with the amplifier
sound and performance.
Regards,
McIntosh Labs
BACK TO TOP
opus21
resolution audio
Opus 21 CD player
as reviewed by Ed Morawski
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/resolutionaudioopus21.htm (1 of 3) [8/25/2002 2:50:49 PM]
opus21
ED MORAWSKI'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Alon Capri.
ELECTRONICS
Plinius' 8200 integrated,
the SA-102 amplifier, and
CD-LAD preamplifier.
SOURCE
and 296 DAC, or the
Cary 306/200.
CABLES
Empirical Audio
interconnects and
power cords.
Resolution Audio is something of a cult. This small, San Francisco-based
company made several CD players, but decided to stop manufacturing for
two years while bringing the Opus 21 to market. I checked their web site,
and was very impressed with what they are trying to do. Resolution sells
direct now, with a thirty-day, in-home audition. If you don't like the Opus 21,
you can return it for a 5% restocking charge. After talking to Jeff at
Resolution, I decided to order one. That was back in March. Jeff anticipated
they would be shipping in April, but as with any new product, there were
problems. Although Resolution wanted to use a slot-loaded, CD ROMbased drive, they found it was not suited for use in an audio component.
This necessitated a redesign of the box. Jeff called to keep me informed
and to make sure I was still interested. Finally, in June, I got a call informing
me that the Opus 21 was on the way via FedEx Ground service. It arrived
the next day, very nicely packed in a fitted wooden crate.
The Opus 21 is a unique, two-box design incorporating the power supply
and display in one box and the transport and DAC in the second. This is
intended to isolate the transport from EMI noise from the display and power
supply. The DAC also has an external digital input for another source, such
as DVD. The Opus 21 has four Burr Brown D/A converters, and is set to
permanently upsample to 96/24 kHz. The volume control has 98 steps. A
very familiar plastic remote with just fourteen buttons, but no direct track
access, is included. The odd size of the units (approximately 9.5 inches)
means that they will not fit side by side on most racks.
Upon powering up, the Opus 21's large blue LED matrix display comes on
and, accompanied by a Star Wars-like chirping sound, begins initializing.
The opening and closing of the drawer is very fast, as is the TOC reading,
so you are ready to hear music in blinding speed. My audition took place
with the following equipment over a period of over two weeks: Plinius 8200
integrated amp, Plinius SA-102 power amp, used direct, and the Plinius CDLAD, used in combination with the SA-102. Speakers were Alon Capris and
my own DIY two-ways, which have Scan Speak 8545/9500 drivers and a
first-order serial crossover. My speakers are very smooth and detailed, and
were extraordinarily well matched with the Opus 21. Also on hand for
comparison was a Cary 306/200, my favorite CD player (until now).
Let me get one thing out of the way—the Opus 21 does have a somewhat
irritating whine when a CD is in the drive. This is audible when no music is
playing, but is drowned out when in use. Perhaps Resolution should look
into putting some noise insulation in the box. After leaving the Opus on for
the first few days, I first connected the Opus 21 and the Cary into different
inputs on the Plinius integrated, and put in Keiko Matsui's Deep Blue.
Matsui is a so-called "smooth jazz" pianist and this, in my opinion, is her
best CD to date. The Opus sounded very, very good. I listened to three
tracks, then switched to the Cary, making sure the volume was the same
(difficult until I switched back to the Opus and readjusted it to compensate
and listened again). The two players are very similar in sound, but vary in
texture. Bass is quite good in both—a sign of a good power supply,
opus21
although the Opus 21 is much smaller and lighter. Most of the time, a
blindfolded person would find it hard to discern which player they were
hearing, but when the music hits the high notes, the differences become
more evident.
The Opus 21 is more lifelike and realistic in its high-frequency presentation.
A piano key sounds organic, a steel string sounds like steel, and so on. It
was not until I heard the Opus 21 that I even realized that this quality is
missing from every other CD player I have heard, including the Cary.
Because of this, I put the Cary into its upsampling mode and listened again.
The 306/200, while very musical and accurate, is harsher than the Opus 21.
The difference is subtle, and most listeners (myself included) will not notice
it unless they experience the two players side by side. The Cary may have
more "punch,” but the Opus 21 is more emotional. The clarity of the Opus
21 is startling. On quite a few CDs, I was able to clearly understand lyrics I
was never able to discern before. This occurred on Norah Jones' debut
album, as well as on Vanessa Mae's Storm, where she sings in French. For
once, I was able to hear it clearly enough to translate the words.
The Cary has HDCD decoding while the Opus does not, so I was unable to
compare them on HDCD-encoded discs. I didn't miss HDCD at all on the
Opus 21. Plus, when you turn on the upsampling on the Cary, the HDCD
seems to be defeated anyway. I finally gave up on the Cary and just
enjoyed the Opus 21. I listened to Norah Jones all over again. "Seven
Years," "Come Away With Me,” and especially "I've Got To See You Again"
sounded like new arrangements. The goosebump factor of the Opus 21
makes it worth many times its asking price. Is it perfect? No. The remote
has no direct track access, and it balked at one or two CDs, but after I
opened and closed the drawer a few times, it finally agreed to play them.
That whirring noise will bother some people, though I find it barely
noticeable. At $3000, or even twice that price, the Opus 21 is probably the
best CD player on the market. I will not be returning mine. Ed Morawski
Opus 21 CD player
Retail $3000
Resolution Audio
TEL 415. 643. 6971
web address: www.resolutionaudio.com
e-mail address: info@resolutionaudio.com
BACK TO TOP
eklipse
audio valve
Eklipse preamplifier
as reviewed by Art Shapiro
I had been told that the Audio Valve Eklipse preamp was drop dead
gorgeous, and upon uncrating it, I had to admit that this was not an
exaggeration. It made my CAT look like a prototype whipped up in
someone’s garage. The rather stocky chassis sports good-sized cooling
slots on both sides and, in perhaps the most interesting departure from the
norm, the top is clear plastic, allowing a clear view of the circuitry. The cover
has two slots, directly over the tubes, doubtlessly to aid in heat dissipation,
although the openings might not be ideal considering the inevitable dust
buildup. Its controls are silky smooth, and there is a plethora of obviously
high-quality input and output RCA jacks on the back. This being a line
stage, I wasn’t able to use my phono gear. As usual, I received no owner’s
manual or other documentation, though it might have proven useful. For
example, one position on the input selector switch caused a rapid oscillation
of some internal relay or relays. Assuming the unit was correctly functional, I
can’t begin to guess the intent of this.
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/eklipse.htm (1 of 4) [8/25/2002 2:50:50 PM]
eklipse
ART SHAPIRO'S
SYSTEM
LOUDSPEAKERS
ESP Concert Grand and
REL Stadium II
subwoofer.
ELECTRONICS
Convergent Audio SL1
Signature preamplifier
and Music Reference
RM9 Mk II amplifier.
SOURCES
VPI HW-19 IV turntable,
Graham 1.5 arm, and
Grado Master Reference
cartridge. Wadia
WT3200 transport and
Kora Hermes DAC.
CABLES
Nordost Silver Shadow
digital interconnect.
Monster Sigma 2000
interconnects and
Cardas Golden Hex 5C
biwired speaker cables.
Tiff, Marigo and MIT Z II
power cords.
ACCESSORIES
All plugged into a Power
Wedge 116 and two 10g
dedicated AC lines.
Amidst all that beauty, however, I had to raise my eyebrows. As I gazed
through the transparent cover at the guts, I couldn’t fail to notice that all the
components were evenly spaced, and either parallel or perpendicular to
each other, with typical German precision. However, isn’t the whole idea
behind printed circuit boards to minimize the signal path and optimize
component location? It seemed to me that the device’s potential
performance was taking a back seat to its visual appeal. More significant
was an alarming and decidedly nontrivial flare-up of the tubes whenever the
Eklipse was turned on. This had to be brutal on the tubes. Considering that
there is a fairly long muted delay before the Eklipse is available for use, I
would say that this is a significant deficiency in the implementation. Tubes
can be rare and n expensive resources, and anything that can be done to
improve their life-span is an asset. I did no experimentation with tubes while
I had the unit, but noticed how convenient it would be to remove the top
cover, which is held down by knurled knobs. No power cord came with the
review sample, so I tried it with both a Marigo and a standard heavy Belden,
without finding any significant difference between the two. As is my usual
practice with units not having a separate power supply, I plugged the unit
into a free outlet in my power conditioner, initially the Power Wedge 116 and
later a BrickWall that I had just purchased.
One can’t help but have expectations when trying a new piece of
equipment. Given the solidness and precision of the construction, and the
curiously perfectionist physical layout, I was almost certain that this unit
would conform to the stereotypical German/Swiss sound: extremely
detailed, but too sterile, dry, and revealing for my taste. I’ve heard systems,
sometimes considerably more expensive than my own, in which every last
nuance of the music is reproduced with utterly devastating clarity. Such
systems reproduce sound, not music, and send me figuratively screaming
from the room. I hoisted my turntable from the top of the rack and replaced it
with the Eklipse, this being a spot that would allow use of the existing onemeter Monster Sigma 2K interconnects. I powered it up, gave it an hour or
so to warm up, and gave a listen. Within a minute or two, it was obvious that
my expectations were utterly wrong! I was listening to a delightfully warm,
rich preamp. Whatever adjectives might be used to describe the Eklipse,
“sterile” and “dry” were not among them. What a surprise!
At first I simply left it in the system, and for over a week used it to enjoy
music without attempting to be analytical. It was thoroughly enjoyable. I was
vaguely aware that the music was missing some of the subtlety and
nuances to which I was accustomed, but the Audio Valve was no slouch.
When it comes to sins of omission vs. those of commission, I’ll take the
former every time. Eventually it became necessary to get down to business
and start comparing the Eklipse with the CAT, and it wasn’t until the AB-ing
began that the degree to which the Audio Valve was sacrificing detail
became apparent. Both units were first rate in various areas—even tonal
balance, good dynamics, and quietness—but with piece after piece I
auditioned on the two preamps, the CAT gave me more of the music without
straying into excessive detail. The CAT conformed to its reputation as a
eklipse
relatively neutral unit, whereas the Audio Valve preamp lay reasonably far
up on the warm end of the scale. The sound of the Eklipse brought back
memories of an extremely warm but seductively enjoyable Conrad-Johnson
PV-9 that I borrowed and used in my system a few years ago. The German
unit didn’t have the utterly mesmerizing musicality of the C-J, but in fairness
my system was completely different at that time. The warmth of the Eklipse
might be an asset in taming an extremely revealing system, but in my case
it was just a bit over the line.
Although such things are usually not important to me, with the Eklipse I was
sometimes conscious that the soundstage was slightly compressed
between the speakers when compared to the same recordings through the
CAT, especially at lower volume levels. This did not strike me as extreme,
but it was noticeable. As always, I spent a fair amount of my listening hours
with solo piano recordings, and the two gave completely different renderings
of the instrument. With the CAT you might say that the piano was a powerful
instrument, with the Eklipse you’d say it was rich, and both assessments
would be correct. This was quite apparent on a remarkably close-miked and
clattery recital by Russian virtuoso Sergei Tarasov on the Melodia label. The
Eklipse had an obvious smoothing effect on this recording, lessening its
aggressiveness and consequently permitting more of the music’s melodic
aspects to be heard. This was in marked contrast to the presentation
through the CAT, with which I cannot help but picture Mr. Tarasov as the
captain of a huge and mighty grand piano with almost limitless dynamics
and power. Having heard this recording on literally scores of audio systems,
I’d postulate that the CAT is closer to the truth, but this doesn’t mean that
the sonic portrayal of the Eklipse is wrong. Music is art, and the difference
between two units is a matter of aesthetics, not mathematics.
I selected another CDs that I’ve heard on over a hundred different systems,
a Dorian recording of Bach secular cantatas. I listened to several bands
from the Coffee Cantata. The richness and warmth of the Eklipse were
particularly enjoyable on the male voices, although the effect served to
reduce some of the subtle nuances of the female soprano. Similarly, the
delicate flute melodies, which waft through the listening room with the best
systems, were slightly constrained through the Eklipse. This is a
spectacular, well-balanced recording, but the Audio Valve unit brought it
down to earth just a little. I had a very similar impression on another of my
favorites, an EMI recording of the Sibelius Violin Concerto with Nigel
Kennedy as soloist. The Eklipse reduced the orchestra’s power compared to
the CAT, while on the solo violin there was the same slight blurring of detail
and loss of nuance that I had observed on the Bach CD. While a valid sonic
presentation, I nevertheless continued to feel that the CAT was the product
of choice.
Observing how the units differed at the low end of the frequency spectrum
caused me to pull out two more of my standard auditioning vehicles. On an
AudioQuest jazz sampler, I listened to the Bruce Katz Band’s "Crescent
Crawl", which features some relatively low electric bass guitar passages.
eklipse
The CAT may have had a slight advantage here, although it was not
significant. The percussiveness of the piano, the snap of the drums, and the
aggression of the saxophone were all well portrayed by the CAT, and
slightly smoothed over by the Eklipse. I continued to prefer the CAT. For
extremes of low bass, I pulled out the Reference Recordings CD of the John
Rutter Requiem, selecting the “Piu Jesu” track with its extraordinarily low
organ pedal stops. Here the Eklipse started to lose it—at 20Hz. and lower,
an area in which my REL subwoofer earns its keep, there was noticeably
less bass energy through the Eklipse. This might be a complete non-issue in
most audio systems, especially since the glorious warmth of the Eklipse was
otherwise a benefit, giving an enjoyable richness to the choral singing.
I could go on mentioning other recordings, but the reader should have a
pretty good sense of the Audio Valve by now. It is a physically appealing
unit, with obviously top-notch guts, wonderful controls, and excellent jacks.
It is quite expensive, but still a lot less costly than many other audiophile
units (such as the CAT). Regarding the sound, I crated up the Eklipse and
said goodbye with a trace of sadness. While it might have not been the
definitive preamp for my system, my weeks with it had been enjoyable. It is
an interesting component whose sonic characteristics are fairly apparent,
and it might be perfect for a different system, perhaps one with a solid state
amplifier. Art Shapiro
Eklipse preamplifier
Retail $3495
Audio Valve
web address: www.audiovalve.de
US Importer
Fanfare International
TEL: 212. 734. 1041
e-mail address: vgfanfare@aol.com
BACK TO TOP
arcam
arcam
CD72T DiVA CD player
as reviewed by Ed Morawski, Larry Cox, and Jim Grudzien
ED MORAWSKI'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Alon Capri.
ELECTRONICS
Bryston 4B-ST
amplifier and a
Muse Model 3
preamplifier.
SOURCE
Muse Model 5
The CD72T was my first exposure to the Arcam line,
and I was quite anxious to try it out. The box was marked Arcam DiVA, which
stands for "Digitally Integrated Video and Audio." This is somewhat confusing, as
the CD72T is strictly a CD player and has no video functions. I assume it is part
of a marketing philosophy, one that I hope is not too confusing to potential
buyers.
I was taken with its sleek, minimalist appearance. The unit is matte black, with
silver buttons and a green display. It also feels substantial, and appears to be all
metal. The retail price of $799 seems to be justified by the build quality. The
CD72T uses a 24-bit Burr Brown multi-level delta/sigma DAC and a proven Sony
CD mechanism. Special care has been taken to optimize the master clock design
for extremely low jitter, while the main circuit board uses carefully tuned analog
filters with audiophile-quality components in all critical areas. The player comes
with a large, well-shielded power transformer and six separately regulated power
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/arcam.htm (1 of 6) [8/25/2002 2:50:51 PM]
arcam
transport and 296
DAC.
CABLES
Synergistic
Research
Kaleidoscope
interconnects,
AudioQuest Slate
speaker cables,
and DIY power
cords.
supplies. Damping is applied to the key components that are subject to
microphonic effects. The chassis is rigidly constructed and includes a slab of
sound-deadening material, until now only seen in their very expensive FMJ CD
player. A detachable IEC power cord is provided, as are both optical and coaxial
digital outputs. The remote, though narrow and comfortable, is a little
overwhelming, with a total of 44 buttons! More than half of the buttons, not to
mention a very large joystick device, had no effect. I assume they are for
controlling other Arcam components.
All right, enough, how does it sound? I connected the CD72T to my reference
Muse 296 DAC using its coaxial output, and played my current favorite recording,
Keiko Matsui’s Deep Blue. For those of you who haven’t heard this, it’s a
beautifully-executed CD. My experience has been that some CD players do not
reproduce piano notes in the correct pitch, but the CD72T was not one of these.
When I finally found the "Play" button on the remote, I was immediately rewarded
with rich, full music. Each note was not only in perfect pitch, but full of dynamics
and energy. It was also evident that the CD72T was great at extracting bass. The
lower range sounded tight, detailed, and very well-defined. The CD72T was
perhaps even better than my Muse 5 transport in this regard, and I found myself
listening to the entire CD instead of just a few tracks. Can the CD72T rock?
Madonna’s Like a Virgin was next up, and again the bass line was very
enjoyable. "Dress You Up" has a fast beat, with lots of bass and treble, and the
Arcam followed along perfectly. I’ve always thought Madonna’s voice sounded a
bit thin on this recording, so I switched to Mariah Carey’s self-titled first CD, and
was not disappointed.
Most people will probably not buy the CD72T to use as a transport, so using
Synergistic Research Kaleidoscope Phase One interconnects, I tried the Arcam’s
analog performance. It still sounded really good. The built-in 24-bit DACs were
among the best I have heard in a player, so good I had to do a direct
comparison, and connected the digital back up so that I was able to switch
between them with a touch of a button on my preamp. Deep Blue went back in
again for the first test. The CD72T’s analog performance was good, though
lacking in some extreme upper-end detail and presence and not quite as airy as
with the Muse DAC. There was a darker presentation in the analog department.
This would be a good player in a system that is overly bright, but don’t get me
wrong, the high end is still there, and amazingly good at that. The soundstage
was also a bit smaller than with the Muse DAC, but not enough to really complain
about. Playing the other CDs just confirmed my observations. Every instrument
was reproduced with accuracy. Low end punch was evident on every recording
along with very, very good detail.
At $799, the CD72T is a good value. I would rank it slightly higher than the Rega
Planet on both sound and build quality. It would be a great component on which
to build a budget system, and I recommend it to the budding audiophile or
someone looking to upgrade their audio capabilities on a budget. After spending
an enjoyable week with the CD72T (with the exception of the remote, on which I
could never seem to find the right button), I suspect many users will be very
happy with this player. Ed Morawski
arcam
LARRY COX'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
ATC SCM 20.
ELECTRONICS
Majeel Labs
Pristine S-10
amplifier. E.A.R.
802 preamplifier.
SOURCE
Pioneer DV 525
dvd player.
CABLES
Quattro Fil
interconnects and
speaker cables
made from Belden
1219A wire.
ACCESSORIES
API Power Pack
and ACPEAM line
conditioners.
I am an advocate of price-balanced systems. It
seems to me that $3000 speakers powered by giant-killing $500 amps and $600
preamps don't integrate as well as $1000 speakers with $1100 amplifiers and
$900 preamps. I am not saying it never happens, or it can't happen, just that
more often than not, products from similar price points match each other better.
This is usually the way people buy gear, anyway. If you don't accept this,
disregard it. With more experience, I might change my opinion, but it’s where I'm
at for now.
The $799 Arcam CD72T is an admirable CD player. In a price-matched system,
the civilizing, musical illumination it provides will be welcome to most. This player
weaves a rich and intricate tapestry of music, and could be a “destination” player,
meaning if you buy it, you’re likely to keep it. It is not the most detailed CD player
I've heard, but detailed $799 CD players tend to sound hard, etched, and
unmusical. It doesn't have the deepest frequency extension, but most of the bass
champs, at any price, tend to be all bass and little music. The CD72T isn't the
most holographic player out there either, though again, most really holographic
CD players at this price tend to achieve that effect with a diffuse, lightweight
sound.
Nevertheless, the CD 72T is among the most refined CD players at or near its
price. Refinement is more desirable than the other attributes I’ve mentioned, as it
complements more systems at more price points. Being a music lover involves
appreciation of not just bass, or any other aspect of music, but balance, and this
the CD72T does well. The sins of the player are minor, and mostly of omission.
Those listening for the last bit of detail or the deepest bass will likely be
disappointed, but how often do you hear the things audiophiles listen for at live
concerts? Not often. The pinpoint imaging, details like the sound of fingers on
guitar strings playing, the things that we as audiophiles seem to expect in
recorded music, are, I believe, the products of recording technique, and are not
present at the live event. Our ears are not at the position of a close microphone
at a concert, but that is what we seem to expect.
Compared to my reference player, the Audio Note CD 3 ($3000), the CD72T was
an effective shadow boxer, matching much of the experience of a player costing
three times as much. Most of the “action” of the CD3 was present with the
Arcam, but with a slight homogenization of color and a very slight loss of detail. A
music lover will be served well by both, but there is just a bit finer level of service
with the Audio Note. During critical listening to the Arcam, I sometimes felt a bit
of a fool for having bought such an expensive CD player. The CD72T is such a
value that I thought I'd blown an extra $2200 on my player, but upon returning to
the Audio Note, music just seemed more involving, with the tiny cues that may
make a difference between occasional listening and lots of listening.
arcam
Sonny Rollins & Big Brass’ Grand Street opens with an in-your-face blare of
reedy saxophone. The CD 72T melded the instrument into a heavier and bulkier
sound, making the reed seem less delicate and giving it a slightly simplified,
liquid sound. As a final word on detail, the CD72T came up short, but the sound
was not “fuzzy,” but simply gilded a bit. Given the price of the speakers and
other electronics the Arcam is likely to be matched with, this is excellent
performance.
At the risk of contradicting my opening paragraph, the CD72T could end up in
much more expensive systems. Most of my components are about $3000, and
while the Arcam was the limiting aspect, it was egregiously so. “Musicality,” or
the ability to present harmony, rhythm, and appropriate tonality, were all A+ at
the price. And it is frankly only smallest respects that the Audio Note CD 3, in a
much higher price league, bests the Arcam. The CD72T is a very good buy, even
a “best buy.” Oh, and if you want, you can upgrade it for the difference in cost
between the 72T and the 92T, which has a version of dCs’ Ring DAC in it, and
that’s a great option. Larry Cox
JIM GRUDZIEN'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Definitive
Technology Pro
Monitor 100.
ELECTRONICS
Denon AVR-3801
receiver.
SOURCE
Pioneer DV-414
DVD player.
I’ve been a big fan of the Arcam sound
since I owned my first CD player (an MCD), so when I was asked to review the
DiVA CD72T player, I was all over the opportunity like a bum on a baloney
sandwich. I was already familiar with the Arcam sound, but let me tell you, the
DiVA CD72T ROCKS. Its build quality is excellent, possessing a very solid feel
and looks to die for. It is a very slim design, only 3 inches high, and has a matte
black finish with silver, soft-touch control buttons, making for a very striking look,
one that I love: simple, classic lines in a functional package. The only thing
missing on the front panel is a repeat button. The rear panel has two sets of
digital out connections, one Toslink and one coaxial, and one set of audio outs.
On the inside, the DiVA boasts a 24-bit multilevel Delta-Sigma DAC, which is
upgradeable to CD92 status. This upgrade would include the dCs Ring DAC plus
HDCD. The reps tell me that once the upgrade is done, the only thing that would
distinguish it from a CD92 is the serial number. Pretty cool.
I don’t like the remote that comes with the player. It’s too big, and the buttons are
too small and hard to read. I also think the remote should have the same color
arcam
CABLES
XLO/PRO 100
interconnects and
Ultralink
Audiophile
Reference Series
speaker cables.
and finish as the player. It is silver, which would be great for the silver-finish
player. I may be nitpicking, but ease of use and aesthetics are important to me.
When I popped in my first disc and pushed the play button, what came out didn’t
exactly excite me. My expectations may have been too high. Anyway, I listened
for a couple of weeks before sending it on its way to the other reviewers. When I
received it back, it sounded better, suggesting that it needed a little more breakin time. I then experimented with cables, trying the XLO PRO 100s, the DH Lab
Silver Sonic Air Matrixes, and the JPS Superconductor FXs. The JPS cables
were the ones that worked best with my 105-watt Denon AVR-3801 and the
CD72T. It was then that this player began to sing. From this point on I
experienced pure, foot-tapping enjoyment and a warm, rich, detailed sound. I
couldn’t play discs fast enough; I wanted to hear them all at once. I was so
excited with this wonderful sound that I thoroughly pissed off my wife by not
doing my daily chores in a timely manner. You see, I would rather listen to music
than take out the trash or mow the lawn. Sorry, honey.
On Mary Black’s No Frontiers CD, her voice, so delicate and fragile, came to life
and was very emotionally engaging. I found myself hanging on her every word.
During the instrumental portion of the song, the guitar and bass players seemed
to be right in front of me, a feeling that makes for an intimate listening
experience. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy was no match for the DiVA. Everything this
disc threw at the CD72T, it just chewed up and spit out effortlessly. BBVD’s disc
This Beautiful Life is their best to date, I believe, and this player reproduced it
easily. The brass was especially taut and detailed. I could distinguish the
trumpets from the trombones when the entire band was playing. The bass on this
player is much improved over my old MCD, which, while musical, did not
reproduce the big, full bass that this player does. This is important to me. When
playing this music on the CD72T, I was tapping my toes and on the verge of
getting up and doing a little jitterbug. Now that’s what I call music.
Diane Schuur’s voice on her Blues for Schuur CD was smooth, rich and sexy,
just the way I remember it from live performances. She is one of my favorite
female vocalists, and each time I play one of her discs it brings back fond
memories of seeing her live, making me yearn to see her again. The
orchestration was big, full and lush, as though you were in the concert hall with
them. Her performance on this player was very involving and lifelike. I could
almost see her tickling the ivories and belting out some of my favorite songs.
I loved this machine. I have nothing but accolades for it. Oh, I have a few minor
bones about the remote and the repeat button, but this player really hits the
mark. Looks, sound quality, construction, it has it all. What you get with this
player is a beautiful instrument that delivers a warm, detailed, tonally rich sound,
with superb mids and good bass slam. You can have your cake and eat it, too,
without having to dip into your retirement fund. I’m certain of this, as I bought the
review piece. Highly recommended. Jim Grudzien
arcam
Arcam DiVA CD72T
Retail $799
Arcam (UK)
web address: www.arcam.co.uk
US Distributor:
Audiophile Systems, Ltd.
TEL 888. 272. 2658
web address: www.aslgroup.com
e-mail address: aslinfo@aslgroup.com
BACK TO TOP
dynaudio
dynaudio
Contour 3.3 loudspeakers
as reviewed by Pat Brady, Dave Clark, and Bryan Gladstone
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/dynaudio.htm (1 of 8) [8/25/2002 2:50:52 PM]
dynaudio
PAT BRADY'S SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Magneplanar 1.6 QR and
an Audio Pro DP40
subwoofer (modified).
ELECTRONICS
VTL Super Deluxe
preamp with built in
phono stage (MM/MC)
and 60s-vintage matched
RCA tube set. Electron
Kinetics Eagle 400
SOURCES
Cal Audio Delta CD
transport and Alpha DAC
with 50s-vintage matched
Telefunken tube set. VPI
HW19 Mark IV turntable
with SAMA (stand alone
motor assembly),
Audioquest PT-8
tonearm, and Benz
Glider and van den Hul
MC One moving coil
cartridges.
CABLES
Transparent Audio Power
Link Ultra power strip and
Power Link Plus power
cords, MIT 330 CVT and
330 interconnects and
750 Plus speaker cables,
Audio Works Datalink
digital cable.
ACCESSORIES
Vantage Point sand-filled
audio racks and various
isolation devices.
Dedicated 20 amp AC
circuit. A bottle of BV
Merlot.
Webster defines pedigree as “a distinguished
ancestry” or “the recorded purity of breed of an individual or strain.”
Certainly the pedigree of a dog has a tremendous influence on its perceived
desirability, and the price people are willing to pay for it. The Dynaudio
company of Denmark has a distinguished pedigree due to its history of
designing and building innovative, well-engineered products that are as
robust as they are musical. Dynaudio has designed and/or built high quality
components for many respected and admired loudspeaker manufacturers.
Quite often, some if not all of the praise other speaker manufacturers
receive is attributable to the Dynaudio components they use. Several years
ago, Dynaudio started designing and manufacturing loudspeakers under
their own name. The product under review is the Contour 3.3.
Before I received the 3.3s, I tapped into Dynaudio’s website and was very
impressed by the intelligent and detailed description of the speakers. I won’t
elaborate on the technical specifications, as they are easily available on the
website, but it is worth mentioning that the 3.3s are entirely hand built, and
are beautiful to behold. They also fit very well with the decor of our home.
I’ve been enamored of Danish design for a long time, and my wife and I
have several pieces of Danish furniture produced in the 1950s and 60s. In
addition to being very attractive, this highly functional and ergonomic
furniture is crafted with the finest quality wood and workmanship
imaginable. The fit and finish of these pieces is so absolutely impeccable
that the Danish cabinetmakers fashioned the parts you don’t normally see
as beautifully as the parts you do. I’m pleased to report that Denmark’s
cabinet making tradition is in evidence in these speakers. I carefully
inspected every square inch of the cabinets. The bird’s-eye maple veneer
was thick, and reeked of quality and richness. The side panels are
produced with exceptionally accurate grain matching, to produce a mirrorimage effect. This is a speaker you will love to fondle just for the pleasure of
it. The sound of my knuckles rapping the wood was the same as hitting my
head with a rock. This is one very stiff and solid cabinet. The WBT binding
posts are gold plated and beautifully made, but not the best design I’ve
encountered. Tightening the post did not inspire confidence that I was
getting the best possible connection. Getting a secure fit required wiggling
the spade connector back and forth with one hand while tightening the post
with the other, although on occasion the post could not be tightened further,
yet the spade was still loose enough to be pulled out with a tug. Perhaps
this is due to the size of the spades on my MIT cables.
Setup was relatively straightforward. I placed the speakers in approximately
the same positions I have my Maggies parked. Dynaudio supplies two foam
inserts for plugging the two rear bass ports, but my initial listening was
performed with both ports unplugged and the supplied spikes installed. I
started my first listening session with “Bees Wing,” a track from Richard
Thompson’s excellently produced CD, Mirror Blue. This is a delightful love
dynaudio
song, well recorded, with gorgeous guitar work throughout. I was
immediately struck by the rich detail and grainy texture of Thompson’s
voice. I’ve been to several Richard Thompson concerts, and this sounded
just like him. The guitar work was impeccably rendered, with speed,
transparency, and a strikingly realistic tone. The mix of voice and guitar
hung in a spatial relationship that wooed me into thinking “Yes, this is what
it’s all about.” I listened to the song several times and enjoyed it each time.
Next was my favorite track, “I Ride in Your Slipstream.” Those of you
unfamiliar with this song need to do something about it. It’s a kick-butt
rocker that jumps right out of the pen and continues to build momentum
until the end. There’s an abundance of low frequency information blasting
through a wall of electric guitar, acoustic guitar, and drums, and here is
where I first encountered a problem with excessive, boomy, and out-ofcontrol midbass. My listening room is fairly well damped, and I’ve paid close
attention to the details in order to make my listening environment as
acoustically neutral as possible. I tried everything to tame this highly
distracting phenomenon. I moved the speakers around to minimize what I
thought might be an interaction, one at a time as well as two at a time. I
removed and reinstalled the floor spikes. Nothing made any difference!
I was disturbed. I played tracks from a wide variety of CDs and LPs. I
played rock, jazz, and world music. To varying degrees, the same problem
existed regardless of what was spinning. I could not listen to any music that
had even a slight bass emphasis, except at very low volume. Even my wife
commented several times about the excessive bass. It was with
disappointment and a certain degree of sadness that I packed these
puppies up after just one week of listening, as I had hoped to be swept off
my feet by them. I love the way they look, and their pedigree implies they
are special indeed. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. In my
opinion, the Contour 3.3 has a long way to go before it’s a winner. Pat
Brady
For the past eighteen years I have had the
privilege and challenge of teaching some of the brightest and most gifted
students at the school where I am employed as a fifth grade teacher of
math and science. The privilege comes from being able to work with a great
group of kids who have the ability and opportunity to become successful
college graduates, and the challenge comes from getting them to actually
be in a position for this to occur. An effective classroom environment is
based on meeting the needs of the students. To do so requires one to
change the program or strategies used so that each student’s learning is
optimized. This means that if Johnny or Suzy needs to work with Tommy or
Debbie to get their work done, so be it. It also means that what works for
dynaudio
DAVE CLARK'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Tetons.
ELECTRONICS
Clayton Audio M100
E.A.R. 834P phono
stage. Blue Circle
BC3000 preamp
SOURCES
with Audient
turntable with K9
arm.
CABLES
JPS Superconductor+
NC speaker cables.
Circle BC63, and JPS
ACCESSORIES
PS Audio P300 Power
Plant.
Dedicated 20 and 15
EchoBuster room
Audio 2D and 3D
hard woods, etc.
one child may not work for another. In my class, there are open
assignments with multiple answers or solutions to a problem, none any
more correct than another. It is an active class, in which students float from
one group or teaching approach to the next, staying where they are able to
work and learn the best.
While this works for the vast majority, there are still those who are unable to
blossom into successful students. No matter what I do, I am unable to
unlock their true potential as learners, and they do not succeed. Are they
failures? I would like to think not. Perhaps in another system, with a
different approach, they may become what I hope for. Unfortunately, I am
unable to meet the needs of everyone, regardless of how much I try.
Sometimes, students require what I can not offer, but the right program is
not readily available, or not an option. I believe that all students can learn
and be successful, though I am sane enough to realize that not all students
are created equal.
What does all this have to do with the Dynaudio Contour 3.3 loudspeakers?
As much as I tried, I was never able to get them to really work in my
system. I think that they may be better suited to an environment I was
unable to offer. At best, the 3.3s sounded dull and lifeless, with an overly
rich and ripe bottom end. Too much bloom and not enough slam.
Additionally, music was anchored to the speakers and never really let loose
rhythmically. Regardless of what I did, the 3.3s never came alive like my
similarly-priced Reimer Tetons can do with the same electronics and music.
I tried the Dynaudios in as many places as practical, ending up at just over
four feet from the back wall (measured from the front baffle). I tried various
degrees of toe-in toward the listener. All helped, but nothing mitigated the
problems. Neither did stuffing the ports with the supplied foam inserts.
These are good speakers, very good in fact. I have heard them at several
shows sounding quite wonderful, but with my electronics and room they
were a sad disappointment. A bigger room, perhaps? Maybe, but the
Reimers are much larger, with more driver area, and they work quite well.
Compared to the Reimers, the 3.3s lacked cohesion, clarity, pace, and
openness. I found them more fatiguing and less involving then any $7000
pair of speakers should be. Music took on a sameness that was shaded to
the dark side. It lacked the subtleties that are woven deep within the
musical tapestry. Complex instrumental passages were confusing. These
are very well-thought-out speakers, using some of the best components
and cabinetry around, and they come from one of the most respected
loudspeaker manufacturers around. So what gives? Well, if I had to point
my finger, it would have to be the Clayton M100s. Is 100 watts enough?
While the 3.3s are not the last word in efficiency (89dB @ 4 ohms), the
M100s and the rest of my system are a fine theoretical match. And, one of
the better rooms at the 2000 CES featured Clayton amps and the Dynaudio
Reference Confidence 3 loudspeakers. Talk about fast, coherent, and
clean! This system possessed everything that mine, using the 3.3s and the
M100s, lacked. But the CES system used the bigger 200-watt stereo
dynaudio
Claytons, as well as DH Labs cables. More power, a cable that features
silver on copper versus my JPS Superconductor 2s, which tend to be
warmer and richer than silver cables. Yes, I think we are on to something
here—poor system synergy.
The 3.3s want power, and lots of it. Make that fast, clean power that leans
to the analytical side rather than the warmer, more easygoing side. The
longer I listened to the 3.3s, the more I could see what they were capable of
achieving, but were unable to realize due to the system they had been
placed in. While they sounded as I’ve described above, I also heard a very
dynamic speaker with amazingly deep and powerful bass, way deeper and
more powerful than any smallish loudspeaker with this complement of
drivers had any right to be. The 3.3s were pretty much equal to the Reimers
in this regard, and the Reimers have the driver complement and cabinet
design to justify their prodigious bass capabilities. Even so, to get any
sense of what the 3.3s could do, I had to play music at a level that was just
too loud for serious listening.
The first thing that came to mind was to pair these with the Gryphon
integrated amp that Dynaudio North America sent along for review, but
alas, the colleague who had it was deep into his review process. Different
cabling was also a wash. I was stuck with a mismatched system that lacked
the program to get the 3.3s to work at their full potential. I have heard them
sound way better, and believe that in the right environment they can be
truly revelatory. One just has to find the right environment to make them
work, which unfortunately I was unable to do. Dave Clark
BRYAN GLADSTONE'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Target stands.
ELECTRONICS
Jeff Rowland
Consonance preamplifier
(phono stage removed).
Krell KPA phono
preamplifier w/upgraded
power supply. Jeff
Rowland Model 1 or
Conrad Johnson Premier
I made the decision to buy minimonitors some time ago, for reasons of both price and space, as my
listening room is very small. After living with my ProAc Response 2s for
some time, though, I’ve begun to miss the larger soundstage and bass
underpinnings that floorstanding speakers can give. The problem is,
floorstanders of equal or greater quality will set me back a pretty penny,
and how do I fit them in my room? In the last few years, however, the priceto-performance ratio in loudspeakers has improved, and there are many
floorstanders whose size is not much greater than the ProAcs mounted on
their obligatory stands, and the Dynaudio Contour 3.3s have cemented my
resolve to move back to larger, full range speakers.
Some will say there is nothing unusual about the design of the 3.3s. They
don’t have the curves or esoteric cabinet materials that some
manufacturers are now using, though they are finely-built boxes. Finished in
beech veneer, the review pair was both beautiful and solid. The veneer is
even mitered at the corners, making it very difficult to tell that the cabinets
dynaudio
11 amplifier.
SOURCES
VPI HW-19 IV with VPI
PLC, Eminent
Technology Tonearm 2,
Wisa pump and surge
tank. Benz Micro MC3
cartridge. Audio Alchemy
Digital Drive System
transport. Audio Alchemy
DTI v1.0. Meridian 606
D/A converter.
CABLES
Cardas Golden Hexlink
5c interconnects and
speaker cables.
are not made from solid wood. The side panels, despite their size, are
dense and stiff, suggesting extensive internal bracing to alleviate cabinet
resonance. The 3.3s have two ports on the rear of each cabinet, and come
supplied with foam plugs to be used if the speakers are to be placed near a
back wall. Although not mentioned by the manufacturer, I found that I could
tune the bass a bit by using only one plug in either port or by inserting the
plugs only partially. This effectively, albeit unscientifically, adjusted
backpressure. Like the other speakers in the Dynaudio line, however, there
is no option for mass loading with sand or lead.
Because the Contours are so revealing, my notes taken while listening to
them are a mess, full of contradicting remarks. Listening notes made while
listening to LPs are completely different from those made while listening to
CDs. For example, one night I sat down to listen to Joan Armatrading’s selftitled album, expecting great dynamics. I did not get them, and thought the
problem might be that my low-power amps were giving up under the
Dynaudios’ greed for power. Looking through my collection for extremely
dynamic recordings of female vocalists, the next two records I put on told a
different story. Carly Simon’s Anticipation showed far more contrast
between soft and loud, but with a severely softened attack on drums and
guitar, while Linda Ronstadt’s Round Midnight was positively alive. It seems
the Contours cannot be used to hide warts. They will reveal flaws in lessthan-adequate playback equipment just as ruthlessly as they reveal the
timbre of a recording. Fortunately, though, they don’t make poorly-recorded
records painful to listen to.
One reason I’ve been hesitant to move to floorstanding speakers is that I
seldom find bass that I like at a price I can swallow. I abhor accentuated
bass that does not integrate well with the midrange. This "thumper" bass
has become even more prevalent and bothersome to vinyl lovers as
manufacturers have begun to tune their products for digital-only playback.
The low end of the Contours suffers none of this. I found the bass produced
by its two 20-cm woofers to be absolutely musically convincing but never
overbearing. At times the bass is barely there because it blends so
seamlessly into the midrange and the music. The Contours will not kick you
in the gut, imparting artificial bass for added impact. When called upon by
tympanis or an upright bass, the 3.3s deliver detail, air, and imaging, even
in the lower octaves. Some will want a bit more visceral excitement from the
low end than the 3.3s can provide, but this is asking for a presentation that
deviates from reality.
The midrange of the 3.3s is astonishingly neutral. The Contours straddle
the line between the euphonic and the analytical styles. There is a slight
boxiness or nasal quality to the midrange that can make strings sound just
a bit wiry, but with extended listening I got used to the Contours’ anomalies,
and they did not bother me. I look for speakers that can create a convincing
illusion of reality, and can forgive some faults in exchange for that illusion.
The Contours also sound just the slightest bit relaxed, but this does nothing
to damage the magic. They are not dynamically limited, but can sound that
dynaudio
way because they play with such ease. In fact, once drawn in, the
presentation seems perfectly logical. What is left is one of the most
believable presentations I have ever heard in my home. Image depth
seems to go on forever. Width is not quite as extended as I’ve heard with
other speakers, but there is no sense of the side wall cutting off the image
prematurely. Instead, the edges just trail off smoothly at the sides. The
Contours create an amazingly convincing holographic sense of space and
surroundings, and place instruments or performers precisely within this
space.
Detail is abundant through the Contours, without sounding analytical or
etched. Listening to the wonderful Pizza Tapes from Jerry Garcia, David
Grisman, and Tony Rice, each guitar is separated in space in a way I have
never heard before. The Contours clearly reveal the sounds of fingers
touching strings, as well as Jerry Garcia’s wheezing while playing. The
Contours also excel at vocals, revealing another layer of detail over my
ProAcs. Through the 3.3s, the very quiet trailing edges of vocals become
evident. You even get a sense of the breath control and emotion of
vocalists. This shows a level of inner detail that I am simply at a loss for
words to describe.
A few months ago I reviewed the Dynaudio Audience 72s. Although the
Contours use a different tweeter, I find a similar sibilance in the uppermost
registers of the high end. Like the 72s, there is a crispy overtone well above
the frequencies produced by most instruments. Because this is in the very
highest frequencies, it does not affect the music. Rather, it is separate from
the primary image, much like ticks and pops in a record. Although many will
be able to listen through this, it is worth mentioning.
The Contour 3.3s have a dynamic ease that provides a sense of realism
I’ve never experienced in my listening room. They seem to play effortlessly
at any volume. Listening volume is limited by room resonance in my small
room, overloading long before any compression or congestion is evident
from the Dynaudios. Detail and image are not affected at any listening
volume. I found myself listening critically and comfortably at much higher
volumes than usual.
As much as I liked the Contour 3.3s, I can’t help but think that I don’t have
the right equipment to allow them to perform at their best. Like the
Audience speakers, the Contours are not extremely efficient. They long for
and deserve a more powerful amp than I can offer. In the audioMUSINGS
tradition, I simply inserted the Dynaudios into my system to see how they
would sound. In my room, I was able to get away with this, but in larger
rooms, seventy watts just isn’t going to cut it. Independent of the power
issue, some speakers like tube amplification and others prefer solid state.
My gut tells me that valves may not be the best amplification solution for the
Dynaudios. Your mileage may vary.
It should be noted that in my critique of the Dynaudios, I am comparing
dynaudio
them to my memory of some of the finest, price-no-object speakers I have
heard. Their overall performance puts them squarely amongst that highlevel competition. The Contours provide an effortless sense of power, with
a midrange that is utterly fluid and free of grain. The boxes disappear so
convincingly that they seem to take up space in the room needlessly. The
music seems to come from somewhere else. They do require lots of power,
and the high-quality power they need does not come cheap. In addition,
their transparency and timbral anomalies require careful system matching. I
don’t think the Contours are the best answer with my electronics. Then
again, I liked them so much that I might just consider replacing the rest of
my equipment in order to hold onto them.
Bryan Gladstone
Dynaudio Contour 3.3 loudspeakers
Retail $6995
Dynaudio North America
TEL: 630. 238. 4200
e-mail address: Info@dynaudiousa.com
web address: www.dynaudio.com
BACK TO TOP
finallabs
final labs
Music 5 preamplifier and Music 6 amplifier
as reviewed by Dave Clark, Mark Katz, and Francisco Duran
Music 5 preamplifier
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/final.htm (1 of 10) [8/25/2002 2:50:54 PM]
finallabs
DAVE CLARK'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Reimer Speaker
Systems Tetons.
ELECTRONICS
Clayton Audio
M100 monoblock
amplifiers. E.A.R.
834P phono
stage. Blue Circle
BC3000 preamp
w/Tunsgram
tubes, and
BCG3.1 power
supply.
SOURCES
EAD T1000
transport and
EVS Millenium II
DAC with Audient
Technologies’
Tactic and Audit,
and Taddeo
Digital Antidote
Two. Linn Axiss
turntable with K9
cartridge and
Basik Plus arm.
CABLES
JPS
Superconductor+
interconnects,
digital, and NC
speaker cables.
Sahuaro
Slipstream, Blue
Circle BC63,
Clayton Audio,
and JPS
Kaptovator AC
cables.
ACCESSORIES
PS Audio P300
Power Plant.
Products like these do not come along every day. Sure,
there are lots of simple, low-watt amplifiers on the market, as well as smattering of
minimalist preamplifiers that stress function over form (though in the case of the Final
Lab products, I am fairly sure that their looks have a lot to do with their design). And
yes, there are other DC-powered units. What sets the Final Lab amp and preamp
apart from the crowd is that both are both DC-powered, and both are small and
minimal in design.
That’s not all. When Final Lab said these units were DC-powered, I was thinking I’d
need to plug them into the wall in order to charge and recharge their internal NiCad
batteries, but there in the Final Lab shipping boxes were bags of D and C cells.
You’ve got to be kidding! When Final said "DC," they really meant it. You can look at
this in two ways—either Final has taken the idea of DC power to the extreme, or
simplified it to its most basic level. I opt for the latter.
There are three elegant boxes to load the batteries—the DC-5 box for the preamp
and two DC-6 boxes for the amp. As I said, there are quite a few batteries to load, 36
D cells for the amp and 28 cells for the preamp. One of the amp boxes is marked
negative and the other positive. These are first connected together and then to the
amp via an umbilical. Each unit should run for up to 150 hours depending on speaker
sensitivity. Use a speaker around 89dB or lower and the amp’s batteries will run out
of charge considerably faster than with a speaker rated at 94dB. I used the combo
for close to 100 hours with no glitches or problems. Final suggests about six months
of use with high efficiency speakers. Also, Final does not endorse using expensive
batteries; el-cheapos from Radio Shack will do. To make things even easier, there is
a meter on each unit that displays battery strength. Really cool!
Both units are easy to use. They are dead silent, with no hiss, hum, or other noise,
even with one’s ear pressed up to a speaker. Neither unit ever got warm to the
touch, no matter now long I listened to music or how hard I pushed the amp. These
are two of the most unfinicky products I have had the pleasure to audition. The only
glitch is that it is necessary to use the mute switch when turning the units on or off to
avoid a loud thump. Final Lab also sent their speaker cables and interconnects.
These are also very minimalist, featuring a thin OFC conductor housed in a cotton
jacket. The cables look identical, except for termination, and are extremely thin,
though not so thin that you have to treat them with kid gloves. They should stand the
test of time with reasonable care.
Substituting this entire setup for my normal amps, preamp, and cabling was a real
eye-opener. I used the Final products as a complete system, but at the end I did try
each piece individually. Differences were audible when I auditioned the units this
way, but because they were consistent with my results when I used the complete
system, my review will be based on the full setup. Also, I presume that most
customers will opt for the complete package. To describe the sound of the system in
the simplest terms possible, this stuff rocked! All forms of music were launched from
finallabs
Dedicated 20 and
15 amp ac
circuits. Shakti
Stones and OnLines. EchoBuster
room treatments.
BDR cones and
board, DH cones,
Vibrapods, Mondo
racks and stands,
Townshend Audio
2D and 3D
Seismic Sinks,
various hard
woods, etc.
the speakers with an amazing amount of speed and clarity—not clarity in the sense
of ultimate transparency, in which music is cold and sterile, but clarity that retained
the warmth and fullness that makes music real and involving. Disc after disc was just
fun to listen to, though of course part of the experience was thinking that these
smallish boxes were making all that noise. I kept thinking to myself, "Ten watts??
Ten watts!!" Such big sound, so much "You are there" perspective. Horns took on the
blatty presence one hears live, with no superficial colorations. Trumpet blasts could
pin you against the wall! Air, space, dynamics, this setup did it all.
Okay, so the bass was not as deep, powerful, or well-controlled as with my reference
amps (100 watts class A). The music was a bit less full or rich through the mids, and
yes, my tube preamp offers a more dimensional soundfield, but the Final Lab sound
was still sweet, and it was much more open. Even though these are transistor amps,
they did not sound like either tube or solid state, just music. I found little to fault, as
any differences between the sound I am used to and that of the Final Lab setup were
a matter of taste or preference. The sound was leaner in the midrange, more up
front, and had less bass slam and punch, but so what? I was not really trying to
dissect the music into its audio parts. If you want to interpret any of the above
comments as criticisms, go ahead. I could purchase these products and never look
back.
A rave? Not entirely. There are some serious issues to consider with the purchase of
these products. First, they will require new batteries every so often, which adds to
the operating costs, and your perspective on the environment might be an issue.
Second, the looks and ergonomics are as different as one can get. No one will
believe that these two little boxes can make all that music, and you will not impress
people with their looks. Third, these components need to be placed on the top shelf
of your rack, since the controls are not on their faces. Fourth, the amp needs to be
mated with a high-sensitivity speaker of at least 92dB. And fifth, these components
are not inexpensive, especially if one opts for the tubed AC power supplies. But if
you can get past all of this, this is a no-brainer. These are amazing products, and
they are highly recommended. Dave Clark
finallabs
Music 6 amplifier
MARK KATZ'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
JM Labs Mezzo
Utopias and
Tannoy 12"
Monitor Gold
speakers in
Lockwood studio
cabinets (second
system).
ELECTRONICS
Kora Cosmos
monoblock
amplifiers and
Eclipse
preamplifier.
Custom 300B
monobloc SE
amplifiers and
Loesch-Wiesner
line stage
preampilier
(second system).
When Dave Clark told me about these battery-powered,
solid state, ultra-fi Japanese components, my first question was, "What happens
when the batteries go?" The answer was a carton full of C and D cell batteries—not
alkaline or lithium or rechargeable batteries, just plain old-fashioned batteries! My
next question was "Why do this review?" That became apparent after some listening.
The Final Lab Music 5 preamp and Music 6 amp are valid sonic alternatives to my
Loesch/Wiesner preamp and 300B SET amps with Tango transformers. No, they
don’t sound anything like them, but they do sound very good in a different way. I
spent a week with the set, always worrying that I’d need to change batteries.
The power comes from one supply for the preamp and two supplies labeled Plus and
Minus for the amps. The power supplies are about the size of abridged dictionaries.
They are designed so that you really can’t goof up the connections. The preamp and
amp are attractive black boxes with Plexiglas covers and brass-colored controls on
the tops and sides. An analog meter on the top of each unit allows one to check
voltages from the power supply. The preamp has three toggled inputs, two line and
one phono (really a line level input that encourages you to hook up a phono preamp,
perhaps their Music 4). It also has gain trim pots on the side and a master volume
pot on the top. The amp has a damping control to adapt to various speakers. Final
Lab also sent a set of thin white speaker cables and two sets of interconnects. Their
literature seems to imply a relationship with human body parts resulting in natural
sound. I’m sure it makes more sense in the original Japanese. The instructions with
the amps and preamps were also slightly odd and sparse, though I had enough
information to get everything running.
The amp is rated at about ten watts, so I figured I’d better hook it up to my Alnico-
finallabs
SOURCES
CEC TL-1
transport and
Kora
Hermes (latest
version modified
by Audio Magic).
McIntosh MR-78
tuner. Cal Audio
Icon Powerboss
HDCD CD player,
Luxman T117
tuner, and a
Nakamichi 680 ZX
cassette deck
(second system).
CABLES
Marigo Reference
3 digital
interconnect. Tiff,
Yamamura, and
Marigo Gen II
power cords.
Kimber 8TC
shotgun speaker
cables and Goertz
Triode
interconnects.
ACCESSORIES
API Power
Wedge 116 Mk II
for sources. Amps
are plugged into a
dedicated 20 amp
line.
based Tannoy Monitor Gold HPD 12" speakers in battered old Lockwood Studio
cabinets, the ugly-looking but beautiful-sounding set of speakers that resides in my
bedroom system. Presenting a flattish 8-ohm impedance with over 92dB sensitivity,
they run well with amps of 5 watts or more. (My next-most-easily-driven speakers, a
pair of Tannoy Saturn 8s, tend to clip under heavy load with amps of less than 15
watts.) For input sources, I used a Luxman T117 tuner and a California Audio Labs
ICON HDCD Power Boss CD player.
The turn-on sequence goes something like this—mute the preamp, then turn it on.
An indicator light glows red when the unit is muted and turns off when unmuted, to
conserve power. Then, if you feel like it, push the test button in both positive and
negative voltage modes to make sure they’re above the minimum voltage and about
the same value. So far, so good. Next, turn on the power amp with the output muted,
test the voltages, unmute, and watch the red light go off. At this point I noticed some
background hiss coming from the speakers. Adjusting the preamp trim pots down to
half allowed greater volume control range and reduced the hiss to a faint sound not
audible more than a few feet from the speaker, and not at all when music was
playing. I adjusted the amp’s speaker damping control until I found the best
compromise between too loose and over-damped bass, about 2 o’clock on the dial
for my speakers and taste.
What I heard was remarkable. Bass sounded almost sculpted, details were clear,
and the sound was very balanced without any special emphasis. No grit, grain, or
etched quality. Nor was there excessive warmth to hide sins. The sound was utterly
relaxed. Plucked instruments had a fast leading edge and good overtones. Human
voice had proper texture. I found myself listening for pleasure. On Telarc’s early
digital recording of the Firebird Suite, the drum thwacks had visceral power. I really
enjoyed the Classic Records reissue of Grieg’s Peer Gynt instrumental suite. Despite
the age of the recording, the orchestra filled the room with rather convincing brass
and woodwinds. On an EMI Classics reissue of Julian Bream playing Bach, I could
hear the sounds of fingers brushing strings and the guitar body resonating.
Continuing with Bach, the secular Cantatas on the Dorian label were a delight.
Harpsichord and orchestra balanced tenor, soprano, and baritone beautifully in the
Coffee Cantata.
Does the Final Lab combination outperform my custom tube-based gear? The only
way to find out was to listen. I reattached the 300B SET amps and tubed preamp.
The sound was noisier and lacked some of the detail and bass impact I had heard
with the Finals, but it now seemed illuminated from within. I’ve heard this quality with
only the best tubed electronics, rarely with solid state. It may well be an artifact of
audio reproduction, but it is one that helps bring the music to life. The Final Lab gear
delivered a natural, relaxed, yet powerful sound that allowed me to hear music
without hi-fi artifacts. They are the first solid state components that I have enjoyed
with the Tannoys. Nevertheless, I would be remiss not to point out that having to
change out dozens of batteries every few hundred hours also makes them a bit
impractical, not to mention questionable from an ecological point of view.
Naturalness, beauty, and an element of impracticality pretty well defines the essence
of the audio journey for me. If you’re willing to put in the effort, and have efficient
finallabs
speakers that won’t drain the batteries too quickly, the Final Lab Music 6 amp and
Music 5 preamp may help you hear what you’ve been missing. Mark Katz
DC-5 holds 28 C-cell batteries
FRANCISCO
DURAN'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
ProAc Response
2 with Osiris 24"
stands.
