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RETURN LABELS ONLY
OF UNDELIVERED COPIES TO:
Box 65085, Place Longueuil,
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Printed in Canada
ISSN 0847-1851
Canadian Publication Sales
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No. 40065638
No. 78
$6.49
THE ULTIMATE SYSTEM: Can the complete
Aurum Integris triamplified system
outperform the best conventional systems?
WE ALSO REVIEW: Affordable integrated
amplifiers, one with tubes, from Creek and
Audio Space. Plus a blind test of six speaker
cables
PLUS: Paul Bergman continues his series on
acoustics, we tell you how to make a disc
that runs seven hours without compression,
and we tell you about tomorrow’s home
theatre sound
ASW Speakers
QED
Target
Vandersteen
Goldring GR2
“Hard to fault in any area.
This has to be the budget turntable of the year.”
Hi-Fi World, April 2005
JUSTI
Justice Audio
111 Zenway Blvd., Unit 9
WOODBRIDGE, ON L4H 3H9
Tel. : (905) 265-8675 • Fax : (905) 265-8595
www.justiceaudio.com
sales@justiceaudio.com
CE
AU
DIO
ASW Genius
400
“It has all the volume you could ever want,
its bottom end goes down to bedrock, and
its top end is delightfully smooth.”
UHF No. 73
IN ONTARIO
Audio Excellence, Toronto
(905) 881-7109
Audio Two, Windsor
(519) 979-7101
AY
JUST M
IO
Harmonix
WBT
Reimyo
Apollo
GutWire
FIM Accessories
Goldring
Milty
Perfect Sound
Nitty Gritty
Gradient Speakers
Arcadia Audio, Brampton
(416) 994-5571
LAST record care
Oakville Audio, Oakville
(905) 338-6609
WATTGate
Waroc Information, Bolton
(416) 937-9276
AUD
McCormack
Just May Audio
111 Zenway Blvd., Unit 9
WOODBRIDGE, ON L4H 3H9
Tel. : (905) 265-8675 • Fax : (905) 265-8595
www.justiceaudio.com • sales@justiceaudio.com
Audiophile CDs
Audiophile LPs
DVD and SACD
The Listening Room
The Aurum Integris CDP
28
It’s a CD player. It’s a preamplifier. It is, in fact, two
high end units in one.
Issue No. 78
Aurum Acoustics Integris 300B
It’s a complete system with six amplifiers, four of
them using single-ended tubes. Its mission, if it
chooses to accept it: beat our reference system!
32
Audio Space AS-3i
This compact and beautiful integrated amplifier
puts our favorite output tube to work.
38
Creek EVO Integrated Amplifier
The name stands for “evolution.” Part of the
evolution is in the price…way downward!
42
Six Loudspeaker Cables
Some of these cables look alike and are even built
the same way. But a blind test reveals they sure
don’t sound alike.
46
Rendezvous
Derrick Moss
The creator of the Integris system talks about
building high end audio in…Newfoundland!
52
Cinema
Tomorrow’s Cinema Sound We know DVDs have sound that is compressed to
within an inch of its life. Will new media change
that?
Cover story: The complete Aurum Integris 300B triamplified system, which gets a full evaluation in this
issue. Behind it: The waters of Lake Memphrémagog,
in which the monster Memphré (not shown here) is
reputed to lurk
Is it like looking for the Unknown Soldier?
Software
Feature
The Long, Long Recording
Put seven hours of uncompressed music on a
recording? Yes you can!
55
20
Acoustics
Taming Reverberation
22
by Paul Bergman
The famous series continues. This second segment
explains how the sound in your room does
eventually disperse, and how you can turn this to
your advantage
The Opera by Reine Lessard
If you know only one opera, odds are it’s Carmen
65
Software Reviews
by Reine Lessard and Gerard Rejskind
72
Departments
Editorial
Feedback
Free Advice
Classified Ads
Gossip & News
State of the Art
4
7
8
45
78
82
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine UHF Magazine No. 78 was published in December, 2006.
All contents are copyright 2006 by Broadcast Canada. They
may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form, or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system,
without written permission from the publisher.
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PUBLISHER & EDITOR: Gerard Rejskind
ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Reine Lessard
EDITORIAL: Paul Bergman, Reine Lessard, Albert Simon
PHOTOGRAPHY: Albert Simon
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Ultra High Fidelity Magazine invites contributions. Though
all reasonable care will be taken of materials submitted, we
cannot be responsible for their damage or loss, however
caused. Materials will be returned only if a stamped selfaddressed envelope is provided. Because our needs are
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ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine
Editorial
Happy birthday, uhfmag.com
Let’s see now…if you have to multiply age by seven to get dog years, what’s
the multiplier for the Internet? Thirty?
It was in the Fall of
1996, ten years ago, that
the newly-registered site
of UHF Magazine first
went live. The image you
see here is from December
of that year, courtesy of
the Wayback Machine
(we would have kept better
archives had we known
what a big deal this newfangled Internet thing
would turn out to be). The
page looks primitive by
the standards of today, but
then the tools available
for Web creators were not
very sophisticated. And
the more sophisticated
sites couldn’t be read by
the Web browsers of the
day anyway.
Within months of that
launch, though, the statistics fed to us by our service provider left us agape.
We were drawing well over 2000 hits a day. We were impressed.
Well, we were realistic too, because hits didn’t mean eyeballs. Just going
to the page you see here would score 15 hits: the page itself, the ten buttons,
the UHF logo, that two-tone red rectangle, and the two separator bars. More
impressive was the number of unique visitors who were coming around each
month. It rose quickly to the thousands, then to the tens of thousands. Today,
just our free (incomplete) PDF editions at The Reading Room get downloaded
more than 30 thousand times a month!
A big deal indeed.
Of course things have changed since the day that people had either a
computer or a hi-fi system, but mostly couldn’t afford both. In 1996 nearly
all new readers discovered us by finding a copy on newsstands. Today most
come to us from the Internet. And we have readers on every continent but
Antarctica.
But we have another anniversary coming up. In 2007, UHF Magazine will
be 25 years old. We’re discussing ways to celebrate. We will of course want
you to be part of the joy.
THE DOG-EARED SURPRISE!
Perhaps you already know this, but then again perhaps you
hadn’t noticed!
You can pay a lot for a magazine, or you can get it cheaper,
but here’s the surprise: it’s the expensive copy that’s likely to
be tattered, torn, and… yes, dog-eared. Did you expect the
opposite?
We mean the newsstand copy. Where do copies sit around
unprotected? At the newsstand. Where do other people leaf
through them before you arrive, with remains of lunch on their
fingers? At the newsstand. Where do they stick on little labels you
can’t even peel off? Well…
Surprise! At a lot of newsstands, they do exactly that! Our subscribers, on the
other hand, get pristine copies, protected in plastic, with the label on the plastic,
not the cover.
We know you want a perfect copy, and it occurs to us that perhaps you’d rather
pay a little less for the privilege of receiving it in perfect condition.
As if that weren’t enough, there’s the fact that with a subscription you qualify
for a discount on one or both of our original books on hi-fi (see the offer on the
other side of this page)?
SAVE EVEN MORE WITH THE ELECTRONIC EDITION!
Read
it on your computer. It looks just like the printed
So what should you do?
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The books that explain…
This is our original book, which has been
read by thousands of audiophiles, both
beginners and advanced. It’s still relevant to
much of what you want to accomplish.
It’s a practical manual for the discovery and
exploration of high fidelity, which will make
reading other books easier. Includes indepth coverage of how the hardware works,
including tubes, “alternative” loudspeakers,
subwoofers, crossover networks,
biamplification. It explains why, not just how.
It has full instructions for aligning a tone arm,
and a gauge is included. A complete audio
lexicon makes this book indispensable. And it
costs as little as $9.95 in the US and Canada
(see the coupon).
This long-running best seller includes
these topics: the basics of amplifiers,
preamplifiers, CD players, turntables and
loudspeakers. How they work, how to
choose, what to expect. The history of hi-fi.
How to compare equipment that’s not in the
same store. What accessories work, and
which ones are scams. How to tell a good
connector from a rotten one. How to set up
a home theatre system that will also play
music (hint: don’t do any of the things the
other magazines advise). How to plan for
your dream system even if your accountant
says you can’t afford it. A precious volume
with 224 pages of essential information for
the beginning or advanced audiophile!