ELECTRONICS
Monarchy SM-70
amplifiers (mono).
Reference Line
Preeminence lA
passive line
stage.
DC-6 holds 36 D-cell batteries
In audio, looks don’t always go hand in hand
with musical performance. The uglier it looks, the better it probably sounds. The Final
Lab MUSIC-5 Preamplifier and MUSIC-6 Power Amplifier look like remote controls
for a model airplane, but don’t let their looks fool you. There is more to them than
meets the eye. There are enough switches, knobs, and meters on them to attract a
gearhead like myself. In each there is a meter to check left and right channel voltage.
The MUSIC-5 preamp has three inputs, one output, and along with the main volume
control, left and right attenuators. This makes it real easy to not only balance the
sound but to dial in the volume settings for different discs. The MUSIC-6 amp also
has an interesting speaker damping control that proved useful in finding the best
sonic match with the various speakers I tried. Turning the knob while music is playing
changes the sound noticeably.
The small control boxes are hooked by umbilical cords to three larger black boxes
full of batteries. No thick faceplates, no huge heat sinks, no (and thank goodness for
this) power cords? Set the control boxes where you can read the meters (this is
important), hide the battery boxes, and start listening to music. Don’t bother with your
finallabs
SOURCE
Musical Concepts’
Pioneer DV414
DVD Epoch VII
Signature player.
Taddeo Digital
Antidote Two.
CABLES
Superconductor+
interconnects and
a double run of
JPS
Ultraconductor
speaker cables.
ACCESSORIES
Panamax power
conditioning. BDR
cones and
Vibrapods.
favorite tweaks, just listen! It has been said that a good system shouldn’t prompt you
to see how good it sounds with different discs, but should prompt you to put on music
for sheer enjoyment. The Final gear definitely prompted me to keep listening. The
music coming through these solid state components had color, depth, and texture.
Harmonics and timbre rose to a level that I have never heard with any solid state
system. Remove the AC from the picture and solid state definitely jumps up a couple
of levels in performance. I don’t believe you can experience true lack of grain and
glare from a stereo system until you remove the AC from the picture. Sure, the
inherent design of the component has to be good, but it looks like Final Lab has done
this also.
One of the first CDs I put on was an oldie, Al Stewart’s Year of the Cat. This isn’t an
audiophile remaster, but a regular old CD. While I sat there listening, I thought back
to when I would spin my old LP of this, and Stewart’s other famous 70s release,
Time Passages, on my AR ES-1 table and MMT/Grace Ruby arm and cartridge. The
music flowed, with fewer digital artifacts and less coloration than a lot of gear that I
have heard. On disc after disc, the music sounded more natural, with better tone and
harmonics and a life-like, engaging sound. The music was so natural, alive, and
coherent that breaking it down in audiophile terms seemed unnatural. Despite its ten
watts, the MUSIC-6 amp has power, real power. U.S. distributor Brian Bowdle was
concerned when he found out that it would be driving my 87 dB ProAc Response
Twos, but there was no need for him to worry. The MUSIC-6 handled my speakers
with no problem. The low end had definition. I didn’t hear the greatest bass heft, but
that’s not what my speakers are about anyway. The 22-watt Canary 301 Mk.-II amp
edged out the MUSIC-6 in the lowest registers, with a little more heft and authority,
but stringed bass instruments had quick and clean sound and a full texture with the
MUSIC-6. When an orchestra played the lower notes, the weight of a full orchestra
was very evident in the context of my system and speakers. Dynamic shadings were
also brought out with delicacy. Check out the interplay between Christian McBride
and the late Billy Higgins on John Scofield’s Works for Me for this particular aspect of
reproduction.
The battery-powered Final combo reflects the quality of the recording but invites you
to listen and enjoy. Transients were clear and clean, as were vocals. The
soundstage was naturally open, and didn’t sound hi-fi. Ted Hawkins’ The First
Hundred Years was a pure joy, with clear highs, precise images, and a wide and
deep soundstage. I closed my eyes and was transported to a little smoky bar
somewhere in Venice Beach. The Final Lab combo launched me into such flights of
fancy time after time. Forget about power conditioners and power cords and start
imagining how the steel guitar player is holding the bar he slides across the strings or
whether the singer is closing his eyes when he sings about his baby. You haven’t
heard Pat Metheney and Charlie Haden’s Beyond the Missouri Sky until you’ve
heard it through the Final gear, with dynamics, inner detail, harmonics,
spaciousness, and great timbre in spades. It leaves most other gear colored and
electronic-sounding in comparison.
I did try the Final amp and pre with other components. My Monarchy amp proved a
very good match with the MUSIC-5, and once the Canary amp got warmed up, I
heard a very dynamic, inviting sound coming from my speakers. I also heard very
finallabs
good detail and resolution. There was more of a see-into-the-music quality than with
the Canary 601 preamp. Bass was a tad more full and dynamic. On the whole
though, I preferred the Final combo together rather than split up. It was interesting to
compare CD players with the Final gear. I had quite a few players in at the time, so
what the heck, I tried them all, including the NAD CD 541, the Audio Electronics CD1, the Norh CD-1, and the Metronome CD-1V. I could hear differences in sound
quality, but they didn’t seem that important. I had a similar reaction when comparing
recordings. The better ones were nice, but it didn’t seem to matter. The recordings
didn’t get in the way of the music. There were times when the Final gear let me know
that they were solid state units. Sometimes I thought it would be nice to have a little
more warmth or harmonic richness, but then I’d put on a different disc and moments
later would say to myself, "Nah." I heard many of the classic tube virtues, without the
vices. The Final combo was dimensional, with harmonic texture and dynamics to
spare, both micro and macro.
Am I being a bit enthusiastic about these products? You bet. The Final amp and
preamp are the most musical devices I have had the pleasure to hear in my system.
Were those other reviewers exaggerating? Since I’ve heard the Final gear for myself,
I think they were restraining themselves! Highly, highly recommended. Francisco
Duran
Final Laboratory
Retail
Music-5 preamplifier: $3250
Music-6 amplifier: $3250
DC-5 battery power supply: $450
DC-6 battery power supply: $700
Audio Cable (pair): 1 meter $229, 1.5 meter $269
Speaker Cable (pair): 1 meter $139, each extra meter $80
Final Laboratory
web address: www.finallab.com
e-mail address: mail@finallab.com
finallabs
US Importer:
Venus Hi-Fi
TEL: 812. 320. 4004
web address: www.venushifi.com
e-mail address: info@venushifi.com
US IMPORTER'S RESPONSE
Dear Sirs,
Many thanks for your very thoughtful reviews of Final Laboratory’s MUSIC-5
preamplifier and MUSIC-6 power amplifier. As each of you observed, these
components are quite unlike anything else in the realm of high-end audio. And it is
true that the MUSIC-5 and MUSIC-6 sound neither solid-state nor tubed—with their
lack of “familiar colorations”, they simply sound like music (hence their names!).
The Final amps are anti-establishment in nearly every way, from their visual
appearance to their minimalist, hand-wired circuitry to their innovative use of opamps. Of all their unconventional features, however, the one that seems most
salient—and often most worrisome—to audiophiles is the battery power supply.
Certainly, the theoretical advantages of pure DC power are obvious, but does one
really want to go to such lengths to avoid the AC power grid altogether? Given that
this was the only real concern raised in a couple of your reviews, I thought that it
might be useful to put this issue in perspective by addressing three questions about
battery power…
1) ARE BATTERIES IMPRACTICAL? No doubt the MUSIC-5 and MUSIC-6 will have
minimal appeal to the plug-and-play remote-control crowd, whose motto is
“convenience is everything”. In practice, however, the operation of these units is
really a snap! It only takes about five to ten minutes to swap out a set of batteries,
which is comparable to the amount of time involved in rebiasing your average tube
amp.
2) ARE BATTERIES TOO COSTLY? Manganese or carbon-zinc batteries—which
sound far better in the Finals than the more expensive alkaline alternatives—are
readily available for between 25 and 50 cents a pop. Assuming that you have to
swap out all the batteries every two to three months for the amp, and every three to
four months for the preamp (the MUSIC-5 drains its batteries more slowly than the
MUSIC-6), the total annual cost of running these components will be somewhere
between $57 and $164. This means that you could use the MUSIC-5 and MUSIC-6
for three years (averaging two to three hours of listening per day) without exceeding
the cost of a matched pair of nice NOS input or driver tubes for many tube amps.
And you could use them for twenty years without even approaching the price of
some high-end power conditioners!
finallabs
3) ARE BATTERIES BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT? Well, yes, but not nearly so
much as, say, disposable diapers. (If you happen to have any infants or toddlers
about and are using disposable rather than cloth diapers, shame on you!) And if you
think that keeping those power-hungry Class A monoblocks fired up twenty-four
hours a day is environmentally sound, think again! The nice thing about batteries, of
course, is that they can be recycled—and there is no excuse for NOT recycling used
batteries!
Thank you again for taking the time to review Final Laboratory’s unique MUSIC-5
preamp and MUSIC-6 power amp. And congratulations on your new on-line
publication! Positive Feedback and audioMUSINGS have always been among my
favorite audio journals, being more passionate, more adventuresome, and MUCH
more fun than the mainstream alternatives. It is wonderful to see your two journals
join forces for this high-profile endeavor, and I consider it an honor to have these
reviews appear in your inaugural issue!
Happy listening,
Brian Bowdle
Venus Hi-Fi
www.venushifi.com
BACK TO TOP
47labgaincard
47 laboratory
50-watt Gaincard integrated amplifier
as reviewed by Larry Cox, Steve Lefkowicz, and Francisco Duran
My entry into "high end" was via a pair of Luxman
separates, the M-02 amplifier and C-02 preamplifier. The M-02 had meters that reported
how many watts were coursing through the speakers. With Vandersteen 2Ci’s in a large
and open room, the sound could be really loud with about five watts, about one thirtieth
the amount of power the amp could put out. In the five years I had that amp I don’t recall
ever seeing the meters registering more than 8 or 10 watts. This brings me to the 47 Lab
Gain Card.
There is only one Gain Card, but there are two iterations of power supply, or in 47 Lab
lingo, "power humpty." Plug in one Humpty and you have 25 watts of power on a short
leash. Plug in another (there’s only room for two) and you are at 50 watts, hardly
enough, I thought, to push the hoggish ATCs. Like an ant lifting seventeen times its
weight, however, the multi-Humptied Gain Card did better than I expected. Even at 50
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/47labs.htm (1 of 6) [8/25/2002 2:50:56 PM]
47labgaincard
LARRY COX'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
ATC SCM 20.
ELECTRONICS
Majeel Labs
Pristine S-10
amplifier. E.A.R.
802 preamplifier.
SOURCE
Pioneer DV 525
dvd player.
CABLES
Quattro Fil
interconnects and
speaker cables
made from
Belden 1219A
wire.
ACCESSORIES
API Power Pack
and ACPEAM line
conditioners.
watts, the Gain Card was at the bottom of ATC’s recommended power rating, so it was
no surprise that things were way more exciting with the volume up.
Though it is possible to use the Gain Card as a power amp, I first listened to it as an
"integrated" amplifier, using its built-in attenuators. The Gain Card didn’t sound solidstatish. Like other solid state products, there was a clarity about the sound, but there
was nary a step into etched treble or an overly damped bottom end. The ATCs do a
fabulous job of letting you know what is going on upstream, so any deviance from
"purity" or "clarity" would have shown up immediately. It didn’t. Coupled with my Pioneer
DV525 DVD player, the sound was on the forward side. In the upper midrange there
was an ever-so-slight beaminess. Vocals like Mary Chapin Carpenter on "The Bug"
were more forward and unrelenting than I like. I switched to Israel Kamakawiwo’ole,
who, instead of sounding sweet, as he usually does, was on the edge of being bright. I
think that is simply the way the Pioneer sounds, but unfortunately it was the only source
I had.
Compared to the $5000 Majeel Lab Pristine amplifier, the Gain Card was far more
revealing of the source. Bass was very tight and deep once the volume started moving
into louder territory, although less textured and rich than at lower volume levels. The
treble was fast, clear, and never etched, but by the same token did not provide a
delicately feathered sound. The last bit of nuance was not present. Images were distinct,
with good specificity into the back of the stage, but within the center, imaging was less
clear. For me this is fine. What was not working for me was the tonality. It was just too
clinical, without quite being analytical. Some might judge the sound as honest or
"accurate," but for me it was initially involving but ultimately tiring.
The Gain Card, in my system, was not inviting or warm, at least with the Pioneer player.
It certainly didn’t invite me to "listen into" the sound. I didn’t find it objectionable, but it
didn’t send me to nirvana. It was time to try inserting tubes into the system, so I hooked
up the E.A.R. 802 preamp. This was more like it. I still wasn’t in nirvana, but I was
invited to listen "in" a little bit more without fear of being punched in the face. With the
E.A.R. in place, the sound was richer in timbre, more textured, and more like the real
thing. Bass softened a bit, which might lead you to blame the tube preamp, but I’ve
heard the E.A.R., coupled with the monstrous Chord SPM 1200B, give bass you could
bounce a quarter on. Treble softened, and gained a richness that was certainly closer to
my preference.
Even with the E.A.R., however, I missed the sweetness and delicacy I usually get.
Coupled to the Pioneer, the Gain Card had a clarity and quickness that bordered on
being sterile or analytical. Definitely not a sibilant sound, but slightly hard. Metal dome
tweeters would not be compatible with the Gain Card. The ATCs’ silk dome tweeters
definitely served it better. Midrange? This is the place music seduces me, and I wasn’t
seduced. The presentation was not rich, warm ,or sweet. It was, rather, "just the facts,
ma’am," with a very slight hardness. Synthesized music would work, but lush, romantic
music was more romantic in the remembering than in the listening.
In fairness, this review was another inquiry into how the ATC 20s react to a low-powered
amplifier. While they sound okay with 50 watts, they really don’t snap to life with less
than 200, so read my review as a test of the ability of the Gain Card to drive a heavy
47labgaincard
load. I think very highly of 47 Lab products. I’m afraid my overachieving, but
underperforming Pioneer held back the Gain Card. This is a high-resolution amplifier
with a fast and maybe a slightly hard presentation, but one which, matched with different
ancillaries, could bring home the bacon big time. Think smaller B&Ws or other less
incisive speakers. I know from experience that it is possible to make the Pioneer sound
seductive in my system, but it just didn’t happen with the Gain Card. Larry Cox
STEVE
LEFCOWICZ'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Sound Dynamics
300ti and Linn
Kan (original
version).
ELECTRONICS
PS Audio 4H
preamplifier. B&K
ST-140 (105-watt
version) amplifier.
SOURCE
Linn LP12, Ittok
tonearm, and
Talisman S
moving-coil
cartridge. AMC
CD8 CD player.
CABLES
All interconnects
and speaker
cables are
Nordost Solar
Wind.
ACCESSORIES
Sound
Organization
stands and
shelves. Monster
Power HTS2000
power line
conditioner.
I have a real problem with the pricing structure in "high end"
audio. Though I tend to focus on affordable equipment, I have used, lived with, and
evaluated many very expensive products over the years. I just rarely find any that seem
worth the money. It seems to me that high-priced equipment costs as much as it does
for one of three reasons:
1. The manufacturer has put lots of time and effort into the design, and uses only
the most expensive parts and custom tooling. This sounds like a good reason to
charge a high price, but often the design seems intended more to cost a lot than
to sound good. These products tend to be recognizable by large size, heavy
weight, thick faceplates, and/or fancy finish.
2. The designer finishes a product, listens to it relative to what’s already in the
market, then prices it at the competitive level he or she feels it attains, totally
independent of the actual costs involved.
3. As Art Dudley has pointed out, the designer or manufacturer simply wants a new
Ferrari.
Keep this in mind as you read my comments, as I admit that as the price of a product
goes up, my tolerance, and willingness to forgive even minor flaws, goes down rapidly.
The 47 Lab Gaincard amplifier is intended to be as minimal as possible, having the
fewest possible parts and the simplest possible signal path. I think these are admirable
intentions, and wonder why no one else in the solid state world is doing this. (The SET
tube crowd has been doing this for quite a while.) Could it be that it is hard to justify a
substantially high price with a simple solid state amplifier? Every time I look at this amp,
I have a hard time reconciling what I see with its price.
But what do I think about sound of the 47 Lab Gaincard amp (with its two Power Humpty
power supplies)? Let me discuss it without regard to price. Given a day or two to warm
up (which makes a big difference with this amp) the Gaincard is as neutral, dynamic,
and authoritative as any amp I’ve heard. It would seem absurd to connect a $5000 amp
to an inexpensive set of speakers like the 300tis, but it was a great combination. The
300tis are, in spite of their price, a fairly difficult to speaker to drive. Many lower-priced
amplifiers I’ve tried have not been able to get a grip on their bass or dynamic
47labgaincard
capabilities. The Gaincard was head and shoulders above anything I’ve ever tried before
in this regard. I knew the 300tis could go fairly deep, but I had never heard this level of
bass detail or punch from them. It’s not just a matter of power, since the fifteen-watt
Antique Sounds Labs MG-SI15DT-S also excels with these speakers. It’s just control,
and the Gaincard has more than I’ve heard before.
What do I like about the Gaincard? Everything. The rhythmic flow of music is just darn
near perfect. It’s almost impossible to pay attention to anything else when listening to
music with this amp, as it has a natural, unimpeded flow that is truly captivating. This is
harder to get right than you might imagine. I have heard so many expensive systems
over the years that mess this up, leaving the music aimlessly ambling from note to note,
with no sense of why the composer wrote the notes down in the first place. Because
they do the sound effects stuff really well, a lot of audiophiles don’t seem to mind, but I
do. The Gaincard plays music with a natural ease, an ability to get out the music’s way
that is unlike anything I have heard recently. Some of the better single-ended triodes
also do this, but not with such a sense of precision and clarity of purpose. Call it
transparency if you will, but there’s more to it than that.
Don’t be fooled by the diminutive size and moderate power rating of this amp. The
Gaincard is a powerhouse. It took a set of speakers (the Neat Elites) that I had been
using with only moderate success with other amplifiers to make me understand what a
really great amplifier this is. Bass went from rolled off and ill-defined to rock solid and
tuneful. Large-scale dynamics were startling and low-level dynamic shadings were
crystal clear. The way the Gaincard grabbed control of the Elites showed me that there
are amps worth the big bucks, and it was the same story with every pair of speakers I
tried. In every case, the rhythmic flow of the music, the revelation of the music’s inner
structure, and the dynamic presentation were always better than any other amp I tried.
The Gaincard does all the audiophile stuff extremely well. Soundstaging and image
placement, along with size and scale, are always very well done. If that stuff is important
to you, it is good to know that this amp can do them without sacrificing the ability to
portray the real musical experience. This is where most of the really expensive high end
amps fail. They do the "sounds" really well, but suck the life out the music (Krell and
Mark Levenson, to name two).
Who should audition this amp? Anyone who can afford them, and who understands that
the physical aspects of audio equipment (size and weight) don’t mean a damn thing.
Also, anyone who might want amps that are stupidly expensive should check the
Gaincard out. It might tell you something about your motivations. Do you want an
incredible musical experience, or something to impress the hardcore audiophiles that
might stop by to visit. I will certainly miss this amp after I return it.
Steve Lefkowicz
47labgaincard
FRANCISCO
DURAN'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
ProAc Response
2 with Osiris 24"
stands.
ELECTRONICS
Monarchy SM-70
amplifiers (mono).
Reference Line
Preeminence lA
passive line
stage.
SOURCE
Musical Concepts’
Pioneer DV414
DVD Epoch VII
Signature player.
Taddeo Digital
Antidote Two.
CABLES
Superconductor+
interconnects and
a double run of
JPS
Ultraconductor
speaker cables.
ACCESSORIES
Panamax power
conditioning. BDR
cones and
Vibrapods.
Back in Issue 12, when I listened to the 47 Lab
Flatfish CD player and Progression DAC, I was impressed. These units had me thinking
that I was listening to tubes instead of solid state. 47 Lab stuff is cool—cool to set up
and touch and cool to listen to. With the Flatfish you have a CD player that feels like you
are using a turntable. You have power supplies in large heavy cylinders that conjure up
thoughts of real power just looking at them. You have circuits that boast some of the
shortest signal paths in the industry. When I unpacked the 47 Lab Gaincard amp and its
two Power Humptys, I was in gear heaven! I don’t want to just walk over to an
unassuming black box, press a button, and hear music come out. BORING! I want finely
crafted, visually stunning pieces of metal to make music in my home. The 47 Lab
components deliver this in spades.
The Gaincard and the Power Humptys feel like precision instruments and are solidly
built. The two stepped volume controls on the amp feel firm and click with authority,
though I wish they had more gradations. The lettering that is etched on the faceplate is
small and hard to read, but has a certain understated appeal. I was warned ahead of
time to give the amp plenty of time to warm up prior to serious listening, so I turned it on
and let it idle away for three days. Once in use, the Gaincard has switches which turn
current to the speakers on and off. Leaving the Power Humptys plugged into the
Gaincard and the switches in the down position keeps the circuitry warmed up. This
arrangement is also useful when changing connections or speaker wire. Sturdy screw
terminals located on the back of the box connect speaker wire. Sorry, there’s no way to
use banana plugs. If your speaker cables or interconnects are of the stiff, garden hose
variety, you better weigh, blue tack, or clamp the Gaincard to your rack, because it is
very light. The Power Humptys won’t go anywhere, but I wish that the umbilical cords
were a little heftier. 47 Lab produces their own wire, which is light and flexible. I tried
using one Power Humpty but preferred two, as music sounded more open and dynamic
that way.
This is the first solid state amp that I have listened to that didn’t make me cringe at some
point during listening. There was no fuzziness to the music, only distinct layers of
instruments playing together. Orchestras sounded clear, rhythmic, and naturally fast.
There was definite texture in the music, with a slight amount of sweetness thrown in, yet
plucked guitar strings sounded immediate and fresh. Listen to the soundtrack of All the
Pretty Horses for that. This disc was very enjoyable to listen to with this amp. When
violins reached their upper limit, the music didn’t thin out. Grain and glare were
nonexistent. The Gaincard also handled dynamics well. The energy from a horn section
or the rumble of low bass was reproduced with an authority that surprised me. The
amp’s low end performance surpassed that of my 70-watt monoblocks. This amp
definitely got a grip on my speakers and manhandled them quite easily. Although the
disc Blue Miles, a compilation of Miles Davis’ "blue mood" music, contains mellow
music, on the song "Blues for Pablo," Davis hits notes that would tax some systems.
Those transient peaks sailed right through the Gaincard and out of my speakers.
Does this amp do everything perfectly? Well, it doesn’t have an abundance of air, and
the decay at the end of a musical passage could float a bit more. Even though
47labgaincard
instruments and vocals had good body and were very clean, the music at times sounded
a little thick. This could mean that there is a mismatch somewhere in my system. I did try
the amp with my Reference Line passive and was not pleased with the results. During
this review I used my Pioneer/Taddeo front end plugged directly into the Gaincard’s sole
input, which worked fine, but I did wish that Sakura Systems had sent the partnering
4707 Input Chooser for more flexibility.
Switching back to my Monarchy monoblocks brought some surprises. My amps were not
as dynamic or full-bodied as the Gaincard. They also didn’t have that tight immediacy
with plucked instruments, although the Monarchies are fast and clean-sounding. The
Gaincard had the upper hand with clearer sound, distinct images on a wider stage, and
better musical textures. I’m being tough on the Monarchies, especially considering the
difference in price, but at the end of the day my amps aren’t going anywhere. For the
record, they did sound a tad warmer!
The Gaincard is a very stylized, highly musical amp. It has the ability to draw you into a
musical performance. With this amp driving my speakers, all I wanted to do was put on
CDs and enjoy music. In this respect, the Gaincard reminded me of the E.A.R. 834
Intergrated from way back in issue 4, another amp that made me forget about everything
but music. With the Gaincard, you not only get an industrial work of art that will certainly
be the center of conversation with your audio buddies. You get a big chunk of music to
boot. Highly recommended! Francisco Duran
47 Laboratory Gaincard
Retail $4000
Model 4706S Gaincard Amplifier Unit: $1500
Model 4700S Power Humpty Power supply: $1800, 50W version $2500
US distributor
SAKURA SYSTEMS
web address: www.sakurasystems.com
e-mail address: sakurastms@aol.com
TEL: 508. 829. 3426
BACK TO TOP
gryphon
gryphon
Callisto 2100 integrated amplifier
as reviewed by Ed Morwaski, Roger McNichols, Jr.,
and Victor Chavira
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gryphon
ED MORAWSKI'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Alon Capri.
ELECTRONICS
and a Muse Model 3
preamplifier.
SOURCE
and 296 DAC.
CABLES
Kaleidoscope
interconnects,
AudioQuest Slate
power Cord.
When I was asked to review the Gryphon
Callisto 2100 integrated amp, I hesitated. Don’t real audiophiles have
individual components? However, being a sucker for marketing, I liked the
name Gryphon—it sounded exotic and high end. When the 2100 arrived, I
immediately knew that it was substantial. The box was heavy! Opening it
was a true pleasure. The Callisto is sleek and stylish, with two huge rubber
feet in front and a single pointed cone in the rear. On the back is a pair of
balanced inputs and a bevy of gold-plated RCA jacks. Most impressive,
however, are the speaker connectors—huge, ratcheted gold-plated binding
posts that hold the wire as you tighten down.
By now I was anxious to hear this exotic unit from Denmark, so I hooked up
some Synergistic Research Active Shielded Balanced cables and inserted
the banana plugs into my Meadowlark Kestrel Hot Rods. Sitting back with
the coolest remote (it’s hardly bigger than an expensive pen), I pressed the
On button. Nothing! I was confused. Finally, after consulting the manual
more closely, I found the Master Power switch under the front of the unit
and flipped it on, and Mariah Carey’s first CD flooded the room with rich
music. I noticed that the bass seemed a little muddy, but as the amp
warmed up, the bass tightened. By track eleven, the room was rocking.
Gryphon recommends a 45-minute warm-up, and this matched my
experience. It sounded so good by this time that I replayed the entire CD.
The Callisto is rated at 100 watts into 8 ohms, and I’d say that was
extremely conservative. These must be the hardest-working watts in
audiodom, because they sound like twice as many! The bass was way
down and solid, the mids smooth, and the highs pure. Carey’s voice was
sweet, with subtle nuances, but not overshadowed by the instruments. The
Gryphon sorted everything into perfect harmony and balance. It had an
immediacy and accuracy that created the sense of a live performance. The
imaging and soundstaging were awesome, totally three dimensional.
I then tried "Dress You Up," on Madonna’s first CD. If you’re not familiar
with this song, it has lots of highs and extremely fast bass lines. The
Gryphon followed along flawlessly, portraying all the dynamics. Next I
moved on to more restrained music by Loreena McKennit. Her productions
are strong on strings, especially harps and cello. The Callisto let loose with
an airy array of beautifully-reproduced notes that seemed to float down
from on high. Diana Krall’s The Look of Love proved that the Gryphon could
handle vocals as well as instruments. Krall’s voice is the epitome of
subtlety. On many components she comes across as dry and cold, but with
the right equipment you can hear a vocal style that is really much more
engaging. The Gryphon brought that tiny bit of warmth to her voice.
Two of my current favorites are Keiko Matsui and Vanessa Mae. These
gryphon
ladies create some complex sounds that never tire me out. With the
Gryphon, Keiko’s restrained piano sounded as good as I’ve ever heard,
giving just the right amount of harmonics while remaining true to pitch.
Vanessa Mae’s Storm is a real treat of electric violin that is astonishingly
different from track to track, though she is always backed by a large
orchestra and a good bass line. The first few seconds on the first cut are so
low in level that many systems miss them completely, and I make it a point
to use this track to test low-volume capabilities. If there is one area the
Gryphon Callisto really outshines a lot of other amps, it’s here. The amp
reproduced every note perfectly, but when I cranked it up, the Gryphon
filled the room with Vaness Mae’s incredibly fast playing.
I just couldn’t fool the Gryphon or make it cringe. No matter what I threw at
it —fast, slow, loud, or low—it performed. I was about to say "like a Ferrari,"
but I didn;t want to give the impression that it is cranky and can only do one
or two things really well. The Gryphon is like your all-around dream vehicle.
It’s like a Ferrari AND an SUV, able to all things really well.
The Callisto has completely changed my opinion of integrated amps. The
pros: (1) Shorter signal length. In the case of the Gryphon, there are no
wires between the inputs and the outputs, and the circuit traces are twice
the normal thickness. (2) Reduced noise and interference. Everything is
contained in the same box, with the same ground plane. (3) Smaller size.
The cons: Same power supply for both amp and preamp. Although this
doesn’t seem to bother the Callisto, its power supply is the source of my
one and only complaint. The 2100 has a huge toroidal transformer, and it
hums. Don’t misunderstand, though—there is NO noise whatsoever
through the audio circuitry.
Is the Gryphon
2100 perfect? It’s
awesome. It’s by
far the best
preamp I’ve heard
lately, and the best
amp I’ve heard. It’s
just all in one box.
The build quality is
old-world
European
(meaning very
high). It looks
stylish and
sophisticated, and it has plenty of features. (Each input, for instance, can
be named with preset levels for convenience.) The remote is clever and will
make for a conversation starter with anyone dropping by your place. During
my time with the 2100, I tried it with three different speakers, and it handled
them all impeccably. I played dozens of CDs, of every type of music, and
enjoyed them all.
gryphon
This integrated amp rocks as well as soothes, depending on your music
and your mood. It easily compares to my Muse 3 and Bryston 4B-ST
combo. At $5700, it should, but the Callisto is more sophisticated. Its ability
to sort out the most complex musical passages and faithfully reproduce
them at thunderous levels is truly amazing. I can picture this unit in a lot of
high-end homes, behind glass since it runs so cool, and with a very high
WAF. The Gryphon and a good CD player (or turntable) would be all you’d
need to enjoy the music. Ed Morawski
ROGER MCNICHOLS,
JR.'S SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Sonus Faber Electa
Amator. Acoustic Energy
speaker stands. NHT SA3 mono power amp &
SW-P subwoofer.
ELECTRONICS
Rowland Design Group
Concentra integrated
amplifier.
SOURCE
Rotel RCD-975 CD
player. Fanfare FT-1 FM
tuner and Terk FM
antenna.
CABLES
Transparent Audio
MusicLink interconnects
and MIT 750 bi-wire
loudspeaker cables.
Have you ever seen a Gryphon? You know,
that awesome creature that has the head, beak, and wings of an eagle and
the body of a lion? These fabulous creatures of Greek mythology are hard
to find, especially in the United States, but I had one land right in my living
room. Yes, it was a Gryphon—a Gryphon Callisto 2100 100 watt integrated
amp, that is. My time with this mysterious beast, the symbol of strength and
vigilance, turned out to be as eventful as any ancient Greek myth.
The Callisto is beautiful to behold. It has a satiny black, brushed aluminum
chassis and a shiny black acrylic faceplate sporting a glowing red Gryphon
when powered on. The unit weighs nearly fifty pounds, and rests on two
front damping feet and one rear conical spike to ward off mechanical
vibration. The display window comes to life when the stylish metal remote
control is used or when any buttons are pushed on the front panel. Besides
displaying the volume setting and selected source, there are many setup
options, like the naming of each input, maximum level limiting, turn-on level,
etc. The buttons control On/Standby, Mute, Volume, Source Selection, and
the setup menu. The rear panel is well designed, and has four line-level
inputs, a tape loop, and one balanced (XLR) input, as well as gold-plated,
solid loudspeaker terminals.
Although the finish and functions of the amp are first class, the interior
design is what makes the Gryphon magic. After spending time with this
amp, I looked for more information and found it hard to come by. Being a
Danish company, most of its sales and activities are outside the United
States. Wanting to learn more, I looked for Gryphon at this year’s CES, but
unfortunately, although the company had signed up to come to the show,
they had to cancel at the last minute. Seeing the large Gyphon Audio sign
outside the locked hotel room door all week at the Alexis Park Hotel
seemed to increase the mystery surrounding this company and its products.
That the mythic Gryphon is a dual beast seems appropriate, because the
company states that its audio designs have dual goals, providing overkill
power supplies and a no-frills minimalist approach to maintaining signal
gryphon
integrity. Just trying to lift the Callisto onto an equipment rack will convince
you that the power supply is impressive. Gryphon describes it as a toroidal
transformer with symmetrical dual mono design. Each channel of
amplification consists of dual bridge rectifiers and twelve capacitors of 4700
microFarad each. The input stages are symmetrical, fitted with J-FET
transistors regulated by high-performance circuits based on
electroluminescent rectifiers for reduced noise. Each power amplification
stage uses eight matched Sanken transistors (quadruple push-pull for each
channel). These circuits employ zero negative feedback. The thick circuit
tracks and all the components in the signal path are chosen with extreme
care to protect the integrity of the signal.
Since my reference for amplification is a Jeff Rowland Concentra
integrated, I was quite curious to hear how the Callisto would perform. After
letting it warm up for about an hour, I sat down to do some listening. The
Callisto was as powerful and seductive as any component I’ve heard.
Although most high end companies claim that they keep the music signal
clean, it was evident that the Callisto walked the walk. The music came
forth in a natural, relaxed (though not laid back), and very enjoyable
manner. I found the soundstage to be the largest I’ve heard. Nothing was
fatiguing—the highs were airy, the midrange lush, and bass powerful and
tight. Whether listening at low levels or high, I had several spine-tingling
moments. The Callisto is a heavyweight that can sip tea or knock you out
cold, depending on what the musical demands are. During my time with the
Callisto, I was helping a friend shop for speakers, and was able to
exchange my Sonus Faber Electa Amators for Von Schweikert VR-3s, PSB
Stratus Gold "i"s, and Acoustic Energy Aegis Threes. The Callisto allowed
each of the speakers to perform at their best. Whether I listened to
acappella vocal groups, jazz, classical, acoustic guitar, or piano, I was
drawn in to a very enjoyable experience.
The Callisto is relatively expensive, yet it offers true value in its impressive
build quality, design, and performance. How does it perform compared to
my Concentra? It was very difficult to choose. They are both at the very top
levels in their field, both truly class acts. There are a lot of good integrated
amps available now, but I would encourage you to audition the Gryphon
Callisto. It will be worth the search! Roger McNichols, Jr.
gryphon
VICTOR CHAVIRA'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Magneplanar 1.6 and
B&W DM 302.
ELECTRONICS
System.
SOURCE
player.
CABLES
Nordost Quattro-Fil
interconnects, Blue
and El Dorado power
cords.
ACCESSORIES
Monster Cables HTS
1000 AC center.
Vibrapods, Lovan
Busters.
If you’ve got a black Escalade in your
carport and all-black high tech decor in your listening room, I’ve got the
integrated amp for you—the Gryphon Callisto. The Callisto is a dual-mono
design that produces power from complementary high-speed Sanken
transistors. The circuit features no negative feedback, a large dual-mono
Holmgren toroidal transformer, mil spec printed circuit boards, and a
microprocessor-controlled passive volume control. The level of fit and finish
is superb. The Callisto can be ordered in any color you like, as long as it’s
black.
I placed the amp on a Lovan Trisolator shelf on the carpeted floor, and
plugged it directly into the wall with its stock power cord. The unit produced
tremendous amounts of fast, clean power, and it maintained superior
control over the Magnepan panels. My usual custom is to ease into the
music. With the Callisto, however, this was not an option. The Callisto had
me up on my feet, moving in time with the clave of Poncho Sanchez’s latest
release, Latin Spirits, featuring Chick Corea. The Gryphon produced clear
images and tonal contrasts. The soundspace of each recording was
significantly more defined than with my reference Explorer. Bass was
another forte of the Callisto. Bass was as firm as a freshly picked spring
cantaloupe, as demonstrated on the soundtrack from the Latin Jazz film
Calle 54. One track features the Michel Camilo Trio, with Anthony Jackson
on six-string electric contrabass. The Callisto accurately tracked Jackson’s
nimble fingers as they grooved on his extended-range instrument. Camilo’s
trademark rapid-fire percussive attacks on piano were also vibrantly
reproduced.
The Gryphon rendered a convincing soundspace, with a touch of emphasis
toward the front of the stage. The overall character of the Callisto was more
explicit than my warmer and less refined-sounding Kora Exporer. In fact,
returning to my Explorer was like listening to music through a child’s toy.
The Callisto’s power and agility simply outclassed the little French
integrated. The Callisto rendered orchestras with true scale and drama.
Classics such as Beethoven’s Symphony #2 in D with Georg Solti and the
Chicago Symphony soared through the speakers with layers of sound. Like
Solti, the Callisto kept impeccable timing. Each strand of the musical
tapestry could be easily identified, creating an engaging musical
experience.
Throughout my time with the Callisto, I felt that the only limitations to
musical involvement were those set by my old CD player. Gryphon’s wise
choice to omit negative feedback resulted in an open and extended sound
to which the Magnepans responded favorably. My criticisms of the Callisto
have more to do with its austere aesthetics. The red dot matrix display
cannot be read from across the room without the aid of binoculars. The unit
gryphon
emits audible clicks when switching between sources. Unfortunately, I
made it click quite often, because the buttons on the slender remote wand
are spaced too close together, causing me to change inputs when I wanted
to increase or decrease volume. Apart from those minor faults, the Gryphon
is a powerful performer, with a clean, uncluttered sound. No search for a
high class integrated would be complete without first listing to the Gryphon
Callisto. Victor Chavira
Gryphon Callisto 2100 integrated
Retail $5700
US Importer:
Dynaudio North America
TEL: 630. 238. 4200
e-mail address: Info@dynaudiousa.com
web address: www.dynaudio.com
Dear Ed Morwaski, Roger McNichols, Jr., and Victor Chavira
Everyone at Gryphon wishes to thank you for your review of our Callisto
2100. It is such a pleasure and honor for us to receive so many kind
compliments, and it makes us all proud. Please look us up at shows and let
us know if we can be of help in any way.
All the best and thank you for your support,
Fleming E. Rasmussen (CEO and Founder)
and the Gryphon Crew
BACK TO TOP
jouleelectrastargate
joule electra
Stargate amplifiers
as reviewed by Bryan Gladstone, Mark Katz, and Dave Clark
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/jouleelectrastargate.htm (1 of 10) [8/25/2002 2:50:59 PM]
BRYAN GLADSTONE'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Target stands.
ELECTRONICS
Jeff Rowland
Consonance preamplifier
(phono stage removed).
Krell KPA phono
preamplifier w/upgraded
power supply. Jeff
Rowland Model 1 or
Conrad Johnson Premier
11 amplifier.
SOURCES
VPI HW-19 IV with VPI
PLC, Eminent
Technology Tonearm 2,
Wisa pump and surge
tank. Benz Micro MC3
cartridge. Audio Alchemy
Digital Drive System
transport. Audio Alchemy
DTI v1.0. Meridian 606
D/A converter.
CABLES
Cardas Golden Hexlink
5c interconnects and
speaker cables.
My dear friends and family: As you know, I
have been gone for several weeks now, leaving behind home, career,
friends, and family, but I will not look back. Living on the lam is difficult. It is
a lonely, solitary life, but I will never return home. There comes a time when
a man must stand up for what he believes, so I will continue running.
I believe that I have successfully evaded the police, for now, but
government authorities are only a minor concern. Infidels track me day and
night from audioMUSINGS and Joule Electra. These two loosely-affiliated
groups share interest in my capture, for I have stolen the Joule Electra
Stargate monoblock amplifiers. They were loaned to me for review, but
when asked to return them, I could not. You see, their owners speak of
these amplifiers in terms such as "transformer-coupled", "class-A," and
"parallel single ended," but this only shows how little they understand.
Never have they mentioned love, art, beauty, or romance. They could never
care for these amps the way I can—the way they deserve. Therefore, I
have taken them.
Before receiving the Stargates, I thought I knew what to expect from lowpowered, single-ended amplifiers. Having heard many, I expected a
glorious, euphonic midrange lacking in bass and dynamics, the perfect amp
if you listen to chorales or string quartets. But I listen to rock, jazz, and full
orchestra, so the first thing to do was to to see what these 50-watt amps
could really do. It turned out that the low power of the Stargates did
represent my largest complaint, but not to nearly the degree I expected.
When played loud, the Stargates exhibited some compression, but only on
crescendos. At all other times, the Stargates are impressively dynamic—not
impressive for low-powered tube amps, but just plain impressive. My
Conrad Johnson Premier 11A lacks the very bottom octave compared to a
powerful solid state amp. The Stargates seem to lose still another octave.
The tympanis in Jascha Horenstein’s Dvorak Ninth on Chesky lack the gutbusting punch that a big solid state amp can produce. In normal listening,
though, I never missed it. Despite the lack of low-end punch, the Stargates
have a warm and full-bodied low end that gives enough weight to underpin
even a full orchestra.
In the treble, an area in which both my ProAcs and I are extremely
sensitive, the Stargates really shine. The high end through the Joules
reaches stratospheric frequencies without any hint of sizzle or distortion.
Cymbals shimmer beautifully, and the overtones of strings and human
voices are perfectly proportioned, never revealing even a hint of fatiguing
stridency. This wonderful, subtle upper end also translates into air and
ambience in spades. The Stargates let an orchestra play from within
whatever hall the event took place. They reveal a wonderful sense of
enveloping space, depth, and reverb that is superb in its ability to put the
listener into the original recording space.
The Stargates have an ultra-quiet background from which their dynamic
"aliveness" emerges. Leading edges of transients appear explosively and
completely free of any grain. Trailing edges and reverb tails fall off smoothly
until they gracefully disappear into empty space. The Joules sound much
more like a musical instrument than an electronic device. Although I didn’t
notice any grain or distortion removed when I switched to the Stargates,
they definitely deliver more detail and delicacy than the CJ. This added
detail emerges from darkness, uncluttered by system noise or by other
elements in the mix. I constantly heard new details unmasked in recordings
I’ve heard dozens of times. Even very slight sounds become clearly defined
and hold their own space in the soundfield.
A few times I thought I detected just a hint of honkiness in the midrange
through the Stargates. Soon, however, another recording would prove me
wrong. I’ve yet to discover if certain recordings reveal an anomaly in the
Stargates or if the amps reveal something in those recordings that I’ve
never noticed. Finally, and most importantly to me, the Stargates have a
sensual and romantic gentleness. Through the Joules, Alison Krauss’ thin,
nasal, and sometimes shrill voice becomes so sweet you want to reach into
the soundstage and hug her. Music through the Stargates just has a
"rightness" that makes me sink happily into my overstuffed couch and sigh
with joy. It should be mentioned that the Stargates take a long time to warm
up. Although they sound pretty good after half an hour, they don’t really
bloom until they have been running for closer to an hour.
I’m a big-picture kind of guy, always trying to see the forest through the
trees, and this is what makes the Stargates such a pleasure. I like these
amps so much that I find it difficult to describe or criticize any single aspect
of their performance. What they do best is create an extremely lifelike
presentation while making no glaring errors to ruin the illusion. The
Stargates don’t better my CJ in every regard. For sheer power and
dynamics, my Premier 11A beats up on the Joules, although this is
probably not a fair comparison given their power specs.
Any complaints I have about the Stargates are subtractive. Their faults are
ones of omission rather than audible slaps in the face. Some very fine
amps, especially solid state ones, are capable of digging very deeply into
the details of a recording. Often, though, they leave me feeling as if I’m
listening for musical errors or edits in a recording studio rather than to an
artistic performance. The Stargates get the subtle details and
microdynamics right without adding any significant coloration. With just a
touch of tube "glow," the Stargates produced an unbelievably lifelike
recreation of the recorded event without giving the feeling of looking
through a magnifying glass. Soundstaging, timbre, timing, dynamics, and
delicacy come through, putting flesh and bone back into a two-dimensional
recording. Performers have never sounded so alive in my living room as
when played through the Stargates.
I am traveling on foot now, after a chase with authorities forced me to ditch
my car in the Arizona desert. At forty-five pounds apiece, carrying the Joule
Electras makes for a difficult journey. They are built as solidly as any amps
I’ve encountered. Setting them up in a new location each evening is a
breeze using their large, clear LED readout and pushbuttons to bias each
tube. At only thirty watts, the Joule Electra Stargates are not the perfect
amp for everyone, but they should not be limited to only chamber music.
The Stargates achieve the elusive combination of transparency and
subtlety without giving up any boogie. They are both analytical and highly
musical, making almost any material thrown at them sound wonderful.
So, to my friends and family, I say goodbye. Do not feel sorry for me.
Although my days are long and dangerous, my nights are filled with lovely
music. I will miss you all,
Bryan Gladstone
MARK KATZ'S SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
JM Labs Mezzo Utopias
and Tannoy 12" Monitor
Gold speakers in
Lockwood studio
cabinets (second
system).
ELECTRONICS
Kora Cosmos monoblock
amplifiers and Eclipse
preamplifier. Custom
300B monobloc SE
amplifiers and LoeschWiesner line stage
preampilier (second
system).
SOURCES
CEC TL-1 transport and
Kora Hermes (latest
version modified by
Audio Magic). McIntosh
MR-78 tuner. Cal Audio
Icon Powerboss HDCD
CD player, Luxman T117
tuner, and a Nakamichi
I’ve just had the pleasure of spending about a
month with the Joule Electra Stargate amplifiers. When Dave Clark
mentioned Joule Electra, I naturally thought of the output-transformer-less
amps that I’d heard sound so good at hi-fi shows, most recently with Merlin
speakers. However, these thirty-watt, forty-five-pound monoblock amps are
not OTLs, but parallel single-ended devices, each using a pair of the
industrial looking, nipple-topped Russian 6C33CB tubes that Joule has
used in their recent OTLs. I first suspected that the Stargates weren’t OTLs
when I lifted them. The transformers are heavy! The amps have multiple
output transformer taps to accommodate speakers with impedances of 4, 8,
and 16 ohms.
What can you do with a mere thirty watts? Plenty! Think of them as singleended amps for medium efficiency, relatively flat-impedance speakers. You
won’t need horns with 100 dB-per-watt-plus efficiency ratings. I wouldn’t
recommend them for speakers with large impedance dips, but they’ll do fine
with many speakers where eight-watt 300B amps would not. I first tried
them with JM Labs Mezzo Utopia speakers, Kora Triode preamp, Museatex
Bidat DAC, and CEC TL-1 transport. Cabling was Kimber 8TC shotgun
from amps to speaker, and Goertz Quartz triode for the electronics. The
amps were plugged into the wall, the supporting electronics into a Power
Wedge 116 II. The amps are quiet, without excessive hiss or hum, a good
sign.
Now for some listening! The delicacy and tonality of strings and woodwinds
were the first thing I noticed, compared to the borrowed Clayton M70s I
currently use, though dynamics were more restrained on piano. Switching
680 ZX cassette deck
(second system).
CABLES
Marigo Reference 3
digital interconnect. Tiff,
Yamamura, and Marigo
Gen II power cords.
Kimber 8TC shotgun
speaker cables and
Goertz Triode
interconnects.
ACCESSORIES
API Power Wedge 116
Mk II for sources. Amps
are plugged into a
dedicated 20 amp line.
from the four-ohm to the eight-ohm taps seemed to improve everything,
surprising for a speaker nominally rated at four ohms. The music was more
dynamic and detailed. I spent some time testing out an old McIntosh MR78
tuner, and enjoyed listening to the local classical station, feeling this setup
worked nicely. On CDs, the J.S. Bach Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins
on Harmonia Mundi, a CD I recommend for an excellent period
performance, was very successful. The Stargates did justice to the violins.
The Bach Coffee Cantata, on Dorian, also fared well, with the voices having
the proper texture and well balanced with the harpsichord and orchestra.
These are not fat or syrupy-sounding amps. The Telarc CD of the Firebird
Suite was more of a mixed bag, with the closing bass drum less explosive
than I’m used to and the early deep bass notes minimal. Overall, though,
the orchestra sounded very realistic. The midbass was presented with fair
control but the deep bass was not, as evidenced by Reference Recordings’
Rutter Requiem. Voices were superb, but the deep organ bass notes were
diminished or absent. There was a great sense of space and ambience. I
think that thirty watts is the least amount of power that I’d consider with
these speakers.
Then I moved the Stargates to a more modest system: the floorstanding
Tannoy Saturn S8 speakers (eight-inch dual-concentric mid/tweeter and
eight-inch woofer), prototype KSS tubed preamp, and Pioneer 701 Laser
Disc/CD player. Though the speakers are nominally rated at six ohms, I
tended to listen with the eight-ohm tap. These speakers are not in the same
league as the much pricier JM Labs, but they are forgiving enough for a
video system with some audio use, and are easier to drive than the Mezzo
Utopias. Dynamics were better. The comparison amp in this system is a
Music Reference RM10, which I feel is a more realistic price match.
The Naum Starkman Chopin Polonaise on the Pope Music label is a noholds-barred dynamic test for any system. Pope captured the contrast of
tone and dynamics of classical "power" piano, and the notes are explosive
at times. The Stargates audibly clipped on the louder notes of this piece
with the Mezzo Utopias, and I expected them to do so on the Tannoys, as
this had occurred with my eight-watt 300B SE amps and my twelve-or-so
watt SE EL34-based amp. They did not, maintaining composure at
moderate levels and not clipping until the volume was turned up past where
I would normally listen. I didn’t have to keep the volume low, waiting for a
dissonant clipped note.All of my comments on their sound with the JM Labs
apply, except that there was more apparent energy and not as refined a
midrange or treble.
Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn, performed by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
and the Berlin Philharmonic on a Sony Classical sampler, is a gem. The
first-rate singing has lively orchestral accompaniment, and this track is a
good test for baritone, orchestra, and the percussion section. While the
energy of the crashing cymbals seemed a bit less than with the push/ pull
RM10, in all other respects the performance seemed more powerful. The
triangle sounded more realistic, the brass more blatty, and the baritone had
greater presence and immediacy. My 300B SE amps simply can’t render
the performance of this piece on these speakers.
The Stargate amps are easy to set up and bias with the help of the manual.
As with all tube amps, experiment with which tap works best for a given
speaker. I tended to prefer the 8-ohm tap. From the upper bass on up they
are excellent amps. Midbass is fairly well defined, but low bass is
diminished. Their sound is clear, detailed, and dimensional, with sweet
extended treble and a hint of warmth. They are not harsh or artificially edgy.
According to the advertising material that came with the amp, Joule also
makes a push/pull version with 40 watts per channel. Perhaps a biamped
system with the push/pull Stargate for the bass and the SE Stargate for the
mid/treble would get the best of both worlds? The Joule Electra Stargate
amps are a great way to get single-ended "magic" without owning exotic
high-efficiency speakers. Mark Katz
DAVE CLARK'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Tetons.
ELECTRONICS
Clayton Audio M100
E.A.R. 834P phono
stage. Blue Circle
BC3000 preamp
SOURCES
with Audient
turntable with K9
arm.
CABLES
JPS Superconductor+
The Stargate is the first foray into
conventional amplifier design for Joule Electra, which is well known for its
OTL amps. The Stargate is nonetheless unconventional in its featuring of
the 6C33CB output tube (two per channel—these are monoblocks, by the
way) putting it firmly in the camp of amplifiers that use a freak-of-naturetube from some Flash Gordon episode. The 6C33CB has a low plate
resistance, which means, first, that the transformer primary requires very
few turns, and second, that one can use very large wire. This results in an
extremely large current-carrying capability. Additionally, the Stargate’s
output transformer weighs more than 20 pounds and the two 6C33CB’s
have been biased at 200 milliamps each, allowing for a dissipation of 80
watts in the primary core. This all results in an amplifier rather heavy for its
size—so lift with the legs. The Stargate can be configured to output either
40 watts as a push-pull class A amplifier or 30 watts running in singleended triode. The units we received were the 40-watters, based on the
speakers belonging to the audioMUSINGS writers involved in this review.
The Stargates are more utilitarian in appearance than earlier Joule Electra
amplifiers. They feature black metal cases with no hint of glitter and
sparkle, and little resemblance to the wood-encased, furniture-quality OTLs
Judd Barber is known for. Easy to set up and use, the Stargates worked
wonderfully for several weeks on my 94dB 8-ohm Reimer Tetons, which,
even with the SET-friendly load and Diaural-series crossover, present a buttload of drivers for any amplifier to control—especially one of lowish power.
Each Teton features four 8 ¾-inch woofers in two isobaric chambers, two 5
½-inch midrange drivers, and one 1 1/8-inch tweeter, and offer a frequency
range of 18Hz to 20kHz. Like I said, this is a fair amount of magnets and
cones to work in a speaker, and one, when complemented just right, can
NC speaker cables.
Audio, and JPS
ACCESSORIES
PS Audio P300 Power
Plant.
Dedicated 20 and 15
EchoBuster room
Audio 2D and 3D
hard woods, etc.
really put out a whole wagonful of music.
I have had a rather varied group of amplifiers here in recent years, from lowpowered SETs to medium-powered integrateds to high-powered tube, solid
state, and hybrid amps. Some of these amps made the Tetons sound slow
or weak, some made them sing. When mated to the Stargates, the Tetons
sang with astounding beauty. They did not have the authority and slam of
the 100-watt class A Claytons, but did remarkably well. The Stargates were
amazingly clean, fast, and detailed, but never dry or sterile. Being sweet
and as dynamic as all get-out, these amps reminded me of the girl next
door, that while possessing an innocent demeanor with the face of an
angel, could whip the living daylights out of any boy on the block. And doing
so with a grin on her face that let you know you both were enjoying it!
Sweet, yes. Quiet and demure, definitely not. I loved every minute of my
limited time with these amps, never once feeling guilty for cheating on my
Claytons. The Stargates were just too much fun to listen to, and sounded
just marvelous on anything I threw at them.
But what should an amp sound like? Well, it shouldn’t sound like anything
at all really. What should happen is that the amplifier should amplify the
signal from the preamplifier all the while "reacting" harmoniously with the
speaker, cabling, and components upstream with as little if any sonic
character of its own being thrown into the mix. Which is not to say that
amplifiers will not have their own "sound", it’s just that the better they are,
the more they should sound alike. Sure one can go find tube amps that
sound like tubes—warm, rich and full-bodied at the expense of speed,
clarity and "neutrality," and solid state amplifiers that sound like, well, they
just sound bad. To put it another way, unless one just has to have a
particular "sound" to work with—a speaker that has a particular "sound" to
match their perception of music having a particular "sound"—an amplifier
should simply pass the signal pure and simple.
In this sense, the Stargates were a very happy match to my system. In fact,
they reminded me in many ways of the Claytons, except they were a tad
leaner, a smidgen faster, and a few clicks less dynamic, with less bass
slam. The fun factor was the same, though. In many ways they also
reminded me of the almost-twice-as-powerful Naked Truth Callas, a 70-watt
OTL Fast, clean, and musically powerful, the Callas were highly
recommended back in Issue 11. Both amps are as neutral from the
midrange up as any other amplifier I have heard—including the Claytons,
which tend to be a bit darker, warmer, and, well, more tube-like. Which is
right? Go figure. The Stargates’ treble is light, airy, and well extended, with
nary a trace of grit nor grain. For a 40-watt amp, the bass was fast, clean,
and considerably more powerful than it had any right to be. They weren’t as
deep and powerful as the Claytons, but apples to oranges.
The only real problem I had with the Stargates was the fact that they are 40
watts, and thus had a tendency to run out of steam with my speakers. More
good watts is MUCH better than less good watts, particularly with respect to
dynamics, slam, and a sense of ease. While the 40-watt Stargates were
extremely musical, the 100-watt Claytons were a couple more levels up the
ladder. If Jud could just make the Stargates as 100-watters, we’d really be
cooking. Highly recommended.
Dave Clark
Joule Electra Stargate
Retail $5500/pr
TEL: 803. 279. 6959
web address: www.joule-electra.com
e-mail address: info@joule-electra.com
A Brief Interview with Judd Barber of Joule Electra
by Terry Rossen
Terry Rossen: Why and when did you get started in this business?