At last, all of Gerard Rejskind’s State of
the Art columns from the first 60 issues
of UHF. With a new introduction to each
column, 258 pages in all. Check below
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The UHF Guide costs $14.95 (Canada) plus 6% GST (14% HST in NB, NS, NF), US$19.95 (USA) CAN$25 (elsewhere).
The World of High Fidelity costs $21.95 (Canada) plus 6% GST (14% HST in NB, NS, NF), US$21.95 (USA) or CAN$30
(elsewhere).
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Just check off the books you want, then fill in the ordering information on the other side of this page.
You can also order on line at www.uhfmag.com/Books.html
We will take $5 off any of these books if you subscribe or extend
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Feedback
Longueuil, Québec, Canada J4K 5J4
uhfmail@uhfmag.com
I was very excited to read the article
on the Edirol UA-25 (High-Res Discs? Roll
Your Own!) in UHF No. 77. I’ve been
looking for a device to convert my 700+
LP’s to an audiophile standard such as
described in the article.
Are you going to stock this item in
your Audiophile Store?
Barry Stevenson
COLD LAKE, AB
Sorry, no. Some computer stores carry the
UA-25 and similar devices, and so do professional music stores. Street prices currently
hover between C$200 and $250.
I especially enjoyed your article
High-Res Discs? Roll Your Own! in the
most recent issue.
I wonder if you have checked out any
of the latest Audigy (Creative Soundblaster) audio cards for transferring to
high resolution audio. They claim 24/96
resolution, but I have seen some comments which suggest otherwise.
Don McIntosh
BURNABY, BC
Yes, Audigy had to backtrack and compensate customers after one of its high
resolution sound cards turned out to have less
resolution than billed. We presume they’ve
learned from the expensive experience, but
we’re really not keen on internal sound cards
for serious recording. There’s just too much
noise inside a computer, and it’s no place for
a sensitive analog signal.
I’ve been reading your magazine
since issue No. 15, and it’s always a
pleasure. However I’ve been wondering
about the orientation of the magazine,
and I wanted to pass on some comments,
which I intend as constructive.
First, I note that you have done few
reviews of home theatre products. Yet
there are many DVD players and multichannel amplifiers you could try. I’m
even wondering why you’ve bothered
setting up a home theatre reference
system.
I fully understand that there are
many products on the market and you
can’t possibly listen to them all, but it
seems to me that over the years you
have given certain products more than
their share of attention. For instance,
you have often reviewed Celeste, Totem,
Copland and Antique Sound Lab. I know
they’re good products, that some of them
are from close to home, and that they
deserve your attention (and ours). There
are other well-known companies, such as
Naim, Rotel, Arcam, YBA and Sugden
(are they still around?) that are nearly
absent from your pages. Your review of
the Bryston 2B SST was the first of that
company in perhaps a decade.
Could you diversify a little?
Jean Dufresne
SHERBROOKE, QC
Message understood. We can promise that,
in our next issue, there will be a DVD player
review (from Simaudio, however). It will be
accompanied, however, by some brands that
we have paid less attention to.
We should add, however, that not all
manufacturers and distributors are willing
to submit products for reviews (that’s the
reason we haven’t reviewed Naim in years).
Does any reader want to lend us one?
In the Errata section of Issue 77, you
talked about a typo in Mr. Bergman’s
article on speaker impedance in Issue 76
that was brought to your attention by a
number of readers. Furthermore, you
said other mail was received quibbling
with Mr. Bergman’s method for measuring impedance, the details of which
could be found in the Feedback section
in Issue 77. I’ve read and re-read the
Feedback section in Issue 77 and cannot
find any reference to Mr. Bergman’s
speaker impedance article and wonder
if something was left out. More to the
point, I’m wondering why my e-mail to
you (assuming you received it) contesting
Mr. Bergman’s statements in his descriptions/definitions of solid-state and tube
amplifiers was not printed. Yes, I realize
you have the right to choose what you
print and, that, you may not always
have space for everything you’d like to
print. Still, Mr. Bergman is just plain incorrect when he calls a solid state amplifier
a current source and a tube amplifier a
voltage source. Most solid state amplifiers have output impedances of 0.1 Ohms
or less; therefore, they are very close to
being ideal voltage sources from a practical standpoint. On the other hand most
tube amplifiers have output impedances
of 1 to 3 ohms, making them not only
poor ideal voltage sources, but even
worse ideal current sources. But if one
had to classify a tube amplifier based on
its output impedance, calling it a current
source would be much more correct than
calling it a voltage source.