Jud Barber: Joule Electra was born when a good friend of mine, Carter
Asbill, moved back to the Carolinas in 1989. He was having a house built
and needed a place to store his tube-based hi fi gear. I had built tube
equipment during the 50s and 60s, but quit when transistors became
prevalent. They measured better, and being an engineer, I did not think
tubes would compete. After living with my friend’s system for a few months,
I realized that the sound from transistor-based hardware was simply
inferior. That was wonderful news because some thirty years later, I still
knew how to design and build tube electronics. In fact, very little had
changed in tube technology in the intervening years.
My first project was a preamp, and I really didn’t realize that this was one of
the hardest pieces of audio equipment to design and build. I drew up
schematics for three basic designs, and predictably the first was quite
complicated, the second was simpler, and the third was the simplest. To
make a long story short, the third sounded the best by far. One of the most
difficult things to learn was that the parts needed to break in before good
sonics could be achieved. After hearing Carter comment “I can’t listen to it”
several times as I tried to develop the production version of the preamp, we
discovered that good sound required burning in. We began the test
marketing of the first LA-100 preamp in June 1992, and realized that we
had a product with great potential.
Terry: What separates your products and designs from the competition?
Jud: The third simple design for the preamp was based on the Mu Follower
circuit showcased in Glass Audio and explored in great detail by Alan
Kimmel. This circuit was such a sonic success that all our products utilize
variations of that original circuit. Among the unique design and construction
characteristics of the LA-100 are circuit boards that I describe as
construction boards. Virtually all the components in the signal path are
connected together with their own wire on pads. There are no traces in the
signal. For example, two resistors and a capacitor all terminate at one point
on one pad and their leads are twisted together. It would not be necessary
to solder many of these sites at all, but then we don’t tempt fate.
Terry: Why did you choose the materials that you use in your designs?
How many products do you manufacture, and what are their sonic
characteristics?
Jud: We were not too original in picking parts, but relied on picking ones
we knew were very good, like Holco resistors, MIT caps, Noble pots,
Cardas Hardware, and New Old Stock tubes. The circuits were tuned to
meet our sonic requirements, using acoustic music and auditioning by
trained musicians. Carter is a professional violinist and has the golden ears
on which we relied. Using these basic principles, Joule Electra now
manufactures preamps, transformer-coupled amps, OTLs, and phono
stages, all using the Mu Follower circuit and NOS tubes. The amplifiers all
use the Mu circuit configured as a differential amplifier. They are probably
the only commercial products being manufactured today that use this
topology, which accounts in major part for their success.
Terry: Why do we need another high end audio manufacturer?
Jud: Why do I feel we need another preamp or amplifier manufacturer in
the high end marketplace? The answer is quite simple. While I started
designing and building speakers in the mid-eighties, I failed to come up with
designs that were consistently better than Dunlavy, Celestion, B&W, and
others, so I gave it up. The Joule Electra electronics are another story. I still
prefer the sound of the Joules, together or in part, to any other competing
products. The Joule Electra motto is “The Only Thing That Matters Is The
Sound.”
BACK TO TOP
jpskaptovator
jps
Kaptovator AC cord
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/jpskaptovator.htm (1 of 3) [8/25/2002 2:51:00 PM]
jpskaptovator
The JPS Kaptovator AC cord is one of those products that makes you go
"Wow!," not just because it makes a positive difference, but because the
price one has to pay for it is rather steep. Like most things, the best audio
components are rarely affordable. At a heart-stopping $1499 for two
meters, the Kaptovator is one of the most expensive AC cables I have
heard.
DAVE CLARK'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Tetons.
ELECTRONICS
Clayton Audio M100
E.A.R. 834P phono
stage. Blue Circle
BC3000 preamp
SOURCES
with Audient
turntable with K9
arm.
CABLES
JPS Superconductor+
NC speaker cables.
Audio, and JPS
ACCESSORIES
PS Audio P300 Power
Plant.
Dedicated 20 and 15
EchoBuster room
Audio 2D and 3D
hard woods, etc.
What $1499 gets you is a special alloy blend, ultra-fine-purity 8-gauge
conductors, and Kapton dielectric. Kapton is a high-tech, golden-colored
dielectric used mainly in space and military applications. Using air as a
reference (which is what all insulators are measured against), JPS set out
to find the optimum dielectric to safely insulate the cord. They found Kapton
to be a great insulator but also a very expensive one, hence the high price.
JPS found that because of its effectiveness as a dielectric, its thickness
could be many times less than a typical cord, eliminating what they felt
were the detrimental effects of the insulation a normal AC cord must have
to be safely rated. JPS uses an optimized concentric lay, coupled with a
very tightly twisted design, to make for a very compact and flexible wire that
acts as a solid conductor. JPS refers to this as their OFM or Optimized
Field Matrix design.
A Kaptovator user had informed me that a break-in time of three months of
constant use was needed to fully appreciate what this cord could do. JPS
suggests that the break-in time is a few weeks. I had them in my system for
three months as the AC source for my Clayton M100 amplifiers, but I am
not able to offer an opinion as to the optimal break-in period, since I
couldn’t remember what differences that much time time had wrought, but I
can say what they sounded like compared to my standard cords, the
Claytons. These are simply built, using ten-gauge silver-plated copper wires
in a Teflon dielectric. No twisting or shielding, just three wires running inside
a mesh covering. I had found them to offer great speed and clarity, resulting
in an excellent sound when compared to competing cords (Sahuaro,
Audience, Blue Circle, and Nordost, to name a few). At the price, they were
the best overall.
Replacing the Claytons with the Kaptovators immediately resulted in a
smoother sound that was way more refined. Music took on a higher level of
transparency, with no grit, grain, or hyped-up detail. In direct comparison,
the Claytons sounded grainier and more brash. This is not to say that they
are bad cables. I would never have noticed this had I not inserted the JPS.
With the Kaptivators, everything was improved, from bass extension and
dynamics to midrange purity and presence to the clarity and naturalness of
the treble. Music became richer and fuller and grain and grit were reduced
to inaudibility. I could hear deeper into the music, with way less fatigue and
at higher volumes. These cables plead with you to turn up the volume. I
liked what I was hearing.
Bass driven tracks had a speed and drive that pulsed with texture. I could
readily hear all the subtle nuances of bass instruments. Vocals took on a
jpskaptovator
presence that was oh so palpable. On more than one occasion, I opened
my eyes with a start, thinking someone was standing in the room either
singing or speaking to me. Usually, it is Carol telling me dinner is ready or
someone is on the phone, but now it was a singer on a well-recorded disc. I
found music now had a greater sense of pace and rhythm. The added
richness arguably lacked a degree of transparency and openness, though I
feel this may be an issue of the cables making my amps sound that way as
opposed to revealing problems elsewhere.
If your system has evolved to a high level of sophistication, these may be
the next step. Highly recommended if you have the money. Are they
overpriced? I have to say that after spending over four months with them, I
am going to find it rather difficult to send them back. The Kaptovators are
definitely worth the price of admission.
Dave Clark
JPS Kapovator
Retail $1499 two meters
JPS Labs
TEL: 716. 656. 0810
web address: www.jps-labs.com
e-mail address: info@jpslabs.com
BACK TO TOP
komri
on the cover...
linn
the Komri Reference Monitor
loudspeakers
All photography and digital image processing for web by David W. Robinson.
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/komri.htm (1 of 15) [8/25/2002 2:51:03 PM]
komri
Prolegomena
DAVID ROBINSON'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Linn Komri Reference
Monitors, Nova Rendition
II, and Buggtussel
Amygdala.
ELECTRONICS
Audio Research
Corporation Reference
Two Mk II preamplifier
with ARC unbalanced
output stage mods. Linto
and Coph Nia phono
amplifier. Linn Klimax (1
pair) and DeHavilland
845 monoblock
amplifiers.
SOURCES
Sony SCD-1 SACD
player with Audiocom
Superclock & Superclock
Power Supply Mods.
Marantz SA-12S multichannel SACD/DVD
player. Sony XA777ES
multi-channel SACD/CD
player. Linn CD-12 CD
player. Sony SCDC333ES carousel
SACD/CD player. Linn
LP-12 turntable, with the
latest Arkiv cartridge,
Ekos tonearm, Lingo
power supply, Cirkus
subchassis, Cardas DINto-phono output jack.
Revox B-77 Mk II 15ips
half-track reel-to-reel
tape recorder. Pioneer
RT-707 7.5 ips quarter
track reel-to-reel tape
recorder. Nakamichi
Dragon cassette deck.
Panasonic SV-3900 DAT
player. Magnum Dynalab
FT-101 tuner.
The chain of audio reproduction that leads from a site or studio ultimately
leads us to the transducer in our listening rooms: the loudspeaker. While
the significance of the loudspeaker in the audiophile scheme of things is
debated—some accord it a place of primacy, transcending all other
components, while others are more concerned with the “front end” or
sources of an audio system—I don’t know anyone who denies that fine
audio isn’t seriously affected by the quality and placement of the speakers
used.
This isn’t an “either-or” proposition, however. Attempts to construct
tempests in a teapot over some variation of “which is more important, the
turntable/SACD player and preamp, or the loudspeaker?” miss the
fundamental proposition: all audio systems, being systems, are synergies
that either work in concert, or in conflict. All must work in harmony, or they
will drown in dissonance.
Stretching from the quality and the medium of the recordings used all the
way to the construction of the listening room itself—and including the soul
of the listener—is, or should be, a considered and tuned instrument. There
is no aspect of the reproduction of recorded music that should escape the
attention of the audiophile, but the sum of the whole will always be either
greater…or alas, lesser…than the sum of the parts. This means that we
must put behind us the immature “either-or” arguments; excellence in audio
is found only in “both-and” passionate attention to detail, and in critical
awareness of the systemic interpretive voice that is emerging from our work
in our listening rooms.
This means that all worthwhile component reviews in fine audio
publications, this one included, must be taken in context of what the writer
is creating, and must be used in the context of what the reader would like to
create. The challenge to the reviewer is to make clear what that context is,
what preferences govern in that world regardless of who is expressing an
opinion…I make no exceptions at all to this observation…these remain only
the writer’s preferences, and should be taken only as guides, possibilities,
and indicators—NOT as “holy writ", so that the reader can decide if his or
her own personal audio journey ought to transit in that direction.
In other words, a component review is always and at best only a road sign
along the way. It is not the destination.
Caveat lector.
Background to a Review
Phone calls from my good friend Brian Morris at Linn are always a treat.
First of all, he’s a great fellow with an excellent sense of humor. Second,
komri
CABLES
JENA Labs, Cardas, and
Linn interconnect and
loudspeaker cables.
Power cables by JENA
Labs, Cardas, First
Impression Music,
VansEvers, and Sound
Applications.
ACCESSORIES
Vibraplane turntable
isolation platform and
VCS Platforms with Black
Diamond Racing cones
under the SCD-1 and
ARC Reference Two, Mk
II Sound Applications
CFX Line Conditioner.
Shakti Stones and Shakti
Onlines. Tice Signature
III Power Block.
VansEvers Clean Line.
Equipment racks by
Michael Green and
Target. VPI 17F LP
cleaning system with
Torumat TM-7XH
Superfluid cleaner.
Record Research Lab LP
cleaning system.
Acoustical treatments by
ASC, VansEvers, and
Michael Green.
he’s got many years of experience in audio. And finally, as the person
responsible for PR at Linn, which is one of the best (and largest!) fine audio
firms on the planet, he’s the person who keeps me in touch with Linn’s
latest developments. Our conversations are always a lot of fun, and
informative to boot.
This time around…during the fall of 2001…the tale was one of
loudspeakers. Linn, said Brian, had released the production version of their
new reference monitor loudspeaker, the Komri. Would Positive Feedback
be willing to give it a go?
Given my experience with Linn gear, this didn’t require any thought
whatsoever, especially since I had seen and heard the prototype under
show conditions (always a difficult setting, by the way) at CES in 2001. The
sound was promising, and worth the usual logistical difficulties of pursuit.
Additionally, I had spent nearly a year enjoying the Komri’s predecessor,
the Keltik, driven by active crossovers from a four amp stack of Klouts. Very
fine, very musical sound, delivered with great authority. With such exposure
to the upper regions of Linn’s product line, would I do it?
Of course I would!
A perusal of the Linn web site gives us the general specifications of the
Komri. This can be found at
http://www.linn.co.uk/spec_sound/products.cfm?range=Loudspeaker#142
Linn Komri Technical Specifications
●
Introduced 2001
●
Type 5 way loudspeaker
●
Frequency response 20Hz – 28KHz +/- 3dB
●
Efficiency 87dB/W at 1 metre
●
Nominal Impedance 4 Ohms
●
Width (including base) 420mm (16.6 inches)
●
Depth (including base) 520mm (20.5 inches)
●
Height (including base) 1163.5mm including spikes (45.8 inches
komri
Linn’s El Magnifico Brian Morris with the Komri after setup…
another successful installation!
Retailing at US $40,000 the pair, the Komri is Linn’s most ambitious
speaker product to date. Designed as a “no compromise” product, the
Komri was built to be a reference grade transducer, with neutrality a central
consideration. At this price point, the Komri are sharing ground with some
legendary company; how do they measure up?
Delivery and Setup
One of the toughest things about doing a speaker (or turntable!) review is
the sheer logistics of it all. Packaging and proper handling of the equipment
is difficult at best, and loudspeakers are quite often the bulkiest and
heaviest pieces of equipment that an audiophile will deploy. Some firms do
well with their shipping materials, others do not. Linn, like Avalon, NOVA,
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Talon, and Silverline, do a superb job in protecting their speakers, though at
the price of some heavy lifting in getting them through the door.
As always, shipping and handling from Linn were impeccable. After the
arrangements had been made, a single pallet arrived, carefully shrinkwrapped for delivery. Shortly thereafter, Brian arrived for a weekend
session of setup and listening to music.
Once we had the Komri out of their boxes and carted upstairs to my
listening room, Brian began a meticulous process of assembly and setup.
The look and feel was outstanding; finished in a blond maple, the Komri are
quite striking to look at. The base, finished in matching maple with silver
metallic corners, was secured to the main speaker housing. Then Brian
added the spikes to the base and very carefully leveled the whole.
Brian Morris placing in Komri, stage left…
In my years of working with Brian, I have always been struck by how much
care he takes to get the position of loudspeakers “just so”…to the nearest
¼”! Given the configuration of PF Central’s listening room and the design of
komri
the Komri, speaker placement is critical. As you can see from the above
photograph, Brian chose to put the Komri near the back corners of the
room, with a moderate toe-in (approximately 15°) towards the listening
position (a solid oak three person futon…very comfortable, but heavy!).
Leveling the Komri, a procedure that Morris does with
practiced meticulousness.
Once the speaker position was established, Morris then worked to get the
Komri leveled precisely (see photo above). I’ve seen him do this on several
occasions, but am always struck by the extreme care that Brian takes to get
the speakers exactly right in a listening room. Using a tape measure, the
speakers are put into proper position; then, when tape measure and ear
indicate that the location is right, he rocks the speakers to assure maximum
penetration of the spikes through the rug to the sub-flooring. Finally, with
the aid of a bubble level, the Komri’ spikes were adjusted for truly level
operation.
The Komri has an ingenious system for doing this. The spikes are
integrated into the maple and metal frame, which is outside the bottom of
the speakers. Access to the spikes is from the top of the frame; by using a
special wrench that comes with the Komri, a user can adjust any spike
without tilting/moving the speaker. This allows you to achieve a true level
without endangering placement—or yourself! (If you’ve ever driven a spike
through finger or foot, you know what I mean.)
komri
The Linn Komri, stage right, after leveling; note the
spike head on the bottom left, which makes for
convenient and precise placement/leveling.
An Innovative Design
The Komri present a speaker array unlike anything else that I’ve seen—and
I’ve seen more than a few loudspeakers in my time. The layout is a five-way
system, with Linn’s “Active Servo Bass technology” providing the deep
foundation. The double woofer system is actively powered and controlled
by an integrated switching amplifier that draws a maximum of 2000 watts.
As you can see from the photograph above, the other four drivers (midbass, midrange, tweeter and super tweeter) are arranged in an overlapping
fashion. This has been done through the eye-catching “figure eight” metal
overlay, which provides a carefully configured and solidly designed platform
for the upper three drivers.
komri
The upper driver array of the Linn Komri; note the
innovative “overlay platform” used to enhance the
coherence of the sound.
According to Brian Morris, the goal was to achieve a speaker array that
approaches “point source” in the mid-bass and above, without some of the
drawbacks of single-driver, D’Appolito, spherical-radiated designs, etc. By
utilizing the layout above, Linn sought to maximize coherence in the critical
listening frequencies without either the loss of phase-correctness or the
sacrifice of deep bass.
The system uses a passive crossover for the upper drivers, with carefully
matched high-quality components. (Down the road, Linn is considering the
possibility of going fully active with the Komri, each driver receiving its own
Linn switching amplifier. If so, based on my experience with the Keltik/Klout
combination, the results will be extraordinary! Bring it on!)
The foundation is provided by the Active Servo system that handles the
deep bass that the Komri is capable of. (More on that anon.) Power is
supplied by an efficient switching amplifier a’ la Klimax that is built into the
back of the speaker. Power up is via a small soft-touch button, which
toggles through optional power modes/settings. There are long cooling
vanes on the back of the speaker, to assure proper thermal dissipation of
komri
this sealed box design.
The Komri features an integrated bass servo amplifier
and cooling vanes. On the floor is the associated Linn
Klimax amp/Bright Star isolation stand; power cabling
by VansEvers, and balanced Duo interconnects from
JENA Labs.
komri
A close-up of the power up/option display on the
rear of the Komri — very sophisticated!
Because of the multiplicity of the driver system, connection to the Komri is
made through four pair (!) of binding posts at the bottom rear of the
speaker. These are easily accessible (unlike some speakers), and allowed
us to connect to the associated pair of Linn Klimax amplifiers that we were
using to drive the Komri.
komri
The four pairs of binding posts used in the Komri;
a VansEvers power cable is being used to supply
the internal Linn Active Servo amplifier. The speaker
cable is by Linn.
Listening Impressions
Long-time readers know that I have a great and long-term affection for the
NOVA Rendition and Rendition II loudspeakers. Originally designed by
Murray Zeligman, this all Scanspeak-based, ported design has been a
particular favorite of mine over the past few years. (Not that I haven’t heard
some other fine speakers over the past few years; Alan Yun’s Silverline
Audio Grandeurs, Winston Ma’s Avalons, George Cardas’ custom-tweaked
Maggies, and Rick Gardner’s ESP Concert Grand Signatures come to mind
immediately.) The ease, naturalness, good efficiency and solid construction
make them exceptionally musical companions for one’s audio journey. I
was therefore quite curious to hear how the beautiful…but radically
different…Linn Komri would sound after they hit their stride.
here are several things that I noticed immediately. First and foremost is the
quality of the bass…especially the DEEP bass. Long-time readers know
that I am a firm believer in the need for full-range audio systems, if we are
to reproduce sound with maximum authority, ease, and weight. The Komri
komri
are rated at a -3dB point at 20 Hz, rolling off a -6dB at around 16 Hz—very
low! I have owned/reviewed several speakers that reached into the 18-25
Hz range: the venerable TDL Reference Standard (16-18 Hz), the NOVA
Rendition I and II (25 Hz), the Silverline Grandeurs (18 Hz), and the Von
Schweikert VR-4 (20 Hz) and VR-6 (about 18 Hz as I recall). None of these
are active servo-controlled designs, however, and rely on the associated
components for bass characteristics. Depending on the complementary
preamp/amp/cabling system, the bass could be either extended and
reasonably controlled, or a bit loose and tubby.
There is no doubt that the Linn Komri represents the deepest, tightest, bestcontrolled bass that I have ever heard in my listening room. This is
especially striking given their “sealed box” design; heretofore, my favored
designs for bass were either ported, or (especially) transmission lines.
While sealed boxes can sound clean, they also have a tendency to
leanness that can become astringent; the Komri are not in danger of being
accused of that! It's clear that the design team at Linn worked very hard to
get the foundation right.
It's also clear that they’ve accomplished their goal. This was confirmed by
using one of my acid-test SACDs, the rare and extraordinary alternative
rock recording Pop Condition by Spitball on the Sony/Columbia label. (Don’t
go looking for it; a contract dispute apparently left this SACD out of current
distribution. A real pity…this is a “must have” disc for anyone who enjoys
excellent Euro-Alternative.) A prodigiously well engineered SA, with
dynamics, detail, and DEEP BASS, it will work out any system downstream.
(This is one of those discs that can actually put the Linn Klimax into thermal
standby mode; there aren’t many of these.) You have to watch your volume
control rather carefully at places; even with the Komri…but less with these
than with any other speakers that I’ve listened to this disc with. Ditto with
such SACDs as Satriani’s Engines of Creation…the very deep synthesizer
bass bathes you with ease on cuts like "Champagne."
The mid-bass/mid-range is marked by extraordinary neutrality. There are no
tendencies to the nasal, nor any “honk” in presentation. I haven’t noted any
beaming to the midrange, and the sweet-spot is reasonably large. Female
vocals like the three smashing Patricia Barber SACD releases from Mobile
Fidelity (hallelujah…they’re back!!)—Café Blue, Modern Cool, and
Nightclub (if you don’t have these…get ‘em!)—float with an almost unreal
clarity. Surprising, this; I wondered if a “sealed box” could shed its
“boxiness.” It could indeed!
At the upper end of the spectrum, the Komri is rated -3dB at a respectable
28 kHz; extraordinary, though, is a claimed -6dB point at 40 kHz! According
to Morris, the Komri was designed with DSD and SACD—and their
increased upper frequency response (out to a nominal 100 kHz)—clearly in
mind. I’ve noted for several years now that the greater frequency response
and dynamic range that SACD delivers means that we’re going to have to
expand the audio reproduction envelope significantly. (As PF Online’s
komri
Senior Assistant Editor Rick Gardner is wont to point out, “we’re gonna’
need a bigger boat!”)
Having an integrated high-end to this level really puts the shimmer in
cymbals, the simmer on sibilance, the edge on trumpets, and the air in
atmosphere. There is no peakiness, spit, beaminess, or metallic harshness
in the high frequencies of the Komri. Partly this is due to the SACD and
vinyl sources used, but even standard CDs were less offensive than usual
(though the Linn CD-12 deserves some of the credit for that, as well). The
eerie capability of SACD to deliver a sense of place, the back wall of the
studio, the roundness of a recording, is taken to a new level.
A speaker without seams!
One of the most notable achievements by Linn in the Komri is the
remarkable seamlessness of its driver array. The “near point source” goal
has been accomplished in a wonderful way. Sitting in my listening room and
listening for hours on end…eyes open, eyes closed, head bobbing…I have
not been subject to that very annoying sensation of knowing where the
drivers are.
Don’t underestimate the importance of this. Highly complex collections of
drivers can trip over their own intricate crossovers, phase cancellations,
beaminess, port configuration, fascia, cabling, power requirements, and
inefficiency. These are difficult to design, and expensive to build.
When I spent an extended time with the Lowther PM2A speakers courtesy
of audio friend Tony Glynn (see Positive Feedback, Vol. 8, No. 4), I had an
opportunity to listen to a single point source driver design. The integrated
nature of the sound was exceptional—one cannot sin with a driver array
with only one driver—but the cost was a loss of extension at both the lower
and upper frequencies.
In the Komri, Linn has sought to minimize the trade-offs inherent to a multidriver array of this sophistication and complexity. Their very innovative
design seems to have accomplished the goal in a very appealing way. The
Komri sounds more like a point source than a D’Appolito or a standard
bass/mid/tweet stack…but a “point source” on steroids!
I would summarize the results as the achievement of a marvelous
coherence in the Komri. Everything is there, is right, is properly connected.
This leads to terrific timbre without a loss of warmth, and proper proportion
throughout the range of reproduced music. Coherence and neutrality are
the hallmark of these speakers, making them capable of fidelity at a level
only rarely heard in audio.
What about imaging and soundstaging?
komri
No surprise here. Given the above mentioned characteristics, the Komri
excel at placing well-recorded instruments in space. Listen to recordings
like Winston Ma’s supreme SACD, River of Sorrow, and you hear the
instrumentalists float without strain in the studio. By the way, if you do not
yet have this SACD, order it immediately. I consider it to be that great rarity:
supreme performances, supremely recorded (www.fimpression.com). This
is also true with great SACD reissues like the work that Chad Kassem has
been doing at Analog Productions. For example, check out the SACDs of
Miles Davis Cookin’, Sonny Rollins Saxophone Colossus, and the Bill
Evans Trio doing Waltz for Debby (www.acousticsounds.com); you’ll get to
hear recordings that let you appreciate what the Komri can do.
Even with the mild toe-in that Brian established, left and right extend nicely
beyond the speakers. Front-to-back spaciousness…one of the truly
revolutionary ways that SACD gives us back REAL soundstaging…is very
fine. Given the way that the Komri vanish into their presentation, though,
this is not a shocking thing; it’s precisely what I would expect.
I have to confess that the quality of the Komri is such that it was almost
disorienting at times. The extreme clarity, without compromise of musical
expression, is exceptional, but I confess…I had to recalibrate! It’s unusual
to hear so much; in tandem with my modified (thanks to Audiocom and
Richard Kern!) Sony SCD-1 SACD player, you have to get used to the
sheer detail and coherence of what you’re hearing. Fair warning!
In other words, the coherence of the presentation of the Komri is supreme:
top to bottom, front to back, side to side, a true world-class reference
standard in fine audio loudspeakers has emerged.
A Challenge or Two…
Having praised the Linn Komri highly, I do need to point out several factors
that potential buyers will need to consider.
First of all, with a nominal impedance of 4 ohms, you’ll need to make sure
that you have plenty of current to drive the Komri. Given the complexity of
the speaker, I wouldn’t even think of driving these with much less than a
few hundred Watts. The Klimax amps develop some 400-500 watts each,
and I would not want less than a pair of these.
Second, and complementary to this, is the fact that the Komri do not set
any records for efficiency. At 87dB/watt/meter, this is the least efficient
speaker that I’ve listened to since the days of the TDL Reference
Standards. You’ll definitely notice that you’re turning up your preamp more
than you’re accustomed when listening to the Komri. I note that I’m
probably 20-25% higher on the Audio Research Reference Two, Mk. II
preamp volume control than I was when using the NOVA Rendition IIs. This
isn’t a problem for me—the Audio Research preamp is utterly quiet (my ear
komri
has to be within an inch of the Komri to hear any white noise at all)—but
that isn’t true of all systems. If you have a problem with noise/RF in your
system, you’ll want to keep this in mind.
This means that the Komri are not for the faint of power, nor for mediocre
audio systems. If you don’t have the necessary components to feed these
speakers correctly, you’ll either have to upgrade (the Klimax are an
excellent step up, by the way!) or look elsewhere.
I should also note that the Komri do take some break-in; I’d reckon on 100200 hours to work in a fresh pair. They’ll begin to hit their stride after that.
For some people this is a frustration; me, I’m philosophical. Like it or not,
fine audio components require break-in.
Finally, I’m still meditating over the question of speaker cables. I’m not
convinced that the Linn speaker cables are the best possible for the Komri;
if I’m able to try some others, I’ll report in a follow-up issue of Positive
Feedback Online.
Conclusion
The Linn Komri gave me the feeling of being in the studio, listening though
a live microphone feed. This is seduction of the highest order for a person
like me—my entire listening room life has been dedicated to re-creating
“mic feeds and master tapes” in my home. In my opinion, Linn has crafted a
very rare loudspeaker: one that gives coherence, neutrality, clarity; a
speaker that combines physical beauty with real authority, and helps you to
approach that grand goal of fine audio—real fidelity in audio reproduction.
In combination with reference level equipment, and using either SACD or
vinyl, the Linn Komri is a stratospheric reference loudspeaker. I therefore
give it my “very highest recommendation”—enthusiastically!
Komri Reference Monitor loudspeakers
Retail $40,000/pair
Linn UK
web address: www.linn.co.uk
BACK TO TOP
magnumdynalab
magnum dynalab
MD-308 integrated amplifier
as reviewed by Larry Cox, Victor Chavira, and Carlo Flores
The MD-308 integrated amplifier is Magnum Dynalab’s
first foray into amplification. I believe that it is based on Simaudio’s I-5, an amp that
was reviewed positively by aM and has garnered praise elsewhere. The MD-308 is
lighter than the I-5, primarily because the casework isn’t as thick, but it is well built
nonetheless. It isn’t beautiful, or ugly, just utilitarian, with a large LED that toggles to
indicate source selected or volume level. The substantial aluminum remote fit neatly
into my hand and the controls were intuitive. It was unequivocally the best remote
I’ve ever used; within a day I was using it "blind," able to naturally find the proper
controls, helped by the LED display.
The MD-308 has a clean, clear presentation, with an appropriately damped bottom
end and reasonably extended highs. I had no complaints about the workman-like top
end. It was neither open nor closed-in, just reasonably good. No frequencies stood
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magnumdynalab
LARRY COX'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
ATC SCM 20.
ELECTRONICS
Majeel Labs
Pristine S-10
amplifier. E.A.R.
802 preamplifier.
SOURCE
Pioneer DV 525
dvd player.
CABLES
Quattro Fil
interconnects and
speaker cables
made from
Belden 1219A
wire.
ACCESSORIES
API Power Pack
and ACPEAM line
conditioners.
out. The MD-308 is a polite amplifier, doing little to offend, matching my experience
with its cousins in the Sim/Moon line, which have always sounded a little more clean
and polished than reality to me. My aural memory (perhaps not to be trusted) says
that the MD-308 is less slick and polished-sounding than the Sim products, allowing
more texture to shine through, but it still errs slightly in melding the finest details into
a sound that implies more than it delivers. I missed the unexaggerated, textured
midrange and bottom end I get with my amplification, along with another level of fine
detail.
On the 20-bit Metro Jazz remaster of Sonny Rollins & Big Brass, the opening track,
"Grand Street," opens with an in-your-face blare of reedy saxophone. The MD-308
made the sax a less finely-filigreed instrument, giving it a slightly simplified sound. It
didn’t make the instrument sound fuzzy, but did gild the sound a bit. Given the price
point of speakers the Magnum Dynalab will be likely to be matched with, this may be
a desirable characteristic, and it will only show up on occasion. I had to search out
specific recordings in order to determine that the amp was doing it. Once heard, it is
heard from top to bottom, but most apparently from the midrange and up, although
not so broadly that no detail came through. On the first track of Bjork’s Verpertine
there is a bizarre, scratchy, electronic sound. My reference amp reproduced it in a
way that was almost indistinguishable from the MD-308’s, but provided an ever-soslightly more detailed AND relaxed sound.
I am no longer using Nordost Quattro Fil interconnects between my CD player,
preamp, and amplifier. They are good cables, but add a little more polish to the
sound than I want. (This coloration, by the way, strikes me as very similar to that of
the MD-308.) Since my current preamp and amplifier are both balanced, I have been
using a one-meter section of Calrad balanced wire (which sounds great at $20
total!). With Ensemble Dynaflux ($850/meter) between the CD player and preamp,
the sound of my reference system is richer and more timbrally textured than the
$1600/meter pair Nordost. I made the switch in the middle of this review, happily,
since the Nordost/MD-308 combination made things sound too much like an ice
skating rink.
Another good match for the MD-308 is DH Labs’ Air Matrix Interconnects. Textured,
detailed, and with very few sonic anomalies, they also keep you from digging ever
deeper into your wallet. I tried the MD-308/DH Labs setup with both my ATCs and
the Ruark Prologue II speakers here on review, and was impressed. The
combination of the Ruarks and the MD-308 was one of those magic price-point
systems that deliver most of what much more expensive systems do. The Ruarks
with the MD-308 was an enjoyable experience, with an "alive" presentation that
could easily seduce listeners. Imaging was good, although not as fleshed out as
tubes would allow. Bass was full, fast and fun. I got a good sense of having
performers in the room. What was missing won’t be noticed by audiophile neophytes
who love music. Even seasoned audio types on a limited budget will be happy. You
don’t get the very best for $2000, but you do get a good sampling of it with the MD308 and the Ruarks. Bass was flat to about 45 Hz, fast, and reasonably welltextured. The midrange was full, with an ever-so-slight bump of warmth. The system
is slightly polite and sweet, but this is a reasonable sin at this price.
magnumdynalab
With my ATC speakers, the DH cables, and the MD-308, the top end was better,
although the ATCs’ resolving ability exceeded the MD-308’s. There was a little more
sparkle and magic with the ATCs and my reference electronics (at almost four times
the cost). It was easier to discern details, and to connect emotionally with male and
female vocals. The ATCs wanted more bottom end than the Magnum Dynalab’s 100
watts could provide, though this is hardly the fault of the amplifier, since the ATCs
require the more juice and higher volume levels of, say, ATC’s 200 watt amplifier.
The gear that will be matched with the MD-308 will probably benefit from a "nicer"
interpretation than a ruthlessly revealing one. I liked Magnum Dynalab’s job here,
and feel very comfortable recommending it. If you are moving up the food chain to a
$2000-plus amplifier, the MD-308 is a very good choice, and one that could settle
you into a stable system, with a sound that is musical, neutral, and enjoyable. Larry
Cox
VICTOR
CHAVIRA'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Magneplanar 1.6
and B&W DM
302.
ELECTRONICS
Kora Explorer
integrated. SCE
Harmonic
Recovery System.
SOURCE
Audio Electronics
CD1 player.
CABLES
Nordost QuattroFil interconnects,
Blue Heaven
speaker cables,
and El Dorado
power cords.
ACCESSORIES
Monster Cables
If anyone had asked me a year ago if I would consider
listening to an integrated amplifier from a company that makes radios, I would have
politely responded, “Thanks, but no thanks.” In doing so, I would have missed the
opportunity to hear one of the most versatile and musical products in its price range.
Essentially, the Magnum Dynalab 308 is the very successful 208 receiver without the
tuner section. Both products produce 100 watts into 8 ohms, 160 into 4. The 308’s
list of features includes a shielded toroidal transformer, oxygen-free wiring, and
ultralinear matched components in a low-negative-feedback class AB design. The
weighty remote is logically laid out and ergonomically designed. The faceplate is
accented by sapphire-blue LEDs and two bright VU meters, one for each channel.
Unlike many integrated amplifiers on the market, the 308 features a true preamp
rather than a passive attenuator, which makes it possible to drive a second amplifier
if necessary. Sadly, the 308 does not have headphone or phono capabilities.
I plugged the 308 directly into the wall with its stock power cord, and placed it upon a
Lovan Trisolator shelf on the carpet. The unit was already broken in, but I left it on
for more than an hour before listening, and left it on for the remainder of the review
period. Getting good bass from my Magnepan panels is always a challenge. Any
amp mated to a Maggie must have a well-designed power supply and large reserves
of juice. What do I use to evaluate a component’s bass performance? Why, bass
players, of course: Cachao, Al McKibbon, Ron Carter, Charlie Haden. I can only
speculate as to what a dinosaur stomp might have sounded like, but I do know the
sound of a string bass. The 308 convincingly portrayed each of the aforementioned
bass players’ signature tones with clarity, pitch, and definition.
But the 308 isn’t only about bass. From the midrange up, the 308 possesses a sonic
signature that is neither tightly transistor nor voluptuously vacuum. The Magnum
was quiet and transparent, allowing the rhythmic and emotional content of musical
performances to flow freely. Nora Jones’ debut CD on Blue Note is an interesting
magnumdynalab
HTS 1000 AC
center. Vibrapods,
Lovan Trisolator,
and Echo
Busters.
example. I first made the mistake of listening to this disc through my Kora Explorer,
and it sounded so bland that I questioned the buzz about Ms. Jones. Then I listened
again with the 308, and experienced insight into the beauty and complexity of this
young performer’s voice and talent. I also listened to that creature of Canadian
comfort, Diana Krall. The Magnum revealed previously unheard subtleties and
nuances of her piano playing and her interaction with her band mates. Whereas
Nora Jones possesses a unique voice and original phrasing, Ms. Krall knows how to
swing.
Another example of the 308’s consummate musical performance occurred when I
connected my budget DVD player to the 308 for an evening of 2.0 home theater.
Moulin Rouge is a film that develops at an astonishing pace, with fleeting moments
of dialogue followed by pulsing musical productions. The 308 sounded like it had two
different amps inside. One sounded as smooth as Satine (Nicole Kidman) during
passages of dialogue, both spoken and sung. The other packed an incredible
wallop. During the “Lady Marmalade” scene, the 308 reached down into the lowest
regions, and rumbled my Maggies in a way I hadn’t heard since the 350-watt
McIntosh 352.
By now it should be obvious that I loved this amplifier. Don’t be misled by the fact
that it can be purchased through Audio Advisor. The Magnum Dynalab 308
integrated is a serious, first-rate product that outclasses anything else that can be
found in the pages of that ubiquitous catalog. After consulting my wife and
considering the family budget, we ordered, not the MD308, but the MD208 receiver,
because we wanted FM. The MD208 has become my new reference. Magnum
Dynalab has changed my life. It will change yours, too, if you give it a chance. Victor
Chavira
CARLO FLORES'
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
PSB Stratus
Bronze,
Sennheiser
HD580, Grado
SR225 and SR60
headphones.
ELECTRONICS
Conrad-Johnson
Sonographe SA250 amplifier, DIY
Simplicity is a beautiful thing, but
unfortunately, most high end audio manufacturers don't feel that way. Components
have lately turned into statement pieces, with garish gold trim, shiny silver
faceplates, wooden knobs, and non-parallel lines. Audio jewelry. There seem to be
two camps in hi-fi, those who enjoy the extravagance of excess and those who see
the appeal of subtlety. I set my tent in the latter.
The Magnum Dynalab MD-308 is, to borrow a cliche, a breath of fresh air. It doesn't
remind me of vintage equipment. Rather, it looks more thoroughly modern, and
simply hip, than the competition. Lifting the MD-308 onto my amp stand gave a hint
of what was to come—the thing weighs a solid thirty pounds and exudes build
quality. An immediate complaint is the lack of a phono stage or headphone output,
but that’s to be expected nowadays. Its simple remote control contains a whooping
seven buttons (input, power, and +/- for volume), all I will ever need. I couldn't help
but pull a cold beer from the fridge, grab a stack of CDs, dim the lights, and slink into
my listening chair.
magnumdynalab
headphone
amplifier, and an
Anthem Pre1L
(w/Mullard tubes).
SOURCES
H! Njoe Tjoeb CD
player (w/Amprex
tubes), Arcam
Apha 9 CD
player, Rega
Planar 3/Origin
Live
RB250/Grado
Gold. Vintage
Phillips receiver
(phono and tuner)
CABLES
TEK-Line power
cords, Tara Labs
and Kimber
interconnects,
and diy speaker
cable.
ACCESSORIES
Vibrapods, BDR
cones, and diy
rollerblocks
My strongest impression of this component's character is its balance across the
frequency spectrum. On Jimmy Smith's Root Down (Verve 314 559 805-2), each
musician's individuality and his part in the musical performance blends together
beautifully. Yes, their genius would catch my ear through a clock radio, but through
the Magnum-Dynalab it turns into candy for my ears. The top end lacks the strident
nature I normally associate with solid state amplifiers. The amp exhibits total control
of the speakers, producing taut, deep, and fast bass response. Listening through the
disc was a pleasure.
"Musical" is an overused term in this hobby. To this day I don't know what value to
place on the word. Is it the smearing of detail to make material more listenable? Or
is it a rolled-off treble to lessen the harshness of inferior masters? None of this
applies to the MD-308. The Magnum handled all that I threw at it, from questionablyrecorded punk such as Iggy Pop's remastering of The Stooges' Raw Power
(Columbia/Legacy CK 6629) to The Modern Lovers' Live (Beserkley SOB CD 0054
a). Mos Def's Black On Both Sides (Rawkus 50141), an addictive mix of social
commentary under the guise of hip-hop, doesn't lose its aggressiveness. The MD308 doesn’t mask the flaws of what’s on the disc—it lets out what’s there. Paul
Simon’s 1964-93 Boxed Set (Warner Bros 9 45394-2) is filled with analog hiss. The
Magnum doesn’t touch it, nor, more importantly, does it mar the artistry that makes
Simon not only one of the premier writers of the past century, but one of the great
musicians as well. This amplifier does exactly what it's supposed to do—get out of
the way of the music. It is the type of component one doesn't listen for, but forgets
about.
However, my job as a reviewer is to dig into the details. My frame of reference
includes my Anthem tubed preamp, so what’s to come can be filed under Tubes v.
Solid State. I really don’t care that some tests show that transistors measure better
than tubes. The Pre1L feeding the CJ SA-250 simply sounds more realistic than the
Magnum Dynalab. I am by no means claiming that Wes Montgomery sounds as if
he’s in my listening room when I play Talkin Verve: The Roots of Acid Jazz. Still, the
decay of his guitar ringing in space sounds much too brief with the Magnum. The
attack of the kick drum, while offering plenty of depth, lacks the slight reverb I hear
through my reference preamp/amp. The emotional connection I find with my
components is sadly lacking with the Magnum Dynalab. Is the MD-308 a coldsounding component? No. Its sonic character, or lack of character, will probably be a
plus for many listeners. Not me.
I understand that for many listeners, soundstage is an artifact of the recording
process and is seldom accurately reproduced in the home environment. Whatever.
In my system, soundstage is a regular occurrence. The Magnum Dynalab localized
placement from left to right well, on par with my similarly-priced but modded
separates. What it lacks is depth. Individual performers sound as if they're on the
same plane, a foot behind or in front of each other. Focusing on drum work from
DCC's remaster of Joni Mitchell's Blue (DCC GZS-1132) usually gives me the
surreal feel of a three-dimensional experience. With the Magnum in the system, I
lacked that. Switching to Ani DiFranco’s post-90s folk genre, her reveling/reckoning
is a well-recorded disc if there ever was one. Hard, dark, straight lines form each
magnumdynalab
musician’s image. Focus on any one instrument–her simple guitar, the bongo
accompanying, the rhythmic bass guitar, or the percussion–and it’s breathtaking, but
try to place the rest of the musicians and they sound as if they’re crammed into a
walk-in closet.
But even these criticisms aren’t overwhelming. The Magnum Dynalab gives up very
little to the Anthem and Conrad Johnson. When taken within the context of what it
does provide: its lack of nonsense and its non-apology for being solid state (in my
opinion, far too many companies try to sweeten the sound to mimic tubes). The MD308 does all it’s supposed to. Compared to my reference setup, I only heard what it
didn’t do—bloom on vocals, a soundstage that doesn’t hover in space, the fine
texture of hands slapping skin on a bongo. This price point is all about tradeoffs, and
the Magnum Dynalab MD-308 simply doesn’t compromise much. Carlo Flores
Magnum Dynalab MD-308 integrated
Retail $2350
Magnum Dynalab
TEL: 905. 791. 5888
Toll Free in North America: 1. 800. 551. 4130
web address: www.magnumdynalab.com
e-mail address: info@magnumdynalab.com
BACK TO TOP
norhcd1
nOrh
CD-1 CD player
as reviewed by Ed Morawski, Carlo Flores, and Francisco Duran
After many hours spent listening to the nOrh
CD-1, I still don’t know if I like it, but I should start at the beginning (for your
information the player was broken-in for well over 100 hours prior to the
"formal" review process) . Upon opening the rather flimsy box, I was
surprised to see a sleek, silver-and-black CD player. The CD-1 is also very
substantial, being all metal. After admiring the thick aluminum and blacksmoked Plexiglas front, I was anxious to hook it up. I decided to test its
performance as a transport first, mated to my Muse 296 DAC, but this was
not to be. I could not get any signal! I tried again with my Denon 5700, but
still nothing. Okay, most owners are going to use the CD-1 as an integrated
player anyway, for its tube output stage, so no big thing. With a spare set of
Synergistic Research interconnects, I connected the CD-1 to my Muse 3
preamp. Planning on letting the tubes warm up for an hour or so, I flipped
on the rear power switch and was greeted with a terrible hum. The next
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/norhcd1.htm (1 of 6) [8/25/2002 2:51:05 PM]
norhcd1
ED MORAWSKI'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Alon Capri.
ELECTRONICS
and a Muse Model 3
preamplifier.
SOURCE
and 296 DAC.
CABLES
Kaleidoscope
interconnects,
AudioQuest Slate
power Cord.
several minutes were spent trying to find the source, to no avail. Changing
cables, inputs, power cords, and receptacles accomplished nothing, so I
decided to open up the unit.
Although nothing appeared amiss inside, I was glad I had a chance to
check out its innards. The construction quality was superb. The CD-1 is
made in Thailand by some engineers that formerly worked at California
Audio Labs, and it is far and away the best piece of electronic gear I have
seen that comes out of a third-world country. Two things should be noted,
however. First, the tubes are unmarked. Secondly, there is no provision for
the cooling of the tubes, as the chassis is without a ventilation hole of any
kind. This causes me some concern about heat buildup. There being
nothing much else I could do, I screwed the cover back on and proceeded
to listen.
This CD player completely changed the character of my CD collection! I
have never heard a player make such a huge difference. I started with
Deep Blue by Keiko Matsui, a very well-produced set of piano tunes. The
nOrh made it sound like a new recording. I suspect the tubes are producing
harmonics in certain ranges. I could actually hear the piano wires vibrating
each time she struck a key! This effect was evident on many instruments.
Anxious to hear how the CD-1 reproduced vocals, I inserted Diana Krall’s
The Look of Love. Although her voice was creamy and silky-smooth, other
notes were emphasized to the point of annoyance. This seemed most
pronounced in the lower midrange, and was evident on the rather peculiarlytuned guitar used throughout this CD. This time the effect was grating.
Not wanting to give up, I played many more CDs, each one sounding either
fantastic or irritating. For instance, on Loreena McKennitt’s The Visitor, the
CD-1 seemed to over exaggerate her intake of breath, while the harps and
piano sounded amazing. I finished up with her Parallel Dreams, and that left
me almost liking the nOrh because it was so emotionally involving. Her
voice sounded natural, while the stringed instruments were as good as I
have ever heard. The drums had a deep, hollow sound that you rarely hear
on a recording. I also became aware of a clicking sound at the beginning
and end of each track. I assume this is a relay. While it didn’t really bother
me, some may find it objectionable.
What do I say? Was this unit defective? I don’t know. I am not a big analog
fan, but I suspect a vinyl buff would love it, as it sure doesn’t sound digital!
It can be described as warm but detailed. Bells, cymbals, and chimes are
crystal clear, and most stringed instruments flat out sing. The bass is tight,
and extremely detailed. The soundstage is okay, but I noticed that on some
recordings the image seemed to separate and then reform. The CD-1 is an
interesting unit, and you owe yourself an audition if you’re looking for a nonanalytical sound. Ed Morawski
norhcd1
CARLO FLORES'
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
PSB Stratus Bronze,
Sennheiser HD580,
Grado SR225 and SR60
headphones.
ELECTRONICS
Conrad-Johnson
Sonographe SA-250
amplifier. DIY headphone
amp and an Anthem
Pre1L (w/Mullard tubes).
SOURCES
AH! Njoe Tjoeb CD
player (w/Amprex tubes),
Arcam Apha 9 CD player,
Rega Planar 3/Origin
Live RB250/Grado Gold.
Vintage Phillips receiver
(phono and tuner)
CABLES
TEK-Line power cords,
Tara Labs and Kimber
interconnects, and DIY
speaker cables.
ACCESSORIES
Vibrapods, BDR cones,
and DIY rollerblocks.
Since buying the AH! Njoe Tjoeb 4000 CD
player, I’ve been wondering about its competition in mid-priced tubed CD
players. Enter the nOrh CD-1, a well made CD player with a tube output
stage, not a buffer as in the AH! Njoe Tjoeb. The nOhr also has an
enticingly low price. I was dying to hear it.
The CD-1 feels like a statement about what’s possible in the sub-$1000
price range. The fit and finish of the chassis, with its rounded edges and
utilitarian look, appealed to me, much more so than the Marantz-based
Tjoeb. The interior of the nOrh is cleanly laid out, and looks much more
substantial than the competition. No isolation, tube rolling, or mass damping
was done at any point during this review.
Before going any further, I’ll note what changes have been made to my
player. Dave Clark added an IEC input, attached to which is a DIY power
cord based on Doc Rosenberg’s design. The top lid and bottom chassis
have several layers of Dynamat pressed onto their surface for added
rigidity, the headphone output has been disabled, and the tubes have been
replaced with 1964 Phillips SQ E88CCs. The Arcam Alpha 9 also featured
prominently in my comparisons.
First up was Having a Party with Jonathan Richman (Rounder 9026).
Jonathan Richman is an interesting guy, known to drop his guitar and
dance like a madman without regard to where the mic is, and his love of
music comes across clearly in his work. This single-mic'd live performance,
just Richman and his guitar, feels like a flashback instead of an album
made in the early 1990s. The CD-1 handled it easily, not giving much of a
hint that it’s a tubed component. The guitar lacked any sense of smearing,
with the slightest sweetness, but without sacrificing extension. I felt very
much like I was in the crowd, with the occasional hoot coming from the far
right, the audience clapping around me, and Richman working the stage.
The soundstage of the CD-1 isn’t as wide as the Tjoeb’s, but it is projected
forward, not offensively, but enjoyably. Richman moves across the
soundstage on "Monologue About Bermuda," clearly establishing a depth
that extends about three feet behind the speakers and a foot in front of it.
The Njoe Tjoeb presents images as if seen through a fish-eye lens, with the
lead singer up front and the other images rounded out behind. With the CD1, those boundaries turn into straight lines. It is more believable, just as
involving, and superior to the Tjoeb.
The CD-1’s instrument separation and clarity with complicated works such
as Tricky’s Maxinquaye (Island Records 610524 089-2), is about average.
This recording’s layered and stepped bass tracks have more blend than I
hear with the Alpha 9, but are much faster and deeper than with the Tjoeb.
On "Ponderosa," the sense of ambience that makes trip-hop what it is pops
norhcd1
out of the digital black. The nOrh has an admirably low noise floor for a
tubed component. Its black background, and its excellent linearity from the
midrange down, easily outclasses the Tjoeb. However, there is a prominent
lower treble glare. On Maxinquaye, the female lead’s voice sounds brassy,
and this doesn’t quite fit. The synthetic horn work throughout the disc lacks
the texture and sweetness I get with the Tjoeb. I suspect a tube change
would tame the harshness, but I cannot say this with certainty. As it is, the
Tjoeb not only sounds more fluid but also has more air. Cymbal crashes on
the DCC remaster of Metallica’s Master of Puppets (GZS-1133) sound hard
and fake with the nOrh. Granted, through the Tjoeb–or the Arcam for that
matter—they don’t sound remotely close to the real thing, but at least
they’re listenable.
Another Steve Hoffman remaster, Joni Mitchell’s Blue (DCC GZS-1132),
finally shows her brilliance without the artifacts so prominent in previous
digital releases. Yes, I’m in love with her, and yes, I think her voice is one of
the greatest the world has known, but with the nOrh I can’t get into the
recording at times. When listening through either the Tjoeb or the Arcam, I
get caught in the romance of "A Case Of You." With the nOrh, her voice
falls apart. But that’s still focusing on the negative; the guitar sounds vibrant
and rich, without the exaggerated but pleasing tone of the Tjoeb or the
flatness of the Arcam. It rings with beautiful decay, slightly colored but very
absorbing.
I spend a lot of time listening to great music recorded on bad equipment.
The challenge isn’t so much in getting a piece of equipment to forgive those
errors, but having it let the musical qualities come through. For example, an
early CD release of The Velvet Underground’s "Lady Godiva" (White
Light/White Heat (Polydor 31453 1251 2) has a ruthless, hard sound that
grates on the ears, but listen for technique instead of sonics and it’s
negligible. Through good equipment it is so absorbing that the lyrics
become secondary. The CD-1 does well, if a tad rolled off in the upper
registers when compared to the Arcam. Compared to the Tjoeb it’s a touch
flatter, but that’s a compliment considering, once again, that the Tjoeb
exaggerates the soundstage.
So, Njoe Tjoeb or nOrh CD-1? The CD-1 looks better, sounds better, and
feels like a lot more thought was put into it, with one caveat—the upperfrequency glare cannot be ignored. Given everything the nOrh does so well,
this turns from a minor blemish to a distraction. It’s easy to imagine how
great the CD-1 could be, but it falls sadly short of the mark, at least with the
stock tubes. When the Njoe Tjoeb is outfitted with its stock tubes, there
really is no contest. The nOrh beats it silly. The stock Tjoeb sounds bland
and uninvolving. The stock CD-1 presents the music much more easily,
with a slightly forward sound that keeps me both interested and willing to
dig deeper into the recording. A more worthy adversary is the Arcam Alpha
9. It outclasses the nOrh with its ruthlessly revealing nature. While slightly
laid back and arguably lean, the Alpha still has the detail and speed that
makes it my favorite player under $2000. However, forgiving and euphonic
norhcd1
it isn’t. The nOrh has great soundstage and tone. It’s revealing enough, just
warm enough to be called musical, and complete enough to live with.
Highly recommended.
Carlo Flores
FRANCISCO DURAN'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Osiris 24" stands.
ELECTRONICS
Monarchy SM-70
amplifiers (mono).
Reference Line
line stage.
SOURCE
Musical Concepts’
Pioneer DV414 DVD
Epoch VII Signature
Antidote Two.
CABLES
Superconductor+
interconnects and a
double run of JPS
cables.
ACCESSORIES
Panamax power
and Vibrapods.
When it came time to write this
review, I realized that I had very few listening notes. Was the nOrh CD-1
CD player so good that I just sat in front of it dazed, pen in hand but not
writing? Maybe it was just so much fun to play my CD collection through.
What a novel idea! The fact that the CD-1 has two 12AX7 tubes mounted to
its circuit board might conjure up visions of rich tonal color and layers of
musical dimension. Well, that depends. If there is anything you learn quickly
when dealing with tube-based products, it is that the tubes used can have a
profound influence on the sound. I have been reminded of this fact in my
recent return to tube amps. In any case, what nOrh has brought to with the
CD-1 is a player with a tube output stage and a 24/96 Burr Brown DA
processor. nOrh designed the CD-1 player from the ground up. It’s not a
Marantz el cheapo stripped and modded to the hilt, not that I have a
problem with modded CD players.
Lifting the bonnet of the CD-1, one first notices a single circuit board
covering three quarters of the interior real estate, with two tubes, two
transformers, and all components neatly mounted to it. The CD-1’s
construction is very solid. This unit costs $799? The look and feel alone
suggest something more like $1400 or $2000. Actually I had the CD-1 in my
system several times. Switching to the nOrh CD-1, I immediately noticed a
very open, dynamic, and fast-paced musical presentation. As with the
Lamm LL2, don’t let those tubes fool you. The nOrh CD-1 delivered a clean,
well-balanced sonic picture. At times I felt that a little too much light was
shed on the top end. It wasn’t really bright, but leaned that way with certain
recordings. Aside from that, I do feel that tonal balance is definitely a strong
point of this player. No part of the spectrum was exaggerated. Notes trailed
off nicely. Bass notes were agile and punchy. Benefiting from the tubes was
the texture and realness of timbre so often missing in a solid state unit. I’m
not sure what brand of tubes was installed in the nOrh CD-1. I did not "tube
roll," but my experience tells me that a whole different musical picture can
be painted by slapping in different tubes, while the inherent sonic character
of the unit will still be evident. If I could change anything by doing so, I
would like a slightly sweeter top end and a little more dimension in the
lower treble. That said, the mid to treble range of the nOrh CD-1 accounted
for itself quite well. Play all of the violin recordings you have in your
collection. Violins and orchestras were reproduced smoothly, but with
detail. A CD player with less grain than this one would cost you much more.
norhcd1
The CD-1 can deliver naturalness of tone in the critical midrange, yet still
deliver the goods at the frequency extremes. This is where I think it has a
leg up on the competition. The sonic picture of the nOrh CD-1 is open, lively
and engaging. It will not cheat you at the frequency extremes, nor will it
slow down a fiddle player doing "Flight of the Bumble Bee" or trip up the
bass player going full tilt on some hard rock. Throw in nice harmonic texture
and dimension and you have a well -rounded player. I feel the competition
for this player is well beyond the $800 price bracket. The slogan for the last
few years seems to be "Why wait for the digital debate?". I don’t know
about you, but I want my music now! Check this player out. Francisco
Duran
nOrh CD-1 CD player
Retail $799 (recently discontinued)
nOrh
web address: http://www.norh.com
BACK TO TOP
beltpen
peter belt
"X" Coordinate Pen
as reviewed by Carol Clark
In Issue 10 of audioMUSINGS (the print version), I presented my findings on
one of the theories of Peter W. Belt, in the area of cryogenics. In a future issue I
will be revisiting that theory, as I have been provided with additional information.
In this issue I will deal with Belt’s "X" Coordinate Pen. I don’t feel qualified to
address the theories behind the operation of the pen, so I will simply describe
the experiments I conducted and the results. If you would like information on
Belt’s theories, visit his homepage at www.belt.demon.co.uk.
CAROL CLARK'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
ReimerSpeaker Systems
Tetons.
ELECTRONICS
Clayton Audio M70
Two and the SCE HRS
unit. E.A.R. 834P phono
stage. Blue Circle BC3000
preamp w/Tunsgram
tubes, and BCG3.1 power
supply.
SOURCES
EVS Millenium II DAC with
Audient Technologies’
Tactic and Audi, JPS
digital cable. Linn Axiss
turntable with K9 cartridge
and Basik Plus arm.
My original experiments piqued my curiosity about the pen. I attempted to find
one locally, but was unsuccessful, and was provided with one by Belt. The pen
is an ordinary red overhead projector pen manufactured by Staedtler under the
name Lumocolor. I had several of these pens in my desk at school, but the ones
I had contained non-permanent ink, and you need permanent ink. Also, getting
the pen directly from Belt is beneficial because it has undergone treatment, and
he provides a correction pen so that before-and-after experiments can be
conducted. The pen also comes with a special sheet of film, and this film is
essential.
As I said, I cannot discuss the scientific theory behind the pen, but here is a
quote from the literature provided with it: "The P.W.B. ‘X’ Coordinate Pen has
been induced with complex messages and when a human writes a message
with the pen, the conditions on the object change in a similar way to the events
in the ‘double slit’ experiment, in which the essential ingredient is the pure
energy form of the photons and electrons which readily interact with the human
observer." Whew! Dave tells me that this sounds like quantum mechanics, so, in
an effort to expand my horizons I went to Barnes and Noble and purchased a
book called The Quantum World, by J.C. Polkinghorne. It purports to elucidate
quantum mechanics for the general reader, and when my schedule allows I will
read it, and then will hopefully be able to understand why this pen works.
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/beltpen.htm (1 of 4) [8/25/2002 2:51:06 PM]
beltpen
CABLES
JPS Superconductor+
NC speaker cables.
Nordost MoonGlo digital
cable. Sahuaro
Slipstream, Blue Circle
BC63, Clayton Audio, and
JPS Kaptovator AC
cables.
ACCESSORIES
Dedicated 20 and 15 amp
ac circuits. EchoBuster
room treatments. BDR
cones and board, DH
cones, Vibrapods, Mondo
racks and stands, various
hard woods, etc.
Yes, dear reader, the pen works, and works brilliantly! Let me describe what I
did, what I heard, and more importantly, what an unsuspecting outside party
heard when I performed my experiments. As with any such phenomenon,
hearing for yourself is believing. Do not discount what you are about to read
unless you are ready to try it yourself. According to the literature I received, the
simplest way to prove the efficacy of the pen is to sign your name on the outside
cover of a compact disc. You use your normal signature, and write it like this:
Carol Clark > o.k. You need to include the "o.k." to transfer beneficial thought
patterns from yourself to the written message. I scoured my CD collection, and
found a CD I have two copies of, the La Femme Nikita soundtrack. Prior to
altering either of them, I listened to both to determine if they sounded the same,
and they did. I set one aside, and wrote my signature followed by "> o.k." on the
case of the second one. You can also sign the label side of the CD, and this will
work with an LP as well, either by signing the jacket or the label.
I chose a track from that CD that I am very familiar with, the song called "Gun"
by the band GusGus. (Incidentally, this soundtrack is from the television series,
not the French movie.) When I listened to both copies of the CD again, the
results were so startling that I wrote detailed notes. Vocals on the unsigned
copy were hard and plastic sounding, and the high notes were razor sharp. I
found myself totally distracted, wishing for the song to end. The treated CD, on
the other hand, provided beautiful, mellow-sounding vocals. The high notes
throughout were subdued, which enabled me to concentrate on the music. I
found the experience enjoyable. As in my earlier Peter Belt experiments, I
assumed I was subject to the power of suggestion. I was afraid that I had set
myself up to hear what I heard, and that I wanted to hear the treated CD in a
positive light. This is where I called on my unwitting accomplice, Dave. I used
the eraser pen that was provided and erased my signature from the case, thus
letting him hear both untreated copies of the CD so he could satisfy himself that
they indeed sounded the same. I chose a different song, "Hanging On a
Curtain" by Morphine, since it is a song he is more familiar with. I gave him the
red pen and asked him to sign his name, then whisked both CDs away, out of
his sight. We then talked for a few minutes, so that his mind would turn away
from the CDs. I played the treated CD first, and when it was done he indicated
that it sounded very good. The untreated CD went in next, and he almost
immediately told me that it sounded worse.
You may now take a moment to roll your eyes and say this is all a bunch of
hogwash. Go ahead, get it out of your system. Many of you will think I’ve flipped
my lid. I agree that Belt’s claims for this product sound completely ludicrous. All I
can say is, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. Trust me when I say the result is
sweeter, less discordant music.
Now let’s proceed, presuming that you will keep an open mind.
Supplied with the pen was a special sheet of self-adhesive film. Remember,
keep your mind open as you read this statement, taken from Belt’s report:
"When the ‘X’ Pen writes on this material, a subliminal message readily
understood by any human within its vicinity is formed on the material. If the
written message is attached to the outer surface of an object such as a
loudspeaker cabinet or the outer case of any electronic or audio equipment, a
significant change to the perceived sound within the listening room will occur." I
beltpen
cut the film into strips and, according to the directions, wrote the brand name of
my loudspeakers on two strips followed by "> o.k.," then took two more strips of
film and wrote the name of the speakers followed by "> no." I then chose a
recording I listen to quite a bit, "Release," by Afro Celt Sound System. I listened
to the song once as a reference. Next, I placed the "o.k." labels on the speaker
cabinets and listened to the song again. Marked improvements were noted.
Everything sounded sweeter and kinder on the ear. The experience was superb,
and highly relaxing. I then removed the "o.k." labels and replaced them with the
"no" labels. Immediately after the song started I began to feel agitated, and
literally cringed at how bad it sounded. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly what
sounded bad, but I could not wait for the song to end, and took off the CD
before it was over.
As with the signature experiment, I was afraid I was not judging correctly, so
once again I called upon Dave to help. I had not shared any of the literature with
him, so all he knew was that I was still experimenting with the red pen. He had
not seen the film, so he had no idea what was in store. I asked him to select a
CD track he was familiar with, and he chose Lambchop’s song "Interrupted." We
played it once without any labels on the speakers, and he reported that it
sounded good. While he sat on the couch with his eyes closed, I placed the
"o.k." labels on the speakers and started the song again. When it was over, he
reported that it sounded better. He was not able to pinpoint exactly what was
better, just that the listening experience was more enjoyable. With his eyes still
closed, I switched the labels. I started the CD again, and almost immediately he
opened his eyes and said "Turn it off!," that it sounded so bad he couldn’t listen
to it. His response was sudden and definite, and very similar to my own.
Afterwards, when I explained what I had done, he couldn’t wait to make "o.k."
labels for every component we own. So, we now have my pictures housed in the
freezer, and pieces of the special film bearing the names of our components
and "> o.k." attached to every piece of equipment we own. Crazy? As I stated in
my previous article, these treatments cost nothing, or next to nothing, and they
improve the listening experience substantially.
Carol Clark
RESPONSE FROM BELT
Dear Dave and Carol,
Thank you for your e-mail giving details of a forthcoming article. Your article
describes the experience of using the P.W.B. Red ‘x’ Pen beautifully and we
admire you for your courage in bringing this extremely new technology to a
larger public.
Have you tried just crossing through, with the Red ‘x’ Pen, any bar code on any
type of product that you find within your home ? You will find the effect of doing
so extraordinary.
beltpen
When you are writing messages, we find that the more definite that you write
"O.K." and "NO" - the greater the effect. We therefore recommend that CAPITAL
letters are always used in this part of the message. Could you amend your text
to show "O.K" and "NO" in capital letters. Also, we normally refer to the P.W.B.
pen as the Red ‘x’ Coordinate Pen. If you would be kind enough to amend the
reference to the Pen in the third sentence to read P.W.B. Red ‘x’ Coordinate
Pen so that people who visit our web site can find the product easily on our
Price List.
All our devices are available on a 21 day approval period. We guarantee to
return the FULL payment to anyone who has purchased any of our devices if
they are not completely satisfied and if they return them to us in 21 days,
irrespective of the condition of the device.
Once again we thank you for your interest in our products and techniques.
Kind Regards,
May Belt
All material herein is copyright 1998 - 2002 audioMUSINGS and may not be duplicated in whole
or in part without express written permission. All rights reserved.
BACK TO TOP
stealthcables
stealth
M7 interconnects, speaker cables,
and AC cords
as reviewed by Francisco Duran, Dave Clark,
and Mark Katz
M7 interconnects
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/stealthcables.htm (1 of 8) [8/25/2002 2:51:07 PM]
stealthcables
FRANCISCO DURAN'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Osiris 24" stands.
ELECTRONICS
Monarchy SM-70
amplifiers (mono).
Reference Line
line stage.
SOURCE
Musical Concepts’
Pioneer DV414 DVD
Epoch VII Signature
Antidote Two.
CABLES
Superconductor+
interconnects and a
double run of JPS
cables.
ACCESSORIES
Panamax power
and Vibrapods.
Stealth seems to have all the bases covered,
with a large range of wire. I tried their speaker cables, interconnects, and
power cords. Having abandoned DACs for one-piece CD players, I had no
need for their digital cable. The Stealth cables are nicely made, with sturdy
outer sheathing. They use either silver, silver-plated copper, or pure
copper, depending upon the application.
I started with the speaker cables. Taking out my trusty JPS wire, I ran the
rather short set (4 ft.) of Triple Ribbon (TR) pure silver wire to the treble of
the ProAcs and ran the Magnificent Seven pair to the mid/bass binding
posts. With this combination the music was very well-balanced and
controlled. The treble had no etch or brightness, grain, or roll-off. The TR
speaker cable is one of the least bright speaker cables I have had in my
system. It was definitely smoother and cleaner, and had less grain than my
JPS Ultraconductors, though of course there is a good-sized price
difference between the two. With the Stealth cables, the lower regions
sounded quick, clean, and extended. Music doesn’t lose pace with these
cables. The open and spacious soundstage was highlighted by detailed
images. There was an atmosphere in the music that invited me into the
musical performance, although I did want a little more air and sparkle. Then
I switched the speaker cables around, with the M7s going to the treble and
the TRs to the bass. Suddenly there was more top end sparkle and air,
which sounded better to me. The horn section on my Flying Neutrino CD
sounded as sweet as my solid state system could muster. Inner detailing
was very good, but not in your face. Other cable combinations that I’ve tried
failed to dig so deeply into recordings.
I mixed Stealth and JPS speaker cables with very good results. On its own,
my double run of JPS Ultraconductor has an open and spacious sound,
though it sounds a little opaque compared to the Stealth TR and M7. It
doesn’t let go of the notes as easily as the Stealth cables, nor does it have
as true a timbre. Also, the Stealths were more dynamic, with vocals more
controlled and natural. (Remember that the Ultraconductors are a fraction
of the cost of the Stealth.) Using my JPS on the mid/bass and either the TR
or M7 on the treble proved to be a very musical combination. This might be
just the combo for the person who wants top notch performance but has
limited funds.
Like the Stealth speaker cables, the Stealth interconnects have a detailed,
clean, and open sound. I compared these cables with the Ensemble
Dynaflux, which have a very grain-free sound. The music sounded spacious
and textured, with very good pace and no slowing of timing, but the longer I
listened, the more I noticed that the Dynaflux sounded hotter in the mids to
upper mids and a little closed-in at the top. They also imparted a slight
warmth to the sound. The Stealth interconnects were more open on the top
stealthcables
end, especially when reproducing piano. The sax on the Flying Neutrinos
CD, The Hotel Child (I love this disc) had more texture and sounded more
neutral in timbre. The drum solo on the intro to track one sounded bigger
and more open, with more weight to the tom toms. The Stealths definitely
sounded more neutral and dynamic.
I have to admit to not being a power cord guy. I can’t see paying the prices
for some of the power cords that are out there, given the level of
improvement. I know that it is difficult and time-consuming to make a power
cord by hand, so I understand how the manufacturers feel justified charging
these prices, but I also feel that many of us obsess over this small stretch of
wire. I’ll bet you guessed that I roll my own power cords. I do, and I also
have two very affordable power cords from Monarchy Audio that sound
great. My homegrown cords fall short in two areas compared to the storebought cords. Mine are a little less clean in the top end, and exhibit slightly
less spaciousness. However, they cost a little over $50 to make, even with
the nice outer sheaths that I buy from heatshrink.com to make them pretty.
And, my cords have Wattgate connectors on each end. Compared to, let’s
say, a $300 power cord, do I hear $250 worth of a difference? No!
M7 AC cord
So how are the Stealth power cords? There is definitely a hierarchy. The
M7 Signature had the smoothest top end, and was able to handle sibilance
in a civilized manner. The dynamics of this cord were also very good. On
the minus side, it is very thick and stiff. The standard M7 cord, a notch
below, had a little more sheen, but dynamics were still very good. It was
closer to my home brew cords in the top end, but with a slightly more
expansive soundstage. One more step down is the HAC, the one with the
beautiful silver outer sheath. Stealth states that the HAC is "for power
hungry multi-channel receivers and power amplifiers. This cord can handle
up to 3000 Watts!" Yes, I heard differences in these cords, but instead of
the differences slapping me in the face, as with the interconnects and
speaker cables, I had to concentrate to hear them. The fact that I won’t
(can’t!) pay high prices for power cords, and refuse to wrestle with stiff,
thick cords made the thinner ones my favorite.
stealthcables
One positive quality of the Stealth wire was that I kept forgetting about it. To
me this says a heck of a lot about a product, especially wire. I kept thinking
that whoever named this wire Stealth hit the nail on the head. Francisco
Duran
DAVE CLARK'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Tetons.
ELECTRONICS
Clayton Audio M100
E.A.R. 834P phono
stage. Blue Circle
BC3000 preamp
SOURCES
with Audient
turntable with K9
arm.
CABLES
JPS Superconductor+
NC speaker cables.
Audio, and JPS
ACCESSORIES
PS Audio P300 Power
Plant.
Dedicated 20 and 15
When you listen to a cable, you are not hearing
the cable, but the cable interacting with the other components that make up
the system. Using a certain cable between two components may result in
bringing out more of this or that aspect of performance, which may or may
not be a good thing. Does this mean that cables are tone controls? Most
certainly, though not of the gross variety. Cables allow us to fine-tune our
systems to a greater degree than any other component, which means that
cable choice is very much a personal thing. Want more of "this" than "that?"
Choose cable A. Want a little more "that" but less "this?" Choose cable B.
The effects of a cable in my system can be at odds with its effects in your
system: what sounds bright here may sound dark there, or vice versa.
Nonetheless, even in this world of uncertainty, one thing has always tended
to be true: silver cables sound brighter than copper.
This brings me to the Stealth M7 cables, which pose the conundrum "How
can a pure silver cable sound so unlike what we expect a silver cable to
sound?" Of all the silver cables I have heard, the Stealth M7 is definitely not
one of them. Stealth (Interlink House) is a newcomer to the crowded field of
cables. Most Stealth cables are made by hand (no prefabricated bulk
cable), using custom silver wire (typically 99.997% pure) and Teflon or
porous Teflon (Teflon with air bubbles) dielectric. Stealth prefers silver over
copper because in their opinion it sounds more natural, although they do
offer a few cables with combinations of copper and silver, and their top-ofthe line PGS uses gold conductors. The wire used for their interconnects is
extremely thin, because they feel that thin wire sounds more coherent. This
they attribute to its greatly reduced skin effect, as compared that found in
thicker wire. The higher one climbs in the Stealth cable line, the thinner the
wire. With the PGS line, it is no thicker than a human hair.
Interestingly, Stealth does not think that a perfect cable exists. They think
that cables can only allow components to perform together properly, and
choosing the correct cabling for a given system is a matter of
experimentation. In their opinion, the more sophisticated and carefully
chosen the components, the more difficult it is to choose the best cables. It
is possible to "fine tune" a system with the help of the right cables to make it
sound its best, but this is also largely dependent on the room acoustics and
the tastes of each listener.
stealthcables
EchoBuster room
Audio 2D and 3D
hard woods, etc.
I approached the M7s carefully, after hearing them in a system completely
different from mine: Lowther PM2A speakers and all-E.A.R. tube electronics
tethered with Ensemble’s best cabling. Music through this system had an
up-front presence that, for me at least, needed a touch more warmth.
Hearing the system with the M7 was an eye-opener. What had been bright
and lively was now too dark and warm. Details and subtleties were lost in
the dark, and the startling pace and rhythm that Lowthers are known for
was missing in action. As we, cable by cable, removed the Stealth and
replaced it with the Ensemble, we were able to find a happy medium. The
Ensemble pushed the system too far in one direction, and the M7 had
pushed it even further in the opposite direction. What ended up sounding
best was M7 interconnects with Ensemble AC and speaker cables.
Triple Ribbon (TR) speaker cables
In that system, the M7 speaker cable supplied was not long enough, so the
Premier Copper cable was used instead (260 individually-insulted OFC
strands, resulting in 7AWG per cable or 4 AWG per speaker). This was the
greatest contributor to the warmth and darkness. When it was replaced with
the Ensemble speaker cable, with everything else—including the digital
cable—still M7, the pace, presence, and detail returned, with just the right
amount of warmth and sweetness. This sounded rather fine, in fact the best
I have heard this from this system. As we continued to remove the M7 and
replace it with the corresponding Ensemble, differences were more subtle
than revelatory. The Ensemble offered a drier but more open sound, with
the M7 warmer and richer, while at the same time slightly more closed-in.
Varidig digital interconnect
stealthcables
In my system, it went the other way. As it now stands, my system leans to
the dark and rich, so would the M7 go too far? Yes and no. Following a
similar route of substituting cabling, except for using the M7 speaker cable
and not the PC, the results were not as extreme. This was pretty much
what I was expecting. The M7 offered a slightly darker and warmer sound,
while the JPS was more "present, " though none of the changes were
dramatic. It was kind of like sitting further back in the hall—the music was
the same, it just had less detail and presence. The soundstage also
changed, with less precise imaging and focus.
I concluded that the Stealth M7 interconnects, speaker cables, and digital
cables offer a very quiet sonic tapestry that stresses warmth and richness
over speed and clarity. Used together, this results in a less precise
soundfield in which images are not razor sharp. All offer a robust and
powerful bottom end that lacks in ultimate impact and dynamics. Of the
three, the digital cable may be the most balanced of all, offering little to
criticize. The AC cables are a bargain, in that they offer speed and clarity
within a balanced sonic tapestry. They are not quite equal to the JPS
Kaptovators, which are considerably smoother and more refined, but
they’re $1600 versus $300! I did find the M7s a joy to use, and I ‘m sure
there are many systems that would benefit from their use. Dave Clark
MARK KATZ'S SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
JM Labs Mezzo Utopias
and Tannoy 12" Monitor
Gold speakers in
Lockwood studio
cabinets (second
system).
ELECTRONICS
Kora Cosmos monoblock
amplifiers and Eclipse
preamplifier. Custom
300B monobloc SE
amplifiers and LoeschWiesner line stage
preamplifier (second
system).
SOURCES
When Dave Clark asked, "Do you
want to try some cables?" I figured he meant a couple of interconnects.
Instead I got a variety of power cords, speaker cables, and interconnects
made by Stealth Audio Cables. "Stealth," apparently, is an acronym for
Sound Technology Enabling Audibly Lucid Transcomponent Harmony, per
the company website.
Considering the number of possible combinations, I figured that I’d start
with my current system and gradually introduce the Stealth cables, listening
for changes. I’ll describe the setup. A CEC TL-1 transport connects with
Marigo Ref 3A digital cable to an Audio Magic-modified Kora Hermes DAC
(new version), which is hooked up to the Kora Eclipse preamp with Goertz
Triode silver interconnects. The preamp drives the Kora Cosmos 100 watt
triode monoblock amps, again with Goertz Triode interconnects. The amps
drive JM Labs Mezzo Utopia speakers using shotgun-wired Kimber 8TC
speaker cables. The amps are plugged into a dedicated line with Tiff power
cords, while the rest of the electronics are hooked up to a Power Wedge
116 II via an old Marigo cord for the CEC, one of Dave Clark’s homebrew
power cords for the Hermes, and the stock cord for the Eclipse. For
listening, I used two CDs, Bela Bartok’s Second Violin Concerto on the
Valois label, and the Coffee Cantata from the Dorian CD of Bach’s secular
stealthcables
CEC TL-1 transport and
Kora Hermes (latest
version modified by
Audio Magic). McIntosh
MR-78 tuner. Cal Audio
Icon Powerboss HDCD
CD player, Luxman T117
tuner, Nakamichi 680 ZX
cassette.
CABLES
Marigo Reference 3
digital interconnect. Tiff,
Yamamura, and Marigo
Gen II power cords.
Kimber 8TC shotgun
speaker cables and
Goertz Triode
interconnects.
cantatas.
The 8-foot Kimber 8TC shotguns went out and the 6-foot pair of Stealth PC
speaker cables went in. I heard a slightly clearer, more detailed
presentation at the expense of some warmth. On the Coffee Cantata, the
soprano’s voice was delicate and subtle, but the baritone was slightly
thinner. It seemed as if the tonal balance was slightly shifted toward the
treble.
Next up were the HAC "high power" cords, attached to the Cosmos amps,
replacing the Tiff cords. I heard greater subtlety in both pieces. The Coffee
Cantata sounded slightly more natural, with a quieter background, less
hashy highs, and better texture to the soprano and flute on the Bach and
the violin on the Bartok. There was no loss of warmth, or any other
negatives I could discern. I didn’t notice any improvement in "energy."
ACCESSORIES
API Power Wedge 116
Mk II for sources. Amps
are plugged into a
dedicated 20 amp line.
HAC AC cord
I then substituted the Stealth M-7 Signature power cords for Dave Clark’s
homebrew cord on the Hermes and the stock cord on the Eclipse’s
outboard power supply. Here the changes were more pronounced. I heard
an increased sense of energy and openness. Everything sounded livelier,
with an excellent balance between orchestra and harpsichord. The voices
projected well, down to the guttural "Acht" of the baritone. I liked these
power cords!
I followed this by taking out my Marigo Ref 3A digital interconnect and
putting in the Stealth Varidig. It has nice WBT connectors and is much more
flexible than the Marigo. Though the Kora DAC tends to sound its best with
the AES connection, the Marigo does a very respectable job. The Varidig
sounded similar, except with slightly increased sibilance. The Marigo
remains the favorite.
Next up were the M-7 and M-7 Signature interconnects. These displaced
the Goertz Triodes, with the longer M-7 between the Eclipse preamp and
Cosmos amps and the M-7 Signature between the Hermes DAC and the
Eclipse. The Goertz cables have always imparted a very clear and open
stealthcables
sound. With the M-7s, the music sounded more robust and powerful while
preserving excellent clarity and detail. In my system, these cables were first
rate.
My amps are easily placed with 8-foot speaker cables, placeable with 6-foot
cables, and with much maneuvering, barely placeable with the 4-foot Trip R
Silv L, though the Tiff power cords had to go back in to allow it. This wasn’t
a big change, perhaps a small step down. Out went the Stealth PC and in
went the Trip R Silv Ls. After all this, was there any payoff? You bet! The
presentation was clearer and more detailed, rich and smooth, with no
harshness, a nice improvement. While I can debate the merits of the
Kimber vs. the PC, the Trip R Silv Ls were clear winners.
The Stealth power cords and audio cables were in some cases comparable
to what I had, and in others clear winners. The big surprise for me was the
M-7 Signature power cords. The M-7 and M-7 Signature interconnects also
made pleasant improvements, and theTrip R Silv speaker cables got very
sweet sound, although I couldn’t tell if this was due to their super-short
length or their sheer quality.
Looking at the pricing of the Stealth products, I’d say that their less
expensive stuff seems to offer good value for the money, and their more
expensive stuff is very good at any price. Recommended. Mark Katz
Stealth Cables
Retail
TR speaker cables $1300 (8 feet pair)
M-7 interconnects $700 (1 meter pair)
Varidig digital cable $300 (1 meter, standard single S/PDIF - RCA or BNC
terminated)
HAC AC power cord $200 (2 meters)
M-7 AC power cord $300 (2 meters)
Interlink House, Inc.
TEL: 240. 631. 8002 or 800. 579. 4046
web address: www.interlinkhouse.com
e-mail: sales@stealthcables.com
BACK TO TOP
taddeopassive
taddeo
Passive Digital Antidote Two
as reviewed by Greg Ewing
Taddeo's Digital Antidote products have been around for several years.
Both the active version ($995) and the passive version ($99.95) incorporate
Taddeo's proprietary phase-altering technology to enhance the digital audio
experience. They both work in the analog domain, and are inserted
between a CD player or DAC and preamp. The Taddeo web site explains
that "The Digital Antidote will correct for the phase errors inherent in all CD
players and DACs as a result of the proverbial steep ‘brick-wall’ filter in
44.1kHz digital processing. The heart of the problem is that a ‘brick-wall’
filter, be it analog or digital, will result in phase distortion. Oversampling will
not solve the problem. Oversampling puts the anti-aliasing filters at a high
enough frequency to be rendered benign, but because the information
stops at 44.1kHz, the information itself forms a ‘brick-wall’ filter." This
explanation makes sense to me, and provides further evidence of the hard
reality that the digital technology of the early eighties was not quite perfect
sound forever, and is a format with technical and sonic limitations.
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/taddeopassive.htm (1 of 3) [8/25/2002 2:51:08 PM]
taddeopassive
GREG EWING'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Magneppan MMGs and
two 12-inch Audio
Concepts subwoofers in
spiked sealed
enclosures.
ELECTRONICS
Monarchy Audio SM-70
monoblock amplifiers (on
Maggies), Audire
Crescendo amplifier
(driving subs), Audio
Control Richter Scale III
24 dB/octave electronic
crossover (set at 72 Hz,
low pass only), and an
Antique Sound Lab
AQ2004 tube
preamplifier.
SOURCES
JVC XL-Z1050TN (highly
modified) CD player and
an Adcom GTP-350
tuner.
CABLES
Canare Star Quad
interconnects and Kimber
4PR speaker cables.
ACCESSORIES
(latest passive version),
AudioQuest RF
Stoppers, Bright Star
Audio IsoNode isolation
feet, marble platforms,
Blutak, Cascade Audio
Engineering room
treatments, and an Elfix
Polarity Tester.
The patented Digital Antidote circuitry takes the analog output signal and
divides it into two equal branches. One branch is delayed approximately 16
microseconds, and the other is then summed with the delayed branch. This
apparently cuts the phase error dramatically as well as increasing the
amplitude resolution. Another side effect of this is a gentle rolloff starting
around 15kHz. I wouldn't call a rolloff of a dB or two from 15kHz up a huge
problem for your average 16/44 CD player. Most of us can't hear
frequencies that high, and what digital does render in that range sounds
pretty sterile anyway. However, don't get the impression that the Digital
Antidote is just a low pass filter. Merely inserting a black-box EQ that tames
the highs of a digital rig would fall woefully short of the sonic benefits that
the Digital Antidote provides.
I tried the Taddeo with my highly modified JVC XL-Z1050TN, a JVC + Bel
Canto DAC, the Rega Jupiter 2000, and even a Sony Discman. The most
obvious improvement that the Digital Antidote renders is the fleshing out of
cymbals and percussive sounds. On CD after CD, cymbals went from
sounding like a drum machine to sounding like real cymbals with 360
degrees of surrounding air. In addition to transforming percussive sounds,
there is less of the digital edge that most people (even non-audiophiles) can
easily hear but find difficult to describe. The Digital Antidote removes a
substantial portion of that digital edge, and thus greatly reduces the listener
fatigue that is so prevalent in 16/44 digital. While listening to Steve
Hackett's live acoustic There are many sides to the night CD, I was struck
by how much more relaxed and the nylon classical guitar sounded in its
decay. In addition, the clapping of the audience sounded much more like
real handclaps, not at all metallic sounding as it does on so many live CDs.
On Gustavo Santaollala's stunning Ronroco CD, the charango and guitar
on sounded much more natural, with more space around them as well as
more air within the overall soundstage. Dense and complex musical
passages sounded less congested. I didn't notice any sonic changes below
the midrange, though. The remastered Roxy Music Avalon CD contains a
wealth of slick production, and the Digital Antidote brought this listener one
small step closer to the studio. The music became more involving, a pretty
good feat for a $99 product.
The most surprising thing of all was the improvement the Digital Antidote
wrought upon the Sony Discman. I had never played this portable CD
player through my system, but the effect of the Digital Antidote was so
noticeable on the other players that I decided to give it a try. The Discman
sounds so incredibly bright that I use its bass boost feature with my Grado
headphones. With the Digital Antidote, however, the Sony produced almostrespectable sound. I can imagine many cheapskate audiophiles using a
cheap CD player hooked up to the Digital Antidote and getting decent
digital sound for a few hundred bucks. Note that the magnitude of the
improvement seemed to lessen as I went from the Discman to the JVC to
the Bel Canto DAC, and finally to the Rega Jupiter. Yes, it slightly tamed
the Jupiter’s high end, but I didn't hear dramatic improvements elsewhere.
Unfortunately, I didn't have any SACD players in house, so was unable to
test Taddeo’s claim that the Digital Antidote can also improve SACD. I
taddeopassive
would be surprised if this were the case. In my limited SACD listening
experience, I hear little or none of the phase distortion byproducts that are
blatantly obvious in 16/44 digital.
From my brief evaluations of the active Digital Antidote as well as the
passive one, I believe that the passive version has a slightly more obvious
top end rolloff, though as stated earlier, I don't think too many audiophiles
will mind this. The active unit also sounds more transparent in the midrange
and top end. The great thing about the passive version is that it does not
require an additional set of interconnects. The downside is that it uses very
inexpensive captive RCA connectors and cables. I plan to disassemble the
unit and upgrade it with Canare Star Quad interconnects.
Of all the tweaks over the years that have promised to make digital sound
more analog-like, this is one that is worth your time and money. When first
installed in your system, the Digital Antidote doesn’t sound that dramatic,
but after living with it for a number of days or weeks, removing it will
certainly have a very dramatic effect on the sound of a good system. With a
30-day free trial, you have little to lose but digital glare and edgy sound.
Greg Ewing
Taddeo Passive Digital Antidote Two
Retail $99.95 factory direct w/30-day free trial
Taddeo Loudspeaker Company
TEL: 716. 473. 9076
web address: www.taddeo-loudspeaker.com
BACK TO TOP
talon
talon
Khorus loudspeakers
and Roc subwoofers
as reviewed by Clement Perry
with a follow-up by Stu McCreary
Plus an interview of Tierry Budge by Clement Perry
(Previously published on www.stereotimes.com and
is reprinted here with the permission of both authors.)
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/talon.htm (1 of 24) [8/25/2002 2:51:12 PM]
talon
CLEMENT PERRY'S
SYSTEM
LOUDSPEAKERS
Von Schweikert VR6.
SOURCE
Sony's SCD-1 DSD
player.
ELECTRONICS
Tact 2.2 Digital Room
Corrector/preamplifier.
Ortho Spectrum AR2000.
Bel Canto 200.2 EVo
amplifiers
CABLES
NBS Monitor One and
Acoustic Zen cables.
Audience power cords.
ACCESSORIES
Sistrum and Rosinante's
Dark Matter isolation
devices. Seven Richard
Gray 400-S line
conditioners monitor the
power going to the
amplifiers, while the front
end benefits from the PS
Audio P-300 Power Plant
and Quantum
Symphonies.
If you've been following these pages you've
seen some enthusiastic reviews of reference-quality loudspeakers, e.g., the
excellent Wilson Audio WATT / Puppy Sixes (Mike Silverton), the excellent
Piega P-12's (Lou Lanese), and the excellent Super Eclipse (yours truly).
Each of these loudspeaker systems represents their designers' ultimate
statement. Mike Silverton and Lou Lanese purchased their review pair. I,
however, did not. As good as the Super Eclipse is, and it is indeed very
musical, it did not beat out the VR6's with respect to overall musicality,
visceral impact, and dynamics. I ultimately returned the review pair and
wondered whether anything would ever unseat the VR6's as my reference.
Patience is a virtue! That day has arrived! Enter the Talon Audio Khorus.
Built in Utah, the Talon Audio Khorus's design philosophy (I'm informed) is
that of the infinite slope. The Khorus is shaped like an obelisk, which,
according to the manufacturer, naturally time-aligns the enclosure, placing
the tweeter slightly behind the midrange. The speaker's height is 46" with a
width of 8" at its flat top. The base widens to 18 inches. Removing its grill
permits a view of cloth-treated baffle and driver configuration. All three of
the Khorus drivers stand about 24" from the floor, closely aligned near the
top of the enclosure. We begin with a highly modified pair of 10"
midrange/woofer drivers working in unison to cancel out exaggerated cone
movement. These dual drivers are said to accurately reproduce without
strain all frequencies from 17Hz to 2200Hz. The method of this—let's call it
madness—designer Tierry Budge explains: "Midrange-based suspensions
and cone-geometries can be mated to subwoofer-like motor structures and
moving masses, if the resultant dynamic response displays proper
execution of progressive damping principles. We designed the 10" driver
we use in the Khorus with these midrange/woofer traits, along with the
widest range of musically-conducive capabilities." [For more technical
specifications Talon website.]
Six inches above the mid/woofer, looking more like a midrange driver, sits a
1-1/2" cloth-dome tweeter handling all frequencies from 2200Hz before
rolling off at 13kHz. Picking up on this high-frequency frolic, its duties
extending to 35kHz, is a 1" titanium super tweeter said to free up the
compound tweeter, permitting it a more effortless extension. Dual tweeters
working in such close unison yield its 2.5 designation
A first order, 6dB slope is the outcome, since the goal has always been
transient purity. Normally, first-order designs are power hungry, but the
Talon's inversion circuit allows great power handling as the first-order
slopes keep transient purity intact. The rear sports what looks like a port but
is actually what Tierry calls a "laminar flow valve," not so much an exhaust
pipe as a pressure release valve. (I go deeper into this in the interview
portion following this review.)
talon
Before getting ahead of myself, let me first explain how I came across the
Khorus. The story begins with an excited email from Delve Audio's Oliver
Solomon: "Yo, P, you better get set to sell your speakers and buy these
new speakers I just heard by a new company called Talon. Man, it's the
finest speaker I've ever heard." Now, don't get me wrong, I'm the coolest of
dudes. Stuff like this rarely rattles me. I hear wild claims all the time,
especially from dealers. Yet I felt I'd been dissed because Oliver had
listened to my system for a couple of hours only days before. Dissed, yes,
but my curiosity was nevertheless aroused. I visited the website. Much to
my amazement, I saw specifications that read like the back pages of Mad
Magazine: "100 times quieter and 20 times faster than any loudspeaker!"
Oliver, I now believed, is definitely off his meds. But, as I say, my attention
was engaged. There I was again doing the Absorbine Jr. thing, taking it all
in. I soon got in touch with national sales manager Mike Farnsworth and
requested a review pair.
We're talking so far about what Oliver says he heard and what the website
claims. I envision a dream loudspeaker encompassing the clear, seethrough quality of the finest electrostatics, as in the Crosby-modified Quad I
heard at HiFi '97 in San Francisco. For the very best top end extension, the
very finest and most delicate treble, let's have the five-foot ribbon tweeter in
the large Magnaplaners I once owned. This dream transducer should also
be capable of the midrange body and ultra quick bass response of my
beloved VR6's, along with the enormous stage width, depth and
spaciousness I've always come to admire in the Avalon and Audio Physics.
And finally, the dream transducer should disappear against a velvety black
backdrop and be absolutely free of compression like the Near Field Pipe
Dreams. Yes, all of this. No compromise!
I've spent three months with the Talon Khorus. Let's not mince words. I truly
believe Tierry Budge has produced a near-perfect loudspeaker, and I'm
saying "near" mostly to cover my butt. After long and interesting chats with
Tierry and my sidekick, Stu McCreary, I've come to two conclusions: one,
how very serious and experienced a speaker designer has to be in order to
succeed, and two, how difficult a struggle it must have been to come up
with the likes of the Talon Khorus. I'm convinced it's the best speaker I've
ever heard.
Let's backtrack. The Khorus arrived in impossibly large shipping crates
weighing 150 lbs. each, necessitating the help of my buddy Terry Smoak to
get them up to my third-floor inner sanctum. Unpacking was relatively easy.
Let's get appearances out of the way before we get down to the serious
stuff: my review pair came in an appealing, high-gloss dark Rosewood
finish. We set up them up in about the same spot—about four feet out and
three feet from the sidewalls—where my long-time reference Von
Schweikert VR-6's stood. Apart from bi-wiring capabilities, the Khorus
employs a unique locking screw-on speaker terminal located underneath its
belly.
talon
The Khoruses connect to my usual array: Sony's SCD-1 DSD player
feeding the Tact 2.2 Digital Room Corrector/preamplifier. The newest
addition to the system is the Ortho Spectrum AR2000 which a number of us
here reviewed with enthusiasm. Amplifiers, the stunningly good Bel Canto
EVo 200.2 (I'm running a pair in mono configuration for the added support
we all need and love). Cabling is Walter Fields NBS Monitor One and
Robert Lee's new and remarkable Acoustic Zen cables. Power cords are
the highly addictive Power Chords by Audience, Inc. The Sony and Bel
Canto rest on the Sistrum Isolation platforms; both the Tact and AR-2000
occupy Rosinante's Dark Matter Isolation devices. Seven Richard Gray 400S line conditioners monitor the power going to the amplifiers, while the front
end benefits from the PS Audio P-300 Power Plant and Quantum
Symphonies.
Setup
The Khoruses are highly critical of location. I have them toed in about 30
degrees, where you just barely seeing their sides. My listening position is
relatively close, about 7 feet from the speakers about 9 feet apart, which
some listeners think too much for their tastes. I disagree. The VR6's have
such wide dispersion that they perform well this far apart. It was
immediately apparent that the Khoruses could do this too, though, I must
admit, not to the degree that the VR6's succeed off axis, with the listener in
a standing or sitting position. After many hours of extensive evaluation and
nit picking, this is the only distraction I found.
Oh yes, there is one more tiny little thingie—break-in! It's insane! These
speakers won't sound anything like what they're capable of until you've put
in at least 400 hard-hitting hours. No, I'm not joking. Never mind the
Olympics—this, for me, is Guinness Book of Records stuff!
Stu McCreary has the Khorus and he comments too. We both agree that
the burn-in should be done patiently or else you suffer from what I like to
call "decompression." I find attempting to adjust to the Khorus' too fast is
akin to what deep-sea divers describe as the bends, a painful and
dangerous condition. Equally, long term exposure to sizzle, hash, pop and
boom can prove inadequate—when done away with.
Just as my view of audio has been irrevocably altered by the experience of
the Bel Canto EVo amplifiers doing their imitation of a fine single-ended,
class A triode amp with bass handling capabilities like the finest solid-state,
so have my views been changed by the Talon Khorus. More often than not,
analytical listening sessions turned into pure listening pleasure. The Khorus
provided utter clarity and sense of ease and resolution, regardless of
volume. It's a dynamic loudspeaker that, by purposeful design, or some
form of voodoo, does not sound like a dynamic loudspeaker. It comes lots
closer to mimicking the speed, transparency and linear smoothness of a
hugely efficient electrostatic driven by 1000-watt single ended triodes!
talon
We all know the effects of turning up the volume. Some loudspeakers rely
on high levels to achieve claimed performance. I believe that the Khorus
also enjoys being played at loud levels, but that doesn't mean it won't
outperform the field when played low. Unlike many a speaker system I've
heard at low level, the Khorus doesn't lose its signature. When played loud,
things get only clearer, more dynamic and musically expressive. I have
never before witnessed such an analytical transducer sounding this
musical.
The benefits of an absence of noise are enormous, especially when it
comes to instrumental truth and tonality. Bass is quicker and ever so
delicate, contributing to a much greater perception of individual instruments
and their location relative to the microphones and each other. Amazingly,
the Khorus' brings new definition to tympani, drum and kick-bass transients.
Attack, presence and sense of location never sounded this good. I gain a
better awareness of a recording's venue. Images stand out in stark relief in
a deep space of blackness. I've never experienced this level of silence,
even when playing in the middle of a hot and sunny afternoon, which we all
know is hazardous to good sound regardless of A/C conditioners.
By comparison to the Khorus, every speaker I've reviewed compresses
dynamic range. None, not even the VR6's, come within a country mile of
reaching down into the quietest of musical passages of many CD's. I
entered Miles Davis's incredibly musical phrasings, squeaking chair and all,
on "Old Folks" from Someday My Prince Will Come (Columbia CK40947)
as never before. Here, on this somber and slowly rhythmic recording, I can,
for the very first time, feel Miles' loneliness. I can actually see him sitting,
alone, desolate, blowing into his muted horn. These images, prior to the
Khorus, escaped me. And to think I thought I knew that disc! My notes after
this experience read only: Amen.
On the very same disc is one of my favorite minor modals, "Teo." Miles,
once again, making use of choked notes, sets the stage for John Coltrane
who proceeds to blow an emotion-packed solo, that to this day is still
argued among jazz aficionados as being his finest. What makes this so
different sounding through the Khorus is Wynton Kelly's performance on
piano. It is alleviated of what I can only describe as haze. I listened in
disbelief. I'm accustomed to his piano, as well as most other pianists, being
usually diminished in both presence, truth of harmonic overtones, and
timbre, making Wynton's performance seem apart from the main events. No
longer.
Let's call this the domino effect. Consider: once Wynton's freed up, he sets
up greater soundstage linearity for 'Trane, who sounds now as if he's
coming from behind the left speaker, deeper in the corner instead of
between the speakers. This positions Miles dead center, tight and neatly
focused, against that deep-space blackness. The Khorus is not doctoring
any of these recordings, making them sound better by emphasizing or de-
talon
emphasizing frequency regions. The speaker's accuracy in retrieval of
detail is without peer. What I hear is a superior recreation of what is on the
disc—not crossover and phase anomalies occurring at the speakers.
Excellent DSD recordings, driven through the Sony SCD-1 proved a perfect
match. The Khorus' responds like a high-resolution microscope, clean
through the electrons, right to the original venue, once again demonstrating
to this audiophile that the Khorus stands above the competition and beyond
criticism.
Enter the Roc… More
Will Be Revealed
So colossal that its wings could eclipse the
sun, so strong that it could carry off elephants,
the Roc was the mythical Arabian bird in
whose talons Sinbad of The Thousand and
One Nights was carried off to a mountaintop.
What an appropriate name for this superduper subwoofer! The Talon Roc has not only
lived up to its handle, it meshes with the Talon
Khorus so musically, so seamlessly, that its
very qualities are bound to become legendary.
The Talon website states that "the Roc uses a
12-inch woofer to deliver deep, tight, accurate
bass without ever bottoming out. The Roc will only deliver the fundamentals
and not the second harmonics (boomy bass)." Let it be known the Roc uses
dual 12-inch woofers in the same fashion as the Khorus. Employed solely in
conjunction with the Khorus, the Roc takes this already incredible
loudspeaker to yet another level! I first placed this quite a large box in
between the loudspeakers directly in front of me. That worked well enough,
but my hunch was that this wasn't the ideal position. It took up too much
floor space where it was, and more importantly, the Roc needs to breathe.
This meant finding a place off to the side where it could dispense its lowend frequencies more evenly into the room. Placing it about six feet to the
side of the left Khorus provided a better result.
In this position, and leaving the phase in the normal position, the total
performance became easily the most natural sounding I've heard. In
addition, when you stuff the laminar valve on the Khorus, you increase its
impedance, which naturally begins to roll-off their low-end delivery
beginning at about 80Hz. I repeat, merely stuffing the laminar "port" does
this naturally. Setting the Roc's crossover to 60Hz results in a perfectly
matched low-end.
Moreover, I didn't need the Roc for greater low-end authority. The Khorus
provides this better than any speaker I've had in my listening room. What
proved a revelation was that by adding the Roc I immediately alleviated two
talon
sources of distortion: intermodulation, caused by the drivers' rapid
movement, and harmonic, caused by overtaxing the power requirements
placed on the amplifiers. The Roc therefore contributes to better sensitivity,
dynamic range, stereo focus, transient attack, decay, dynamics and
definition throughout the frequency range. I take it that you think I'm hugely
impressed by the Roc. You got that right!
Conclusion
The Khorus plays louder, goes deeper, is significantly quieter, and
produces greater yet subtler dynamics. It provides a greater sense of ease
than my reference VR6's. The sense of soundstage scale, height and depth
are state-of-art. The Khorus/Roc combination combine to create the highest
degree of musicality I've yet heard from a speaker system. In other words
and to repeat myself, state-of-the-art! I guess I don't need to add that I
purchased them as my new reference standard.
At a combined price of $18,000, the Khorus/Roc is a steal for the audiophile
considering buying a world-class speaker at any price! For me, their arrival
couldn't have come at a better time. My wisest purchase, absolutely!
Clement Perry
STU MCCREARY'S
SYSTEM
LOUDSPEAKERS
Von Schweikert VR4.5
mkII.
SOURCE
Sony 777ES SACD
player.
ELECTRONICS
Thor Audio TA-1000
preamplifier and Bel
Canto EVo 200.2
amplifier.
CABLES
Harmonic Technology
interconnects and
Analysis Plus speaker
A Subjective Commentary
Stuart A. McCreary, Associate Editor for Hardware, Positive Feedback
Magazine
"And now for something completely different..." (Monty Python's Flying
Circus)
It does get a bit tiresome after a baker's dozen or so loudspeaker have
come and gone. It's hard to be original, insightful or the least bit excited
when you're talking about the same old dynamic drivers in a wood box.
Maybe it's got a neat sculpted baffle, trick mid/tweeter module isolation, or
the largest flared ports you've ever seen, but is it really all that different in
form, function and sound from all the others? All too often the answer is no.
Sure, they all sound a little different, but it's a continuous scale, with very
fine increments and the pendulum rarely swings too far.
It's this reviewer's rare pleasure to have in the Talon Khorus, a loudspeaker
that really shakes things up, gets the juices flowing again, and reacquaints
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cables. Shunyata Viper
and Acoustic Zen
Sunami AC cords.
ACCESSORIES
Tice Power Block III.
Townshend Siesmic
Sinks, BDR cones, and
Bright Star products.
me with my passion for music.
Clement Perry did an outstanding job of describing the Khorus's unique
features and technical aspects. That leaves me with the fun stuff. We
agreed to this division of labors early in our Talon journey: I get "techie" with
the Bel Canto EVo and Perry does the heavy lifting with the Talon Khorus. I
think I got the better part of the deal, because the subjective side of the
Khorus experience is extraordinary and chock full of anecdotes, and the
technical side is daunting, to say the least. Let's get down to it, shall we?
The Stage is Set (and the Gauntlet Thrown)
The original claims of Talon as presented in their website and white papers
are so outrageous that you might think you're reading from a Monty Python
script. Ten times faster, 100 times less distortion, a ten inch woofer that
handles midrange up to 2.2kHz, incredible power handling and bass
extension from just over one cubic foot of air space…geesh! As incredible
as all this sounds, Talon has plausible engineering explanations for each
claim, along with patent applications. Me, I'm from the So What School. If it
doesn't sound better to some significant degree, then it's all just
meaningless engineering hoohah.
This was my mindset when I un-crated the Khoruses and moved them into
Stu's Place for a serious listen. Perry had started his phone campaign
weeks before and I could detect these were not your ordinary run-of-the-millloudspeakers. He was excited by what he was hearing and couldn't help
himself. We do this to each other often. It's part of the ritual and fun to call
up your audio pal and let him know that your listening room ceiling just
opened up and you were visited by an archangel. "OK, OK, I'll be sure to
sprinkle the holy water and burn some incense," I told him with just a touch
of smugness in my voice. I can't be rolled by anyone, not even my Bro' from
the Big City. I was not about to abandon my critical nature.
I'd gotten emails from several audiophile friends extolling the virtues of
these speakers, with statements like, "the best I've ever heard" and "clearly
superior to the XYZ's you love so dearly." This kind of thing has a negative
effect. Rather then being excited to share their experience, I found myself
getting more cynical and more willing to cut against the grain.
Breaking in, or Deflating the Cynical Balloon
The Khorus is not your average dynamic-driver loudspeaker and this
realization arrives right out of the box in the first few hours of play. While
most loudspeakers start off by sounding dry, thin and constipated, the
Khorus was the complete opposite. It was immediately so full bodied and
over-rich, that I was stunned. The bass was phenomenal, the midrange was
a bit overblown (particularly the lower mids) and the treble—it sounded
rolled off. No, I think recessed is the better word. It was there but distant,
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lingering more toward the back of the stage. Now, except for the bass, this
wasn't promising. I thought the holy water might be needed to dispel the
audio demons, rather than to invite the heavenly host.
Nevertheless, there was something else I heard that intrigued me and gave
me the patience to weather the arduous break-in process.
Through that ripe, warm sound, I detected a background silence that was
uncanny. I'm not talking about silence between musical passages; I'm
talking about silence between and around the instruments. The pesky treble
halo, haze and glare were absent, gone, adios, bye-bye.
This "haze" I used to think inherent to all loudspeakers diffuses the edges of
images and fills in the gaps all around them, consequently decreasing the
focus and spoiling our perception of stage depth. When that haze is
removed, the solidity, precision and three-dimensionality of the soundstage
stand out in striking relief. These over-ripe Khoruses removed the haze like
no other loudspeaker I'd heard. It made such a strong impression that I
knew in the first hour of listening that something extraordinary was taking
place.
This was a déjà-vu experience. The Bel Canto EVo amplifiers had also
exhibited this lack of halo and haze and in my review of them, and I
commented extensively on this. Perry called the EVo the "Talon Khorus of
amplifiers." With the EVo, I concluded that its incredibly low distortion gives
it this unique property. So what about the Khorus?
The air was starting to leak from my cynical balloon. Could low distortion
claims of Talon be true? Could this "group phase" thing and unique
compound driver loading significantly lower distortion like the EVo's digital
technology? Hmmmm.
So there I was on my first evening of listening with loudspeakers that
arguably had the best bass I'd heard from something other than a dedicated
subwoofer (much more on this later), a quiet, haze free soundfield, but with
an over-ripe, almost tubby midrange and a recessed treble. Argggh! How
frustrating! I was used to listening past the break-in problems, but I had
serious doubts that this sound would improve over time. After all, this was
not how fresh loudspeakers are supposed to sound. If they got any riper
through break-in, I wouldn't be able to take it. The cynical balloon was
starting to re-inflate.
Fortunately, Talon had the good sense to say something about this break-in
process in the manual that came with the speakers. It warns that 50%
break-in takes upwards of 250 hours of play and you're still not home after
500 hours. About the 500-hour mark the manual says, "85% of break-in:
Midrange becomes more expressive, more dimensional towards the rear.
Extreme highs come forward from the rear of the sound stage, creating
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more of a spectral match with the rest of the range." Ah-hah! That's what I
was looking for! With a sigh of relief and major cynical deflation, I knew that
my hearing was all right and that there would probably be light at the end of
the break-in tunnel.
Another comment in the manual intrigued me. Under the heading Burn-In
Note, the manual states, "In view of the burn-in time involved with the
Khorus speakers, Talon has designed-in two 'elements' which minimize the
actual change in sound over time…as time passes, these 'elements' will
diminish their overall effect, in order for the system to maintain a consistent,
and correct, tonal balance." Hmmm, well, well. Could this be why these
speakers have such an ass-backwards break-in progression? Are these
'elements' what make it so intensely rich until the upper-mids and treble
come in? I would wager that they are.
Armed with a little knowledge, I set upon the break-in process with a sense
of mission. I played the Khoruses non-stop for three weeks with the volume
cranked while the family was away during the day. I used Purist Audio disc
extensively as I did my Dorian Organ recordings. When I sat down for some
serious listening after two weeks, things were improved, but not to the
degree I had expected.
On closer examination, I discovered that the compound loading of the teninch woofer yielded very little cone excursion. The accordion surround was
still quite stiff and I doubted whether I had played the speakers loud enough
to really give them a workout. The specs say that the Khorus will take a
1000 watts and produce a continuous 120dB. Well now, that's really loud!
Much louder than I was playing them.
For the next week, I waited till the kids were off to school and the wife at
work and played them at levels that shook the house. For fear of damaging
my ears, I wore shooting headphones while in the room and used my Radio
Shack decibel meter to check the sound pressure level. With the Bel Canto
EVo monoblocks pushed near their limit, I was getting close to 120dB
peaks.
After the first day of this regimen, I knew that I was hitting pay dirt. I could
smell what seemed to be fresh lacquer in the room and I was finally seeing
some reasonable cone excursion. Much to my delight, after a full week of
this torture, the speakers settled in just the way the Talon manual said they
would. The treble did in fact move forward from the recesses of the stage
and the upper mids fleshed out nicely as well. The speakers still had a rich
sound, but no longer over-ripe. The low bass, which I thought was already
outstanding, was now incredibly good—powerful, full and oh my God, the
pitch definition!
The Talon Controversy
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On various Internet chat groups, these speakers have elicited some of the
most polarizing comments I have ever read. Some folks fall under their
spell immediately, while others make disparaging remarks about their
listening experience. Why is this? Why the love 'em or hate 'em reactions?
I have my own thoughts on why this may be happening. Let's dispense for
the moment with those who may not have heard a broken in pair and those
who have a vested interest in another loudspeaker and can't stand to hear
praise heaped on a competitor. Even with these folks eliminated, I'm sure
there is still a small number of honest, well meaning people with reasonably
good hearing who just don't like the way these speakers sound. I hear the
occasional comment of "it sounds rolled off," "not enough bite," or "there's
something weird going on with the midrange."
Now, far be it from me to label these people as tin ears who "just don't get
it." The Khoruses are not some audio philosopher's stone that separates
gold from tin. There is plenty of room for personal preferences and
disagreement here. However, given technology claims of Talon and the
unusual properties of this speaker, I wouldn't be much of a reviewer if I
didn't state my own position and vigorously defend it.
I have reached the conclusion that it is the Khorus' speed and low distortion
that is messing with people's heads and ears. What may sound to some as
rolled off highs is, I believe, the lack of treble halo and haze. I have
confirmed this for myself by going back and forth between several other
loudspeakers I have on hand. There appears to be no treble information
missing from the Khorus. What is missing is the low level hash and haze
that typically rides along with the upper mids and treble like a halo around
the instruments.
It does take some getting used to. The initial absence of this "filler" can
produce some strong cognitive dissonance. I admit that it was a bit weird at
first, but in my case, the acclimation occurred quickly. I was able to identify
what it was and embrace it in my first hour of listening.