Was this another unintentional
interchange like the one you mentioned
in Issue 77’s Errata? If not, these statements ought to be corrected. My comments are not “quibbling”; I’m a BSEE, I
have designed a number of amplifiers in
my time and know what these definitions
state and why.
Paul Kittinger
HILLIARD, OH
The correction on the impedance article
should have appeared in the Feedback section, and it was omitted by error. Specifically,
a capacitor’s impedance drops with frequency,
whereas an inductor’s impedance rises with
frequency. Paul knows that perfectly well,
and so do we all. We’re not sure how the error
got past all the proofreaders.
In actual fact most sources of electrical
energy provide constant voltage, which
means that their output voltage stays constant. An ideal current source would have
an infinite output impedance, clearly not
the case of any sort of amplifier, including
(as you note) a tube amplifier. Of course
neither type of amplifier comes close to being
an ideal source of current or voltage, and
labelling them that precisely was certainly
misleading.
We appreciate your comments.
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine Free Advice
Longueuil, Québec, Canada J4K 5J4
uhfmail@uhfmag.com
I recently purchased a Cyrus CD8x CD
Player (demo unit, excellent price) after
spending considerable time auditioning a
number of different players (Cambridge
640, Audio Analogue Paganini, Arcam
CD192), expecting a significant improvement over my 11-year old Marantz carousel.
I’ve noticed some improvement but not as
much as I thought, or to justify the cost in
my opinion.
This seems to point to other problems in
my system which consists of: Rega Planar 2
turntable with original arm and Grado Red
cartridge; NAD 1600 Series preamp/tuner;
B&K ST-140 amplifier; PSB Silver Stratus
speakers.
Which should I upgrade first? I’m
looking for more detail and dynamic range.
Lowell Gross
TORONTO, ON
We would guess that the NAD is
dragging down the system’s performance, Lowell. A number of companies
used to offer tuner-preamp combinations
(Adcom is another example), but in general these combinations were designed
for a clientele that favored convenience
and compactness over raw musical satisfaction. We suggest shopping for a new
preamp or even an integrated amplifier.
Unless live FM concerts are a big part of
your life, you could keep the NAD for
its tuner section.
You may also want to upgrade the
speakers, but the PSB’s are pretty good
entry level speakers, and we would leave
them for last, once the whole system is
starting to sound the way you want.
After reading your books and subscribing
to your great magazine for the last couple
of years, I have used your guidance to put
together my first system. Now I look to you
for advice on my first upgrade (the typical
question!). I expect it to be the CD player. ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine
The current system: Cambridge Audio
D-500SE CD player with DIY power
cord, Shanling SLM-A40 MkII integrated
amplifier with built-in DAC, with BurrBrown PCM1738 D/A converter chip and
automatic upsampling to 24 bit/96 kHz.
Output is 2 x 50 W pure Class A (8 Ohms).
It comes with a Shanling-supplied power
cord. I have DH Labs Silver Sonic T-14
speaker cable, B&W DM602 speakers ( first
generation), and Wireworld Solstice III
interconnects (when not using the Shanling’s
DAC). The locally-made digital coax was
supplied by the dealer I bought the amp from
and was the very one he was using to demonstrate the unit (supposedly the second best
he had in the store). I think that perhaps the Shanling is the
strongest part of my system, but I know that
it also is entry-level and is often aftermarketupgraded. I find myself using the Shanling’s
DAC and bypassing the upsampling when
listening to Jazz at the Pawnshop, Donald
Fagan and Ricki Lee Jones, as it creates a
deeper image when I try to hear where the
instruments and singers are (compared to
the Cambridge). I occasionally turn on the
upsampling when listening to Pink Floyd
or other 80’s electronica with entertaining
imaging. I live almost three hours from Calgary
and Edmonton, so I audition seldom and
investigate online often. After reading your
review about the Benchmark DAC, I am
wondering if that should be my next step,
keeping the Cambridge as transport. Or do
I just replace the Cambridge? If so, then
could you give an example of a player with
a performance level to upgrade the rest of
my system around?