There are some who say there is no such thing as speaker break-in, only
listener break-in. The Khoruses make a strong case for speaker break-in.
There's no mistaking the sound of the fresh-out-of-the-crate speaker with
one that's been playing for 300 hard hours. But this speaker makes an
equally strong case for listener break-in. Clement and I have walked
several other owners through the listener-acclimation process. It was
getting so commonplace that we gave it a name. We call it "the bends." Like
a deep-sea diver who comes up to the surface too fast, the audiophile who
experiences the Khorus after listening to conventional loudspeakers may
suffer some ill effects. The recovery time is hours for some, days for others,
and sadly, some will never get over it.
A less severe agent of the audio bends is the speakers' ability to deliver
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and instrument's bass, midrange and treble spectrum in a way that makes it
appear to emit from the same point in time and space. The treble does not
leap out at you, nor the bass lag behind the midrange. It comes in a very
natural envelope that makes you think of real instruments instead of
loudspeakers. Now, I know this is subtle. There are any number of good
loudspeakers that do not have obviously disjointed treble, midrange and
bass. We're talking about degrees here. The Khoruses sound just that
much more holistic in the sense that it all emits from the same point in the
soundstage, thus making the imaging that much more believable. Could it
be because there is one compound driver handling frequencies from 20Hz
to 2200Hz? Is it because there is a series crossover to the tweeter and no
low pass to the super-tweeter? I don't know and I'm not writing about the
technical aspects. All I know is, it works!
Midrange and Treble
With haze and glare gone, the extended treble takes on a delicacy and
sweetness that one seldom, if ever, hears from a dynamic loudspeaker.
The midrange melds with it very well; that is, the midrange is of the same
character, cut from the same cloth, so to speak. The absence of haze and
glare is also noticeable in the upper midrange. The mids are not aggressive
or forward. If anything, I'd say slightly subdued, as compared to what I'm
used to. Maybe it's the "holistic" thing again. The absolutely seamless bass
to midrange transition makes it difficult to dissect the midrange sound.
That's to be expected given the dual role of the compound mid/woofer.
What I didn't expect was such a smooth transition from midrange to treble.
There may be a slight dip in the frequency response (or power response,
due to radiation) around the crossover point which may contribute to the
subdued character, but it is slight, certainly no more than I have heard in
many other top shelf speakers. My eyes see a great big 10-inch driver
below a 1.5-inch dome tweeter and my brain tells me, "Nah, no way can
these blend at 2200Hz—way too high for a ten-inch and way too different
dispersion." Again, the proof is in the pudding. It works! Talon has a
technical explanation (and, as mentioned patent applications) for how this is
accomplished, and it's a bit, even for me. Notwithstanding the complexity,
I'm glad that there is a plausible explanation, because without it, I'd
probably keep staring at those drivers and thinking my ears were playing
tricks on me.
I'm a big fan of acoustic music—strings, woodwinds and brass in the
classical, baroque and jazz milieu. These instruments, especially strings,
are notorious for their complex sonorities. If you look at the spectral balance
of say, a cello, playing a C-flat, you will see an incredibly complex
signature. There is a strong spike at the fundamental frequency, but a host
of other frequency spikes representing over and under tones, resonance
characteristics and miscellaneous spuriae all with time and amplitude
components. Taken together these are what make the cello sound like a
cello instead of a viola.
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The problem with typical high-end audio systems, particularly loudspeakers,
is that the spectral signature gets filtered in a way that condenses the
spikes in both the amplitude and time domain. It's like looking at a MLSSA
frequency response after you apply a "smoothing" algorithm. You get a
bleached out, sanitized version of the cello. I think our playback systems do
such a good job of this—bleaching and straining out the harmonic texture of
real instruments—that we accept the sanitized version and underestimate
how rich and sonorous these instruments actually sound.
When you hear the Khorus reproducing that same cello note, the first
response will probably be "Wow, that's rich." There is some real gristle and
meat on the bones that may be hard on the audio-vegetarian's taste buds.
The question then becomes, is it more accurate, or is it over-done? To
answer this for myself, I performed a little experiment.
I have a sister who is a music instructor and between her and her teaching
partner, they can play almost all of the wind and string instruments you find
in a typical orchestra. I invited them to my listening room and asked that
they bring a full complement of instruments with them. I sat right in the
"sweet spot", had them play for me while standing well behind, and
centered, between the loudspeakers. There is no substitute for this
experience. You can claim to have heard dozens of live concerts, but until
you hear the live instruments in your listening room, I don't think you can
adequately judge what’s real and what's just "hi-fi." I'll be blunt. The
dynamic energy and richly textured sound of live instruments made a
mockery of my system. Were the Khoruses too rich, too "full bodied?" Not
even close! They sounded thin, compressed and sterile in comparison. I
had no idea of the amount of resonant bass energy a cello can produce, or
a bassoon for that matter. Although the Khoruses were a step in the right
direction, they, and the rest of my system, still had a long way to go before
they could substitute for live music.
I had new respect for the Talon sound after this experience and it only
increased when I substituted other loudspeakers. All that I tried (and I'm not
going to pick on them here by naming them) were even more efficient
strainers of harmonic texture. The deficiency became obvious when playing
any good recording of piano or strings. The Khorus left more of the spectral
signature intact. The Khorus strainer had bigger holes and let more
information through.
I have often used Carol Rosenburger's Delos recordings as an example of
how much more full-bodied and bell-toned a Bosendorfer piano is
compared with a Steinway. Performers often prefer a Steinway for its ability
to cut through the orchestra and keep to center stage. The Bösendorfer is
warmer and more powerful in the bass scales. When I heard Rosenburger's
Bösendorfer on the Khorus, I just about blew a cochlea gasket. Oh my god
is that ever rich and powerful! I played Horowitz, Brindel and Ashkenazy
and damn, the Steinways sounded better too—not nearly as strident as I
was used to. I might even learn to love Steinways the way they sound on
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the Khorus.
Oh, and the strings? No question there, the best massed and solo strings
rendering I have heard in my room, period! I use Corelli's Concerti Grossi
on Harmonia Mundi and Chesky's Chamber Orchestra performance of
Vivaldi's Four Seasons as my long term strings test recordings. After
reaffirming what they sound like live in my listening room, I had no doubt
that Khoruses got the strings more "right" than any other loudspeaker that
has visited this room.
I had a loudspeaker designer over at my place. He brought a prototype of a
design he'd been working on. After listening to these recordings on his
speaker, I coyly suggested, "Now, would you like to hear more of what
these strings are supposed to sound like?" I disconnected his speakers,
hooked up the Khoruses and cued up the Vivaldi. Oh, the look on his face!
Priceless! To his credit, he admitted that he had some work to do. It was
that obvious.
Basso Profundo
One thing I can state categorically: the Khorus loudspeakers have "state of
the art" bass. I used to think that detail and definition were the business of
midrange and treble domains. Not any more! I was blown away by the
information coming through in the lower bass octaves. The pitch definition
and localization of bass is, in my opinion, without peer. By pitch definition, I
mean the very subtle changes in pitch that let you know that a flat or sharp
has been played, or even a half step between. Perhaps as subtle a thing as
a change in the tremolo frequency of a huge organ pipe would be audible.
It's pretty stunning when you put on an old bass favorite and discover that
there is a lot more "music" way down there. What may have sounded like
an amorphous wash of droning low frequencies, now has real notes and
colorations of pitch. That old war-horse "Way Down Deep" on Jennifer
Warnes' "The Hunter" is a fine example. I must have heard that piece a
hundred times, but until I heard it on The Khorus, I really didn't appreciate
how tuneful and complex all that bass drum work is.
I had the same revelatory experience with my Dorian Organ recordings. I
could hear all of the big pedal stops as clear as a bell. I could actually count
the bellows cycles as the air was pumped through the big 64 footers. I
measured low 20's in my room when the big pipes opened up. That, folks,
is going low with authority.
Is this astounding bass performance the by-product of speed and low
distortion? I don't know. Again, it just works.
Now, as for "localization," I choose this word carefully to distinguish it from
"imaging." Low bass information doesn't "image" the way midrange and
treble does. It doesn't carve out a fixed image in space like you hear when
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a saxophone is playing. It's the higher frequencies produced from the mallet
striking the skin of a bass drum that fixes it in place, not the lower
fundamental notes that emit immediately afterwards. However, when you
have something like a bass organ pipe that is not "struck," there is very little
higher frequency information to fix it in place. Oh, perhaps a faint click of a
stop opening or some "chuffing" of the wind in the pipe, but if the recording
is mic'd at any reasonable distance, you really aren't going to hear much.
So, these low organ notes aren't going to "image" in true audiophile
vernacular. But, with truly great low-end reproducers like the Khorus, these
notes will "localize." You will get a very good sense of where in the hall the
bass pipes are located—are they far behind the chorus? To their left, or
right? At the same height, or above? The Khoruses answer these general
location questions better than any loudspeaker I've heard.
What about the congas, tympanis, and bass guitar, those instruments that
are struck or plucked and produce more mid-bass frequencies? Because
these do have midrange and treble components, they should be easily fixed
in space. Most any good loudspeaker will do a reasonable job of placing
these images on the stage. The problem is that after the strike or pluck
things can go a bit awry. The midrange and bass frequencies that follow
don't quite match up with each other or with the treble in terms of timing. As
I've said, this timing phenomenon is a subtle thing, which the Khorus does
to a degree better than what I've heard from other full range loudspeakers.
The key here is "full range."
Small two-way monitors have always excelled in this as do coincident
drivers. Perhaps it is because of the simplicity of their crossovers and the
fact that a single driver is handling both their bass and midrange
frequencies. Up till now, the only drawback to these monitors has been their
limited bass response. With the Khorus's technology you get your cake and
can eat it too: the holistic qualities of a two-way monitor with outrageous
bass extension.
You hear this best on recordings with string bass and congas, like the
outstanding Buena Vista Social Club that features righteous Cuban classics
and Chesky's new recording of The Conga Kings. The Conga Kings are
featured on Chesky's SACD compilation disc, and when I heard it in SACD,
I suffered a traumatic case of mandible distention. It was sensory
overload—impact, texture, pitch, imaging...good Lord, this stuff is amazing!
It's one thing to say that a speaker has excellent pitch definition when
playing at moderate levels. I'm sure there are a few speakers that can make
that claim. It's another matter altogether to maintain that accuracy at live
listening levels peaking over 100dB. This is where the Khorus really sets
itself apart. These speakers maintain their purity and poise at absolutely
ridiculous listening levels. I have never heard a speaker go this loud without
smearing and congestion. As a result, my average listening level has gone
up a few clicks, and that's a good thing.
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If you can listen comfortably at a louder level, you will hear a lot more of
what's on the recording. I have long maintained that a lot of the ambience
cues and "live mojo" are at very low levels in the recording, often lingering
around the noise floor. You will hear more of it if you lower the noise floor
(which is preferred), or if you raise the overall sound level. The problem
with the latter is that at louder constant levels, the peaks often get
compressed and distorted. The wonderful thing about the Khorus is the
huge amount of dynamic headroom they provide. Since the peaks are not
distorted, you can comfortably listen at levels that would normally sound
like fingernails on a blackboard. With higher continuous levels, those "way
back there" rear soundstage cues are easy to hear, as are the plethora of
human affectations, like humming, grunting, and the passing of gas.
It's the Music, Man...
At the end of the day, it all comes down to the enjoyment of music. Forget
about the vivisection we reviewers are obliged to perform. The final
questions we should all be asking are:
1. Did the speaker heighten your listening enjoyment as compared to
others? and
2. Did the speaker give you any new insights with your favorite music?
and
3. If the answers to one and two, are yes, are the benefits
commensurate with the price?
My answer to one and two is an emphatic yes. The Khoruses produce
beautiful, intoxicating music. The presentation is so natural, so devoid of
artificial haze, glare and congestion, that I can sit contentedly for hours, just
lost in the music. This is unusual for me. In recent years I've gotten very
restless and finicky, more interested in watching a DVD movie than I am in
listening to complete CD. That has changed with the Khorus. They draw me
in and seduce me with their sound. I'm not bored any more, because even
when listening to familiar music, I'm discovering all kinds of interesting
things.
As for the price? Well, it's difficult to put a price tag on this level of music
enjoyment. As compared to other high priced audio products I've had, I
would say that the Khorus loudspeakers yield a very high return on the
investment. These are not your ordinary dynamic driver speakers in a wood
box. If you are like those who recover from the bends, you will appreciate
what these differences mean and will embrace them as I have.
My skeptical view of Talon Audio and my cynical attitude have been
permanently checked at my listening-room door. You can count me in as
one of the audiophiles who believes that Talon technology works. Hey,
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Perry, I'm a convert, and it didn't take an Archangel. Now, let me tell you
about the preamp I've got. The other night I swear the front wall parted like
the tearing of the Temple curtain and Moses himself appeared before me…
Clement Perry interviews Tierry Budge of Korus
Clement Perry: Tierry, you seem like quite the experienced type. How long
have you been an audiophile and what made you want to become a
speaker designer?
Teirry Budge: I was introduced to High End in1973 when I heard a
Kenwood marble-bass turntable, and Crown separates driving AR3
speakers. I was struck by 2 things (that sent me on my "quest"): 1) I was
pleased to hear that I could get more than I thought possible out of a stereo
(I had been devouring everything that I could—reading—about stereo since
1967), and 2) I was even more disappointed that it was still that far away
from the absolute.
From 1973-1986, I heard a number of systems that seemed to do various
things quite well. I won't list them all, but suffice it to say that they all did
things that led me to believe that if a system did something really well, it did
something else very poorly—it was all trade-offs...no clear-cut "winners."
The one system that seemed to come the closest was one that I heard in
1984, I think. ARC SP10 and a D250 Mk II (I believe), driving some heavily
modified Quads. The system also used a pair of Entec subwoofers which
must have been judiciously and carefully integrated because I've never
heard them (since) sound anywhere near as good. It was tonally balanced
quite well, evenly dynamic (if a bit foreshortened), detailed, and seemed
comfortable with most any kind of music. (I've heard the WAMM's sound
better on a number of different pieces and styles, but never so evenly
footed as this system was.) This was also, perhaps, the most transparent
system that I ever heard, BUT, even the images had the see-through
quality that the soundstage did. It was a fun experience, but a bit
disconcerting as well. I've heard Meridians (late 70's), Celestions, Linns,
Wilsons, and even some Yamaha NS1000's do a few things musically right,
but always at the expense of other musical virtues. As each "reference"
system did certain things well, I started to make a mental checklist of just
what those things were. I found various musical strengths in specific
products; However, I realized that there were a few "virtues" that I had
never heard out of any speakers: 1) real-world dynamics (large AND small
scale), 2) the sense of energy or "vibrance" of the real thing, and 3) timbres
that bring true instrumental character and dimensionality. This, of course,
was above-and-beyond the fact that no speaker had managed to assemble
ALL virtues into one package. (Perhaps I should add that I feel that from
about 1982 on, speakers, in general—not specific—have been getting
brighter and boomier.
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It's almost as if we're saying that we can't get the excitement that we want
out of our systems, so we try and liven it up a bit.) I began to feel that
vibrance, dynamics and timbral control had to be the pursuit. Not because
they seemed the most important, but because they seemed the most
difficult to attain. So, I made it my goal...hoping that if I attained these
attributes, the others would come along for the ride, as it were. Each of
these elements seemed to depend, intuitively, on pistonic movement. Since
it didn't seem possible to make a panel speaker perform like a perfect
piston, I chose to pursue dynamic-driver-based speakers. (Yes, some paneltypes have come close to pistonic movement, but they still sound a bit thin,
timbrally, and dynamically compressed.) However, dynamic drivers seemed
to possess a few dichotomies of their own: Soundstage width/depth, solid
fundamentals, timbres, and "pace and rhythm" all seem to need large
moving mass. But, to have detail, good transient definition, and
transparency, you need low moving mass. Broadband agility and low bass
seem to require a loose suspension; but, power-handling and absolute
output require a stiff suspension. Loose suspensions seemed agile, but not
"detailed"; responsive, but not vibrant. These kinds of questions and
dichotomies represent some of the more challenging "troubles" and
"difficulties" in getting a dynamic speaker to "get close to the music." I
figured that if they seemed mutually exclusive, it was only because I hadn't
found the answers yet.
CP: How long have you been tinkering at this new
midrange / woofer technology?
TB: I began my own efforts in 1981, but I wasn't sure where to start. (I have
lived and breathed speaker design ever since.) I suppose that, for me,
dynamics came first. Since the overriding dependence on driver function
was the interaction between the box and the woofer, I started with loading
techniques. I tried everything: Transmission line, closed box, B4, QB3, etc.
Nothing seemed to work. However, everything seemed to point,
dynamically, to using stiffer suspensions and smaller boxes. While this
improved dynamics to measurable degrees, I was losing my low-bass
extension. (no surprise) In 1993, I designed a smallish box (1.5 cubic feet)
around a high moving mass, yet relatively stiff 10" woofer. (the high mass
was my attempt at bringing in low bass.) The low-frequency cut-off was
around 30Hz. But, I still had a number of problems: 1) High moving mass
drivers want to stay in motion, 2) the high mass of the woofer precluded any
midrange response—forcing a 3-way approach (which was o.k., but it
introduced a whole new set of variables), and 3) there was still entirely too
much distance between the "speed" of the tweeter and that of the woofer.
CP: Can you tell me how you got the "20 times
faster" and "100 times quieter"?
TB: I have always used tweeters that have "rise-times" (measured with a
"step" or impulse response) between 6-12 uS. The 6.5" "midrange" that I
talon
used for the 3-way that I designed in 1993 had an out-of-box rise-time of
about 70 uS. But, when this woofer was dropped into the box, the rise-time
was close to 1500 uS—more than 20 times slower!! The 10" woofer that I
described had a rise-time of about 150 uS, free-air; but, it was closer to
2500 uS in my "small box," QB3. This kind of disparity (12->1500->2500
uS) was actually quite good, by market comparisons, and the whole 3-way
did quite well in it's day. But I couldn't help but think that since the voice-coil
of each driver sees signals which travel at—or near—the speed of light,
there had to be more information "in between" this great disparity in speed.
I have since learned that both a) musical "energy" and, b) dynamic
gradations, are lost when the differences in speed are so great.
You asked how I came up with the numbers "20 times faster, and 100 times
lower in distortion." Well, the answers are, perhaps, a bit more practical
than technical. The 10" woofer that I designed for the Khorus has a free-air
rise-time of about 130 uS. In a 1 cubic foot box (like the Khorus'), QB3
loading, the 3dB down point would be around 60 Hz (not good), but the
woofer/box combo. would have a dynamic rise-time of about 1500 uS.
(Progress, compared to my system of 1993.) HOWEVER, in the "Group
Phase" loading (explained in the attached technical paper) the rise time is
less than 50 uS, and the 3dB down-point is 17 Hz! So, as far as the "gain in
speed" goes, you divide 1500 uS ("old" QB3 loading) by 50 uS (Group
Phase Coupling), and you find that GPC brings a gain of 30 times, for this
particular woofer.
As for the "100 times lower distortion," we took a low-frequency organ note
(around 28Hz), IN A MUSICAL PIECE, and turned up the volume until we
got to the point of hearing a "tremolo" kind of a sound. (the point at which
intermodulation begins to dominate) With the QB3 loading, this occurs at a
continuous sine-wave output of about 105dB. (1M) Under the same
conditions, the Group Phase loading showed no signs of this sound...even
at 126dB, where the amplifier gave out. Here's where the numbers get a bit
tricky: 126-105= 21. We're getting at least 21 extra decibels out of this
loading. If you add 21 dB onto 10 Watts, you end up with close to 1300
Watts. Since every 10 dB greater is a multiplication factor of 10, we figured
that there wasn't much difference between saying that we're getting 100
times the output wattage, or saying 100 times lower distortion, since it's all
measured logarithmically. I suppose that it's more of a marketing thing, but
we couldn't think of how else to describe it.
Group Phase became a perfect solution since it overcame a number of
different issues: 1) "speed" disparity, 2) the apparent dichotomy of the
virtues of low/high moving mass, and 3) suspension control vs. lowfrequency extension. One of the unforeseen strengths turned out to be that
the overall speed allowed us to have much better integration with a tweeter
than using a low-mass 6.5" or 5.25" woofer. (the latter two, at best, are 900
and 1300 uS rise-time-performers, whereas the Group Phase 10" is down
below 50 uS...as fast as a dome-mid.)
talon
As the system got faster and faster, we began to notice something: Yes, the
system had more detail, more transparency, more "blackness between the
notes," but it was SO clean that it almost sounded like it was "missing some
highs." In fact, we can't tell you the number of times we've had audiophiles
say, "I don't get your speaker...I only hear the highs when there's highfrequencies in the music." Perhaps it's just me, but this statement seems to
involve a bit of pretzel logic. Nonetheless, we use a couple of tests to
confirm the existence of the highs: 1) a 1500-2500Hz square-wave, and 2)
live music—typically massed violins. We use square waves because the
leading edge will demonstrate both high-frequency extension AND highfrequency control. The "control"—lack of ringing—is important to rich and
delicate harmonics in the same way a linear damping factor is for an
amplifier. The rest of the square wave demonstrates how coherent the
system is...timbrally, dynamically, harmonically. As for the massed
violins—it is extremely difficult to produce their unique set of fundamentals
+ harmonics; due, in part, to the fact that there are lower-frequency-based
"beat frequencies" as a result of the various playing styles of the individual
violinists. Having the group sound large AND "sweet" is a horrific challenge
for tweeters to negotiate.
CP: Please explain why this speaker sounds rolled off until well broken in?
TB: If we listen to harmonics alone, the system isn't "rolled-off" at all, but if
we listen for the "air" that we're used to hearing, then I would have to say
that all 3 speakers sound rolled-off. Of course, Talon would like to believe
that what's missing is all the modulation caused by the (uncorrected) beat
frequencies of the various phase shifts, which exist naturally in dynamic
drivers. (see "inversion circuits" in the Technical Paper.) We also feel that
there are several arguments supporting this: 1) no instrument produces its
own air. Such "air" only exists through the interaction of the
room/microphone/mic-preamp with the instrument itself. In other words, this
is the province of the recording engineer, not the speaker designer. (just
think about how a given speaker's presentation of "air" is superimposed on
every piece that is passed through it. It tells you—even if you're
blindfolded—"oh yeah, I recognize this speaker...it's______." Live music
has no omnipresent "air.") 2) Listening to a good set of headphones. (I use
this example because with headphones, the "mechanical" problems are on
a much smaller, and more manageable, scale.) The better, and faster, the
headphones get, the more you are aware of the harmonic richness of the
music, not the grainy/shushy sound of the "air." They get cleaner, and more
controlled, and LESS hissy.
In the end, it's hard to make excuses for the high-frequency balance,
because the speaker meets the design criteria. Basically, we feel that we
have to have the discipline to leave it alone and trust that the future will
bear it out. It may sound "softer," but only by direct comparison. If we turn
the whole "problem" around, we realize that we can get far greater (and
cleaner!) dynamic output this way. In any case...So far, this presentation of
"air" seems to be the closest thing to an identifiable "weakness." And yet,
talon
it's probably closer to a "flavor" choice, than an absolute weakness.
The Khorus DOES measure like it's about 3-5dB down in level compared to
the midrange (2KHz on up), but there reasons for this: Mostly, it's because
the Khorus has two tweeters which overlap, electrically, from 3-20KHz.
Placing a microphone at a "listening distance" helps show the true in-room
output, but now the distance from the microphone demonstrates all kinds of
room cancellations. Actually listening to something like warble tones, or 1/3
octave bands (like on the MF Sound Check 2 disc) will demonstrate,
empirically, that there isn't any terrible disparity.
CP: How did you meet sales and marketing president Mike Farnsworth?
TB: Mike and I met because he had spent a few years building speakers,
and he was convinced that no 10" woofer could ever do what I claimed it
could. (sound familiar?) He had to come and hear for himself. (This was
almost 2 years ago.) After hearing, he called me every day for two weeks.
His first comment in each conversation was, "that speaker has thrown me
for a loop." He was actually only looking for a subwoofer, but ended up
saying, "this is what I've wanted to do all of my life." He has become the
driving force behind refining, and getting all of this to market. I have always
wanted the Technology to be "complete" (meaning, an assembly of ALL
musical virtues and/or minimum of weaknesses), and Mike has wanted to
make the COMPANY "complete." (i.e. finished look and feel, brochures,
ads, reviews, manufacturing, everything.) I couldn't have met Mike at a
more perfect time. Any sooner, and some of the Technology would have
been set aside for manufacturing concerns. As it is, he took no
convincing...he knew it instantly, as if he had been doing this for years.
CP: So how did you come up with all the names at Talon?
TB: For about 6 years, we've gravitated towards raptor names. (Khite is
actually Kite with the Khorus' "h" in it...we also have a product by the name
of "Khestrel," in the works. "Roc" is the name of a mythical raptor that could
hold an elephant in its claws.) It took a bit of time and effort to come up with
a name that was fairly simple, strong, and represented our tendency to
raptor names. For us, "Talon" works. (The logo was another struggle
altogether, but we feel even better about its "look and feel.")
CP: This sounds all too easy, which I know it
couldn’t have been. Were there trails and
tribulations?
TB: "Trials" are a bit more difficult to enumerate, both because a) they bring
up difficult memories, and b) we feel so fortunate to be a part of a
technology that is more than the sum of its parts. Sure, we've been through
debilitating lies and rumors. (sometimes at the hands of those we were only
talon
trying to help.) We've had more than two dozen potential associates who
have either graciously offered to separate us from our best ideas, or run off
with cabinet plans, take us to court over their own mistakes, take our
services but not pay, steal and copy crossover designs, or try to beat us to
market with our own product. But, through all of this, the biggest challenge
has always been the following: Locating an answer that you KNOW is
there, but has never seen the light of day...then moving to the next "answer,
"...and the next one...and the next one...not knowing when you'll feel it's
"complete."
CP: What challenges do you see in your bright future and what type have
you encountered thus far?
TB: Over the last two years, the biggest challenge that we've anticipated
has been that of finding a way to express the reality of the technology, and
our excitement over its introduction, in such a way that people know that we
take the technology—not ourselves!—seriously. When you think about a
marketing-hardened industry, it takes as much creativity to genuinely
provide a new technology as it did to "invent" the stuff in the first place.
Along these lines, one of the biggest struggles has been to present a
market-accepted line of speakers. This Technology is more expensive than
most, to implement. At one point, we discussed the possibility of diluting the
technology, in order to make a more affordable product. But, it was decided
that a) those who would criticize the higher price would likely find something
else to criticize if it were less expensive, and b) those who could afford, or
stretch to, what we had to present, would greatly appreciate the "no
compromise" approach. Obviously, we opted for those who would both
support and appreciate our efforts. As it is, because of the total lack of
compromises, each one of the speakers belies its size—even the Khite.
This is a hallmark of "Group Phase Coupling." The Khite, properly
demonstrated, can portray the full size and weight of the Symphonic Doublebass Drum...in a way that most $20,000 speakers can't.
Through all of this, there have been a number of staunch
supporters...some, of whom, have been responsible for my not giving up,
through the hard times. Now, just the promise of the technology is enough
to keep us going for years.
CP: Okay, so what’s in the future for Talon Audio?
TB: The plans for our future might border on the "overwhelming" to go into.
Suffice it to say that we have at least 5 products planned, above the
Khorus, and 2 products "below" the Khite. As for those "above," the idea is
to make them bigger, more efficient, and more tailored to an individual's
home...not sonically better, per se. (This is not an attempt to minimize these
products, but an admission that the scope of the Khorus is truly SOTA.)
Those "below" the Khite would be the first Talon products to experience
judiciously chosen compromises. In all actuality, we would love to license
out Technology to some of the bigger companies so that the compromises
talon
are limited, and the technology is more accessible. We hope to meet, and
become involved with every aspect that will better the "experience." We
don't wish to be anything but speaker designers, but we'd like to "lend a
hand" wherever possible. We have patentable applications for Sound
Reinforcement, and multi-media presentation. In either case, we believe
that we can provide something that has far greater performance out of
much smaller and more manageable packages. We have a patentable idea
for a speaker with a boom-microphone-like reproduction of sound. (for
exhibits and displays) We even hope to take the time-related reconstruction
concepts to a University, and spend the time developing the associated
equations. We hope to leave no stone unturned.
In the short term, the "products" that we have coming up are 1) some
seriously cool retrofittable spikes that make use of correct mechanicalgrounding principles (dare I say...more openness on top?), 2) visually
matching stands for the Peregrines, 3) a more "exotic," "export" Khorus
enclosure (read—expensive), and 4) visually sprucing up the Peregrines
and the Khites, while increasing their own ability to dissipate mechanical
energy. In the long term...while we have already received the initial
prototype drivers for the more expensive systems, we have decided to hold
off, in an effort to provide the best product line that we can right now.
CP: Can you provide a cutaway photo of the Khorus?
TB: Although I don't have a cut-away of the cabinet, there is a reasonable
description of the loading technique in the Technical Paper that I'm sending
you. (We won't mind providing a cut-away, once the patents have been
granted.) As for the Roc, it uses all the principles outlined in the "Group
Phase Coupling" section of the Technical Paper. But, in its case, I designed
a 12" woofer with a 4" voice-coil, almost 2" of "throw," and the
suspension/motor-structure of a high-powered 18" pro-sound woofer. It's a
beast. (For whatever it's worth, the Roc has enough "speed" to successfully
negotiate a 900 Hz crossover point, but this probably doesn't surprise you,
by now.)
CP: Explain what occurs when I stuffed the ports on the Khorus’?
TB: The Khorus' impedance looks like a classic QB3 design, with two
separate peaks in the low end. (one at approx. 50 Hz, and one at 17Hz.)
But, unlike the QB3, the Group Phase loading doesn't set the low-frequency
cut-off at the trough between the peaks. Rather, it is at the center of the
lower peak. With the port plug in, the system has only one low-frequency
peak, coinciding with the upper of the two peaks. In other words, it now has
the impedance structure of a closed-box. The low-frequency cut-off, under
these conditions, is about 50 Hz. But the plug causes the appropriate phase
shift to begin around 80 Hz. Having removed the "duty" of the bottom 2
octaves, the Khorus plays with even lower distortion, and actually sounds
more efficient. Of course, the performance of the Roc helps elevate the
response of the entire system. You almost have to think of it as bi wiring
talon
from the preamp->out, instead of the normal amp->out.
Well, I just estimated that you're getting about 10-12 pages worth of
information...but then...dare I say it?.."you asked for it."
Khorus loudspeakers
Retail: $14,000
Roc subwoofers
Retail: $4000
Talon Audio Technologies, Inc.
Tel: 801. 619. 9000
web address: www.talonaudio.com
e-mail: sales@talonaudio.com
BACK TO TOP
wavacmd811
Elegance . . . and a Lesson about Patience
wavac
MD-811 amplifier
by Rick Gardner
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/wavacmd811.htm (1 of 4) [8/25/2002 2:51:14 PM]
wavacmd811
RICK GARDNER'S
SYSTEM:
LOUDSPEAKERS
Esoteric Speaker
Products (ESP) Concert
Grand Signatures (all
upgrades and specific
modifications).
ELECTRONICS
Balanced Audio
Technology (BAT) VK-50SE line stage
preamplifier, Linn phono
stage, and BAT VK-500
solid-state amplifier.
SOURCE
Sony SCD-1 and Sony
333-ES SACD players.
Teac VRDS-20 transport
and Timbre TT-2-1000
DAC. Wilson Benesch
Full Circle Table (.05 Arm
and Ply MC cartridge).
Sony CDR-W-33 CD
Recorder.
CABLES
Jena Labs interconnects
and speaker cables.
ACCESSORIES
Jena Labs power cords.
ESP distributor strip.
Liberal use of Black
Diamond products (The
Shelf for the Source,
Those Things, Round
Things, Cones, etc.)
Delux Justarack and
Seismic Sink.
I have not had the best of experiences with SE amplifiers. I simply have not
been able to see the attraction. Like the little girl eating olives with her
father and crying because his obvious enjoyment suggests he is getting all
the good ones, I have even considered that I might somehow be lacking in
this regard. However, a brief moment of insecurity aside, I remain
convinced that, for me at least, the serious limitations of SE amplifiers
simply do not present a viable approach to listening to recorded music. The
Bel Canto 845 monoblocks, fatally flawed as they are, have represented my
peak SE experience to date. Even with all the things I appreciated about
these amplifiers, I simply could not live with them long term. However, life is
learning and I am determined to remain open and vulnerable to new
experiences. Recently, I even listened to a HORN speaker at the VSAC
conference that I liked. (Will wonders never cease?) Along with my sonic
reservations, most of the SE stuff is pretty uninspired when it comes to
industrial design, typically wearing frumpy clothes and no-nonsense shoes.
Enter the WAVAC MD-811
Nobu Shishido is one of the most immediately-recognized names in audio,
and one of the most admired (personally and professionally) people in the
business. His work is the stuff of legend. The MD-811 was my first chance
to experience a product of his company. The MD-811 is WAVAC’s "entry
level" amplifier, based on the 811 transmitting tube, still in production. David
and I unboxed the unit in my living room and were immediately struck by
the simple, elegant beauty of the compact unit. The antithesis of the typical
single-ended amplifier, the MD-811 is a champagne-tinted, blonde-woodclad confection. The thing literally draws your hand to it as a natural
response.
The MD-811 features very modern circuit topology, including a highefficiency IITC circuit and inverted interstage transformer coupling. At 15
watts per side, I did not even bother hooking it to my reference ESP
Concert Grands. The first mating was with a pair of high-efficiency Kochel
loudspeakers, which, alas, never turned out to be my cup of tea, regardless
of what I tried to drive them with. On a whim, I decided to make the WAVAC
the heart of my bedroom system. Using the Sony SCD-C333ES SACD
changer, I decided to employ the WAVAC in direct mode (the amp has a
volume control and three inputs) to drive a pair of KEF 102s. I was shocked
and completely seduced by this combination. Yes, it was rich and lush, but
it was also tight and literally bursting with a sense of dynamic "eagerness"
that made it the king-of-rock-and-roll SEs for me, to date. Of great surprise
was the bass. It was huge, relatively well controlled and extremely well
differentiated. This from a speaker that comes with a "bass enhancement"
equalization module (which I did not use).
Shortly after taking receipt of the unit, I attended a local meeting of the
Oregon Triode Society with Jennifer and Michael Crock, of JENA Labs
fame. I decided to drag the WAVAC along, just for giggles. The meeting
was mostly about DIY, but the suave and sophisticated WAVAC was simply
wavacmd811
too much for the crowd to bear. So... we ended up lashing it to Jennifer’s
SCD-1 and feeding a modestly-priced pair of high efficiency two-ways
designed and built by a local man (Alfred Dupke, more on him later).
Plopped down in the middle of a terrible church basement room, the
resultant sound drew virtually the entire crowd. Whatever the program
material, this combo rocked, rolled, cajoled, and seduced.
The one common experience I have with the WAVAC is its "single cloth"
presentation, so much the antithesis of current "hi-fi" molecular-dissection
models. There is a wholeness to the presentation that drives the listener
from the need to examine each octave and to listen critically. While
enjoyable, this makes for tough reviewing. From an objective standpoint,
the WAVAC is colored, lush, and far from neutral. Because it is a singleended amplifier, its "sound" is highly speaker-dependent. However, the
listening experience is subjectively free from the gradual, unsettling
recognition that all of the recordings are starting to sound alike, which has
been my common experience with SE amps. It is also free from the mushy,
poorly-controlled, and seriously rolled-off bass I associate with this
topology. The highs are softened for sure, but not as rolled as I have
become used to. Grain-free, smooth as a baby’s butt, and sweet as first
love. We are talking sex and romance here, not hi-fi.
Without embarrassment, I say that the WAVAC is a little more beautiful
than life itself. Frankly, at this point in my life I am beginning to appreciate
romantic love and beauty more than the truth, sometimes. The WAVAC is
all about romance. It is gorgeous to look at and touch. Controls are silky
and of extremely high quality. I enjoyed the simple process of turning the
unit on and adjusting the volume (really cool tri-tipped rotary controls),
seeing the bright emitter tubes flood my bedroom with the cheery light of a
bygone day. Every interface is carefully thought out to be as effective and
sensual as possible. The sound is rich, silky, and seductive. Perhaps there
is some airbrushing and diffusion being applied, but it is nicely controlled
and always tastefully executed.
The amp will absolutely rock with a reasonably efficient speaker. I played it
LOUD with such non-audiophile screamers as Kittie, Skunk Anansie, Full
Devil Jacket, and others. I am thinking an active pre would have coaxed
even more out of the MD-811, but I never found myself sufficiently
motivated to seek one out. The MD-811 performed flawlessly throughout
the review period. The distributor sent alternative tubes to try, but frankly I
never found myself interested in making any changes to the sound. I really
struggled with letting it go back when the time came, and I still miss it. I kept
fantasizing the distributor would "forget" it for a few months. However, as
with a beautiful but sadly impractical lover, I eventually had to say adieu to
the WAVAC. I simply could not afford such a wonderful amplifier for a
bedroom system. Even I am not that self-indulgent. (Well, yes I am, but I
cannot afford it).
This is a marvelous piece of audio art, which satisfies at every possible
wavacmd811
level. In that it represents the entry level of the line, one can only imagine
what subtle wonders inhabit the higher price points in the WAVAC line. For
me, the bottom line is that this is the first SE amplifier I could joyfully live
with, long term. I wish they would send it back.
Rick Gardner
WAVAC MD-811
Retail $4000
WAVAC Audio Lab, Sigma Co. LTD
web address: www.wavac-audio.gr.jp
US Distributor:
tmh Audio
TEL: 937. 439. 2667
web address: www.tmhaudio.com
e-mail address: info@tmhaudio.com
BACK TO TOP
ricker1
Stan Ricker Live and Unplugged: True Confessions of a
Musical and Mastering Maven, Part One
by Dave Glackin
(This article first appeared in Positive Feedback, Vol. 7, No. 5)
Introduction
Stan Ricker has a unique combination of knowledge of music, recording, and mastering, and
is one of the few true renaissance men in audio today. Stan is a veteran LP mastering
engineer, renowned for his development of the half-speed mastering process and his
leading role in the development of the UHQR (Ultra High Quality Recording) process. Stan
cut many highly regarded LPs for Mobile Fidelity, Crystal Clear, Telarc, Delos, Reference
Recordings, Windham Hill, Stereophile, and roughly a dozen other labels, including recent
work for Analogue Productions and AcousTech Mastering. Stan is particularly well known to
audiophiles such as myself, who were actively purchasing high-quality LPs during the mid70s to mid-80s.
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/ricker1.htm (1 of 29) [8/25/2002 2:51:18 PM]
ricker1
Stan's love of music has stood him in good stead in his mastering career. His long
experience as both a band and orchestra conductor has trained him to hear ensemble and
timbral balance, which has proven to be exceptionally useful in achieving products of the
highest caliber. Stan has played string bass (both bowed and plucked) and tuba from the
fifth grade through the present, and he turns out to be something of a bass nut. Watching
him play standup acoustic bass in front of his Neumann lathe with "Stomping at the Savoy"
playing over his mastering monitors was a special treat for me. (Writing for Positive
Feedback does pay, just not in cash.) Stan also has a love of pipe organs, and is quite
knowledgeable regarding the acoustical theory of pipes. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in
Music Education from Kansas University, but his prodigious mastering skills were selftaught.
As the capstone to his career, Stan has gone into business for himself with the creation of
Stan Ricker Mastering in Ridgecrest, California. He has a state-of-the-art Neumann VMS 66
lathe with a Neumann SX-74 cutter head, a Sontec Compudisk computer controller, a
Technics five-speed direct drive motor, and console and cutter head electronics designed
and built by Keith O. Johnson. Stan now specializes in less-than-real-time mastering from
digital sources (DAT, CD and CDR) onto 7" or 12" 33 rpm or 45 rpm LPs. The lacquers that
Stan cut for me speak for themselves. He can also handle up to 14" diameter reels of halfinch analog tape at 30 ips. By day, Stan is the head buyer for the Telemetry Department at
the Naval Air Warfare Center at China Lake.
Stan has lots of great stories, and is known for speaking his mind. He has been called
"iconoclastic" (The Absolute Sound, Vol. 4, No. 14, 1978), "pleasantly cantankerous"
(Stereophile, Vol. 20, No. 6, 1997), a "crusty curmudgeon" (by Bert Whyte), and "the most
understated renaissance man of audio" (Positive Feedback, Vol. 7 No. 1, 1997) by yours
truly. Stan is all this and more, as I'm sure his wife Monica will attest. I have wanted to do
this interview for several years. Our first session was held in Ridgecrest on December 21-22,
1997. We continued on January 7, 1998 on the way to WCES in Las Vegas, which proved to
be a refreshing respite from the hypnotic blur of countless Joshua trees whipping by. We
concluded on January 31, 1998 back at Stan's place. Each time, all I needed to do was wind
Stan up, let him go, and have a rollicking good time with the man who was once quoted as
saying that "conformity is the high road to mediocrity."
Early Influences
Dave: Stan, I'm very glad to finally have the opportunity to do this interview. An interview
with you is long overdue in the audiophile press. Thanks very much for taking the time to
give us your unique perspective on music, LP mastering, acoustic bass playing, the halfspeed mastering process, conducting, the UHQR, pipe organs, Neumann lathes, classic
cars, tubas, your gift of perfect pitch, and most importantly, what happens when a glob of
nitro-cellulose shavings happens to come into contact with a match. But first, let's begin at
the beginning. Where were you born, where did you grow up, and how did it all start?
Stan: I was born the fourteenth of December 1935, in Marblehead, Massachusetts. I lived in
Marblehead, Lynn, and Swampscott, Massachusetts. My mother had two brothers, one of
whom lived in Marblehead, and the other one lived in Exeter, New Hampshire. We spent
many summers in Exeter, a place I really grew to love. My cousin, Harry Thayer, and his
ricker1
brother, Charlie Thayer, still live there.
Dave: You've spoken very fondly of Exeter. I was there just a couple of months ago, and
really liked it as well.
Stan: My uncle used to own the Exeter newspaper, The Exeter Newsletter. He purchased it
in the forties when I was a little kid. Then he sold it to his sons, and the oldest son Harry
recently (ca. 1988) sold it to the Dow Jones Corporation. I learned a lot from my uncle about
bosses who really appreciate their employees and reward them accordingly.
Dave: You were exposed to music and audio very early in life. What came first, was it music
or was it hardware, or both?
Stan: I would say they both arrived simultaneously. My mother tells me that the first time I
did anything with music, I was three years old, and I sang some song at my uncle's house in
Marblehead, Massachusetts. I sang into a microphone, and it was recorded on one of those
Wilcox Gay Recordio machines, which was quite the thing in 1938, 1939. It was big, like a
Stromberg Carlson-type cabinet, and you had this record machine that was a turntable with
a cutting arm and a playback arm on it, so you could record something and then play it back.
The disks were ten-inch acetates. You know, I do remember that, though I don't remember
what it sounded like.
Later, when I was seven, my parents gave me a phonograph for either my birthday or
Christmas. I think it was my birthday, and they gave me a bunch of records, which, of
course, were 78s. And I remember one of the first records I had was an Arthur Godfrey
song, "The Too Fat Polka," and I discovered that I could put my fingernail in the groove and
feel the vibrations, and could put my ear next to my finger and hear the music that way. So it
was always a parallel experience between live music and recorded music, and one was just
automatically an extension of the other, and even 'til this day, I don't see how one could get
along very well without the other. They're part of the entire experience of music performance
without a live audience. Recording sessions are very difficult. Live audiences are where
everybody gets excited, you know, that's the fun stuff. And every time you do it, whether you
play in the orchestra or whether you're conducting the orchestra or anything else, you
always have a bit of butterflies. I still get excited when here comes a new job on a tape.
What is this? What's it gonna be like? What can we do with it? How's it gonna sound? How
can I help it sound as good as possible? So there's always an excitement, a sweaty-palms
time that goes with it and I hope I always keep that excitement, 'cause you can learn
something new every day.
I started playing the string bass and the tuba when I was ten years old, in fifth grade, after
we moved to Bannockburn, Illinois, which is just north and west of Deerfield, Illinois, which is
a western suburb of Highland Park, which is a suburb of Chicago on the North Side. I also
lived in Hawaii. My dad was a Naval officer, and after World War II the dependents were
allowed to join their family members at the military outposts, wherever they were stationed.
My dad was a University of Colorado graduate in Civil Engineering, bridge building and
tunnel building, and he was Executive Officer at a Naval base called Lua Lua Lei, which is
an ammunition depot.
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So we lived there while I was ten and eleven, having moved from Highland Park. The Navy
didn't have a school, a dependents’ school, so a designated driver used to come and take
my sister, who is two years older than I am, and myself over the Kole Kole Pass to Scofield
Barracks Army School. That's where I first heard a real, honest to God, kick ass military
band, with five big sergeants playin' five big York four-valve Sousaphones. And man, I'm
runnin' around behind that band, "What are these? Boy, do these sound good! I wanna play
one of those!" Ya know, I was so impressed by these! There I was, experiencing something
grand. These were outdoor concerts. The band came and played during the lunch hour. Set
up in the baseball diamond. And they'd play these noon concerts, every Wednesday they
came over. You could stand behind the tuba section and it would just vibrate your whole
body. I didn't know it at the time, but I was experiencing exactly what multiple woofers do in
sound systems. They mutually couple. If you take a whole bank of tubas standing side to
side with one another, or a whole raft of string basses in an orchestra, they do the same
thing. And that's one of those grand cases where the sum is more than the individual parts. It
was just, what do I say, ballsy. It was great. I was totally impressed by this.
Dave: So Stan Ricker became a bass nut at a very impressionable age.
Stan: Yeah, right (laughs). Yeah, fifth grade, ten years old or so, is a very impressionable
age, so when Dad got transferred back to the United States, we came back to Highland
Park, Illinois. I continued at Bannockburn grade school. We got a new music teacher that
year, and she came in and said, "Hey, if you were to play in a band or orchestra, what
instrument would you want to play?" And I said, right off the bat, "Hey, Mrs. Shimer, I wanna
play tuba." "Okay", she said. So what happened is, she and her husband took a big old van,
went down to Lyon & Healy in Chicago, rented all these used instruments, and started the
school orchestra. It was lots and lots of fun. But I mostly learned how to play the tuba and
the string bass by ear, until I got into high school. We didn't have much music in the grade
school. Mostly, Mrs. Shimer would write out the parts. She was really good at that kind of
thing, which, looking back on it, is kinda rare for a grade school music teacher to sit down
and play a recording and write the parts out, all by ear. I remember our first year we played,
shall we say, an adaptation of Brahms’ First Symphony (laughs). Only one movement,
fortunately!
Dave: With tuba.
Stan: Yeah, tuba, string bass, and some clarinets and a bunch of violins and piano and
drums. It was the kind of orchestration, actually, you would have called in those days a cafe
salon orchestra, you know. A mixture of just about everything.
Dave: And you both bowed and plucked the string bass.
Stan: Oh yeah, I plucked that thing. I marginally taught myself how to play the string bass
and, except for a few isolated instances, didn't actually see much printed music for the bass
until I got into high school. Before that I was doing it almost all by ear. So I “Suzukied” myself
(laughs), to quote a latter-day terminology. The Suzuki method is students learning how to
speak through their instruments. Just as we, as children, learn to speak our native language,
English or whatever, by listening to our parents and imitating them, so you learn to speak
music by having an instrument in your hand (or in your throat) and becoming familiar with
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what it sounds like. If you do this, you get this characteristic kind of sound out of it, and it's
not until several lessons, several semesters, maybe years, before you actually see music
notation on a page. Just like kids learn how to talk long before they learn how to read and
write. But this thing about just shovin' paper in front of people with notes....
I remember, so clearly, my first reaction when I saw a paper with what we call “notes” on it.
My Dad was an avid golfer. He was a sportsman, and so when the music teacher put this
sheet of printed stuff on a stand and said, "See that note, that's C," and I looked at all these
notes goin' across the page, I asked her, "Why are all these golf clubs on this page?" and
"Why are some of 'em solid and some of 'em hollow?" Because you see, musical notation
had nothing to do with conveying pitch, tempo, frequency, intensity to the untrained person,
nothing, you know. Just like, you do this (motions with hand), we call that a letter A. We have
to learn what the symbol is for the sound, the concept, and so forth. So, yeah, I “Suzukied”
myself. I learned to play bass with a lot of records like that tune that we played earlier, "Black
Beauty," with Duke Ellington. I learned to play the bass to the original of that, you know. And
a lot of it's bowed bass. They played jazz, bowed bass and tuba, in the early days. And most
of the bass players were not considered complete bass players unless they played at least
two instruments. You had to play the tuba. You had to play the string bass. Some even
played Bass Sax. You had to play them all well, and you had to play 'em in a number of
different styles. Nowadays bass players don't have to do that. Electric bass players, a lot of
'em, don't play string bass and even fewer of them play tuba. But I always felt it was my duty
that, hey, if it was a bass generator I was gonna tackle it (laughs). If there had been
subwoofers in those days, I woulda learned how to make 'em go.
Dave: So, your fingering was all self taught?
Stan: Largely so, yeah, by just looking up in books, consulting what's the fingering for C on a
tuba: one and three, okay. Write it down and after a while you'd learn these things, see.
Same with the string bass. And then I managed to do well enough in my music that when I
graduated from high school, that was a whole ‘nother trip (laughs).
Dave: Is your acoustic bass completely hand made?
Stan: It was a four stringer and I converted it to five strings with a low B string at twenty-nine
cycles. And this superstructure down here moves the tie-point of the strings 2.5 inches off
the lower end of the body, so the angle over the bridge isn't so acute. So you don't have as
much compressional pressure goin' on the face of the instrument, which is equivalent in a
loudspeaker to having a DC bias constantly going through the voice coil, you see. It's
pushing it away from its really happy, neutral place.
This bass was a four stringer that was broken. I rebuilt it as a five stringer and built this
wedge, bought a new fingerboard, put this wedge on here (between the fingerboard and the
neck). That was for the purpose of raising the fingerboard so I could have a taller bridge, so
you get more mechanical advantage. I couldn't buy a five-string tuning machine, so I had a
local fellow, he and I designed it and he built it. His name is Jerry Kirsten, and he does
machining, manufacturing, and instrument making. He did all this brass work. My idea was
to put these brass weights here to add mass to the top end because the vibrations of the
strings, especially the lower frequencies, tend to cause the neck of the instrument to whip
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about. By increasing the mass, it reduces that element in the instrument, which therefore
makes the sustain of the instrument a lot longer than it would be. Oftentimes the notes just
peter out. They just go dead, real fast.
Dave: I know you also have a great love of organs. How did that develop and when did that
all start?
Stan: By the time I'd gotten into high school, well, things happened when I was fourteen. For
instance, I went to Trinity Episcopal Church in Highland Park and we had an old, two-manual
Austin organ in that church, but we had a really excellent organist. His name was John
Henry McClay. He was head of the Choral Department at Northwestern University. He
commuted up to Highland Park to be our organist on Sunday. And he had recognized that I
had some kind of, maybe a little bit better than average either hearing or listening or playing
ability or musical ineptitude (laughs). However you care to say it. Anyway, he offered me
free organ lessons and I went home and asked my mom and dad about it. My dad just blew
up, and I didn't take any lessons from John Henry McClay. I was just impressed with that
pipe organ. When you wanted real woof, it was there. This organ had stopped diapasons:
square, wooden pipes with a tight, but movable (for tuning) stopper, which produce a very,
very pure tone when not driven hard. Almost a pure sine wave. I was fascinated by how
these pipes, so effortlessly driven, with such little wind, could produce this marvelous woof.
At fourteen I grew very disenchanted with the Episcopalian Church, because I could make
no connection between what the minister was preaching and today's events or, to use
today's vernacular, it was not the "Church of What's Happening Now," you know (laughs). As
a teenager, I guess I was really looking for something that spoke to my needs more, and up
the street was the First Presbyterian Church of Highland Park, and my band director at
Highland Park High School, Harold Finch, was the Choir Director. His wife Doris was
organist, and one of the members of the church was William Kimball, the piano and organ
builder, and he had just given the church about a 105-rank instrument, with four thirty-two
foot pedal stops in it. And boy, I tell you, the voice of God spoke that morning (laughs), and I
tell you what—you talk about Woofer City, U.S.A. That thing'd really make a believer out of
you. The choir sat over there, the congregation's out here (gesturing), and the altar was up
there, and the organ was in the entire wall back behind the altar. Mind you, though, it was
probably fifty to seventy-five feet wide. It was big and it was spacious. When that thing
spoke, I mean, the whole place went up and down (laughs)! It was exciting beyond, I mean, I
don't know if I got any religion from that place, but I sure got some indelible impressions
about what power music could really have in your life. And boy, when they did stuff from
Bach's B Minor Mass, or Faure’s Requiem, oh, just stuff like that, it really, really got to me!
When I went to the Presbyterian Church, Dr. William Young, he'd talk about things, about
how your attitude affects you in school and life; things that I could actually relate to, and so
that was a great eye opening for me. Soon, Mr. Finch invited me to sing in the choir. Well,
the choir area in the Presbyterian church was huge It was in the shape of a huge "U." The
two sides of the "U" faced each other, and you could put about fifty voices per side. The
back of the "U" was where the big altar was, behind it was a porous screen, which is where
the Kimball organ lived. The church had a vocal quartet that came up from Chicago; I think
they were some folks from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Chorus, they were always very
good. And so when you took these soloists, and the choir, and the organ, and you put it all
together, that, other than being in the high school band and orchestra, was my first really fullhttp://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/ricker1.htm (6 of 29) [8/25/2002 2:51:18 PM]
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blown experience of being up there where the music's happening. And I tell you, I'll never
forget it.
Dave: At another very impressionable age, fourteen.
Stan: Yeah. Well, when you hear things like that, any damn age is impressionable. When
you hear something that good. I mean it'd be like the first time you ever drove your car over
140, or the first time you were ever in a space shuttle and it lifted off, you know, things like
that. No matter how old you are, there are certain things that make one hell of an impression
upon you because they're really so powerful. For me that was one of those things, so that's
partly where my love of pipe organs came from.
I remember Easter things so well. I used organ recordings to test my loudspeaker systems
because I had three fifteen-inch loudspeakers mounted in my closet door, a la infinite baffle,
and the only things that I could find that would really push the low end were 78 rpm
recordings on RCA, E. Power Biggs before he went with Columbia in the LP age. He was
originally with RCA, and there were some mighty powerful recordings that he made, mostly
on the four-manual Aeolian-Skinner Organ in Boston Symphony Hall. You could get 27 1/2cycle low As real well, and I could realize them in my room with cloth suspension
loudspeakers. I'd experimented with mass loading speaker cones and all that kinda stuff,
too. Oh yeah, it worked very well. That's the first loudspeaker of any seriousness that I ever
bought sitting over there, a 1948 Jensen H510 co-ax, and the JBL 075 tweeter came in
1956. It was in your face. It was everywhere. Obviously I got no high frequency response in
the closet at all, which was full of clothes and things like that. But, wow, you could sure find a
twenty-seven cycle low A quite easily. People don't believe that kind of low end exists on
78s, but it very definitely does.
Dave: Yeah, I heard phenomenal 78 reproduction recently. I was at Clark Johnsen's
Listening Studio in late November, and he played some 78s that really opened my ears. But
this speaker you were talking about is the one for which your mother sewed a special
surround.
Stan: Yeah, yeah. See, I had been reading all those little books that G.A. Briggs of
Wharfedale Wireless Works had written in England. He talked about loudspeakers with cloth
surrounds and things like this. I had been out working a couple of summers mowing grass at
fifty cents per yard. I mean, not per yard as in, thirty-six inches, but per yard as in, three
quarters of an acre per plot of one family housing! And you do that for fifty cents. Anyway, I
saved up my money. I had like a hundred-and-some-odd bucks, and I bought this Jensen
H510. It was Jensen's answer to the Altec 604 co-ax. And I was astounded to find that here
was a fifteen-inch loudspeaker, the cone resonance was seventy-two cycles, which was
exactly the same frequency as the D string on my bass. I mean, one string above that is G,
which is ninety-six. And then below the D is A, which is fifty-five, and E which is forty-one,
and this loudspeaker couldn't even reproduce those notes below its resonance. So, I
thought, well, what's to do but lower the resonance? So I separated the cardboard gasket
from the frame, but first I took a twelve-inch record and I laid it on this fifteen-inch
loudspeaker, and I found that after you got past the corrugations of the surround, that actual
cone of a fifteen-inch loudspeaker is twelve inches. Then I took a razor blade, centered the
record, and just cut all the way around it, then separated the gasket, used some of my
mom's fingernail polish to soften the glue, and got the rest of that surround out of there.
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Because in those days I don't even know if MEK had been invented. You couldn't go out and
buy the damn stuff, that's for sure.
Dave: And MEK is...
Stan: Methyl Ethyl Ketone. I don't know when it came into being but I'd never heard of it as a
kid, so all I had access to was my mother's fingernail polish remover. Which is quite stout
stuff, almost pure acetone. So, anyway, I was reading Mr. Briggs' dissertations on
loudspeakers and excursions and cloth surrounds and all this, so the first cloth surround I
made was just cut out of a bed sheet, fifteen inches outer diameter, eleven inches inside
diameter, which gave me half of an inch overlap onto the cone. I just glued it on there and as
long as you just had small excursions the performance was okay. But as soon as you got an
excursion where the surround ran out of cloth, ran out of compliance, it just stopped, stone
hard, and turned into the best third-harmonic generator I've ever heard (laughs). All the low
organ stuff began to sound like there was a huge sixteen-foot pedal reed attached to
everything when I turned it up loud. I realized what was happening and showed my mom
that it needed to be more resilient and not stop so hard, and she said, "If we cut the cloth on
a bias we can avoid that problem." She said, "You can't cut a continuous ring. We have to
cut separate pie-shaped pieces of cloth." So we used some scotch plaid and cut a bunch of
pieces, kinda pie-shaped, glued 'em around the outside edge of the frame and overlapped
them onto the cone, glued them to the cone, and then sewed all the overlapping edges
together. And that thing still exists, as you saw.
Dave: Yeah, I'm quite impressed that you still have that. It shows real parental support,
which is really, really important to developing a life-long love of a field.
Stan: Yeah, Mom supported me in a lot of things like that. I'm eternally grateful to her and
she's still very much with us. She lives in Zellwood, Florida, which is a little bit north of
Orlando. She loves to play golf. She was born in 1913, so that means she's about eightyfour. Her birthday is in July. Pretty smart old lady. But that concept of cuttin' the cloth on the
bias—she loved to make clothes and she made almost all her own clothes and she made
most of my sister's clothes as well. It was a way for her to be creative as well as to save
money during the war years and so forth. She continued with it for many years thereafter.
Dave: You had some really meaningful listening experiences during this time, too, for
instance, hearing Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony and Heifetz and Piatagorsky.
Stan: Yeah, Gregor Piatagorsky came to Highland Park High School and played for us in
those Community Concerts things. I was especially taken with one number he played. He
says he's gonna do this a la Andre Segovia, and he picked the cello up and set it across his
lap like a big guitar, and proceeded to play the most delightful old finger-picking pizzicato
Bach on it, you know.
Dave: That's phenomenal. That must have been a real joy to see.
Stan: Oh and to hear, yeah, yeah. And we had the Washington, D.C., Navy Band and the
Cleveland Symphony come to the high school and these concerts. I found out that if you
wanted to get some really good low end you went up in the balcony and sat all the way in
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the back. That's when I found out what a bass drum was all about. Those big suspended
drums. You've seen those bass hoops and the drums are suspended by calfskin thongs
because with a bass drum, when you hit the bass drum head, the two heads move in phase,
side to side, the air mass inside goes side to side with the heads. It is only contained by the
elasticity, tension, and mass of the heads. Now, in order for this to be a system in
equilibrium, when the heads and the air go one way, the shell has to go the other way.
That's why you always have this bass drum suspended from the hoop. As soon as you put
the bass drum on a stand or set it on the floor, you prohibit the shell from moving counter to
the air mass and the head, and you kill the whole sound of the instrument. It just totally
wipes it out. You'd be surprised how many percussionists don't understand this. A lot of
recording people don't understand it. Jack Renner and Bob Woods understood it real well
when we were doing some early Telarc stuff. I remember when we were first doing the
Cincinnati Symphony's 1812 Overture.
Dave: Ah, the famous cannon shots.
Stan: The famous, well, not only cannon shots, but it's got some hellacious bass drum
whacks in it, too. We were having trouble with the bass drummer in the orchestra. He
happened to be the percussion section crew chief. We'd get the drum tuned the way we
wanted it—it had to be in the back center of the hall, so when you hit on the back head and
the sound emanates from the forward head, it goes out and hits all three microphones in
phase, which means lateral modulation on the disk, which is what you want, not vertical.
We'd get it set up about right, go back to the recording booth and look at it on the
oscilloscope, and it would be all skewed. We'd go back out there and the guy woulda turned
the damn thing, you know. And finally Jack and I went out there and Jack said, "Listen,
dammit, we're payin' for this. You do it our way." And the percussionist said, "Well, we never
had to do this for Vanguard Records." And Jack and I both said, about the same voice,
"Well, that's probably why you never sold very many ****** records through them, did ya?"
(laughs). Ya know, you cannot fool Mother Nature. You have to do these things according to
the laws of physics!
Dave: So, what were your impressions of Reiner and Chicago? How old were you when you
first heard that?
Stan: Well, hell, I was at least a freshman in high school, so I had to have been fourteen.
Oh, I just thought that was, oh I mean, everyone was, "Oh, God, we're gonna go hear Fritz
Reiner. Oh man, is he good." I mean he was everything he was cracked up to be, plus tax. I
remember one of the things he played, Finlandia. All this stuff and oh, the cymbals and the
bass drum were so together and, you know, everybody else was doin' their thing really well,
but I'm watching the bass fiddle section. I think at that time the orchestra had either ten or
twelve basses, and almost all of 'em had low C extensions on 'em. I used to go around to all
these different bass sections and see how many of 'em had low C extensions, and almost all
of 'em did. If you look at the individual basses in an orchestra today, in fact, it's hard to get a
job with a standard four-string bass in a symphony any more. You have to have either a low
C extension or you have to have a fifth string, like that bass I have at home, ‘cause
otherwise there's just a lotta stuff written down there you can't get with the standard fourstring bass. You can't get your thirty-two cycle low C. You lose C, C sharp, D, and D sharp,
which is most commonly called E flat, which is the most glorious key ever invented. The
strings sound so good in E flat, and the woodwinds and the brass love it, too.
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Dave: You also paid a lot of visits to Allied Radio when you were in Illinois.
Stan: Yeah, yeah. Every Saturday for a number of years, from Highland Park I used to have
to ride the Chicago & Northwestern train down to Chicago to go visit the dentist, Dr. McKay.
He was attempting to put some corrective dentures on my crooked teeth, and as everybody
can see, he was a kindly man, but he wasn't very effective. So I'd ride the 8:10 train down to
Chicago and my appointment with Doc McKay wasn't until about ten o'clock. I mean this was
a Saturday, mind you. Who in their right mind wanted to go to work on Saturday, anyway?
He was gracious enough to come in. How my dad was able to talk him into doing this, I don't
know. I had hours to kill every Saturday, so as I would walk to my destination I went by 833
West Jackson Boulevard, and that's where Allied Radio was. They were in the back of a
shoe store at that time. That's where I first heard an Electrovoice Aristocrat corner horn
enclosure, licensed from Paul Klipsch. The first time I heard thirty-two cycles, low C, right out
there in the open (other than in my own room). I was real excited by all that. Also, that's the
first place I actually physically saw an Altec 604. So that had to have been around 1952 or
'53, because I was doing so poorly in Highland Park High School. After my junior year my
folks took me out of Highland Park High School and sent me to a boarding school in the
state of Maine called Hebron Academy. Of course, over in Israel they call it "Hebron" (short
e), and we hear about on the news all the time. But in Maine they call it Hebron (long e). And
one of the reasons they were happy to send me there was because Hebron had absolutely
no music culture at all, nothing whatsoever to do with music, and I knew I really had to get
my grades up. So I repeated my junior year. I went to Hebron junior and senior year (195354) but I promptly started a Hebron Pep Band (laughs).
Dave: I don't think that's what they had in mind.
Stan: That wasn't what they had in mind, but it worked out well because it was directed by
Mr. Philip Stackpole, who was my Algebra and Geometry instructor. Mr. Stackpole was a
marvelous pianist; the academy had a Steinway D and Phil knew well how to use it. He was
a music nut, and he was just looking for an excuse to do this band thing, so when someone
got enthusiastic about it, he went with it. And then there was a record club. I wound up being
president of the record club.
Dave: That sounds very dangerous.
Stan: Yes. Mom and Dad weren't too happy when they found out I was doing all this musical
shit, at a supposedly nonmusical secondary school. But anyway, I got my grades up to the
point where I was accepted at four universities, and then was faced with the dilemma that I
didn't really know what I wanted to study. All of the colleges sent representatives to the high
school campus, "Hope you'll consider goin' to our college," and so forth and so on. College
Career Days, or somethin' like that. So anyway, I just filled out a bunch of damn paperwork
and sent it in, and I got accepted to Purdue, the University of Colorado, Dartmouth, and
Eastman School of Music (laughs). And I didn't know what the hell I wanted to do. None of
this was on anything what you call a scholarship. It was one of those, "Yeah, I'll go to
school," and we'll accept your money. So, I knew already that Mom and Dad had really been
bitin' the bullet just to send me to Hebron. They were also sending my sister to the University
of Colorado at the same time, and I thought, "Oh God, if I go to one of these schools and
screw up, boy is Dad gonna be pissed." I remember that was my exact viewpoint, exact
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words on it. So I elected not to go to college, but to enlist in the Navy. Those were the years
where you had no choice after you got outta high school, you either went to college or you
were gonna be service bound. You know, go register for the draft and things like this.
Dave: Right. The draft is etched in my memory.
Stan: Yes, yes. It's been around quite a while. Frankly, I think it would do the country a
helluva lot a good if they instituted that again. We wouldn't have so many people with
absolutely no idea what they're gonna do, or no goals. Even if the goal is just to cover your
own ass for a few years.... In spite of that, there's still folks like me who haven't figured out
what we're gonna do when we grow up.
Dave: Yeah, well, most of those people are doing what they really love.
Stan the Barnacle-Encrusted Musician
Dave: Tell us about your experience in the Navy, Stan.
Stan: When I graduated from high school I auditioned for the Navy Music Program and was
accepted. So I went to the Navy Music School in Washington, D.C., and that was the first
time I ever had any really formal music education at all (1954-1955). I had very good musical
instructors. Almost all the instructors I had at the Navy Music School were Eastman
graduates. Really fine.
I remember being absolutely surprised at having an Army PFC, whose name was Richard
Kneiter. He was a graduate of Eastman School of Music, and boy did he know his theory. He
made it so vividly clear to me that I remember saying, "Now I understand why a G7 chord
goes to C (or sometimes A minor)!”. Because I had just learned that these things were so
(by ear), but didn't know anything about the voice leading or the mechanics of good writing,
which are guided by good hearing, what one expects to hear from one chord sequence to
the other, and what are the rules regarding that. So I was very excited to finally have all my
many scattered-around bits and pieces of music info finally put in a structured,
organizational context where I could really begin to understand it. It took me years to
understand that music really is a language. You learn music by imitation and it's only later
that you learn how to read it and write it. But you learn how to speak it first, and I was finally
getting to the point where I could read music and make harmonic sense out of it. For me that
was a great awakening.
My main duties in the Navy (1954-58) were to play tuba and string bass and bass drum in
marching bands. We didn't do much marching aboard ship, but when I was stationed in the
New York Navy Band, we played at least one parade up or down Fifth Avenue every week.
They were usually five-mile parades, so I got lots of practice in being involved with live, loud
music. Record players and loudspeakers sounded pretty dismal and lacking compared to the
real thing, and today they still do sound pretty second rate compared to the real thing.
Aboard the battleship New Jersey, I was in what's known as the Comm Sixth Fleet Band. I
was stationed on the French Riviera for a while, with a very good Navy band, and that was a
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good experience in and of itself. I was playing a lot of dance band stuff and concert band
and parades. I played bass drum on those parades, 'cause the tuba that I was issued was a
nice tuba for a Sousaphone, but the mouthpiece had some of the plating off of it. Under the
plating is brass and I got brass poisoning on my upper lip, so I couldn't play the tuba for
about my last fifteen months in the service. For dance band stuff I, of course, continued to
play my string bass. In the parades I played bass drum, and I really enjoyed it. Really, really
enjoyed it. There's a real art in playing one of those things, in tuning it right and damping the
heads right, so that when you hit it with a hard beater, you get a real smack, or a crack.
During my time aboard the New Jersey we did a midshipman cruise. We went to Annapolis
Roads and took the midshipmen, class of 1958, on what they call their junior-year cruise. I
was seeing a lot of interesting things what these midshipmen were doing. The radars and
the gunnery works, how you aim and train a gun, and how it was all done by very crude
computers. Seamanship and navigation I found very interesting, as well as enjoying doing
my music, which was my real job. I got interested enough in what those midshipmen were
doing that I applied for an appointment to the Naval Academy. So I went there as a
midshipman in the summer of 1956. That was the first part of my time at the Naval
Academy. Turned out though, I didn't really have my heart in it, 'cause I spent more time with
the Naval Academy Band listening to them practice when I should've been doin' my
homework. There was one class I just couldn't fathom. They called it Descriptive Geometry
or Mechanical Drawing, where they give you a picture of some square box that looks like a
cash register. It's got a whole bunch of stuff hidden inside, and you're supposed to draw it
from a side view and a top view and front view and show what's hidden inside, and so forth,
and I have, even to this day, not very good spatial perception. If I can't fiddle with it with my
hands and figure out how it works, I just don't understand it (laughs). If I didn't know what I
was drawing, I was just totally guessing. So I flunked out of the Naval Academy because of
my lack of abilities in that area (Feb. 1958), reverted back to enlisted status and finished my
enlistment (Aug. 1958) at the New York Navy Band (Brooklyn Navy Yard).
It was during that time, in 1957, that I first met Mr. Bert Whyte. The band was involved in
early stereo broadcasts with radio station WQXR in New York, when Bert Whyte was Chief
Engineer of WQXR. He recorded the band in stereo. I think he used two RCA 44s, but I'm
not sure. Two RCA ribbon mics, and recorded them on two synchronized PT-6
Magnecorders, which were mono machines. I don't know to this day how he kept the damn
things synchronized, but we had a giant playback session of this thing over in Queens, I
believe it was. It was a Chinese restaurant called the Dragonseed Restaurant, and it was the
Dragonseed Hi-Fi Club. We had in attendance Mr. Saul Marantz, and we had Rudy Bozak,
and the head of McIntosh (Mr. McIntosh, I presume). We were using two of the two-hundredwatt McIntosh amplifiers. We were using four of Rudy Bozak's Concert Grand loudspeaker
systems, two per side, and I think Marantz preamps, I don't know. There was a whole bunch
of famous people there, and the whole band was there, and our commander, Dr. Donald W.
Stauffer. He was our Band Director. He was working on his doctorate in music acoustics at
Columbia at the time we were doing this. It was quite the exciting thing to hear stereo
playback for the first time ever, in a large environment. This was a multi-hundred type
seating restaurant and what they'd done was, the restaurant wasn't open on Sundays, and
they cleared out all the tables and made space for us all to come in and listen.
So we had these double Rudy Bozak Concert Grands on each side and the band sat in
between. We enjoyed our first taste of stereo. It was quite impressive. The microphones they
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used were, well, they were okay. They were RCA 44s, ribbon mics. Pair of 'em standing on
the stage when we recorded. It was quite interesting. I enjoyed that. When they finally
broadcast this thing, that was before FM multiplex, and they had FM on one channel and AM
on the other channel. So the band barracks was pretty long. It was a typical long military
type barracks building, with a lotta windows. We raised all the windows and we tuned all the
FM radios to the FM side, which I guess was left channel, but I don't know that for sure. We
set them facing the parking lot and all the band went outside and stood in the parking lot and
we had channel A. So how'd we get channel B? Well, we got a bunch a cars with AM radios
and opened the doors and tuned them all to the AM WQXR and heard our first stereo
broadcast of ourselves. It was kinda cool!
Dave: That's great. So your love of cars mixed up with your love of audio goes way back.
Stan: Oh yeah, yeah. Have you ever experienced the thing about going into a drive-in
theater when nobody's there, and they've got twenty-five hundred of these little
loudspeakers standing up on their poles and somebody's playing some music on it good and
loud? Have you ever experienced that? It's really ethereal because you have all this multilayered delay because of the distance you are from each of these rows of loudspeakers. It's
really something. It's like you're in an aircraft hangar but there's no building around you. It's
really amazing and nobody can experience it now because there aren't any drive-in theaters
anymore.
I got out of the Navy and went to Ottawa University in Ottawa, Kansas for two years (Sept.
1958 - Aug. 1960) as a business major, of all things. That was a mistake.
Dave: Hopefully some of what you learned there will stand you in good stead in your new
business.
Stan: Well, what I learned is that there were people who really got their jollies from
balancing a ledger book (laughs), and I said to myself, "Self, there's got to be more to life
than getting your jollies balancing a ledger." I enjoyed music and I had done some teaching
while I was in the Navy. (This was between the time of leaving the Naval Academy and
reporting to Brooklyn.) I taught Chemistry to some folks while I was in the Navy; some
enlisted folks who were trying to pass the Naval Academy entrance exam. That part of the
test flunked more of them than anything else. I had done well in chemistry, so the Navy had
me teaching other people how to pass the exam. So when I went to Ottawa University, I
thought, "Well, man, I enjoy teaching and I enjoy music, so why don't I get out of this stupid
business major and go into music education?" So I did and I then transferred to the
University of Kansas in 1960 and graduated in the summer of '62 with a Bachelor of Music
Education degree. It's just been ongoing music and hi-fi and old cars since then.
Stan's First Honking-Big Turntable
Dave: When you were at the University of Kansas you made a pretty interesting turntable.
Stan: Well, I had started that project when I was at the Naval Academy, then put it on hold
for a while, and when I was at the Brooklyn Navy Yard Band I worked more on it. I really
didn't get it all together until I got out of the Navy and went to Ottawa University. It worked
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amazingly well. People would hear rumble and say, "Well, are you sure that wasn't just
rumble from your string motor?" Hell no, I'd just take the string off, ya know, and turn the
turntable by hand. Well, you could tell real easily, just take a 33 1/3 record on the turntable
and spin it up to about 78 or 90 rpm and you could hear hmmmmhmmmmhmmm. You could
hear all kinds of recorded low-end disturbances on the recording, you see. You knew it was
nothing except what was on that particular record. Every record you put on had a different
rumble signature. That's a real easy way of finding out what low frequency disturbances are
really on the record and what's related to the playback turntable. It doesn't work well with a
high-mass arm, of course, or a warped record, but if you have a flat record....
So I was pleasantly surprised when I found that because I thought that was really cool that I
could actually make a turntable that had less rumble than whatever equipment it was being
recorded on. Now, some lathes were obviously much better than others. But the records cut
on the old mono Scully lathes appeared to have the most random phase rumble, especially
vertical rumble. If you put the playback preamps in mono, combined left/right channel to
mono, then most of that stuff would go away, but as soon as you went stereo there was all
kinds of garbage. That's another reason why, if you're playing a mono record on a stereo
system, you should, in fact, have a mono switch. Otherwise there are a lot of random arm
resonances. You look at the oscilloscope and you see it real easily. Certain bass notes will
excite arm resonances that are more in one plane than another. It will depend entirely on the
frequency. Do you have a J-shaped arm, just straight with a hook on the end, or is it an Sshaped arm? They are going to vibrate differently in a lateral mode than they do in a vertical
mode because there are different moduli of stiffness in the two planes. And if it’s a straight
arm, it would have basically the same resonances, laterally as well as vertically, but we
almost don't have any of those purely straight arms. That Grace arm in there on the lathe is
fairly close to that. It's kinda like an SME, though—it's got a "J" down near the end.
Dave: Your turntable was made with a sixty-pound flywheel from a diesel engine. Tell our
readers about the string. You found an interesting way to handle that.
Stan: That's the string drive. The motor was a quarter horsepower EAD (Eastern Air
Devices) synchronous motor from an old external rim drive Rek-O-Kut 16-G2 transcription
turntable. It had a big fat phenolic drum on it to achieve the proper speed of this sixteen-inch
turntable, so it was pretty close to being the right diameter for driving this sixteen-inch
flywheel. I really only had to just cut a little beveled groove into this pulley to put the thing
right on speed. But you didn't want to pull the motor up very tight against the string.
Originally I had used ten-pound monofilament fishing line. The only way I could figure out
how to tie the ends was to literally tie a square knot. Of course, every time the knot passed
around the small end, the motor end, if you had it very tight you'd get a bump. Later on, I
learned how to hold the two ends over a flame and melt them together. 'Course, sixty
pounds was pretty good mass loading, so you didn't get too much of a bump. I could run the
string loose and I'd soak it in a mixture of alcohol that I had dissolved some bass fiddle rosin
shavings in. The alcohol would dissolve the rosin and then you could pull the string through
it and then let it dry. It would be just kind of tacky. Nowadays you can find this stuff in auto
parts stores in spray cans and it's called non-slip belt dressing. It’s for fan belts that slip, you
can just spray this stuff on and it's basically the same stuff. The smell will give it away. You
smell the alcohol and the rosin and all that stuff. But anyway, that was how I drove it, and the
motor sat on a mounting plate, a metal mounting plate that was maybe 5-by-7, and the
motor hung in rubber bushings on the plate, and I had the plate suspended on two stacks of
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bricks on the floor. It just turned out to be the right height. The only time I ever got feedback
out of this system was when I cranked the whole thing up loud enough that it got into the
floor because it was wooden. So I had the turntable in the corner where it would be most
firmly supported by the edge of the house and whatever, ya know. That was then and this is
now and now I have the use of a marvelous lathe to play records on (laughs.
Stan Teaches K-12 and Lives to Tell the Tale
Dave: So at Kansas University you started getting into what you really loved and have stuck
with it ever since. Your next step was teaching music in Kansas public schools, right?
Stan: Well, I like doing that very much. In the back of my mind is that famous quote from, I
don't know, Confucius, or Shakespeare, or somebody, "Those who can, do, and those who
can't, teach." And those who can't teach, teach teachers. Been there, done that. If I had
stuck with playing my bass after I got out of the Navy, I probably woulda just gone on and
been a pro bass player for the rest of my natural life, or unnatural life, as it may be (laughs),
but I had promised my mother especially that I would go in the Navy for four years only.
Then I would get out, go to college, and make something useful of myself. I really wanted to
stay in the Navy 'cause I really enjoyed the Navy music program. I enjoyed it very much. A
lot of the guys around that time, especially between 1956 and 1958, were getting out of the
Navy music program and signing on with the Air Force band program. The Air Force was
new at this time. In 1956 they first established the Air Force Band and the Air Force
Academy out in Colorado Springs, Colorado. They had to staff a fifty- or sixty-piece Air
Force band, so there were vacancies up the ying-yang at all the other Air Force bands
around the country and around the world. It was a really great time to change services and
become an Air Force band musician. Nowadays the Air Force Band has more visibility than
any other military band organization. They just keep it right on going.
Dave: So you didn't do that. You taught instrumental and vocal music in Kansas public
schools for six years (1962-68), I believe. Kindergarten through twelve, which sounds like a
real challenge.
Stan: Mmm hmmm. It's a real challenge to come from a high school concert band to go and
do first grade music. Actually, kindergarten music was the most interesting. I can remember
going to the kindergarten class after high school girls' triple trio. Triple trios were a fun thing
in the Midwest. You had a pretty high level of musicianship there. Then the bell would ring
and everybody would pack up and go, and I'd pack up my stuff, go down the hall to
kindergarten and go in there and I'd say, "Okay, let's sing 'My Jet Black Pony'." "Well, Mr.
Ricker, what page is that on?" I'd say, "Well, that's on page twenty-six and that's a two and a
six, and the two comes first." (laughs). You had to be ready, just like that, shift gears and
work on the level the kids were at so that you could help 'em go farther. But you had to go to
where they were in order to bring 'em along. You can't stand up and say, "Well, you know, if
you don't know what a twenty-six is, come on, kid, get outta my class." (laughs). You just
can't do that, because it isn't fair to the kids. You have to get to where their learning level is,
their intelligence level.
So, I could remember enough of these youngster tunes on the piano, just enough so that I
could play accompaniment, boom-chicka-boom-chick, boom-chicka-boom-chick. Just
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enough, couldn't play any melody, just play the chords. It was like strumming a guitar except
I was strumming a piano, you see. And we had a fine time singing these songs and whatnot.
The kids always seemed to get a lot out of it.
I can remember teaching beginning band. Beginning bands usually start in the fifth grade. I
remember when I was teaching in Hope, Kansas, which is just fifteen miles south of where
Chad Kassem has his Acoustic Sounds in Salina. So I remember I had one young lady,
Kayla Gantenbein. Kayla wanted to play the alto sax, and she eventually became extremely
good at it. But in the beginning she sounded like an unmuffled chain saw, and her dad would
not let her practice in the house. Even in the dead of winter she had to go out in the barn to
practice. I felt so very sorry for her, yet I was amazed at the level of determination of all
these Kansas kids. This was a small farming community. Basically, they were saying, "By
God, I want to do this, no matter what it takes." And I thought that was neat. Those students
taught me a lot about perseverance.
Dave: Yeah, it's great to be in a classroom full of people who want to be there.
Stan: Oh, they wanted to be there. They really dug it, and they'd say, "Oh, man, what're we
gonna do today?" That was the excitement of teaching.
Dave: That's a wonderful feeling. I've done my share of teaching and I've usually been
fortunate enough to be teaching people who really wanted to be there and usually were
paying to be there.
Stan: Yeah, yeah, that's a double duty.
Dave: Yeah, that's awfully enjoyable when you can find students like that.
Stan: These kids would go home and just practice their brains out. It was every day. We had
band every day. We had beginning band every day. We had intermediate band every day,
and we had high school band every day. They were fifty-five-minute classes, so you could
get a lot done. So I really enjoyed teaching very much. But all the time I was playing bass
fiddle in a band out of Emporia, Kansas, called "The Counts." The no-accounts and the
charge accounts, whatever (laughs). It was led by a nice gentleman, Bob Lenigan. Anyway,
that was when I could play my bass fiddle, play a gig every weekend, make forty bucks,
which would buy all my lunch and all my gas money and all my expenses on the car. So for
years and years I never had to take any of that kind of expense out of my paycheck, so to
speak.
So I enjoyed teaching a whole lot but I wanted to do more with my life. I was perfectly willing
to do more with my life just through teaching, but then I thought, "I need to expand my
horizons past the small towns of Kansas," even though it was as great an experience for me,
I'm sure, as it was for the kids. I mean we won superior ratings at state music contests. You
had to have prepared music, sight-reading and marching band. The only way to do marching
band accurately was to memorize everything. You have to really internalize the music you're
playing. You have to know it by heart, thoroughly, so that you don't have to worry about
reading notes, you're just playin' your horn, but you're paying attention to where you're
going. And you're using your peripheral vision to keep your ranks and files straight. You see
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these bands marching down the street and they've got these folders of music in front of 'em.
God bless 'em, but they're not gonna get anywhere because they're having to concentrate
too much. I mean they're focused right here, eight inches from their face, on that sheet of
music. How can they concentrate on what's going on around them? How can they stay
straight? It's not really possible to do it that well, at least in my opinion. But I wanted to do
more, and the pay in Kansas was abysmal. I took a job in Kansas City at an inner city junior
high (1966-68). I did one year there and that ended it because I didn't want to be that much
of a policeman. Gangs were not yet happening, just mucho civil disobedience between the
students and teachers.
The Experience of Live Music (Up Close and Personal)
Dave: Maybe you can tell our readers what you were saying earlier about reviewers
(laughs).
Stan: Well, I don't see how they can evaluate the sonics of something like a loudspeaker
system. Obviously, that's what you have to evaluate, ‘cause that's where the sound comes
out, other than headphones. But what I really don't know is how they can evaluate things to
such tiny detail if they don't have the experience of listening to live music, first hand and
often. Because you have to refresh your memory. It's easy to say, "Oh, man, this sounds just
like I was there." But when was the last time you were there? Live is so much better than
even the best microphone feed. That's what I was saying earlier about some people who
have not really experienced, for instance, a symphony orchestra, or a chorus, an organ, a
concert band, a string quartet, any of these things not only first hand, but up close and
intimate. Not back there in the hall somewhere but up where it's happening, where the music
making is occurring. You’ll find out how dynamic it is! I mean, it's so exciting that you could
put a rock up there it would come to life with a good orchestra. Music making like that is an
exciting event. I mean, I'm assuming we're talking about good music making, which doesn’t
mean "good music vs. rock 'n roll." I mean the goodness as in the level of expertise of
interpretation and performance.
Dave: I've heard times when a full choir lets loose that things kind of sound aharmonic or
distorted in real life. You want to know that it can sound that way and not confuse that with
system distortion.
Stan: Yes it does. And it comes out and sounds rough. You get all these high-level voices,
high level in strength of output. Stand in front of something like the Los Angeles Master
Chorale or the Robert Shaw Chorale and you get all kinds of intermodulation noise in your
ears and say, "Man, isn't this music great?" But if you listen and pay attention to what you're
hearing, you can hear a lot of these “beat frequency” things going on that are just, wow,
they're just random, sometimes they add up to tremendously powerful stuff. Peaks. You
know, the peak-to-average ratio in some kinds of music is higher than others. Choral music
doesn't have a real wide peak-to-average ratio. It is, by its nature, bandwidth limited, but
within that bandwidth it's very intense, whereas with a symphony orchestra, a ten-octave
pipe organ, or a well-adjusted concert band, you've got quite a bit more bandwidth to deal
with.
Dave: As a conductor and a musician you've been right up there, close up, in your face.
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Stan: Yeah, and it's really exciting to be there. I've always had this great distaste, this kind
of gut wrenching, when people talk about "concert hall realism." I say, "Who the hell wants to
be in the concert hall? I want to be on the stage where the music's happening." I mean this
was happening to me in fifth and sixth grades and things like that, man. I want to be up there
where it's goin' on. How do you do that? What's happening? How do you make this thing
work? Why do up bows sound different from down bows on the strings? We get into the
absolute polarity of the sound of instruments.
Dave: You were saying that this experience is what makes you so good at mastering.
Stan: Maybe it's not. What makes me think I'm good? Or what fakes out others?
Dave: But that's inconsistent with the title of this article (laughs).
Stan: I don't see how, I know a lot of people have done it, but I do not, for the life of me,
understand how a recording engineer can produce a really top flight recording if he doesn't
have some really first hand experience about music LIVE, in your face, so to speak. What is
good balance between bass, midrange, and treble, which covers a large area? For instance,
a concert band has a very weird energy distribution. A concert band, no matter how good,
doesn't have much low end. It doesn't even have much tenor or baritone. The octave above
the basses, octave and a half. And it's got a lot of energy clustered around trombone,
trumpets, and clarinets. It's all very much clustered around the central part of a piano
keyboard. (Frequency and loudness)
Now if the bass drum is tuned intelligently, it has to be tuned lower than the lowest note of
whatever tubas and string basses you may have, so that it doesn't muddy the bass line.
That's really important. In speaker systems you wouldn't have a subwoofer whose frequency
response at the top end was crowding over an octave into what the low end of your main
array was doing. Your subwoofer better stay in the sub-basement, see. Each instrument has
its own well-defined bandwidth. As soon as you start crossing these things up, that's the art
of orchestration. That's the difference between really intelligent composing and
orchestration. Composers are a whole different breed from orchestrators. For instance, take
Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. I mean, Mussorgsky composed it for piano, and a lot
of people don't realize that it's damn near impossible to play. The work really didn't come
into its forte until Ravel orchestrated the damn thing, and all the tonal colors of the orchestra
made it really what it is today.
Dave: Definitely. So, one thing that makes you so good at what you do is your background
as a musician and conductor. And another is obviously that you absolutely love what you're
doing.
Stan: Oh, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I really dig it!
Dave: Stan, I certainly share your love of low frequencies. During the night before Easter
this year, I was at Saint Eustache in Paris listening to their organ, which is quite amazing.
That was a really incredible experience.
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Stan: There are so many neat instruments in France and I really dig some of the Pierre
Cochereau or Marcel Dupree recordings at the organ of Notre Dame Cathedral. One of the
things that's characteristic of those instruments, and part of the tonality, is the fact that the
damn things are out of tune. They're difficult to get to, hard to tune, and expensive to
service. So oftentimes, you listen to some of the recordings of those instruments and you'll
notice the basses go plummrouw like a whole squadron of B29s whose props aren't quite
synchronized (laughs). You know that sound. Well, that's a real characteristic sound of some
of those instruments, and it's because they've drifted out of tune, so if it's a low D, it's close
enough to D. It hasn't gone to D flat. It hasn't crept up to E flat yet, so we've got D kinda-flatsharp, and that's a really neat sound on the pedal. Frankly, I love it. I love it more than when
all the basses are thoroughly in tune. But, believe it or not, if we have a concert band up at
the college and we've got three tubas, or in the orchestra, if I've got three string basses, they
will acoustically couple together, just like loudspeaker systems will. They will couple together
to produce an in-tune bass, and you have to work at getting them out of tune. You have to
be quite out of tune before the phase-lock loop breaks. With the pipe organs (French or
otherwise), the random large linear dimensions, usually in excess of many meters, between
different families of pipes, one of each producing the same frequency, just about guarantees
that these pipes won’t couple.
You can take three tubas and seat them together with the bells quite close together, and
somebody plays a G, and the other two guys will have an awful time playing anything other
than the same G (laughs). There's a lot of acoustic coupling between instruments. A lot of
people don't realize it's happening, and it's part of what happens in the excitement,
especially in live performances, with amateur orchestras where people get really excited
during the performance. Everybody, somehow or another, gets the message that the total
was more than the sum of its parts, and where did this come from? What's going on here?
And there's this elevated excitement that comes up and the instruments couple together and
suddenly, "Wow, we're a really working unit." "Yeah, man, this is what happens when you've
got a working unit. It's fun, isn't it?"
Dave: When you're playing that must be exciting, and when you're conducting that must be
overwhelming.
Stan: It is. And the thing about conducting, I love conducting. And I love playing, too. When
Decca Records recorded Star Wars with Zubin Mehta and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, I
was invited by the Decca recording team to go there and participate in that recording
session. I had the good pleasure and privilege of meeting Zubin Mehta and of meeting John
Williams, the composer of the Star Wars music. And it turns out that we're all the same age,
within just a couple months of one another. I asked Zubin, 'cause he's a bass player, did he
ever miss playing bass, and he said, "Well, once you've played the big instrument (by which,
of course, he meant directing the whole shebang), you really don't like to go back to the
section anymore." (laughs). I found that to be true.
Dave: But you're still doing both.
Stan: I still do both, but I do mostly playing. Yeah, we've had a situation up at college where
the staff got together and said they wanted their people who are teaching, even part time
instructors, to have Master's degrees. The administration up there was trying to grandfather
me in and you had to do three semesters consecutively to be grandfathered in. And I'd done
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two semesters and took a break, two semesters and took a break, and two semesters and
took a break. So I didn't have three consecutive semesters, so they couldn't do it, but
occasionally the band director or the orchestra director, when they're sick or out of town or
whatever, call me up, "Would you mind conducting a rehearsal?" Hell no, I'd love to do it!
Dave: Which college is this?
Stan: Oh, it's Cerro Coso Community College, here in Ridgecrest.
Dave: You like Dixieland and Big Band and all other kinds of music.
Stan: Yeah, we have a Dixieland band here in town. We also have a big band, a 21-piece
jazz/dance band called BBX (Big Band Xpress). The Dixieland band has been around for a
quite a number of years, about forty years, and the big band's been around, we just
celebrated our tenth year. This was a direct outgrowth of theChange of Command band that
I had over at the Navy base. Everything's downsized so much now that we can't do that
anymore, but we used to do it. I had a roster of sixty-three people in that band, totally
volunteer, and a lot of us wanted to keep it going, so what'd we do? We branched into the
Big Band, and we branched out into a concert band, which is now the Cerro Coso
Community College Band. We got it included into the curriculum!
Dave: And you play in both of those?
Stan: Oh, yeah.
Dave: Your conducting experience allows you to hear the ensemble balance and the timbral
balance of the instruments, which is so important in mastering.
Stan: Consider the sound of a trumpet. There are times in orchestral music, especially like
opera, when you'll get an instruction to have a trumpet played off stage somewhere. And this
is for a very particular reason. I mean, the trumpet player could say, "Well, geez, I don't
wanna pick up my horn and my music and go back there. You know, how the hell am I
gonna see ya, ya know, peek through a crack in the back curtain?" And, "I'll just play soft."
Well, no, that isn't the point, because when you play softly, you alter the ratio of the
fundamental to the harmonics. This is what mutes do on strings, and this is what wind
pressure does and mutes do to brass instruments. So it's not the same just to say, "Okay,
John, just play soft." No, that's not the point. Go back stage. Go behind three curtains and
blow your ass off! That's what we want. We want to hear you signaling, "DaDa Dat DaDa,"
from far away. Like, "Hey man, you're off, way up there, you're the sentry, and you're blowin'
us a signal, and God, the enemy's comin'," you know, but it's from far away. The harmonicsto-fundamental all sound different.
This is what I appreciate about that record I was playing for you when we first came into the
cutting room, that Opus 3, of that jazz band. There's a trumpet player standing right in front,
with his music, he's not playing hard, he's just mezzo forte. In music that means, "Hey man,
just play. Just enjoy. Just play. Let it swing." And he's got a good balance between the
fundamental of the instrument and the harmonics, and the recording engineer's done a
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marvelous job of getting that balance, and not only getting it, but getting it to the final
product, which in this case was the CD. Even though it went through convolutions of being
an analog and then being a CD and so forth.
Dave: We're looking at the Opus 3, Test Record 4...
Stan: ... Jan-Eric Persson, Producer and Recording Engineer. I have just discovered his
recording technique, and his is a personification of how I hear my music. I mean, from the
same perspective. I stand here, we've got this equilateral triangle with these loudspeaker
systems, and that whole damn band is spread right out from wall to wall, and you can tell
where everybody is. You can close your eyes and you can see 'em. I find that very exciting
to be able to pull off, on a recording.
Stan Starts Down the Slippery Slope to Becoming a Mastering Maven
Stan: At the same time I was looking for other opportunities and I ran into Gerald Riegle at
radio station KXTR. It was in Independence, Missouri. I used to keep my FM tuner on all
night on KXTR, and when it came on at six o'clock in the morning it'd wake me up. One time
the station came on in the middle of the night and, believe it or not, it was going from stereo
to mono and stereo and back and forth. They had some stereo that was out of phase and so
I called up the radio station and asked what's going on. I got hold of the chief engineer at the
radio station. His name was Gerald Riegle. He asked me what I was hearing, what was I
listening on, and so forth. I told him, and we talked. He said, "Well, you might be just the
person I've been looking for quite a while." And I said, "Why's that?" He said, "Well, I have
this Century Recording franchise in Independence, Missouri. And I know all this technical
stuff, but I couldn't tell an oboe from a bass drum if either one or both of 'em hit me over the
head." (laughs). I said, "Yes, I've been involved in music, more or less, most of my life."
So I started working for Gerry full time and I stopped teaching. It was from there that I did my
own Century Records franchise in Lawrence, Kansas (1968-69). Somewhere around here I
still have a little clipboard that says, "Century Records of Kansas, 1322 Brook Street,
Lawrence. Call Stan Ricker for a good time." or something like that (laughs). So Century
Records and Gerald Riegle soon outfitted me with a 354-2 Ampex stereo recorder,
theoretically called “portable.” Like the Navy, anything they put handles on is, by definition,
portable. We'd just bolt handles on this house, you know, and call it portable. Anyway, it was
heavy, heavy, heavy. I had two MX10 tube mixers and a mix of M251s, U47s, and U67s.
They made nice sound, did real nice work. Gerry Riegle also had some of the original RFpowered Sennheiser mics, I think they're MKH404s or 405s, one set that were omni and a
set that were cardioid. I sure enjoyed the omni pair.
They had smaller diaphragms than the Neumanns, which have large diaphragms. Gerry was
in charge of recording the five-manual Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ that was located in a
building called the Auditorium. It's the world headquarters of the Reorganized Church of
Latter Day Saints. You have LDS, which are Mormons, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day
Saints. Then there is a part that broke off called the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter Day Saints, and the reorganized home is in Independence, Missouri, in a large ovalshaped building, seats 3000 or 3500, had this 109-rank Aeolian-Skinner organ at one end of
it. So Gerry put me in charge of recording this thing, which was, "Yeah, whoopee!" (laughs).
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There's a picture of it in the house. Let me get it, I'll bring it out. It's just hanging on the wall.
The interesting thing was that the church had a lot of acoustical work done by (name deleted
through fear of legal eagles), everybody knows of them, right?
Dave: My best friend in high school used to work for them.
Stan: Yeah, well, they were as famous for screwing things up as they were for making good
things. They were famous for putting these large wire-lath-and-plaster acoustical clouds in
places. In this building, I mean, there are thirty-two-foot pipes. So it gives you an idea of the
size. There's the chairs (pointing at the picture), so it gives you an idea of the size of the
instrument. This is the choir seating. The choir couldn't hear themselves because the organ
blew them away. So (deleted) came and hung seven of these concrete clouds over the choir
so they could hear one another, and it did help. They were hung by a bunch of cables, and
you could walk around up there on top of the clouds, so we hung microphones down. I soon
found that of all the Neumann mics, I liked the KM56 the best. It had a 5/8" diaphragm, a
nickel diaphragm. It was real clean and clear on the top end, you could really hear the
articulation, the chiff of the pipe, each pipe when it first speaks. You didn't hear that with the
likes of the U67s and things like that. The U67 is designed as an announcer's mic, to be
used about one foot away from the talker, so they're being misused when they're used as
distance mics. They have no top end to speak of in that application.
So I worked with Gerry Riegle recording that instrument for more than a year. The organist,
his name was John Obetz, and I believe he's still there. I think this group of folks, this RLDS
gang, I think they have built a new building. And they put in a new Casavant organ, which I
didn't know about until I heard a broadcast on NPR called "Pipe Dreams." I heard an
interview with John Obetz, and he was demo-ing some of the new voices on the new
Casavant organ and I thought, I've gotta go see him and see if I couldn't make a recording of
him. I don't know if he's done a recording for anybody yet, but I'd have to think he has.
Anyway, that was quite a fantastic instrument to work with, and I really enjoyed it. What was
interesting was the low-frequency pipes here (pointing to the 32-foot pipes in the photo). If
you're standing here, you're approximately half way between this end and that end, and
there's some real interesting phasing anomalies that go on between either if you're standing
half way along the length of an open pipe. They speak like this, you see. The compression
and rarefaction happens mostly in the middle, so you've got output. In other words, it's like
two woofers in phase. Both go out positive and they both come in negative. So you get some
really good acoustic humps right there in the middle.
Dave: You're standing right at a node, but this thing looks like it could blow the choir right
through the back wall of the auditorium if you really let loose.
Stan: Well, at the other end of the auditorium, on the second level, up here (pointing to
photo), this large wall goes all the way around. At the back it was cut out, and there was
another, smaller organ console back there, with some ranks of what they call trumpet en
chamade, otherwise known as state trumpets. They're long pipes that look like the kind of
trumpets that the guy plays at the racetrack, which is just an unwound bugle. But these state
trumpets are very bright and piercing, and they work on a very high wind pressure. When we
were doing recordings we never could use that part of the organ because the wind supply for
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it was so noisy. So I went back there with Gerry one day and we opened the door and
walked into the wind supply room. There was this big turbine on the floor and the output of
the turbine just went up; see you're in a small room. Here's the turbine sitting on the floor,
and sitting above this is a ceiling, which is the floor of the room above, and that's where the
wind chests are for the state trumpets. So what would happen is all the noise from the
turbine would go right up there into the wind chest and out into the auditorium. You'd hear
thisWheeee, ya know, just like some turbine jet engines. You'd hear this high-pitched
squealing and it was really terrible.
And I said, "Well, have you contacted the Aeolian-Skinner guy, find out what they'd charge
to build a baffle box to cut out that noise?" And he said, "Yeah, we had them out here last
year and they wanted something like $9000 to build a baffle box." I said, "I think it can be
done cheaper than that." He said, "For how much?" I said, "Maybe about a hundred bucks."
(laughs). He was a very, very proper fellow, Gerry Riegle, he never cursed, but as close as
he ever got to cursing was then and he said something to the polite effect of, "You gotta be
shittin'’ me!” He just couldn't believe it. "How would you do this?” I mean, his eyes were as
big as saucers. I said, “Well, okay, we take the output from this turbine, and what we're
gonna do is have it go up into a box about yay so big by yay so big (hand gesturing), and
then we’ll cut some two-inch holes in this box and then we're gonna go to the auto parts
store and buy nine Walker glass-pack mufflers. So we've got three holes by three holes and
we have these nine mufflers and we're gonna put 'em in there and then we'll build another
collection box at the other end for the muffler output and then the wind can go on up into the
wind chest.”
Anyway, we did it and got something like a 38dB reduction of the high frequency noise
coming out the other end. And it didn't impede the air flow at all, ‘cause they were straight
through, just glass-pack mufflers in parallel. Somewhere around here I have a picture of that,
except I think we wound up using six mufflers instead of nine. They were very happy with it.
That's one of my first experiences in the actual application of what the military now calls offthe-shelf technology. And that's exactly what that is. I love to solve problems by crossmultiplying technologies that already exist. You see, you don't have to go out and invent
something. There's a lot of stuff that’s already been invented, but it's finding new uses for
things that already exist that to me is the great challenge.
Dave: That's yet another example of cross-fertilization between love of automobiles, love of
music, and sound effect. I'm surprised there's not a Recaro seat hooked up to your lathe
(laughs).
Stan: That was an interesting time in my life, working in that RLDS auditorium. They had a
whole recording department because they sent tapes around the world for radio broadcasts.
They were simply called "Music and the Spoken Word." I learned about making tape
duplications. I also learned a lot from Gerry about the care and feeding of analog tape
recorders. I learned that by making tape duplications backwards, they came out cleaner
because of the improvement in recorded transient response. When you strike a cymbal or
something like that, it's easier to build it up and then cut it off than it is to start from max and
come down. So we duplicated all our tapes at one-to-one speed backwards, on Ampex AG350s. And they came out very well, indeed. It turns out later that quality-oriented people in
the know did this.
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Dave: I'm surprised you didn't do the Beatles box backward (both laugh).
Stan: Something I've always wanted to do is take something like Ravel's Bolero, which
starts so quietly and then just builds into this orchestral orgasm at the end, I've always
wanted to do an inside-out twelve-inch 45 rpm of that. As the dynamics increase, so does
the scanning velocity, so that by the time you got to the end you were scanning it about forty
inches a second. You could deal with all these crashing frequencies and dynamics and, you
know, all the stuff that happens. That's the typically perfect example of a record to do an
inside-out recording on. Now I've gotta figure out some way to run this lathe backwards. The
interesting thing is that it would theoretically be possible on this lathe because the
Compudisk motor is a servo motor that drives the feed screw. And it's a Gilmer belt, which is
what we use in automobiles for timing belts, where it's got to be belt drive but you can't have
any slippage between rotating parts. It's a toothed belt, so the motor that drives the feed
screw is coupled to the feed screw by a belt and a little gear on the motor and a large
cogwheel on the center line of the feed screw. If I can figure a way of twisting the belt half a
twist I could, in fact, run this thing backwards. Now (laughs) what are audiophiles gonna
say?
Dave: A standard that records at two-thirds speed, half speed, minus half speed, minus two
thirds speed, the complete spectrum.
Stan: Yeah, start from the inside out. That's a challenge.
A Light Bulb Beams Brightly in Stan's Head
Dave: So at some point right here in your life you came to join the Audio Engineering
Society.
Stan: Well, I was still working with Gerry Riegle in 1967, and he said, "Hey, there's an AES
convention in New York. I'm goin', do you wanna go?" And I said, "Yeah, yeah. I'd love to." I
had long ago reached the point in my life where if it (any record) was mastered by George
Piros, I bought it. I didn't care what the music was, I just bought it, 'cause George did the
best sounding stuff I'd heard. And of course, if it said "recorded by C. Robert Fine and
mastered by George Piros" that was two reasons to buy it. Yeah, I wanted to go, and
besides, Gerry had told me, "Yeah, they're gonna have some computerized lathes there." I
said to myself, "What's to computerize about a lathe?" I didn't know. I remember going to the
Gotham booth. Of course, Gotham was the importer of the Neumann lathe and all the
Neumann gear like the VMS66, which this lathe is (at Stan Ricker Mastering). The whole
system was something like $227,000, and that was in 1967. It was one expensive Mother J,
I kid you not. Only the rich and famous could afford such a thing. Anyway, I saw one of those
things and salivated. And yes, I had to go meet George and find his lathe, which was on the
top floor of the North American Hotel. That was where Bob Fine had his studios. Big old
ballrooms were his recording rooms. He did things for Tempo Records, like Erbie Green and
Twenty-One Trombones. He did all the Command Records recordings there (other than the
on-location jobs like the Brahms symphonies with William Steinberg and the Pittsburgh
Symphony Orchestra). All that stuff was done in these big, spacious recording rooms. You
just walked in and talked and they just had great sound. “This is a great room, let's do
something in it.” Marble pillars around here and there. Then when I met George I spent two
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days hanging out at his mastering room, just soakin' up everything I could get. What he used
for monitors, and people will laugh nowadays, but I still have a pair of these out here in a
box, a pair of Altec 604C coaxials.
Dave: I know people who would not laugh at that.
Stan: I learned my mastering with those things. I never had something that good when I was
actually doing live recording. But when I got into mastering, most everybody had 604s.
George had a pair of 604s sitting on top of a pair of Rudy Bozak Concert Grands for the
bottom, that's where he got the bottom half to listen to, you see. It made quite a satisfactory
playback system. It didn't surprise me at all. He said, "You probably think this is quite a
kludge?" I said, "Not at all. Bottom line is that it sounds great." A lot of people tend to forget,
or maybe some of today's audiophiles don't even know, that virtually all this stuff was used
for the classic RCA Red Seals, the Mercury Living Presence, they were all monitored on
these Altec 604s. Almost without exception it was the standard gizmo to listen to. I mean, it
was an efficient loudspeaker, it had a gross distortion that everybody was totally used to and
just kinda tuned out, and you had to drive it hard over 10K. In order to make it talk much
over 10K, you just had to really know there was something there on the tape because it
wasn't gonna manufacture any false tizzy top end at all.
Dave: You want standardization among those monitors, because as recording engineers go
from to location to location, if they're using the monitors they're accustomed to, and their
ears know how to compensate for the deficiencies of those monitors, then everything's okay.
But if every studio is using something different, then it's trouble.
Stan: If you have a migrating engineer, he's just bound to be in trouble over things like that
unless, as smart engineers do, and as we do at CES, we have records we take around from
place to place because we know what they sound like. Having listened to them on a lot of
systems over the years, you get a fairly good hang of what's really on the record or CD, or
whatever. But the 604s, in their standard gray hammertone utility enclosures, were just
everywhere, and most of the time they were driven by two amplifiers, often Altec tube
amplifiers. The guys wanting the really good- sounding stuff, they used the sixty-watt
McIntosh tube amplifiers. That made a really good combination with the Altec. The Altec was
a 16-ohm system. It's got a three-inch voice coil (woofer), and it can't take a lot of power
because the voice coil and voice coil former are old technology, they're paper. You can't
drive 'em very hard or you're gonna have a fire. They're hellaciously efficient, and the
Westrex cutterhead came from that same concept, in that it has a very, very efficient highconversion efficiency. It's got big magnets on it. I mean, the magnets on a Westrex
cutterhead would do justice to a good ten- or twelve-inch woofer, to say nothing of a highpowered tweeter. So the tube amplifiers that were in use then, the 70-watt tube amplifiers,
were quite good enough for those Westrex cutterheads. But you can't take a 70- or 100-watt
tube amplifier and drive a low efficiency Neumann cutterhead and get satisfactory results. It
just must be solid state to get the current up and get the damping, the low frequency
damping that's so important to today's accurate cutting.
Dave: So Stan, here's the big question. When did the light turn on for you? When did you
decide to become a mastering engineer?
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Stan: Well, I'd always loved it, loved seeing pictures of what George was doing with his
specially modified (every good hi-fi piece of gear was “Specially Modified”) Scully Lathe and
then meeting him and seeing that first Neumann computerized lathe, just drooling. Oh God, I
thought, I'd love to have one of those things. But when it really hit me was when I went to
work with my own franchise in Lawrence, Kansas, the Century franchise. I used to go out
and make what I think were pretty damn good basically amateur tapes of amateur bands,
and I was using the three-mic technique, three omnis in the same plane, same height. And
boy, when we'd have tape playbacks, they'd sound great, but when you got the disk back
they sounded just horrible. I never really tied the two together until I was dealing especially
with a recording of this organ (pointing to the RLDS organ) here. And it had sounded so
good on tape and the test pressing I got back from Keysor-Century was just phenomenally,
for lack of a better word, ugly, or not satisfactory.
The cutter systems at Keysor-Century were Neumann lathes, but they used the Westrex
cutterheads with fixed depth. Therefore, they used a low-frequency combining network,
usually referred to in the industry as a crossover, almost permanently set around, well, the
lowest I ever saw almost anybody set it was 250 cycles, which is middle C on the keyboard.
Most of the time it was set at 500 cycles, so that there was very little vertical modulation in
the disk. The vertical modulation is that part of the signal that's responsible for stereo, being
phase and amplitude difference between the inboard groove wall and the outboard groove
wall, which are, respectively the left channel and the right channel. So I got especially
frustrated on this recording, and I called up George Piros and talked to him and he said,
"Hey, send me the tape. I'll cut your disk." So I did and he did, and, of course, I was just
blown away, "My God, this sounds just like the real thing, ya know." I had a good turntable. I
had this belt drive or string drive kludge of a turntable that worked very well. And I had a
Paul Weathers FM Capacitance Mono cartridge and a Paul Weathers strain gauge, his first
strain gauge stereo cartridge. They worked phenomenally well and really tracked well. It was
really neat to be able to play this lacquer back and feel, "Hey man, this thing's just like the
tape." Which is what you want. You want the record to sound like the tape as much as
possible. So I sent it off to Century. They played it and they were duly amazed, but they
could not cut the tape that way because of their fixed depth thing. I think what they finally did
was to send the tape down to Capitol Records and get it cut there. Then we finally got a
decent recording of it.
Then I was in contact with Keysor-Century so much about the quality, or lack of quality, of
the recorded sound, between this compressed sound, which was musically unrewarding,
and warped records and records with ticks and pops in 'em, and things like this. I'd just call
up and bitch and moan about all this stuff, and they weren't unreceptive. They didn't say,
"Well, what the hell ya want for the price you're paying?" They never said that. They
sounded generally concerned. They just really didn't seem to know what to do. The upshot
of it was that they had a QC position open up because the lady who had been the QC
person had died. And Keysor had the government contract for Armed Forces Radio and
Television Service worldwide distribution of radio programs on phonograph records. They
had to be done every week, and you had to get these things recorded, pressed, put in
sleeves and shipped out. Every week they went to Korea and all these places. Remember
that movie with Robin Williams, what is it, Good Morning, Vietnam, or something? He's
playin' this damned A-farts stuff, that's what we used to call it. A F R T S. That's Armed
Forces Radio and Television Service records that we made at Keysor-Century. They needed
somebody in the QC supervisor slot to fulfill their contract obligations, so they offered me a
job at about four times the salary I was making recording with Gerry and trying to run my
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own little thingie in Lawrence, Kansas. And I said, "Oh yes, oh gee, how long do I have to
make up my mind, like can I make it up now? (laughs). When's the next bus, ya know?"
Dave: Plus you got to move from Kansas to California. This was in Saugus, right?
Stan: Yeah. I drove from Lawrence, Kansas, and I remember filling up at the gas station. I
had a '61 Chevy with a 348 stick overdrive. That's another car that had been automatic and I
converted it to stick overdrive and drove out to California in June or July of 1969, to go to
work for Keysor-Century Corporation. The job as QC there was really quite something. That
was a University of Hands-On Experience because you had a recording department, you
had electroplating, matrix stampers, mothers, all that kinda stuff. You had a print shop that
printed album covers, fabricated jackets. You had mastering and record processing, as they
call it. And just in record processing alone there's like fifty-four steps, any one of which can
just sabotage the whole process, sabotage the final product. So you have record pressing,
and the print shop as I mentioned, with printing labels and album slicks on four-color
Heidelberg presses, drying labels, making sure you get paper that's heavy enough that it
doesn't split when you're pressing the record. Ninety-pound chrome coat paper works real
well. I learned that from Doug Sax when we first pressed the first Lincoln Mayorga and
Distinguished Colleagues. I was head of QC when we did his very first direct-to-disk, other
than he had a limited production one with, I think, Jim Keltner, just doin' his drum set all by
himself.
So the Quality Control procedures for label paper and the four color presses for album
covers and back liners, fabricating jackets, shrink-wrapping... I was the one who came up
with the idea to not shrink-wrap those damn bags so tight because they pull up the corners
of the albums and warp the pressings when we later got into, not so much at Keysor, but
later on with other record companies, got into audiophile stuff. That's when I said "Let's loosebag it. Don't put it through the heat tunnel at all." Then you had record collating, how to
handle the records without contaminating them with your fingers when you put 'em in the
jackets. Now RTI and everybody uses white gloves, but then they didn't. They just got their
fingers on them and hell, when the roach coach came along and everybody went out and
bought a burrito, well, you got burritos on the records after the break, you see. So, just
workin' out things like that with people at a higher level of caring about what they did was
important.
Dave: I hope we're not scaring our readership too much with all this sordid detail (laughs).
Stan: They have a right to know!
Dave: That's true.
Stan: It's what they don't know that can hurt them. One of the most interesting things about
Keysor-Century is that they manufactured the vinyl. They would constantly experiment with
vinyl compounds. Remember when we had quadraphonic records? And we had SQ and QS
and CD 4 and God knows what else? See, all this was before I went to JVC. Keysor came
out with one vinyl that if they had been able to continue with it, they would have made a
killing. It was such high quality, glass-hard stuff. The model number was Q540, and it was
introduced right around the time when the quadraphonic stuff was goin' big. Man, it was
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hard. It was like playin' a metal mother back. Our audiophile friends ought to go to a record
pressing plant like RTI sometime and let Gary play a metal mother for 'em, because you
have zero groove deformation when you play this thing back, and you'd be surprised about
the high frequency response of phonograph records. It can really be quite good.
Dave: I don't know if I want to run my Benz Micro through a metal mother!
Stan: I remember one time at JVC, I attempted to play a metal mother with a Denon moving
magnet cartridge. Denon's got one helluva magnet inside and that ole' cartridge just went
Bammm, right down on this mother. I didn't realize that nickel was magnetic! Boy, I mean
that cartridge just stuck to that mother really vigorously.
Dave: Talk about a collapsed cantilever. If you sent that back to Denon for repair they must
have wondered what the hell happened to it.
Stan: Yeah. They probably thought, "Who ran over this?" Yeah, that was quite a surprise
indeed, because it stalled the motor, the turntable motor. Just locked the whole thing up.
Anyway, the experience at Keysor-Century was so very, very valuable. There were so many
things that were being done wrong, but in spite of that they could, from time to time, produce
a really good product. When everybody focused their minds on what they were doing, I
mean these pressings that we made for Doug on that Lincoln Mayorga and Distinguished
Colleagues, well, you know, they're highly sought after now.
Dave: So, did Doug cut that and then you plated and pressed it?
Stan: No, we didn't plate it and press it. We pressed it. It was plated at James G. Lee
Record Processing. Those were the days when you could chrome plate stampers and that
really gave a smooth surface to the record. Nowadays you can't chrome plate stuff anymore
because of the EPA. Chrome plating is a really dirty, messy operation. Nickel is very porous
and granular when you look at it under a microscope. It looks like you're looking at a bowl full
of Rice Chex or Wheat Chex, and the chrome plating would fill in a lot of that. Look at the
earliest of Doug's pressings that were made there with the chrome stampers. I got to where I
could look at a record and right off the bat know if it was pressed with a chrome stamper.
You could just tell, with a glass smooth, shiny black surface. The matrix facility at Keysor at
that time wasn't all that swift, although they got better as time went on.
Dave: I'm surprised you don't have some custom-made hubcaps for your Ranchero made
out of these things (laughs).
Stan: Well, I didn't have the (1959) Ranchero then.
Stan Ricker would like to express his most heartfelt thanks to George Cardas for
underwriting the mastering lathe and its electronics at Stan Ricker Mastering. George has
made it possible for Stan to continue doing the work that he loves. Serious inquiries about
this article can be sent to Stan Ricker via e-mail at s.ricker@iwvisp.com or via phone to Stan
Ricker Mastering at 760-375-3829. The interview continues in Part Two.
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The entire contents of this article are Copyright © 2000 by David L. Glackin, all rights
reserved. No parts of this article may be reproduced without the express written permission
of the author.
BACK TO TOP
InterviewScottFrankland
Mike (left) and Scott (right) at the 2001 VASAC
(Vacuum State-of-the-Art Conference)
An Interview with Scott Frankland
by Mike Pappas
Pappas: Scott, I pulled Positive Feedback Vol. 5, No. 5 and have read the V8 article about
five times now. I am trying to understand how a guy who NEVER liked how tube amps
sounded could be so knocked out by what I heard at VSAC (STUNNED is a better term).
The more I re-read the V8 treatise, the more I understand what makes it so special.
Frankland: Thanks, Mike. Just remember these key words: brown-base, black-plate, cleartop.
Pappas: Diamond-bottom?
Frankland: You catch on quick.
Pappas: Scott, I recall that your new EL34 V8 amp was running 80 watts using eight EL34s
in triode mode.
Frankland: I’m going to rate the amp at 75W nominal. Power at clipping is 125W. This is a
far cry from the 300W, 6550 V8.
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Pappas: Why the change to EL34s? There seems to be a huge power penalty.
Frankland: Because an EL34 amplifier has the potential for less distortion than a 6550 amp.
Pappas: What’s so special about the EL34?
Frankland: For one thing, the EL34 is a true pentode. The 6550 is a beam tube. They have
different conductance curves and therefore different distortion characteristics. RCA and
Philips carried on a sophisticated debate in the 30s over which technology was better.
Although the 6550 can produce more power than the EL34, the EL34 needs less driver
swing than a 6550 at any given power level. This means less distortion contributed by the
driver stage.
Pappas: So you’re going for lower distortion in this new amp?
Frankland: I’m going specifically for lower high-frequency distortion.
Pappas: What was your reference speaker for this project?
Frankland: I needed a speaker with natural yet revealing highs, so I chose the Avalon
Eidolons as my primary reference. As a further test, I used the Von Schweikert DB100s to
"magnify" the amp’s sound at the milliwatt level.
Pappas: As I recall, you used the Sound Labs as your reference when you designed the
6550 V8.
Frankland: Right. The 6550 V8 was designed to drive difficult loads, such as the big Sound
Labs. When played loud, the Sound Labs draw enormous current at high frequencies.
Pappas: How can we be sure that an amplifier is able to handle this kind of load?
Frankland: Besides bench testing, I use a track called "Fire and Water" from the Free album
of the same name. This pink Island LP is so smooth you can blast it at 110dB and it won’t
burn your ears. During "Fire and Water," a long fuzz-guitar sustain is played. This type of
sound contains high-frequency harmonics at high levels. The Sound Labs can easily draw
7A under these conditions.
Pappas: I take it the EL34 V8s have trouble driving the Sound Labs?
Frankland: They are on the margin. The saving grace of the EL34 V8 is its clipping
characteristic. There is no loop feedback in this amp. This results in a deceptively powerfulsounding amplifier.
Pappas: How does feedback affect clipping?
Frankland: The more feedback we use, the harder the clipping. The basic rule with a
feedback amp is that you never want to run out of power.
Pappas: Is that why you decided to eliminate feedback from your amp?
Frankland: Soft clipping provides a small amount of headroom, nothing more. Since
headroom can be obtained by other means, I don’t see clipping as a make-or-break factor in
amplifier design. There is another problem with feedback that is of far more concern.
Pappas: And that problem is?
Frankland: That problem is harmonic multiplication.
Pappas: Could you explain what that means?
Frankland: When we apply feedback around a circuit we create a path for harmonic
distortion products to loop through the amplifier. At each pass they intermodulate with the
audio signal, creating sum-and-difference products at the output.
Pappas: How is this different from ordinary IM distortion?
Frankland: Ordinary IM distortion creates a finite number of sum-and-difference products.
With recirculation, however, the IM products have the potential to multiply themselves to
infinity. This was analyzed by Baxandall in the late 70s.
Pappas: How is this possible?
Frankland: Let’s say we have an amp that produces purely second-order distortion—a
triode amp at low power levels, for example. When 2f loops around, it intermodulates with 1f
(the fundamental) to produce 3f; 3f then loops around to produce 4f; and so on. This
repetitive looping generates a flood of high-order products that runs through the circuit like
bad adrenaline.
Pappas: That sounds ugly.
Frankland: And that is the main reason why feedback has become so unpopular lately.
Pappas: So harmonic recirculation turns out to be a fundamental flaw in feedback theory?
Frankland: Feedback per se is not inherently flawed. This becomes apparent once we
understand what makes feedback turn ugly. What is flawed is the active device around
which feedback is applied. Baxandall showed that, although feedback converts low-order
products to high-order products, the feedback still acts to reduce the overall distortion.
Pappas: But if feedback multiplies the order of harmonics to infinity, how can it reduce
products at infinite frequency? It sounds to me like the old "kill one and two take its place"
routine.
Frankland: It doesn’t quite work that way. As we apply more and more feedback, the loworder products will approach zero. The recirculation products will then converge to zero. At
that point, there will be vanishing products left to intermodulate.
Pappas: But how do we know when high-order products are small enough to be inaudible?
Frankland: Let’s make this practical. If feedback can be made to reduce the recirculation
products to a level below that of the open-loop amplifier, then I would say that feedback’s job
is finished. This, I think, is a key criterion for any feedback amp.
Pappas: It sounds to me like you’re saying we need to use more feedback, not less? Didn’t
the transistor guys try that once during the specs wars?
Frankland: They did, but if you recall they only told us the distortion at 1kHz, or with the
amp driving 8-ohm power resistors!
Pappas: Why, then, do so many designers argue for smaller amounts of feedback?
Frankland: Applying small amounts of feedback is actually the worst case. The feedback, in
this case, will create recirculation products but will be insufficient to reduce them.
Pappas: But won’t more feedback cause TIM problems?
Frankland: TIM will not be an issue so long as the stage receiving the feedback does not
overload with a worst-case feedback signal. It’s just that simple.
Pappas: How do you define a worst-case feedback signal?
Frankland: The worst-case feedback signal will always be less than or equal to twice the
level of the amplifier input sensitivity. This was explained by Garde and Cherry in the late
70s. This margin against overload is not difficult to achieve with tubes. Again, the problem is
not feedback, it is inadequate headroom in the feedback receiving stage.
Pappas: So what’s to prevent us from applying more feedback?
Frankland: Unfortunately, small amounts of feedback are all we can get with conventional
tube amps, due to limited open-loop bandwidth. This limited bandwidth creates phase shift
near the audio band, which forces us to limit the feedback. If we fail to do this, the amplifier
becomes unstable.
Pappas: How does phase shift affect stability?
Frankland: To be effective, feedback must track the input signal inversely. At some high
frequency the feedback will accumulate 180° of phase shift and will "uninvert." We are
forced to reduce the amplitude of the feedback to unity at this frequency, otherwise we risk
oscillation.
Pappas: What can be done about this?
Frankland: There are three solutions to this problem. Two of these solutions are fantasies,
but they best illustrate my point.
Pappas: I’m all ears.
Frankland: The first solution is to create a distortionless open-loop amplifier. In such an
amp there will be no harmonics to intermodulate, and therefore no harmonic multiplication
when feedback is applied. This fact alone should give us pause to rethink feedback as not
inherently flawed.
Pappas: I think I’m beginning to see what you mean.
Frankland: What seems to get lost in the feedback debate is this one critical fact: harmonic
multiplication occurs only when feedback is applied around a nonlinear circuit. The more
linear the open-loop circuit, the more blameless the feedback.
Pappas: So we should really be faulting the active device–with its limited bandwidth and
nonlinear gain—rather than the feedback.
Frankland: Feedback is nothing more than a path by which the audio signal communicates
with itself. This path is not the fault, the fault is the amplifier itself.
Pappas: And what is the second solution?
Frankland: The second solution is to design an amplifier with infinite bandwidth. Infinite
bandwidth means no rolloff and therefore no phase shift. This allows us to apply infinite
feedback (assuming infinite open-loop gain). Applying infinite feedback will reduce, to an
infinitesimal level, all distortion products, including multiplicative products.
Thirdly, we can design real-world circuits with less dependence on feedback.
This places a burden on the designer to use techniques optimized for linearity. This is one of
the hottest trends in tube audio today. Most of these techniques will be expensive and
inefficient, such as class-A circuits, mu-followers, current-sources, choke-loads, etc. But
what else can we do? The first two solutions, after all, are impossible. The third solution is
the only practical one.
Pappas: But if good, linear circuits can be designed without feedback, why use it at all?
Frankland: Strange, isn’t it? It’s like at the bank. The more we need a loan, the less likely
we are to get one. It’s the same with feedback. The more we need it, the less likely it’ll do us
any good. But even linear circuits can benefit from feedback, because feedback improves
damping.
Pappas: So how do we obtain damping if we don’t use feedback?
Frankland: The price for more damping is more tubes. Without feedback, damping will be
marginal at best unless several tubes are paralleled in the output stage. Each time we
double the number of tubes in parallel, the internal amplifier impedance is cut in half. What
I’ve done in the V8 is to use enough output tubes in parallel so that damping is adequate
without feedback.
Pappas: So where does that leave the typical tube amp? The vast majority of tube amps
use only one or two output tubes.
Frankland: The Achilles heel of the typical tube amp is the output transformer. Even the
best transformers don’t provide adequate bandwidth for sufficient feedback. By sufficient, I
mean sufficient to reduce all high-order products (caused by recirculation) below the level of
the open-loop amplifier. Using small amounts of feedback is not an option since this will
produce more high-order distortion than we get open-loop!
Pappas: So what I hear you saying is that there is just no way to increase feedback in a
conventional tube circuit.
Frankland: I’m saying that it’s extremely difficult to apply sufficient feedback in a
conventional tube amp. To get sufficient feedback I think we have to turn to unconventional
tube circuits—circuits with wide open-loop bandwidth. Sufficient bandwidth will support
sufficient feedback. A very linear OTL might allow this, or a cathode-follower amp. A
conventional tube amp with multiple feedback loops might also allow the use of sufficient
feedback.
Pappas: So where does that leave us in the feedback wars?
Frankland: To make progress with conventional tube circuits, our best option may well be to
eliminate loop feedback. To use feedback effectively, we need open-loop circuits that are not
only wideband, but very linear. This puts the burden on the open-loop design rather than on
the feedback.
Pappas: Multiple output tubes would seem to be the way to go in zero-feedback amps. Why
don’t more designers do this?
Frankland: Because they are more concerned with simplicity, parts count, or economy
would be my guess. By so choosing, they become less concerned about damping.
Pappas: What are some of the problems designers face in using multiple output tubes?
Frankland: I would cite the article on paralleling tubes in Glass Audio Vol. 12, No. 5. The
authors explain what’s needed to get tubes "in synch." Another snag is input capacitance.
Every tube has an input capacitance that becomes additive when we parallel tubes. This
problem is especially marked in triodes. Every time we double the number of tubes, we also
double the input capacitance. High input capacitance not only rolls off the top end, it also
loads down the driver at high frequencies.
Pappas: Is there any way around this?
Frankland: A conventional driver circuit can handle this job, up to a point. But if we want to
use multiple triodes in parallel, we face high input capacitance. In the V8, I place a small
power tube, a 12GN7, between the driver stage and each output tube. The 12GN7s provide
more than enough current to drive the triode input capacitance. I call these auxiliary power
tubes "grid superchargers."
Pappas: Is that the gist of your patent?
Frankland: It’s one aspect of it. My patent has a number of claims, but there is really only
one key idea, which is to set up a one-to-one correspondence among the output tubes and
the "superchargers."
Pappas: This is like taking the twin-turbo idea to the extreme of one turbo per cylinder.
Frankland: As a matter of fact it was this explicit one-to-one correspondence that allowed
me to push the idea through the patent examiner. What finally convinced him is that this
solution permits an indefinitely powerful high-fidelity triode amplifier.
Pappas: Indefinitely powerful?
Frankland: Yes, because the power potential is open-ended. Basically I can go on adding
as many tubes in parallel as I choose. There is no penalty due to additive input capacitance.
I can build a 5000W triode amp using EL34s with no loss of bandwidth and no increase of
high-frequency distortion. That’s the gist of my patent.
Pappas: Impressive. I think I already know the answer to this next question, but why don’t
more manufacturers publish their high-frequency distortion figures?
Frankland: Because it would be too embarrassing.
Pappas: Ouch!
Frankland: But if you ask them why not, they’ll just respond with something like: "Specs are
not a reliable indicator of what we hear."
Pappas: Do you think specs will ever be reliable?
Frankland: Let me put it this way. A lot of our cheap consumer hi-fi equipment has improved
over the years as a result of toughening the specs. Manufacturers don’t sit around tweaking
car radios and rack systems, changing this wire or that capacitor, and yet consumer audio
gets better-sounding each year. What’s happening is that this equipment is being built to a
tougher spec. Not just low THD, but low THD across the audio band.
Pappas: ICs seem to be getting better, too.
Frankland: Without question. Just look at the success of the 47 Lab stuff. Or the Black
Cube. With ICs, the same rule applies: if we can improve the open-loop design, the IC will
sound better when we apply feedback.
Pappas: Do you think amplifiers will always sound different?
Frankland: You know, there may well be a perfect (or near-perfect) amp available right now.
But I don’t think it would ever be accepted as such, because there is no perfect loudspeaker
by which to confirm it! We have this wild card called amp/speaker synergy. So long as
loudspeakers remain imperfect, the perfect amplifier will take a back seat to a more
synergistic amp if the synergy makes our speakers sound better.
Pappas: So you don’t think amplifiers will one day all sound the same?
Frankland: Given a high-enough standard for our specs, I don’t see why not, but I doubt it
will happen anytime soon. One problem is power wars. Everybody wants to show how
powerful their amps are, yet the manufacturers aren’t willing to disclose what happens to
their amps under adverse conditions.
Pappas: How do you define "adverse conditions"?
Frankland: When a speaker passes through its impedance minimum, the amplifier should
deliver current without loading down. This means keeping some power in reserve. This
reserve power doesn’t show up in the rated power spec. It only shows up under duress.
Pappas: So how do you design reserve power into a tube amp?
Frankland: By tuning the power characteristic curve. This is the curve of power vs. load
impedance. For example, instead of designing for maximum power into an 8-ohm resistor,
we can design for optimum power into a real loudspeaker. The problem is, which
loudspeaker? There is no such thing as a standard loudspeaker.
As a start, we can simply design for an impedance minimum of 4 ohms driven from the 8ohm tap. That way, if a nominally 8-ohm speaker has a 4-ohm impedance minimum at, say,
100Hz, the amp will not come unglued at 100Hz. It can still deliver clean power. This is a
matter of juggling the output transformer impedance. The downside is that it trades off the
rated power spec.
Pappas: So if a tube amp is designed without reserve power it’s liable to sound markedly
different on different speakers?
Frankland: Correct. This is something that goes beyond mere damping. It’s an impedance
vs. power function as seen through the output transformer. What we need to know is how
the amplifier behaves when the load increases and decreases at different frequencies. It’s
like the torque vs. horsepower curve of an engine at different rpms. You don’t want the
torque rolling off before the horsepower kicks in. Anybody who builds engines will provide
this information. It’s what allows us to match an engine to a car.
Pappas: That seems like pretty basic information.
Frankland: On the other hand, I’m sure a lot of audiophiles won’t care at all. They are
looking for a more beautiful midrange, for more involvement, or for more goose bumps. They
can accept other problems in exchange for what they want. But those of us interested in a
more orthodox concept of high fidelity should be concerned.
Pappas: What is your concept of high fidelity?
Frankland: I think the standard concept of high fidelity is very straightforward. High fidelity is
the pursuit of replication. We want to hear exactly what was heard in the recording studio or
concert hall. It is audio fidelity as opposed to audio impressionism.
If we want to optimize a catalog of records, such as the Living Stereo catalog, we can do
that. We can become audio impressionists. In this case we are using the "sound" of an
amplifier to invert the defects, as it were, of a given recording heard through a given
loudspeaker. But that’s not high fidelity, it’s synergy. We can’t get replication by this means.
In the strict sense of high fidelity, an amplifier must not have a "sound." A musical instrument
has a sound. The amplifier’s job is to replicate that sound. Any "sound" in the amplifier is a
residual product. Progress will depend on rooting it out.
Pappas: But is replication really possible?
Frankland: It’s approachable. The simple fact is, if we don’t have flat 20kHz bandwidth we
can’t approach a live musical performance. No way. Go stand next to a drum kit and listen to
the crash cymbal. The crash cymbal creates an envelope of sound that radiates outward in
all directions. It’s uncanny. The harmonics just seem to go on forever. That quality is elusive
as hell in a hi-fi system.
The only way to get manufacturers to come clean is to insist on knowing the gain ratio at
20kHz. This is easily measured. There is no subjective element here at all. Stating that an
amplifier is ‹1dB at 50kHz looks impressive, but it’s really a copout. We need to know the
loss at 20kHz. Is it 1dB? Half a dB? A quarter? I think it should be less than a
quarter—preferably within a tenth. Now, we can hear the correct harmonic relationships out
to the limits of our perception. At least potentially. Without a flat bandwidth to 20kHz (at
least), there is no such potential. Again, the big bottleneck is the output transformer. The
transformer I use in the V8 is less than 0.1dB down at 20kHz. It’s also expensive. That’s the
downside of flat response.
Pappas: As you say, I find that a lot of audiophiles simply don’t care about wide bandwidth.
It’s almost as if they prefer listening to a rolled-off amp.
Frankland: These folks are trying to airbrush the centerfold. The midrange may sound
better on many recordings, but this is not replication, it’s impressionism. At worst, it’s a bandaid for poor design. How can we know if we’ve got the midrange right if there are no highs?
Pappas: Good point.
Frankland: But extending the bandwidth to encompass our entire range of perception is
perilous. There are some physical impediments on the hardware side, and some
psychoacoustical impediments on the listener side. This was recognized early on. There
were a lot of listening tests done in the 40s by people like Olson, Shorter, and Fletcher.
These tests revealed that the average listener would not accept extended bandwidth unless
the high-order distortion could be kept within certain limits.
Pappas: So a flat 20-20k bandwidth is really just a start.
Frankland: My view is that an audio amplifier ought to provide clean power across the entire
audio spectrum. This means rating the power of an amplifier at 20kHz rather than at 1kHz,
as is commonly done. If an amp can’t produce clean power at 20kHz, I believe that is
cheating the consumer. How else can we be sure that an amp can drive, for example, the
Sound Labs?
Pappas: The usual way is to hook it up and listen.
Frankland: It would be so much simpler if we could just look up the figures and winnow
down the final candidates for audition.
Pappas: But that would deprive audiophiles of the joy of the hunt!
Frankland: Personally, I’d rather get it over with so I can sit down and listen to music!
Pappas: So really you are advocating more than just flat response to 20kHz. You are
advocating clean power bandwidth across the whole audio spectrum.
Frankland: That is the challenge I present for the coming decade. The movement among
tube designers toward greater linearity is a sign that people have grown tired of relativism in
audio.
Pappas: Clean power bandwidth is something that tube designers have always struggled
with, is it not?
Frankland: It’s a huge challenge. With wide bandwidth amplifiers, we create more room for
distortion to creep in, and it just gets worse as we go up in frequency. This is basically why I
began experimenting with zero-feedback amps. In any well-designed, zero-feedback triode
amp there is no need to roll off the highs to get the midrange right. The highs are already
clean! This rolling of the highs is a compromise that I think we need to get beyond in the
tube world. I just hope I can make a small contribution to this effort.
Pappas: Pricing is about $16K per pair, is this correct?
Frankland: That’s the projected retail price, yes.
Pappas: You also mentioned a pentode amp that’s under development.
Frankland: I plan to offer a pentode V8 after I decide on 6550s or EL34s for the final
product. I have yet to build an EL34 in pentode, however. I won’t decide until I finish my
experiments with both tubes. So far I’ve built 6550 V8s in triode, ultralinear, and pentode,
both with and without feedback. I want to do the same with the EL34.
Pappas: That’s a pretty comprehensive program you’ve embarked upon.
Frankland: It goes back a ways. The first phase of my comparison of 6550s and EL34s was
purely theoretical. It ended with a research paper I published in Glass Audio (11:5, 1999)
and V&T News (Dec 1999). This paper looks at the technical debate between RCA and
Philips. The second phase, which is currently in process, is the experimental and listening
phase. One aspect of this phase involved my participation in a listening comparison of
EL34s. The results were published in Vacuum Tube Valley (#16), in which fourteen NOS
and current-production EL34s were compared. A 6550 shootout is also planned.
Pappas: Do you really think a pentode can compete with a triode for sound quality?
Frankland: Not a pure pentode, no. But if we use the high pentode gain as local feedback, a
funny thing happens: the pentode turns into a virtual triode! The feedback shifts the plate
curves of the pentode, normally horizontal, into a vertical position. This indicates low internal
impedance. With certain pentodes, the resulting plate curves can be more linear than a
natural triode! That’s why I think a pentode has the potential to sound more neutral, although
perhaps less "beautiful," than a triode.
Pappas: How about the rest of the system you demo’ed at VSAC? I tried to find information
on the VSR speakers with the built in sub-amp but their web site has no information.
Frankland: The speakers are too new to be on the website is my guess. They are Albert
Von Schweikert’s DB100s (100dB@1W/1m). The tweeter is a 1" silk dome using partial horn
loading and ferrofluid cooling. There is also an ambience tweeter (adjustable) on the back
panel. The midrange is a 6" cast frame with a 72 oz. magnet. The cone material is Aerogel
(a composite of carbon fiber powder, chopped Kevlar fibers, and cellulose binder). The
woofers (2) are 8" cast frame with 900W peak power capability. They are loaded into a triplechamber transmission line with a tuned 20Hz port. There is a built-in 600W amp that takes
its signal from the main amp in order to preserve coherence. The dimensions are 54"H X
12"W X 22"D. Weight is 200lbs each.
Pappas: What preamp were you using?
Frankland: The Hovland HP-100. The cables were all top-of-the-line Cardas. (Thanks,
George!)
Pappas: Why didn’t your amp blow up at VSAC? I noticed you pulling out George’s
interconnects with the speakers disconnected!
Frankland: I’m a big believer in "idiot-proof" products. A stable design should take idiotic
behavior into account (even when the designer is acting like an idiot!). Second, I derate all
parts according to a Norton/Thevenin model. The failure mode now becomes worst-case. In
the first step, each tube is open-circuited. This allows the DC voltage to rise to its peak
maximum. The parts must be rated to withstand this voltage. In the second step, each tube
is short-circuited. This allows the DC current to rise to the peak maximum. The parts are
also rated to withstand this condition. Those parts that can’t be protected in this way are
fused.
In other words, if a tube blows up, gets stepped on, or otherwise gives up the ghost, the V8
will not go down in flames. The same goes for signal voltages and currents. If the amp is run
without a load, or if the interconnects are pulled out during play, the amp will not go down.
The only thing likely to blow up in the V8 is tubes. But this can happen to anybody. In this
sense, the V8 is plug-and-play.
Pappas: Why do tubes blow up?
Frankland: Well, they don’t actually blow up, they just arc-over and die.
Pappas: For no good reason?
Frankland: The usual cause is excessive screen voltage.
Pappas: Can anything be can be done about that?
Frankland: Manufacturers can start respecting the limits published in the tube manuals.
This respecting of the manuals was common during the golden era.
Pappas: But aren’t some brands more rugged than others?
Frankland: True. There is a great variation among tubes in this respect. But there is also a
great deal of consistency in the tube manuals with respect to operating voltages. So it’s
largely empirical. The problem is that if we design our amp with a rugged tube, operating at
the edge of its capability, what do we do when that tube is no longer available?
Pappas: It would almost make more sense to design tube amps to operate with the lowest
common denominator.
Frankland: There is a fairly simple solution to this dilemma. In the 6550 V8, I include a B+
switch that allows the owner to switch the operating voltage up or down depending on the
brand of tube he’s using. When the B+ switch is set to a higher position, more power is
obtained. If this proves to be stressful for a particular brand of tube, the switch can be turned
down. This also gives the owner the option of prolonging his tube life.
Pappas: Considering the state of the economy, that might not be such a bad idea.
Frankland: When I set out to design the V8, I chose output tubes that are cheap and readily
available. Tubes, after all, wear out. And when we have sixteen of them to replace, this
becomes a real issue.
Pappas: So where does the V8 fit into the brave new world of SET amps?
Frankland: The philosophy behind the V8 is far removed from the single-ended credo,
which places a much bigger burden on the loudspeaker. With SET amps, we need a
speaker that’s not only efficient, but also well damped. But that’s what makes for choices.
I’m simply providing a product for people whose preferences drive them to purchase large,
difficult loudspeakers. I’m happy to fill this niche.
Pappas: So when can you ship me a unit for review?
Frankland: Mike, you are first in line as soon as they go into production.
Pappas: Thank you, sir.
Frankland: Not at all. Thank you, sir.
BACK TO TOP
mainterview
An Interview with Winston Ma
Part I: Ma’s Entry Into Fine Audio
by David W. Robinson & Rick Gardner
(In August of 2000, PF Online’s Rick Gardner and David W. Robinson had a long and
delightful interview with our good friend, Winston Ma, of First Impression Music. Part I
appeared in Positive Feedback Magazine, Vol. 9, No. 2; we are including it here for
continuity, since Part II will be published soon here on PF Online.)
Winston Ma at the doorway to his
magnificent listening room
Robinson: I’m meeting with Winston Ma of First Impression Music and Rick Gardner of
Positive Feedback Magazine here at Winston’s remarkable listening room.
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/mainterview.htm (1 of 12) [8/25/2002 2:51:24 PM]
mainterview
Ma: It is my privilege and honor to have you two gentlemen here for the sharing of views.
Gardner: I’ll be the booming voice in the background! I’m very glad to be here, and am
looking forward to our conversation.
Robinson: I thought that we would start out by exploring the creative process of how you
went about building the most extraordinary listening room that I’ve ever seen, Winston. I
thought that it would be good for our readers to come to know how you became involved in
audio. Obviously, you’ve been doing audio for quite a while…
Ma: Yes. To answer your first question in a short way, the music room is, in fact, not a
sudden idea. It is my dream project that I’ve had for many years. All along, I have had a
vision that, in order to have the best reproduction of music, I needed to have a total system.
We will talk about what a total system is later on.
The listening room is a project primarily accomplished after I had settled here (in the Seattle
area) on a permanent basis. How I decided to do a project of this kind may have come from
the early days of my childhood. I don’t know why; I don’t think that any members of my
family—they all like music—pursued music with the passion and the emphasis and the force
that I have. It seems like I’m the only one in the family who has done this.
mainterview
I still remember that when I was a child, perhaps at the age of 10, that the love of music was
very strong. At the time, just after the Second World War, everyone was trying to emerge
from the ruins. Everyone was so poor; nobody could afford to have high-class audio. We
could only afford to listen to cabled radio networks. I used to go to a street corner where
there was a teahouse, and we would sit there and listen to the radio. Sometimes they would
turn on the English channel on Chinese radio, and from time to time we would hear music,
and I loved it! I certainly did not know the name of the music, I did not know the composer—I
just liked the music. I don’t think I have a very good memory generally, but I do have an
extraordinary ability to remember the melody of a particular song. The songs I heard I
remember to this time. That gave me a very good basic training.
Robinson: About what time was this?
Ma: It was about… the mid-‘40s.
Robinson: So you’re unique in your family? No one else is an audiophile?
Ma: I think so. To a certain degree they love (music and audio), but they are more passive
when they do this. For me, I just want to go very deep into it. I have my particular
preferences—for this recording, for this song—which I would like to be done in a particular
manner. But with the constraints in my background and my training, I was not able to do this
in my years as a teenager.
But I started to contribute articles in my early twenties. I did not have any training in music or
audio; it just came like that. I had a particular idea about a performance, or the recording
itself, (and I would write.)
Robinson: Do you remember what the first magazine that you wrote for was?
Ma: Let’s go a little bit further first. I started contributing articles on my daily life, my
experience in life, my observations of human affairs, at the age of eleven. I sent these to
magazine, to the newspapers, because this helped to augment my pocket money.
Whenever my article was accepted by a newspaper, I was paid one dollar! (Laughter)
Gardner: You made more than we do putting together Positive Feedback!
Robinson: You wish you made a dollar, Rick!
Gardner: I wish!
Ma: One dollar was sufficient for my spending for one week as a little boy. So, every week, I
wrote, and did it continuously for several years.
Gardner: So you were a professional writer long before you began to write about audio.
Ma: You could say that…
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Gardner: Hey, if you get money for it, you’re a pro!
PF Online’s Rick Gardner in discussion
with Winston Ma
Ma: I went to school very late, at the age of six or seven I think, because of the war. I still
remember when I wrote my first page of Chinese characters with brushes, nobody taught
me. I had simply observed the teacher, and saw how to hold the brush. I did my first page
with all the ability that I had. I was brought to the front of the class when I submitted it and
was asked by the teacher, “Why did you have your father do this for you?” (Laughter) “I’m
sorry,” I said, “I will try to do this better.” “No!” they said, “This piece is so good that it should
not be coming from your hand.” I said, “No, I did it!” Because, to be quite frank, my father
was illiterate. So, in school I was very, very good in Chinese writing, and also very good in
literature. With this I could contribute articles, and the newspaper always accepted them. I
continued with this until I was 18, when I was too busy to continue submitting them.
After schooling, I remember that my first article was done when I was the age of 23, when I
bought an RCA LP of Alpine Symphony. This was recorded by Kenneth Wilkinson. I didn’t
know it at the time, but I found out later that Wilkinson had recorded it. That recording was
done in the U.K. I sent this in to a magazine named Ming Pao. I wrote about how I felt when
I listened to the music. It seemed like I was there in the Alps—the snow, and the kind of
overwhelming… grandeur of nature. I said that at the climax of the symphony you could
hear the trombones—it was so good! I wrote something like that…
Gardner: When you listened to this symphony, Winston, do you remember what it was
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being reproduced on?
Ma: This would have been in 1959 or 1960. This would have been a tube amplifier. The
speaker was home-built…
Gardner: (Laughing) So you were a DIY person way back then—a triple threat!
Winston Ma’s peaceful garden and listening room;
the sunroom is to the right.
Ma: Yes! I built my first Wharfdale speakers at the age of 18. With a 15” triangular
enclosure. Anyway, as a result of my review of this recording, the distributor, who somehow
got my telephone number, contacted me and told me, “You know, as a result of your article,
we have sold 7,000 copies of this LP, which we have never before achieved! This is crazy!”
So as a result of this, I was given LPs from time to time to listen to. (As time went on) I
became more choosey…
Gardner: So you were a music reviewer..?
Ma: Yes. You know, as we talk so many memories are coming out. I did find something
really very good in writing about recordings. Later on, I discovered that I should collect and
keep all these articles for future reference. I have a vision that when I retire, I would like to
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publish a set of books incorporating all these articles—because, perhaps I could write better
when I was young. Now, I am too old.
Many years later, when I incorporated Golden String, and I got to know some customers,
they brought some of my articles, which I published many years ago. They kept them, and I
was so glad; I asked them if I might make a copy, so that I might have one!
I still remember the three of my best articles of my life. One was about the Linn LP-12. The
other was about the Thorens 124 turntable. The third one was about the SME tonearm.
Gardner: Do you remember the first piece of equipment that you wrote about formally?
Ma: I must confess that I do not. I wrote about some amplifiers, some speakers… (many
things.)
Gardner: One of the reasons why I ask is that you were writing about music in a general
magazine. It’s a big jump to audio magazines…
Ma: Later on I wrote in all audio magazines (there), and also I wrote in The Voice of
America. I was given the highest pay. Later on, when I started my own company, I quit
writing about equipment. I still wrote about music, but I quit writing about equipment,
because of complications, and questions about my integrity…
Gardner: … conflict of interest…
Ma: Yes, conflict of interest.
Gardner: Let me follow up with this question: Do you remember writing for a specific audio
magazine that was devoted to audio equipment?
Ma: As I said, the first magazine that I wrote for was Ming Pao; it was a weekly. They had a
special column that was dedicated to hi-fi or music. It was three or four pages of their thick
magazine. I was invited by the editor of that column, who happened to become my very
good friend, and who later on became a very famous cartoonist—he died of cancer at the
very young age of 35—he “discovered” me. Otherwise, I might not have had the interest or
encouragement or the courage to knock on the door of the magazines and tell them, “I can
write; give me the chance to write!”
He went to my home to listen to my system. He listened to my way of talking about to set up
the best SME tonearm. And why my loudspeakers were put in the two corners instead of in
the front. I told him, “This is the way I feel. And look! The whole soundstage is there! You
don’t hear the speaker; this is the actual way it sounds!” And everybody said, “Your AR-3’s
sound so much better than anyone else’s place!” They wanted to borrow them and try them
out in their own homes. And they found they didn’t have the same result! (Laughter)
Robinson: “It’s not the turntable!”
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Ma: I remember an engineer came to listen to my AR-3’s, and he said, “How come the
sound of your AR’s is better than what we get in the AR facilities?” And it was because I
modified them; I modified it because I felt that the AR was bass-heavy, and I felt that this
was a way of putting the proper upper balance in. The three drivers were not 100% (exactly
aligned.) So I tried to fix this, to align it, and I tried and I tried, and finally I had the image in
focus. I also tried to change the wiring inside. And I tell you, I was swamped! I tried to use
better wires. This will sound terrible, but I had to pick them up out of the dustbins—but this
was a good experience.
When you modify something, you will get hooked. It will be a different sound; in most cases,
worse. Because the designer should know better than you. Unless you have something
special, and then you may come up with a sound that you prefer. It may be better.
Gardner: So at 23 you were writing professionally, you were building speakers, you were
tweaking and re-designing audio equipment. At that time, did you think to make your future
living in music, or ..?
Ma: I was young, and I met my wife, we fell in love, and we got married at the age of 24. And
then we had three kids.
Gardner: Ah!
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Ma: So I had the family burden; I had to work. At the time I had no idea at all that I would
become an “audio man.” I just worked for years as a teacher. Later on, I found that I’m
interested in communicating with people with kids. But I felt that I had a lot of ideas that I
could not execute as a teacher. So I changed my job to be a government worker. My wife
said that I could do whatever I wanted provided that the kids can go to the university, and all
the bills are paid for, and there is no debt. (Chuckling from Gardner) You can do whatever
you like! (Laughter)
Gardner: That’s the trick, isn’t it?!
Ma: And I was able to do that, (but only later.) I have been in the audio business only a
relatively short time. There are people who say, “Oh, Winston has been in the audio
business for many decades!” I have had the love of music for many decades. But I have
been in the audio business for less time than many other of the established audio
businesses.
Robinson: When did you make the transition (to full time audio), then—what year was it?
Ma: In 1980. I started off very humbly, with a desk, a part-time person in the foyer, and I
didn’t have much that I (carried). So what I represented as an audio company was a piece of
(equipment) that gave you better sound. So I marketed this, and people believed it, and I got
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good business out of that. Later on, (I came to understand) my weaknesses, and my forte.
My forte is music and LPs, and recordings, so I was the first one who created that kind of
trend, of buying Japanese pressings—JVC, etc. I sold so many. And then I tried to negotiate
with record companies to become their exclusive distributor of particular recordings. I
discovered Cantate Domino (and others.)
The first audio equipment that I represented formally was Harman. I used to buy Hafler from
a very established company for many years. This was from Albert Chang; I like him very
much. He is a gentleman, he is very knowledgeable. He is to this day the best audio man in
Hong Kong, I think. David Hafler came to Hong Kong and certainly he met David Chang. He
also came to my very shabby store. (Laughter) He looked at me and said, “You are Winston
Ma?” I said “Yes.” We talked, and he listened to me for about half an hour. Then he said,
“OK, I’ll take you, instead of a bigger company, because you will pay attention to my
products instead of having 1,001 brands of equipment.”
Gardner: Were you using David (Hafler’s) equipment in your home system at the time? This
was 1988, right?
Ma: 1981 or 1982. After that he came to Hong Kong, and I would travel to the U.S.A. I think
we became friends. We had some conversations. At that time he was so rich that he was
always at the beach or at the office on the telephone…
… I also met Bob Fulton, of Fulton Audio. Among all audiophile engineers in the world, and
among all so-called audio gadgets for tweaking systems, Bob Fulton was the number one
man—and I think he’s still the number one man, though he died some ten years ago. He first
came up with the “crazy” audiophile cable, so thick, so hard, but it sounded so good. And
nobody believed it. And he came up with audiophile interconnect, and with (a product) for
the turntable. Later on he came up with small cables (for phono cartridges.) So he was the
first high-end audiophile (cable) man at that time. Because most didn’t believe that cable
makes a difference. Even David Hafler—I checked with David and said, “This is Fulton
cable.” He said, “All cable is the same! As long as you get good connections.” said, “No, this
is the best!” He said, “No… “ I still remember this!
Gardner: I’m so glad that we’ve resolved this, too! Now everyone is in agreement
nowadays… (Chuckles)
Ma: David Hafler himself! He said “No, I did not find any differences. As long as (the cable)
is of acceptable quality.” I’m sorry (that he thought that,) but David is a great engineer, he
has done a lot for audio. But the first guy who expressed insight on this was Robert Fulton.
He was one of the men that I respected very much.
Gardner: From an earlier conversation that we had, you mentioned something that I wanted
to go back to. You had a nickname in your writing days…
Ma: Yes. You know, I have interviewed many (audio people over the years.) Eventually, I
was interviewed quite frequently by magazine editors or on the radio. I was asked to
produce a couple of TV shows on high-end audio and video. I tried to talk honestly and
modestly about these things, and not do any bullshitting. (Robinson chuckles) (I tried to
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make sure that) everything had a solid scientific and technical background, and not just our
imagination, because I had to do some service for the (audio) industry.
So, in one of the interviews, four or five interviews—long interviews—with Mr. Chang well
known in as an editor, and also for) the popular series, “Beautiful Music,” he said, “You don’t
write things in a terrible way; your writing is so beautiful.” He started calling me “the audio
poet.”
Gardner: Yes, that’s what I wanted to hear!
Ma: He’s very experienced. He drove every bit of this material out of my brain, all this
material, which was put in the magazine for (many years.)
I have other nicknames too. I was also called “Mr. Hi-Fi”…
Gardner: David and I have nicknames too, but we can’t repeat them! (Much Laughter)
Ma: I feel grateful, because people do treat me well. I have a lot of friends, and some have
become very good friends. If you are sincere with others, and give good advice, and you are
not always talking about money, then people will like you and treat you as a friend. Instead
of (everything being) commercial…
So when people ask me “how should I improve (my system); what equipment should I
change?”… 20% of the time, they don’t need to change anything. When I visit a home,
many times I simply work with what is there. Many times, the owner was a happier man
when I left.
Robinson: It’s clear that by the 1980’s your love of music had become fused with your love
of audio equipment itself.
Ma: Not quite, because you can’t break it such parts. Certainly, without music I wouldn’t
have tried to pursue my affection for the reproduction of music that hinges on the music
equipment. As I said, I wrote articles (like the one I did with) 13 points on how to improve
your LP-12. And I wrote about the Thorens 124, about the flutter of the motor. I had a very
simple suggestion for readers, to use a rubber band at the juncture of the motor so that the
top would not slip away. It works! I did it very playfully; at that time the Thorens 124 was a
standard in the market. And then I got a letter—a serious letter—from the distributor, and
later a very serious letter from Thorens in Germany. Wow! I was shocked! At that time I was
a young chap. And they said, “You’re talking about our design and engineering. I respect
you as a reviewer, however you did not give (any specifications about your modification, nor
warn your readers that) if they do as you suggested they will void their warranty as an
implication. However, I must write to thank you; we also noticed this defect. In our new
production this kind of improvement has been incorporated into our new model.” (Laughter)
Gardner: You have used the term “perfection” in some of our conversations, and I’ve
sensed that as we’ve talked with you, as we’ve toured your listening room and your garden,
and this beautiful sunroom that serves as an anteroom to the listening room proper, that
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there’s more to this than music, there’s more to it than audio equipment. That there’s an
underlying aesthetic, an underlying search for perfection, and I thought it was interesting that
you use that term, that it wasn’t just a love of audio or music; that those things combine into
something more than just that.
Ma: Yes, yes, I can’t argue with what you say, because we are human, and all the subtleties
of the environment have certain effects on your thinking and your sensation of things,
including music. And so, I think this is the way I should do whatever I can do (to achieve
perfection in the listening room.) I haven’t (accomplished this yet.) I should have been able
to do it earlier, but unless a so-called perfection—well, “perfection” is my term for it; to others
it may be inadequate, but I have my own way, and this is the way I do it. Within my ability,
and in terms of my knowledge, skills, experience, and financial means.
Robinson: Yes, we cannot escape the constraints of the budgets that we have, which is
something I would like for lovers of audio to understand is that many things can be done;
that one does not have to be Paul Allen to achieve a level of excellence. I’ve always defined
“excellence” in relative terms. Excellence is doing the very best that you can with what you
have.
Ma: Yes! This is very important, and very true. I hope that I always remember that. A man
can be very rich and happy, even if in actual fact, he isn’t that rich. A man can be very poor
and have a very poor life even if he’s a very wealthy millionaire. It all depends on his vision
and perception in life. Does he take time to appreciate nature? I would say that, in the
broadest sense, music is also nature. We are a part of nature.
Robinson: I’m very curious; at what point in all of your striving, in all of your desire for
excellence, for perfection, for the beauty of music—at what point did the idea of a listening
room being to enter your thinking?
Ma: Oh, very, very early. As early as my twenties. But because of my financial constraints,
and also because Hong Kong is such a very small place—in Hong Kong, 99% of the people
listen to music in the sitting room or family room—the constraints are obvious. In terms of
space, in terms of loudness, in terms of placement; you have the TV there, the kids do their
homework there. Certainly at the time I dreamed of having a room dedicated for myself; over
the years, I thought more about it. I naturally started to notice (rooms), and also started
reading anything about music rooms. And I found that there is not much material in
magazines that I found to be useful. Certainly they would have reports from time to time
about listening rooms built by rich guys. (Many of them are built like) concert halls; the front
end is like a stage, like a concert hall stage. But there aren’t many specialized books about
building music rooms; there are many books about building concert halls and recording
studios, but very few about music rooms. So references are limited.
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Winston relaxing at his desk in his listening room.
(Part II of our interview with Winston Ma, and photographs of his listening room, will appear
in PF Online shortly—stay tuned!)
BACK TO TOP
threeglackin
Three Jazz Titles: Bernie Wallace, Sarah Vaughan, and
Jacintha
by Dave Glackin
Bennie Wallace, Moodsville
(Groove Note Records GRV1010-1)
Ying Tan continues to issue some of the best-packaged LPs in the business, it’s hard to find
a better producer than Joe Harley, and I always appreciate Tan’s habit of including a 12-inch
45-rpm LP with the 33 1/3-rpm record. This release is pressed on gorgeous blue vinyl.
There’s a reason for this other than looks—as I found in a recent head-to-head comparison,
blue vinyl captures the high frequencies better than black vinyl.
Moodsville features tenor saxophonist Bennie Wallace leading a classic quartet of piano,
bass, and drums. Although this is a multi-miked studio recording, Joe Harley and recording
engineer Joe Marciano have done a credible job of creating a plausible soundstage. The
recording has good dynamics and presence, and captures Wallace’s big tenor sax tone. The
surfaces are dead quiet, which indicates excellent quality control—blue vinyl is very hard to
QC. This is a direct-to-two-track-Direct-Stream-Digital (DSD) recording. Much as I have
been blown away lately by SACD, this recording would have benefited from the use of tubes.
It has a bit of a solid state signature, especially evident on the piano and drums, which
sound a tad bright.
In classic jazz tradition, ballads alternate with more up-tempo numbers on this great latehttp://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/threeglackin.htm (1 of 4) [8/25/2002 2:51:25 PM]
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night-listening disc of standards by Billy Strayhorn, Cole Porter, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis,
and others, including “I’ll Never Smile Again” and “April in Paris.” The album won’t knock
your socks off with technical pyrotechnics or gimmicks, and it’s unlikely to become a classic
of the genre. It is an album of straight-ahead jazz that will make your quiet evening at home
much more pleasurable. The 45-rpm disc (also pressed on blue vinyl) will increase that
pleasure. Listen to “I’ll Never Smile Again” on the 33 1/3-rpm LP, then go to the 45, and
you’ll understand what people have been saying for years about the higher speed.
Everything gets better. I’d love it if my entire collection were in this format, except that it
wouldn’t fit in my listening room.
Ying Tan and company are a class act, and I applaud their efforts to make the jazz music
world a better place. Keep it up, guys. (While I have the floor, I wanted to mention that I have
finally been able to hear the Groove Note release of Luqman Hamza—With This Voice,
which was released some time ago. This is an absolutely stunning recording of a
phenomenal, unique jazz balladeer. Run, don’t walk, to wherever you can buy this recording.
It’s an instant classic that has my highest recommendation.)
Sound 8 Performance 8 Music 8
Sarah Vaughan, The Lonely Hours
(Classic Records SR 52104)
Sarah Vaughan is one of my all-time favorite singers. I consider her to be on a par with Billie
Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, which is as high as you can go in my book. Her expressiveness,
phrasing, breath control, and vibrato are outstanding. When she is singing about “The
Lonely Hours,” you are left with no doubt as to what she means. Sarah maintains the mood
from the beginning to the end of this record, and the instrumental arrangements by Benny
Carter are in perfect synchronicity with her performance. This is a great record to put on for
a romantic evening, to go with a good bottle of wine and a roaring fire. (The only problem
might be getting up to flip the record. Such are the sacrifices we make for the sound of vinyl.
What!? You say you’ll solve that problem by recording it to CD? Go read Stereo Review ...
oops, I mean Stereophile.)
The sound quality achieved by Classic Records and Bernie Grundman is excellent. It sounds
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like the master tape was in great shape. The record surfaces are flat and dead quiet. This is
classic left-center-right recording, meaning that the instruments tend to be clustered in and
around the speakers and in the middle, without the soundstage that we have come to expect
in modern recordings. Technically, I know this, but I don’t care one whit. Sarah’s
performance is so outstanding that I forget about the technical stuff as soon as she starts
singing. Musically, there’s nothing here I can find to criticize.
What more can I say? As usual, Classic has done a bang-up job with their reproduction of
the original cover, and the multi-colored label. Classic’s products have been sounding better
since Bernie changed to his tubed signal chain, and better yet since Classic changed to the
Quiex vinyl formulation (though I have yet to do a direct comparison of the two Kind of Blue
pressings). Classic’s choice of albums to release has been excellent. (Their taste overlaps
quite a bit with my impeccable own!)
If you like jazz but you’ve never heard Sarah Vaughan, buy this record. It’ll be a great
introduction to one of the best female vocalists of all time. If you like Sarah Vaughan but
don’t have this album, buy this record. It’ll be a great addition to your collection, and you
won’t just play it once and shelve it. No matter which category you fall into, please support
vinyl in general, and Classic Records in particular, by buying this record. You won’t be
disappointed. I predict that you’ll be inspired to go out and find more Sarah Vaughan
recordings. It’s going onto the “desert island” shelf in my record collection, and that’s the
best recommendation I can give.
Jacintha, Lush Life
Groove Note Records GRV1011-1
Ying Tan has produced an instant classic with his third album by Jacintha. Seriously, Lush
Life is one of the most outstanding female vocal jazz albums I’ve heard in many years.
Jacintha’s vocals are silky, smooth, sensuous, and seductive. Her intonation, phrasing,
breath control, and vocal modulation are quite phenomenal. The lush recording quality that
Joe Harley has achieved lets anyone who has never understood the definition of palpable
presence suddenly see the light. The instrumental timbres are captured with great clarity,
threeglackin
nothing is buried in the mix, and there’s a lot of outstanding instrumental work. The
flugelhorn is particularly mesmerizing, and Bill Cunliffe’s piano work is a joy. The orchestra,
present on most of the cuts, is arranged with taste and restraint. It would have been easy to
get carried away, but Bill Cunliffe did not. Although the album was multimiked due to the
sheer number of instruments, I do not find this objectionable. Great care was obviously
taken with the microphone setup, the mixing, and the mastering (by Bernie Grundman). The
result is that the vocals and instrumentals sound like a coherent whole within a believable
soundstage.
This is an album of jazz standards, including Black Coffee, Summertime, Lush Life, and
September Song, as well as one Latin piece. The interaction of piano, bass, drums, and
flugelhorn creates a very atmospheric and introspective ambience. If you badly need to
relax, toss this album on the turntable, and it should do the job. If it doesn’t transport you to a
more mellow state of mind, you’re in bad shape indeed.
I really appreciate Ying Tan’s practice of packaging 45 rpm LPs with his 33 1/3 LPs. Wow. I
thought I had heard Jacintha’s voice on the standard-speed LP, but... double wow. It’s like
I’d left the front door unlocked and she had somehow slipped into my listening room (in a
singing mood, yet). Harlem Nocturne must be heard to be believed. The phrase “palpable
presence” doesn’t do this justice. How about “phenomenally plausible palpable presence,
plus?” And there’s more of that mellow, tasteful flugelhorn. The flip side of the 45 duplicates
the first two cuts on the standard LP. My gosh. If you own this 45, keep it in a safe place,
and if you need something to amaze your audiophile chums, pull it out and play it. They’ll be
suitably impressed.
My hat’s off to Ying Tan, Joe Harley, Bill Cunliffe, Bernie Grundman, and everyone else who
made this recording a reality. It’s a knockout, and it deserves my highest recommendation.
Please support Ying Tan and colleagues and buy it. And if you don’t like it, mail it to me. My
copy may be worn out before too long.
BACK TO TOP
vinylcheapskateCES02
The Vinyl Cheapskate
by Roger S. Gordon
CES 2002—Vinylwise
There are numerous pleasures associated with attending the CES convention in Las Vegas:
seeing old friends, making new friends, seeing, hearing, and fondling expensive equipment,
eating good food, and of course, buying music. One of the reasons for getting to the CES early
on the first day is to hit the Alexis Park Ballroom and the other rooms where music (vinyl and CD)
is being sold at discount. Most of the major audiophile mail order companies are there, as well as
many of the small audiophile labels. The sellers only have limited stock, so you have to get there
before they sell out. This is especially true for the used vinyl. So, with cash in one hand and
plastic in the other, I jumped into the fray and emerged with what I hoped would be vinyl to die
for. Upon returning home several days later—wiser, poorer, and heavier (the buffets in Las Vegas
are truly excellent!), I proceeded to put my vinyl acquisitions on the turntable.
First up was a reissue of Decca SXL 6529, Holst, The Planets, Zubin Mehta, Los Angeles
Philharmonic. This reissue has been out for some time, but I had put off getting a copy as I
already had two copies of the original London CS6734. This recording is arguably the finest
Planets ever recorded. The performance and the sonics are superb. Its only competition would be
Stokowski’s Capitol recording with the LA Philharmonic, though I have not yet found a Capitol
pressing that sounds as good as the London. So it was with great anticipation that I put the
needle down on the Decca reissue. The opening strains of the first movement, Mars, filled my
room. The performance was everything that I remembered it to be, but there was something
missing. The hairs on the back of my neck weren’t tingling like they usually do when I hear this
movement. I quickly put on one of my CS6734s. Ahh, there were the tingles. Wonderful music.
Back onto the turntable went the Decca. Uh oh, the highs are missing. Back on the turntable went
my second copy of CS 6734. Lots of high-frequency energy. The piccolos pierced my skull like
shrieking banshees, just as they should. The previous week I had attended a San Diego
Symphony performance of Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra, which is scored for two
piccolos and two flutes. The piccolos shrieked even louder in the concert hall than they did on the
CS6734s, so I knew the CS6734s were closer to the real sound. Have the master tapes, which
are only thirty years old, lost their highs? It does happen, sooner with some tape brands than
others. Decca SXL 6529 was a severe disappointment. I wish I could get my money back.
Next on the turntable was a reissue of Westminster WST 14003, Rimsky-Korsakov,
Scheherazade, Hermann Scherchen, Vienna State Opera Orchestra. I have enjoyed many
Westminster recordings over the years, both mono and stereo, and was looking forward to this
one. I thought it a curious choice, though, as this performance had never stood out amongst the
multitude of Scheherazades in my collection. Scherchen is very collectible in Japan—could this
be the reason for the reissue? I played the first side, then I played my original WST 14003. The
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reissue vinyl is quieter and the dynamics are slightly better, but I thought I detected bleed-through
at several points. (Bleed-through is what happens when a master tape is stored, unplayed, for a
long time. The strong magnet signals recorded on a very dynamic section transfer, in part, to the
tape on either side of it on the reel. If the signals on that adjacent winding are also strong, you
won’t hear the bleed-through, as it will be masked, but if the music is quiet, you will hear the
bleed-through underneath the soft passage.) After playing the reissue several times, the bleedthrough became more noticeable. While the mastering of the reissue is better than the original
and the vinyl is quieter, the master tape has deteriorated over time, and I prefer my original WST
14003 to the reissue, despite the original’s shortcomings.
After two duds in a row, I needed a winner to revive my flagging spirits, so I put on the Classic
Records reissue of Everest SDBR-3003, Antill, Corroboree, Eugene Goossens, London
Symphony Orchestra. I have always been a fan of Everest recordings, and was very sorry when
DCC Compact Classics stopped reissuing them. Classic Records, however, has a difference
reissue philosophy than DCC. DCC reissued the Everest recordings for their performances, but
Classic reissues them primarily for their sonics. Thus, the Antill was a no-brainer—it is one of the
most sonically spectacular of all of the Everest recordings. Ten seconds into the opening cut, you
know why Classic Records reissued this. Wonderful sound. Fun music. My first-pressing original
Everest (silver/turquoise label with wooden dowel) does not sound this dynamic, nor is the vinyl
this quiet. A winner at last!
With my sonic palette cleansed, I moved on to another European reissue, EMI SAX 2342,
Mendelssohn, Symphony No. 3 and Final’s Cave Overture, Otto Klemperer, Philharmonic
Orchestra. This is one of my favorite recordings of Final’s Cave (The Hebrides Overture), which I
have on Angel S 35880. The reissue is clean, quiet, and dynamic, a joy to hear. However, is it
worth $30, when you can buy S 35880, one of the better-sounding Angels, for $1? A close call.
The EMI reissue sounds better, but many collectors could live quite happily with a clean copy of
the Angel and spend their $30 more profitably elsewhere.
The next LP I put on my turntable was not a reissue, but a first release of music recorded years
ago. Over the years, Cisco Music of Los Angeles, in conjunction with King Music of Japan, has rereleased many of the famous London/Decca recordings. Now, independent of King, Cisco is rereleasing recordings from the Urania catalog. Urania, a small audiophile label in the 1950s, made
super-sounding recordings for the time. The company issued fewer than 100 stereo LPs before
folding in late 1959. The label was acquired by Connoisseur Records (no relation to Connoisseur
Society), which re-released much of the Urania catalog on poor-sounding budget LPs. The first
Cisco release (CLP 7001) combines a recording from Urania’s catalog that was never released,
Freidrich Witt, Symphony in C, Hans Schweiger, Brussels Radio Orchestra (recorded in
1959) with a non-Urania recording, Mozart, Symphony No. 35 (“Haffner”), Thomas Nee, New
Hampshire Festival Orchestra (recorded in 1976 and originally released as Hammer Records
SD-150). The Witt piece was originally attributed to Beethoven when an unsigned manuscript
was found in 1909. After a second manuscript was found, signed by Witt, it was properly
attributed. The mistake in attribution is understandable, since the structure of the symphony is
pure Beethoven, though Witt’s themes mimic Franz Joseph Haydn. It is a shame that the piece is
seldom performed or recorded because of the plagiarism. This is a very nice performance, with
audiophile-quality sound. The Mozart also has excellent sound. The performance is quite good,
better than one would expect from a no-name conductor and orchestra. I would give it a B+, but it
is not world class. I still prefer my less-than-sonically-stunning recordings by Walter and
Beecham.
The second release from Cisco (CLP 7002) is another Urania recording, Prokofiev, Symphonic
Suite of Waltzes and excerpts from the Stone Flower Ballet, Hans Schweiger, Kansas City
Philharmonic. This was originally released as Urania USD 1030, later reissued by Connoisseur
Records as US 5130. This was the first recording of the Symphonic Suite for Waltzes, which had
been given its first American performance a few weeks earlier by the same conductor and
orchestra. I wonder what machinations of the Cold War resulted in a regional orchestra obtaining
the right to perform the American premiere of a work of one of the century’s greatest composers.
If only the dead could talk! The Symphonic Suite of Waltzes is made up of waltzes extracted from
six of Prokofiev’s previous works. Two will be instantly recognizable—the ones from the ballets
Cinderella and Romeo and Juliet. The other four are from very obscure works, including two film
scores. Still, Prokofiev is Prokofiev. This is a minor work, but very enjoyable, and it should be
heard more often. The Stone Flower excerpt—also known as the “Gypsy Fantasy” because they
comprise the Gypsy Dance, Severin’s Dance, Dance of the Gypsy Girl, and Mass Dance–are
heard more often than the Symphonic Suite of Waltzes, but still not as often as they should be.
This is fun music. The sound of the original Urania release was quite good—equal to any of the
RCAs or Mercurys being issued at the time. I compared the reissue to my Urania original, and
much prefer the reissue. It is quieter, more dynamic, and sounds more like a real performance. A
definite keeper.
Selling substantial numbers of reissue LPs from the Mercury, London/Decca, and RCA catalogs
is difficult. Selling reissue LPs from lesser-known labels is a real gamble. For Cisco to stick their
financial neck out with these two LPs is very courageous. If you are a vinyl collector, I would urge
you to buy both of them. I doubt you have a copy of the Witt in your collection. If you don’t, you
need it. It is also unlikely that you have many performances of the Prokofiev works. You also
need these. Support Cisco so that they will bring out more recordings from the Urania catalog.
We need to hear these performances again.
Being on a roll now, I put on the LP that I had the greatest expectations for, Classic Records’
45rpm reissue of RCA LSC-2341, Saint-Saens, Symphony No. 3, Charles Munch, Boston
Symphony Orchestra. The Saint-Saens Third, the “Organ Symphony,” is a real crowd pleaser.
You have to hear it in a live performance to really appreciate it. When I heard it live for the first
time a few years ago, I was sitting in the sixth row, just right of center. As the orchestra swung
into the finale, I could see the expressions on the faces of the orchestra members. They were
loving this music as much as the audience. As the final chord died away, the audience exploded
in applause, as did the orchestra members themselves. After the conductor called for quiet, the
orchestra replayed the last five minutes of the symphony. As the last chord ended, the audience
and orchestra again exploded into applause. What an exhilarating experience!
The Munch/BSO recording has always been my favorite performance of the work. I have listened
to every recording I could get my hands on, including the sonic spectacular from Telarc, but none
has been as emotionally satisfying as my 2S/6S Shaded Dog. I love the performance, despite the
fact that there are problems with the sonics. As the sound volume increases, the music congests.
This is particularly true at the finale, when the loud volume and the inner groove distortion
combine to make the sound a mishmash of loud noise. The Classic Records 45rpm reissue is
comprised of four single-sided records, one movement on each LP. With the music stretched
over four sides, the grooves do not run into the inner part of the LP, thus there is no inner-groove
distortion. In addition, the faster speed allows for greater dynamics; the record moves faster, and
imparts more energy to the stylus. These improvements alone would have been worth the price,
but the best part of this reissue is that even in the loudest parts, the music does not congeal.
Even at the finale, where every instrument is playing FFFF, each instrument, each individual line
of music, is clearly discernible. At last I can hear the music almost as it sounds in the concert hall.
Happiness! I turned off the system and went to sleep with dreams of glorious sound in my head.
The next evening, with fond memories of the previous evening’s glorious conclusion, I played my
last acquisition from CES 2002, Classic Records’ 45rpm reissue of RCA LSC-1992, Beethoven,
Violin Concerto, Jascha Heifetz, Charles Munch, Boston Symphony Orchestra. The
Beethoven Violin Concerto is not nearly as dynamic as the Saint-Saens Third. While I had
expected the 45rpm reissue of the Third to sound much better than the original Shaded Dog, I did
not know what, if anything, to expect from the Beethoven. I played my original 9S/7S Shaded
Dog, then played the 45rpm reissue. It was no contest. The 45rpm sounded so much more like
what I hear in the concert hall. A few weeks later, a couple came over for dinner. They asked if
they could hear some Beethoven. I played the 45rpm Violin Concerto. Ten seconds after Heifetz
made his entrance, the wife nudged her husband and exclaimed, “Listen to that. It sounds like a
real violin.” It’s close, in fact the closest I have heard in my system. I guess I am going to have to
buy Classic’s other current 45rpm reissues.
CES 2002 was a mixed success as far as vinyl acquisitions were concerned–a couple of
disappointments, but also a some real successes. I hope Cisco sells enough of their new series
to bring out more of the Urania catalog. I also hope Classic Records continues with their 45rpm
series. Wonderful music! I can’t wait until CES 2003….
BACK TO TOP
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Dr. Sardonicus Does the Music!
by Rick “Dr. Sardonicus” Gardner
Foreword
No... this is not some misguided attempt at a Guinness World Record for the most music
reviews from a single reviewer in a single issue of an audio magazine. As I have become
increasingly involved with Positive Feedback over the years, I have also become (of
necessity) more involved in the world of fine audio.
In truth, this increased involvement has been somewhat of a struggle for me. For a very long
time I existed as a solitary audiophile. When I was given the opportunity to join the
audiophile community I jumped in with both feet... and I have been educated. In the
beginning I generalized from my highly pleasant experiences with PF and thought that “high
end audio” was all about beauty, nourishing the soul and sharing this most basic of human
experiences, music.
To a distressing degree I was naïve in my assumptions. The unrelenting conflict, narrowmindedness, gossiping and general rancor that is all too evident in audio these days
threatened to diminish the joy with which I pursue this avocation. But, as I have done so
many times in my life when soul-sick, I returned to the why of it all... and focused on the
music. Along with what my ex-wife described as a “slightly” compulsive nature, these
reviews are record of the medication I have been taking to feel better... and as always,
music saves my soul.
Super Audio Compact Disc Reviews
I think even the most casual Positive Feedback Online reader can discern my position on the
superior sonics of SACD and the operational excellence of the Sony SCD-1 machine in my
listening room. For a long time I was concerned that we would piss away our best chance at
a truly high-resolution medium…I wasn’t sure that the format would survive the histrionics
and hassles that such adoptions generate. Early SACD adopters (people like Ye Olde
Editor, Stu McCreary, Jennifer Crock, Mike Pappas, Greg Maltz, Brian Moura, Kelly Tang
and I) were all too often having to purchase whatever music was available, regardless of
taste or preference. I guess in some ways this is an eloquent comment on SACD sonics.
People have invested regardless of the flow of new titles, not because of them. The paucity
of compelling new titles has been especially troublesome in the pop and rock genres. This
deficit has been even more tragic given what SACD can do with this type of music.
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However, things seem to be improving in an encouraging way these days. With the
Universal Music Group and Verve Music aboard the “SACD Express,” the advent of more
REAL MUSIC on SACD (witness July’s slated release date for the first of a MAJOR BATCH
of SACDs from the ROLLING STONES!!...as in, “I can FINALLY get some
‘SATISFACTION’!), and the gathering momentum for DSD Surround (lots more on that
subject in future writing here on Positive Feedback Online), it looks like critical mass for DSD
and SACD has developed. Finally! (It’s about time…)
Enough of that; now for some SACD reviews…
Paul Dukas, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Telarc – CD – 80515-SA
This recording may be the single most compelling argument for SACD currently extant.
Native DSD (no messing about with analog or PCM masters). This is wonderful music,
exquisitely performed and recorded. This disc is what we have been waiting for. More than
any other SACD disc in my collection, it highlights the capabilities of DSD and the immutable
fact that DSD does NOT sound like analogue any more than it sounds like PCM digital... it
sounds like what it is... the closest thing we have to the master tape.
How do I know this? See, we get into these silly discussions about controlled listening tests
to ferret out the subtle differences between analog, digital and DSD... as if we were trying to
discern fleetingly small gradations of differences. This disc should put this question to rest
for most people. From the opening notes of Fanfare to La Péri to the heart stopping,
instantaneous pp to fff of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice (and yes, I can’t shake the image of
Mickey with those damned brooms either), the listener is immediately and continuously
aware of the differences among analogue, PCM and DSD. Perhaps auditory memory is not
sufficient for a number of critical listening tasks, but it is sufficient here. Putting aside
analytical discussions of specific elements of the listening experience there is a rightness
here... a closeness to the sound of real instruments in a real space that is incomparable.
I would suggest that if you are contemplating SACD and you want a good test, do this...
along with this recording, get a copy of the superb, Water Lily SACD (WLA-WS-66) of
Sawallish’s Natures Realm (dual layer). This is a NEW tube-based, full analogue recording
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of a major orchestra. These two discs will give you the ability to compare the standard CD
layers of both tubed analogue and DSD, as well as the SACD layers. I won’t comment on
what I hear, just invite you to do your own comparisons. Highest recommendation!
Manfredo Fest, Just Jobim
DMP – SACD-05
Here we have one of my nominations for best sound in new release SACD’s. If you are an
aficionado of Brazilian music you already know the late Sr. Fest. If you are not... hie thee to
a music store and correct your inadequacies. A bossa nova GOD, Fest is not as well known
outside Brazil as he should be. The son of a classically trained German immigrant pianist
father, Fest learned to read music in Braille and studied classical piano for a time before
moving to jazz. He immigrated to the US in 1967 where he lived until his death in 1999. This
DMP disc is simply astounding. Taking the audiophile approach (what can I add to what has
already been written about the music of Jobim, anyway?), this disc has perhaps the best
rendering of piano of any digital recording I have ever heard. The harmonic complexity
presented here is simply breathtaking. Huge, deep soundstage... luscious shimmer and air.
Great music, perfectly played.
This is what being an audiophile is all about!
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Joe Satriani, Engines of Creation
Sony/Epic ES-67860
As you can probably tell, I listen more to rock, pop and blues than I do classical and jazz,
and it PISSES me off we are not getting better offerings from these quarters on SACD. But
when we do... oh mama! The opening cut “Devil’s Slide” almost made me swallow my
tongue when I first heard it at David’s house, with the Linn Klimax’s doing almost that
through the superb Nova Rendition IIs.
I want to drag every metal-head musician I can lay my hands on over to my room to hear
this disc... to hear what studio-produced rock can REALLY sound like. This disc will slam
your system to the stops and will have all but the most robust speakers and amps crying for
their mamas! SETs need not apply here! Listening to the disc from my nearby office, the
coffee in my cup was trembling like the water pools in Jurassic Park! My now-gone (and
unlamented!) ex-wife sat with her now-gone mouth agape on first listening, muttering “Oh...
my... God!” Satrianni is a technical guitar monster. The disc is dangerously recorded.
Exciting stuff!
The Florestan Trio, Piano Trios – Debussy, Fauré and Ravel
Hyperion SACD – A67114
David and I were both delighted to see Hyperion join the SACD movement—and what a
debut it is. Arguably one of the most accomplished trios extant, Florestan gives the
venerated Suk Trio a run for their money on this disc. The Florestan Trio’s playing is
perhaps most defined by a sense of delicacy. Brighter sections from these three works
{Debussy’s Piano Trio in D minor (op.120) Fauré, Piano Trio in G minor, and Ravel’s Piano
Trio} fail to break completely free from their ever so civilized restraint but are luscious,
nonetheless. Simply superb!
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Jay McShann, What a Wonderful World
Grove Note – GRV1005-3
This, the second of the Groove Note dual-layer SACD’s to find its way into my hands, is
simply wonderful. An analog recording (originally recorded to the Studer A-80 2-track at 30
IPS and mastered by Bernie Grundman to DSD), sonics are stellar, warm... lively and
immediate. The venerable Kansas City piano elder statesman, Mr. McShann is well into his
eighth decade of life (he reputedly gave Charlie Parker his first professional opportunity),
and a fixture of jazz music since the early 1930’s. McShann is joined in this fresh as a daisy,
blues-driven effort by Gerald Spait on bass, Todd Strait on drums, Ahmad Alaadeen on
tenor sax, and Sonny Kenner on guitar. Particularly toothsome are Jay’s sophisticated and
sweetly fragile vocals, so purely right for this music which includes cuts like, “Cherry Red,”
“Hot Biscuits” and “Blue Monday.” If Groove Note keeps this level of contributions up they
will surely achieve preeminence as a source for the finest SACD has to offer.
Terry Evans, Puttin’ It Down
Audioquest AQ-SACD1038
Here is a fascinating opportunity to directly compare analog-mastered material in PCM and
DSD reissues. For some years I have enjoyed this offering by Mr. Evans on the JVC-XRCD
re-issue. I have long held that the XRCD’s represent the best PCM has to offer. Produced by
Joe Harley, this live-to-2-track (except for minimal overdubbing on a couple of tracks) was
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originally recorded by Mike Ross on a modified ATR-124 2-track running at 30 IPS at
OceanWay studios in 1995. The SACD re-issue was done by Bernie Grundman, using the
Ed Meitner DSD converters. So we start with great music, recorded beautifully to 2-track
analogue tape. Then we evoke the JVC PCM wizardry on one side... and Mr. Grundman
with his Meitner powered DSD equipment on the other side. And... drum roll... the results?
First, props to JVC. The XRCD version of this recording is truly wonderful, with deep, meaty
bass and smooth as silk sonics. The SACD... well, sorry... there is simply no substitute for
the additional resolution and simplicity of DSD. The primary differences are what one might
logically expect, greater ease, resolution and a three-dimensionality that is most evident with
Mr. Evan’s voice and brass instrumentation. Interestingly, the bass on the SACD is not as
prominent but more natural and differentiated than that on the XRCD. Both discs are stellar.
Well, I’ve said it before, but here I go again... I would love to see the folks at JVC move to
DSD and start working their way back through their impressive catalog of re-releases. The
world would be a happier and better place for it.
Pierre Boulez, Boulez Conducts Ravel
Sony – SS-89121
Although I have never been able to reconcile the images of a nubile Bo Derek “10” with that
short, stumpy English fellow, Ravel’s “Bolero” has almost become synonymous with carefully
timed sex (surely you HAVE tried doing it to this music, at least once, have you not?).
Everyone loves Ravel, even people who couldn’t tell you who he is. They know the music.
This is one of those great Sony archival SACDs. Originally recorded over a period of time
from 1969 to 1975, the renown Boulez gives great readings of “Bolero,” “Rapsodie
Espagnole,” and the haunting Daphnis Et Chloé, working with (in order) the New York,
Cleveland and again the New York Philharmonic Orchestras. Sonics are great, with the
different venues clearly audible. Truly wonderful. A must have.
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George Frederick Handel, Water Music – Music for the Royal
Fireworks, Pierre Boulez conducting the New York
Philharmonic
Sony SS-8912
One of the most recognizable pieces of music in western consciousness, it had been ages
since I listened to this old chestnut. Recorded between 1973 and 1974 at the Columbia New
York studios, these two nearly inseparable works are beautifully executed by Mr. Boulez and
the New York Philharmonic. Sonics are little up-front in perspective, but without glare or
hardness. Makes me fantasize about someone storming the castle and breaking those
wonderful Mercury Living Presence recordings free and transferring them to DSD as fast as
possible. Oddly, I often find myself enjoying SACD the most with heirloom classical
recordings, with a few exceptions. Highly recommended. You know the music, you know the
director, you know the orchestra, now hear them on SACD.
Wynton Marsalis, The London Concert
Sony – SS-57497
My first instrument (after the Flutophone®, of course) was the trumpet and one of my life’s
great possessions was an Olds Opera I had for years and years. Sadly, it was a better
instrument than I was a musician, and besides... eventually I discovered rock, women and
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herb and moved on. But I will always remember hooting my way to a second place recital
award doing “Wonderland by Night.” Well, brass lovers, this is the SACD for you. The
London Concert shows Mr. Marsallis at his classical best, giving us Handel, Mozart, Fasch
and Hummel with a deft hand (or is that lip?). The Hayden (Concerto for Trumpet and
Orchestra in E-Flat Major) is particularly tasty. This is Sony SACD at its best, straight ahead
classical music from analog masters. An endearing disc that will see a lot of play on my
system.
Giovanni Gabrieli, Antiphonal Music
Sony SACD – SS-89173
Originally recorded in 1966 there are performances here by the Philadelphia, Cleveland and
Chicago Brass Ensembles. In addition to Gabrieli, works by William Brade, Johann Pezel,
Orlande De Lassus and Anthoy Holborne are also featured. Sort of a greatest hits of the
16th century. I have always thought PCM fell hardest on its face with recordings such as
this, but I am pretty sensitive. For example, I have always had a hard time with Miles Davis
CD’s because of how PCM does muted trumpet. Hurts my ears. Not so DSD. While one can
only wonder what this recording would be like in native DSD, it’s a hoot (yuk, yuk) as is. The
cover says, “The glorious sound of brass” and it is absolutely correct. Unlike a lot of the stuff
currently coming out on SACD this is real music and really enjoyable. While Gabrieli is
obviously the star, I particularly liked the Pezel suite. Although I found myself repeatedly
thinking this was probably a good Christmas disc, it is still recommended.
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Jacintha, Autumn Leaves – The Songs of Johnny Mercer
Groove Note – GRV-1006-3
David Robinson actually ordered this disc for me without my prior knowledge. It is significant
to see Grove Note adding their voice to the SACD cadre, but such boldness on David’s part!
I joke. It’s rare when grouchy old men approaching the half-century mark become fast
friends in the old fashioned way (read – NOT business, or “what can he do for me?” which I
consider to be modern forms of male bondage). He even introduced my ex-wife to cigars,
something I thought she would never even try. (But then, one never knows about
women…which is why she is now “ex”.)
Oh, right... the disc... This is the smoky, sweet, late night jazz we all put on when we are in
the mood for romance, or lamenting lost love. Jacintha has a classic voice for this material,
expressive, subtle and patient with a phrase. I know these songs. I know this sort of voice...
but then, like the slow flush of good brandy, song after song, that subtlety takes root and
appreciation grows. Elegant, understated... classy. This is a wonderful disc and a wonderful
present (even if technically I did have to pay for it). Thanks Dave!
Jay Leonhart, Salamander Pie
DMP – SACD-07
Featuring Mike, Renzi, this 1983 recording of well-known bassist Jay Leonhart is a
sophisticated, witty, and entirely delightful exercise in jazz whimsy. Originally recorded on a
Mitsubishi X-80 digital recorder at 50.4kHz, the transfer was made from the original tape
using an EMM Labs DSD converter. No equalization or processing was used in the transfer.
I include this information because this disc seems to avoid the majority of the problems
associated with PCM to DSD conversion. This means we may have a rich source of high
resolution PCM masters that will serve well in DSD conversion and that would be great for
everyone. And now the music... this disc is light-hearted fun, with such tunes as “Drink No
More” and “Beat my Dog.” I always take it as a good sign when I giggle listening to jazz.
Jay’s voice works fine with these fairly non-demanding songs, and Mike Renzi’s piano is deft
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and sure. Lots of fun!
Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown and Milt Jackson, The Very Tall
Band
Telarc CD-83443-SA
1998 live recording at the Blue Note. You probably recognize the names. Seventy-one
minutes of classic jazz-trio joy. SACD sonics. Bliss. What else is there to say?
...and now, things get a bit murky...
OK, whatever your position on this, you probably need to know about these SACD reissues:
Billy Joel, 52 Street, Journey, Escape and Cyndy Lauper’s, She’s So Unusual. Of the three, I
confess a guilty pleasure with the seductive Ms. Lauper (I am afraid my fascination with her
is not entirely platonic). Yes... shaving one side of her head and forming an association with
professional wrestling suggest less than stellar decision-making, but some of the most
memorable ballads of the eighties came from her (“True Colors,” “Time After Time,” etc.).
Whatever you think of her music, she has a tremendous voice and boy was she completely
HOT in that little white dress in Vibes! I use the Lauper disc to demo SACD, because I have
the original LP, the original CD and the 20 bit PCM re-master of some of the songs. Makes
for interesting comparisons. Oh, the other guys? The discs sound better than stock, better
than the LP’s (Yes, sadly I have both) and at least we are getting SOME rock and pop discs,
even if it is just these. Bring on the Rolling Stones!!!
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Flim and the BB’s, Tricycle
DMP SACD-08
I have much the same reaction to Flim and the boys as I have always had for Mannheim
Steamroller... yeah, well... OK. This is contemporary jazz-pop... something. DMP does a
great job with the recording... but my question is, why? The disc is pleasant enough, but not
a lot of substance.
Joe Beck & Ali Ryerson, Alto
DMP – SACD-06
The first cut from this guitar-flute duo is “Ode to Billie Joe.” Yeah, right... that one. We get
“Willow Weep for Me,” “Autumn Leaves,” and even a medley of “Scarborough Fair and
Norwegian Wood.” This is sweet, mellow stuff, and although I did feel my brain waves
flattening out considerably with extended listening, it is beautifully recorded and for those of
you who like easy-listening jazz, I am sure it will give great pleasure. Zzzzzzzzzzzz.
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Next Move, Hue and Cry
Linn – AKD-131
I ponder the significance of Linn entering into the SACD recording camp. What does it mean,
gang? Can we look forward to an SACD-12 (and wouldn’t that just be nifty?)? Anyway, to the
disc. I am less enamoured of this disc than is our estimable Editor, David Robinson. First of
all, it sounds like PCM to me. I am not sure, but I suspect this was cut from a PCM master...
and, as with the Delos SACD offering, you can hear the difference. Secondly, the music is
not terribly distinguished, post-modern, male vocalist jazz. Passably well-played and sung,
there is just so much more worthy music out there waiting for the magic of SACD.
Red Book CDs
Chesky
Christy Baron, Steppin’
Chesky JD-201
...and I will tell you why I hate Christy Baron. First, she is beautiful. Secondly, she is a highly
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talented and successful stage and film actress, and as though that wasn’t enough... she can
sing, and jazz nonetheless. At first glance, Steppin’ is way-familiar ground for audiophiles.
Relax, take a puff, and sit back. Wait, don’t relax too soon! There is some “mouth music” at
the front of “Tomorrow Never Knows.” Yes, this is almost trippy, vaguely psychedelic. This is
unconventional (although Mickey Hart also put some of this aboriginal music in
arrangements on his most recent disc). There is the fact that Christy only lets them do
whatever it is they do for the top side of the cut. After that? Well, a highly mannerly treatment
of this Beatles tune. “This must be Love” starts promisingly with bongos and harmonica.
Very pleasant. Now we move to the Zombies, “She’s not There.” Bongos again. Kind of
bluesy-groovy. Surprisingly, it works. But seriously folks, how many renditions of “Spooky”
can we take? Sheesh. The last cut, “Night and Day” sounds it was arranged for a comatose
Cassandra Wilson. Overall, not a bad outing. Sonics, as with all the Chesky discs, are...
Chesky.
Clark Terry, One-On-One
Chesky JD-198
Ah, the estimable Mr. Terry... I never tire of his classic approach. This disc is no exception
and features a gerzillion stellar contributors. From Geri Allen and Billy Taylor, to Monty
Alexander. Such delightful cuts as “L.O.V.E.,” “You can depend on me,” Honeysuckle Rose,”
and “Misty” bring a comfortable smile, the shoes come off, and the sweet red from Portugal
begins to pour. Delicious.
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Dave’s True Story, Unauthorized
Chesky JD-189
Naively, at first I wondered if this could be some alter ego project of a, ahem, well-known
artist, but it turns out this delightful duo (David Cantor, Kelly Flint) are ten-year veteran
performers on the New York music scene. They allegedly formed their relationship while
under the spell of demon rum. Whatever... this is my vote for the most fun disc of 2000 from
Mr. Chesky, at least so far. I giggled through the darkly vampy “Misery.” “Lily 110-140” had
me believing I was listening to the Jody Grind. Vastly amusing to a conga beat. “China Tour”
finishes the disc on a wry note. Definitely recommended.
The Conga Kings
Chesky – JD-193
It is gratifying to see the growing interest in Latin music. Some of the most repulsive
miscreants I have ever met still possess sufficient soul to think the Buena Vista Social Club
is wonderful. The Conga Kings are Candido Camero (what an absolutely kickin’ name!) on
conga and vocals, Guillermo Edgehill on bass, and Joe Gonzallez on bongos. We get
occasional flashes of this stuff, such as with the beginning of some Eddie Palmieri (Lacuma)
and Trio de Paz cuts, but here you get the whole pescado. Hypnotically repetitive, this is the
opposite of brash tropical fireworks but with driving rhythms and red-hot passions more
subtly told through unamplified traditional instruments, redolent of Africa. This disc requires
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and warrants patient consideration before it will give up all of its subtle charms. Makes me
want to eat something in a banana leaf. Just perfect.
David Johansen, And the Harry Smiths
Chesky JD-196
Coincidentally, Stereophile recently featured one of their regular “Rick Rosen Visits with
Famous Musicians who have Crappy Stereo Systems,” interviews with David. A veteran of
the New York Dolls and his alter-persona as Buster Poindexter, David has gone folky with
some interesting results. His gruff, growling voice works very nicely on this blues-folk
material. I confess it took me a while to warm up to this disc, but I suspect it was head and
not heart things that were in the way. While the disc isn’t a barn-burner, it has limited
charms. “Darling, do You Remember Me?” was interminable, but “Well, I’ve Been to
Memphis” is jaunty fun.
The Coryells
Chesky JD-192
This family guitar trio (with bass and percussion contributions) led by the veteran guitarist,
Larry Coryell is likeable from the first few notes. The Chesky recording method particularly
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suits this group. Sonics were absolutely fine; great body and sound stage depth... and a real
sense of air, often missing from even the finest PCM recordings. This is a long disc, chuck
full of acoustic guitar delights. Really sweeeet!
Mapleshade
We at PF have often, and affectionately written of Mapleshade recordings. For myself, along
with an appreciation for their focus on natural sounding recordings, I have always thought
the Mapleshade bunch had great taste in music. This latest gaggle of releases is no
exception.
Sunny Sumter, Sunny
Mapleshade 05932
Silky sweet, smoky and sexy, Sunny Sumter gives us a modest, but highly enjoyable disc.
Supported by Larry Willis (who also gets production credits), and other Mapleshade
familiars, this is laid-back acoustic jazz with much that is familiar (songs like, “Nobody knows
the trouble I seen” and “I fall in love too easily.”). Sunny’s voice is expressive and poignant.
This is one of those perfect, “port and walnuts by the fire” discs. Most pleasing.
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Bob Willoughby, Blues, Booze and Oldtimey Soul
Mapleshade 06452
It’s not that I have a specific problem with “white blues.” From John Mayall to Dave Hole,
there are distinguished white artists who have added enormously to this genre. But, as with
this disc, sometimes it just doesn’t ring true. When boiled down to its essence the blues is
essentially about heart and crotch and sadly there is little of either here. Bob is a great piano
player and just maybe this disc would have been more successful if the original idea of a
solo piano disc had been pursued. However, it was not. And, at the risk of seeming
uncharitable, Bob’s wife Amy seems incapable of singing reliably on pitch. Her presence on
the disc adds an irritatingly amateurish cast. Good songs, good piano, Pierre’s great
production, but just too white-bread for my tastes. Pass.
Various, The Art of the Ballad
Mapleshade – 006132
OK, this is just yummy! Larry Willis, David Murray, Harriet Bluiett and a host of other
luminaries makes this “greatest hits” disc a real pleasure. As stated earlier, I like Pierre’s
taste about as well as anyone working in the audiophile music scene. If by some chance you
are not familiar with Mapleshade, this disc is definitely the place to begin. Spanning a fairly
wide range of styles, The Art of the Ballad, is precisely what it purports to be... a nice cross
section of ballad-based jazz styles beautifully recorded and assembled. First rate stuff!
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King/Bluiett Trio, Makin’ Whoopee
Mapleshade – 4832
I think this is my favorite of the new issues from Mapleshade. Obviously, it is a homage to
the Nat King Cole Trio. Tasty it is too. Except for the annoying “Route 66” (which, sadly,
takes up over eight minutes of this recording) and one briefly misguided and inexplicable
synthesizer foray, the disc is a pure joy from beginning to end. Sax, bass and guitar,
intimately recorded. Great sax sound; meaty, big and bouncy, as it were. Sure there is
comfort in the old songs, but there is also fresh life infused by this talented group. Nicely
done.
JVC – XRCD
Gino D’ Auri, Flamenco Passion
FIM XRCD 23
This disc faced an uphill battle with me. First, I think Flamenco is as much a visual art as it is
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a musical one. Secondly, although it is said that Flamenco is characterized by a lack of
conventional percussion instruments, in live performances the percussion is found in the footstomping and castanets-clicking of the dancers and this is typically missing from studio
recordings of this genre. I truly miss the sound of human feet and the vocalizations of the
dancers. Their absence turns a sweaty, sexy, emotional experience into something more
cerebral and less compelling. Italian guitarist, Gino D’auir is not a classical Flamenco artist.
He has done electronically enhanced music, fusion forms, and has even appeared on two
discs by Keiko Matsui, new-age/world fusion recording artist. The compositions on Flamenco
Passion are all contemporary and all written by Gino himself. For me, this means several
strikes before I even pulled it out of the wrapper.
Now, all this being said, this disc has its own, inescapable charm and allure. “Galicia
Flemnca,” and “Las Minas,” are simply brilliant. Sonics are JVC superb... I keep fantasizing
JVC will begin to produce SACD’s. Can you even imagine their current catalog available as
dual layer, SACD/XRCD discs? I almost lost consciousness writing the sentence. It shouldn’t
be, but this is a great disc and in spite of my churlish biases, I have to recommend it highly.
Bravo!
DCC
Ok, so what do the following have in common? Jim Croce, Metallica, Judy Garland and
Queensryche? That’s right, “what is... what passes for A& R currently at DCC?.” Simply
amazing, and I am a very open sort of guy to differing musical styles. Well, let’s take a look.
Metallica, Ride the Lightening
GZS-1136
This 1984 recording finds our devil-worshipping band of merry men assiduously pursuing
their collective speed-metal thang. This is everything you were warned about. Every
prejudice you have against long haired, tattoo festooned, morally challenged rockers finds its
unholy embodiment here. Mind-numbingly loud (well, it is if you play it correctly), brutally
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percussive, sweatily excessive in every dimension. Gothic titles like “Creeping Death,” and
“The Call of Ktulu” pretty much say it all. While I can’t really recommend it, I loved it. Caveat
Emptor!
Judy Garland, At Carnegie Hall
GZS-1135
Now, things start to get a little weird. Recorded live at Carnegie Hall in April of 1961, this
three channel stereo recording (2 discs) takes us back to the early days of commercial
stereo. And I mean early... we get two hard-left, hard-right channels for the instruments, with
Judy inhabiting the middle channel. Once you get used to it it’s not a bother. However, at
best the sonics are fair. But never mind pussycat, because this is all about Judy and... this is
the lady herself, raw... vibrant, not always on key, and simply staggering. We forget how
slick everything is these days, even the alt rock. Not here. I was almost embarrassed at
times, faced with a level of intimacy rarely achieved in recorded sound. The sense of her...
hell, the SMELL of her, filling the room. This is a mesmerizing recording. Even if you are not
given to this sort of thing, treat yourself to a “human” recording and remember there is a
living, breathing creature at the microphone who holds nothing back in some misplaced
attempt at “cool.” God love her, she was with us such a short time. I can’t listen to this one
much; breaks my heart.
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Queensrÿche, Empire
GZE-1138
Here we have delicious paradox, “intelligent” heavy metal, well-recorded and even remastered. The original was very well done and Steve Hoffman’s careful attention only
improves things. “The Thin Line” and “Della Brown” are startlingly well-crafted. But what do
you do with a metal band that does not write songs to the devil, can actually sing, but
frequently and disturbingly sounds sort of like Rush, if they had a normal amount of
testosterone? Damned if I know.
Jim Croce, Words and Music
GZS-1134
Once upon a time I threatened my fellow bar-band colleagues that if I EVER had to play
either, “Leroy Brown” or “Jeremiah was a Bullfrog” again I was going to maim someone and
they were high on my list of possibles. Despite this, I have no rancor for the charming, late
Mr. Croce. If I had to pick I’d take him over John Denver every time. Well, here we are in
1972 (I was a junior in college) and James Taylor, John Denver, and Cat Stevens and other
folkies provided tuneful balance to the likes of Deep Purple, Uriah Heep and Led Zeppelin.
This is a fine recording, and if Mr. Croce’s sweet, blues-tinted, folky jive is your cuppa, this
disc is a quiet pleasure.
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Metallica, Master of Puppets
GZS-1133
It’s starting to get weird again. Don’t ask me why, but I have this premonition they are going
to work their way through this group’s discography. Noooooooooo! Seriously, I dump on
them because of the genre, but Metallica is really a bit more than a markedly successful
speed-metal band. There is more to this group than simple bitter hostility, sturm and drang.
This 1987 recording is a little more raw and youthful sounding than Ride the Lightening but
just as much fun, if you’re into that sort of thing. Everything said about Ride the Lightening
applies here... including the question for DCC... with audiophile CD sales where they are,
what was the intended niche for these two discs?
Jazz CDs
Ronnie Earl, Healing Time
Telarc CD-83490
I am annoyed. This is a native DSD recording from a company that is producing SACDs, but
we get it as a standard CD. Damn, what a waste! However, you must remember I am the
guy is trying to figure out some way to get AC/DC to come to my house and hear Satrianni’s,
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Engines of Creation, so they can hear what their already finely recorded albums can sound
like. But to the point at hand. Ronnie is a veteran of Roomful of Blues before he formed his
own group, The Broadcasters. His distinctive guitar work, formed of equal parts intense fire
and precision machining, makes this disc both a technical killer, but also keeps the heart and
toes engaged. Jazz, blues and whatever else was in the refer when he was fixing dinner are
offered up. Great stuff.
Yes, the sonics are fine, but alas... they are a pale imitation of what they could have been.
There aren’t that many native DSD recordings out there and we disserve to have each and
everyone of them on SACD. Harrruummph!
Kenny Drew, Jr., This One’s for Bill
AGB99352
This is a nicely recorded solo piano album, featuring some old favorites, like “Suicide is
Painless,” and “The Days of Wine and Roses.” Son of a famous musician, Jr. is a talent in
his own right, winning the Jacksonville jazz piano competition. The recording (done at a
Mason Hall and edited and mastered by the redoubtable Mr. Rudy Van Gelder) is excellent,
getting some of the best non-SACD left-hand piano sound I have heard for some time.
Immediate, warm and inviting, it’s perfect for cozying up with your favored life-form and
exploring la dolcé vita!
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Louis Hayes Quintet, Quintessential Lou
TCB-99652
If jazz is dead how come great discs keep coming? This group of lions has made a scorcher
of a traditionally rooted jazz disc. Firmly in the West Coast bebop tradition, the maturity,
taste and skill reflected here is simply joyous. One can certainly hear the influences of
Horace Silver, Oscar Peterson, et al. This is a studio album, and the venerable Mr. Hayes’
drumming is front and center. It is one of those rare discs that really captures percussion
well. Lots of air and dynamics in this recording... and smooth as a baby’s butt. “Tenderly”
(with Abraham Burton’s unaccompanied sax taking the opening) is first moody romantic...
and then scintillating as Riley Mullins joins on horn. The first cut, “Progress Report” is a
delightfully creative read, with enough personal touches to avoid a “me too” arrangement.
This is great stuff for those of you who are worried that jazz is a dying art form. No worries.
Keith Jarrett, The Melody at Night With You
ECM-1675
The nice people at ESP sent me this disc (I employ their power cords and distributor strIPS
throughout my system), with a note that their cables were used exclusively in the recording
of this solo piano disc. Keith has been sick for some time and this is his first foray back into
the studio in way too long. The disc is dedicated to his wife. It’s simple, sweet and
unabashedly romantic. Maybe adversity brings us closer to our core, what is really important
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to us... but I respect a man who recognizes and celebrates the bond with his life partner.
“Someone to Watch Over Me,” “Don’t Ever Leave Me,” and “Be My Love” are tenderly
played. This is a quiet disc that reveals its charm slowly, and with great tenderness. Sonics
are great. Recommended.
Joao Gilberto, Joao Voz E Violao
Verve 314 546 713 2
I have always thought that Brazilian jazz was the epitome of sophistication, the mixing of
tropical heat and sun-drenched rhythms with unbridled romanticism. Joao is a national
treasure in Brazil. The preeminent author of the bossa nova, Joao offers a scant half-hour
disc, his first in nearly a decade. Minimalist recording... his dulcet, shy voice and guitar,
move artfully between old classics (“Voce vai ver,” “A cor do pecado”). One might wish for a
few more tunes, but could hardly wish for anything more touching and beautifully done. An
instant classic.
“Da Blues” CDs
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Koko Taylor, Royal Blue
Alligator – AlCD-4873
My ex-wife was once fortunate enough to see Koko in a small venue in Nashville,
Tennessee. After this encounter she was as one who has experienced a piece of the true
cross. She talked about it for days.
See, Koko Taylor is the real thing. When they say she is the Queen of the Blues, they are
crapping you negative. Long time Alligator recording artist, we have not had new material
from Koko for over seven years. Royal Blue finds her shed of her more “modest” backing
musicians, and getting the studio attention her stature warrants. Even B.B. King makes an
appearance. The disc is an absolute delight... but, I sort of long for a more minimalist
approach that puts her incredible voice in the expressive forefront. Here’s to hoping we hear
from her often now she has returned to the studio. Brava! Must have for anyone who thinks
of themselves as a blues fan.
John Primer, Knocking at Your Door
Telarc CD-83456
A veteran of thirteen years with Magic Slim and the Teardrops, and former side man for
Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon, John has certainly earned his “props” as a bone fide senior
Chicago blues man. This Telarc recording is the real thing for Chicago style blues
aficionados. Rough as a cob and completely without compromise, the fine sonics of this disc
capture a mature musician in the height of his powers. “Excited by Your Charms,” and “The
Kiss of Fire” are standouts on this impressive recording. I am particularly impressed that
Telarc’s first blues series is as well thought-out and tasteful as can be. Toe-tappin,’ rock &
rollin’ fun, from first cut to the last. Recommended.
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James Cotton, Fire Down Under the Hill
Telarc – CD-83497
Continuing with coverage of the Telarc blues series, here we have a roots-driven quartet
fronted by the gravely voiced harmonica monster, James Cotton, and featuring the
considerable talents of Rico McFarland, David Maxwell, and Darrel Nulisch. James’s vocals
are sadly roughened by illness in this latest disc, but charming nonetheless. Remember, this
guy was playing harp for Muddy Waters when most of us were still playing with blocks. A
student of Sonny Boy Williamson, his vocal pyrotechnics may be a thing of the past but do
not despair. This is a wonderful disc in the traditional mode, with no percussion. I especially
like the boogie-woogie offerings, such as “Cotton Jump Boogie,” and “Boot Knockin’
Boogie.” I have to confess at first I sort of missed percussion, but that didn’t last long. Who
says you need a kick drum, to kick ass? Sonics are superb. Another hit from Telarc.
Zydeco Madness, Gaga for Ya-Ya
Winter and Winter – 910-041-2
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood is one of those best-selling “chick-books” so in
evidence these days (my ex-wife loved the book…for what that’s worth). Winter and Winter
are a German company, with which I was unfamiliar before David dropped this recording off
for my consideration. I guess it was not to his tastes, although he never said. Basically, this
is a pretty shallow survey of Zydeco (the more African influenced form of Cajun music).
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While it has little new or interesting for anyone with any real knowledge of this genre, it’s a
very pleasant disc for the newbie. Recording quality varies by original source, but overall is
quite good. If you can avoid cuts like “Iko” and “Tequila” there is some enjoyment to be had
here, with Boozoo Chavez, Geno Delfose and Beau Jacque kicking it. Not bad.
World Music
Femi Kuti, Shoki Shoki
Polygram – 559-035-2
Sparkling, horn-driven Afro-pop, this disc is a must-have. Femi is the scary-talented son of
famous Nigerian musician, Fela Kuti (perhaps one of Africa’s most respected musicians).
Before striking out on his own he apprenticed with his father’s band, Eygpt-80 for more than
a decade. He emerges on his own, fully formed and laying out a funk-drenched groove I
predict Americans will find irresistible. His remake of “Beng Beng Beng” is just killer. I truly
appreciate the socially conscious, but never heavy-handed touch with these songs. Like Zap
Mama there are fusion elements here, but so tastefully composed as to avoid the too often
obvious “lifts.” Sound quality is very good. If you haven’t made a significant foray into world
music this is as good a place to begin as any. Beng, Beng, Beng!
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Kiyoshi Yoshida, Asian Drums
Chapter One – chcb-10013
I suppose it should be a tip-off when a CD comes with its own incense packed inside. I
would like to believe I am a pretty open guy when it comes to musical forms, but this whole
new-age, world fusion stuff mostly makes my ass itch. Try as I might, I really could not
meaningfully differentiate among the cuts on this disc; sort of like most Japanese cars... look
away for a second and you can’t remember what they look like. Mushy, diffuse, ambient
glop. Oh, and the incense smells like fly-spray... pass.
Hyperborea, Ten Years Under the Earth
Global – CD-001
As tough as I am on world-fusion forms there are some interesting exceptions. The mixing
of Celtic and African forms produces some interesting music, on occasion. With Hyperborea
we have these two influences with yet another two added, Arabic and western dance/hiphop rhythms (including super deep, synth bass lines). Recorded in Dublin, this is my first
exposure to Hyperborea and I have to say I am impressed. The recording is superb, and the
music is strangely compelling. It takes careful restraint to mix this many “influences” together
and still produce a coherent musical experience. If you like Celtic music, but are looking for
something a bit more adventurous this might be for you.
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Mystic Rhythms
Xquisite Planet ORR-58682
Rick Wakeman underwent a spiritual conversion and, in a moment of mescaline induced
madness, kidnapped a group of Native American musicians and dancers. Locked behind the
cold walls of his castle estate, he proceeded to have his demented musical way with them.
Ok... so that didn’t really happen, but this would be the sound-track if it did. However, to be
completely honest (as far as I am aware) Rick doesn’t even know this disc exists. By now I
am betting that you think I hated this recording. Well... not really.
I struggle intellectually with the idea of Native American Electronica, but the actual
experience was really sort of pleasant. Oh, by the way... they also throw in some Tibetan,
Indian, Chinese and “aboriginal” (Aboriginal from whence? They, don’t say.) chants. In the
completely unrevealing liner notes, there is a suggestion that all “Indian” languages share a
common ancestor (continental drift and all that). Boy, does this disc do bass. My Timbre
DAC was shaking the sidewalk outside. In spite of myself I like this disc. I sure prefer it to the
most recent outing by Rick himself, a hopelessly self-indulgent and tedious return to “The
Center of the Earth.”
Michael Dog, Summer Night Sessions
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Entry LIQ021CDL
Trance/trip hop, world fusion influences form this curiously compelling disc. One of the
defining characteristics of trance music is, of necessity, repetition. It’s here where most of it
leaves me cold. The combination of endlessly repeating phrases, electronic nibbles and
nabbles, chilly ambience synthesizers and that whole Gary Newman mecho-cyber
emotionless drone is typically more than I can take for long. Not here. I suspect that it has to
do with the fact each cut is from another source. We have normal, living humans like Tony
Hunt and Grant Wilkinson who AKA as “entities” such as Rootsman, SexyrubberSoul,
Metamorph VI, et al. I must confess, I have NO idea where Michael Dog comes in. I can’t
find any references to the name and the liner notes are completely devoid of mention.
Sonics are quite good. Nice, three-dimensional, airy as the term “ambience” suggests. Not
half-bad.
Sorma, Mirage of the East
Chapter One CHCB-10014
Ok, this one comes with incense too but boy is it an improvement! (The music, the incense
still sucks). I don’t know much about modern Japanese music, but this disc makes me want
to learn more. Replete with Indian influences and quirky quarter-tone vocals, covering pretty
conventional dance-music foundations, there is charm here. Besides, how many young
musicians do you know who actually play the sitar? Sorma is apparently one of those
“project” groups so common these days. As many as four female vocalists appear on the
disc, as well as a bunch of players. Tadahiro Wakabayashi is credited with the Sitar. Yoichi
Shimada gets most of the writing credits, and Sorma turns out to be the mixing engineer and
producer. This is their second disc and apparently it contains some re-mixes from the first
(Illusion). I find there is a “female” delicacy and refinement to this disc I am not used to
hearing in electronic-based music. Good recording. The music is unexpected, and mostly
very interesting.
Safe and Sane Pop CDs (Seat-belts are not required, but may make the reader more
comfortable)
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Patti Smith, Gung Ho
Arista 07822-14618-12
This is Patti’s third offering since exploding back onto the music scene in 1996, after a fifteen
year hiatus to be married and act like a real person. While I could appreciate both of her
more recent offerings there was little there to evoke the spirit of her debut album (Horses)...
until now. This disc is killer! At 53, it seems Patti has reconnected to her passionate past and
fetched up a treat you simply have to hear. This disc is not just a nostalgic return to her
roots, but rather a complete reflection of then and now, with a clarity and articulation that is
simply breathtaking. Production values are first rate. Go get this one!
Tracy Chapman, Telling Stories
Elektra 62478-2
One of the seduction tools I used on my, then to be wife…now my cursed ex-what’s-hername... (along with my porcini risotto-stuffed chicken), was Tracy’s first offering, a disc that
hit me like a hammer from the blue. The first time I put it on I listened completely through...
transfixed, mouth open, shocked. I was alternately angered, saddened and moved by this
brilliant young woman who seemed to have come from nowhere, carrying the pain and
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sorrow for every unfortunate who dangles from the thin threads of the richest and most
powerful nation in the world. Then I watched every successive album grow dimmer and
less... well, just less.
Telling Stories is her best offering since her first, in 1988. It still suffers from preachy navel
watching, something absent from that first transcendent effort, but in Telling Stories these
things don’t dominate as they have so often in the past. I particularly liked “Wedding Song.”
Ok, it’s still unremittingly glum but we are closer to that burst of originality that defined her
first album as a defining work in pop/folk music. Sonics are HDCD and should be better than
they are. Something funny about how they did her voice. It’s not a deal breaker, but she
deserves better.
Joni Mitchell, Both Sides Now
Reprise – 9 47620-2
Upon reaching middle age, male rockers and folkies of the 60’s generally seek rehab, the
arms of younger women, and try to arrange dinosaur revival tours to fund their retirement
plans. The women? They make recordings of standards (well, not Gracie, but she never did
anything much like anyone else).
Both Sides Now is an audiophile’s wet dream. There is this wonderful story floating around
about Allan Sides at Ocean Way doing a DSD 6-channel mix of this recording for her nib’s
gratification. The disc is HDCD... but it would have been so much better to have been issued
as a dual-layer SACD.
And the music? Don’t get me wrong. I am a long term Joni lover (I NEVER forgave Joan
Baez for being such a male-type member to young Joni, simply because Joni’s talent made
her feel a tad insecure). I really wanted to like this disc. There is nothing specific to object to,
other than (including her own tunes) all of these songs were quintessionally defined long
before Joni’s “homage.” I have this occasional fantasy when I wonder about Jimi, Janis,
Buddy Holly, and so many others we lost too soon, about what they would have done, the
music they would have written and performed had they lived on.
Well, that’s what fantasies are for.
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I think that Joni should be allowed to do anything musically that she wants. I just wish it
hadn’t been this. However, from an objective standpoint this is a nearly perfectly recorded
disc of great songs from one of America’s living musical treasures.
Noe Venable, No Curses Here
Intuition – 3508-2
Let’s see. Talented young woman, dark folky songs, no hooks, unknown label. Yeah, this
girl’s got about as much chance of getting airplay as I do getting a Nike television
commercial. Unfortunate, too. If you can find this quiet gem, it’s worth a listen. Sonics are
good. She has a unique voice and that most rare of commodities, something worthwhile to
say. I hope she survives.
Marianne Faithful, Vagabond Ways
Instinct Records – INS515-2
OK, so we all know what a hose-monster and junky she was. Most of us remember her
scalding rendition of “Broken English” on SNL, when she was just coming off a major coke
gardnermusic
fest. Her voice was so hammered she could barely croak the lyrics, which worked
PERFECTLY for that piece.
I am glad she is alive and healthy and making recordings, but I have some continuing
problems with Marianne and strings. I would much rather see her following Patti Smith’s
lead. It’s not that the songs are uninteresting or that her performance is uninteresting, it’s
just I would rather her explore her angry, minimalist self once again. This newest offering is
very well done and beautifully recorded. What we mostly have here are slow and mid-tempo
ballads of aging and dissipation. It’s all very arty and sophisticated. Sad, she doesn’t seem
to be able to rock any more.
amercianfootball
Polyvinyl Records Prc-025
The most recent effort of Joan of Arc co-founder, Mike Kinesella, amercianfootball is a
sparsely arranged, post-punk dreamy delight. Beautifully recorded, this minimalist disc
prominently features Mike’s delicate and emotionally expressive voice. Guitar work is
restrained and also very delicate. Oddly endearing touches like the horn part in the second
cut, “Imagine Us Together,” add poignancy to this uniformly pleasing outing. I doubt it will get
much airplay... lacking any discernable “hooks,” but for those of you who associate “punk”
(post or otherwise) only with violence and cacophony... you will be surprised and I think
seduced by this gentle marvel. Highly recommended.
gardnermusic
Josh Rouse, Home
Ryko SRRCD45
This is pop poet purity

june/july - SCN Research

Transcription

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