Jay McHollister
STETTLER, AB
It’s true that Shanling products are
often the target of upgrades, Jay, because
they have very good potential, not all of
which is unlocked by the need to keep
prices attractive. However there are
some obvious down sides to following
that route. Not all “upgrades” make
things better, and potentially your
product could wind up sounding worse
(one well-known company spent its early
years ruining Dynaco amplifiers and
destroying their resale value). You also
need to send the unit off and be without
it for a while, and probably picking up
a shipping tab of more than symbolic
value. To be fair, it’s possible the results
would be everything you hope and
more.
More on this in the next letter.
With that bit of (admittedly ambiguous) advice out of the way, we can
confirm your suspicion that we would
advise a new CD player. The Benchmark
converter may be a good choice, though
ultimately it can justify a better transport than the Cambridge (we reviewed
it with the CEC TL-51X). You’ll want
to use it with a better interconnect than
the Solstice, and chances are you’ll want
to consider a top grade digital cable as
well.
I purchased a late 70’s Rega Planar 2
turntable from a flea market vendor a while
back, with no cartridge. A friend of mine
has a used Clearaudio Virtuoso Wood up for
grabs at $380. Would this cartridge be overkill for this turntable, and if so what price
and/or cartridge would you recommend?
David Scott
SARNIA, ON
If the cartridge were new, David, it
probably would be overkill, but of course
the price offered is more in line with what
you might want to invest in your older
entry level Rega. Note that the Virtuoso
Wood has a very long cantilever, which
is easily damaged, so make sure it hasn’t
been bent and straightened…especially
since, unlike what you might expect, the
stylus is not user replaceable.
By the way, Clearaudio nowhere
specifies the shape of the stylus. We
would guess that it is elliptical, not
line-contact, otherwise the company
wouldn’t try to hide it.
I very recently damaged my cartridge
and I am looking for a replacement. I have
listed below some of the associated equipment
I have, including the cartridge I damaged.
Based on the information below, which
cartridge in your lineup do you recommend?
I listen to classic 70’s rock music on high
quality vinyl. I am looking at a ceiling price
of about US$2000. Cartridge (damaged): Monster Cable
Alpha Genesis 1000. Arm: Alphason HR100S MCS. Turntable:Linn Sondek LP12,
Valhalla power supply, Cirkus suspension
upgrade. Phono stage: Audiomat Phono
1 (low-output MC setting ). Preamp:
Robertson Audio 6020. Amp: Musical
Fidelity A3CR. Speakers: Energy Reference
Connoisseurs.
Chris Douglas
BARRIE, ON
Phono LUX DT. It was good to read your
recent review, but I’m surprised you didn’t
mention those retina-burning blue LEDs!
One last question. The Goldring manual
(er, page), specifies the unit is to be left on
during the playing session. Should I not be
turning it off when switching albums?
Tim Leeney
GEORGETOWN, ON
be good, depending on how the cartridge
was set up to start with.
I need your help, right now!
I have Rotel equipment (an RA-01 amp
and RCD-02 CD player), but I would like
to upgrade. With a limited budget (about
$1800), what is my best choice? A lot of people
recommend the Jolida 1501RC hybrid amp
and vacuum tube CD100. Or should I go
for the CEC (3300R amp and CD3300)?
Please help me make a clear choice! Also, I would like to buy Zone 2 DVDs
from France. Are there DVD players that
can read them over here?
Stéphane Leblanc,
MASCOUCHE, QC
That’s a lot of questions in one, Tim,
so let us tackle them in inverse order.
We believe in leaving electronics
switched on all the time, though we
confess to a small twinge of guilt about
what we’re doing to old Gaia. We do
not, however, believe in leaving anything
with moving parts operating all the time.
We suspect Goldring just copied this We actually have the answer to your
Chris, the likely candidate will be a piece of advice from some other manual second question right in our last issue,
things that
can’t
do as
with
printed
magazine.
can’t put
interacmoving coil cartridge with aThere
line contact
(er, you
page),
such
thea one
for its
phono You
Stéphane.
The
article, De-Zoned DVDs,
tive
links
on
paper.
describes in detail how to convert outstylus. You’ve got the associated equip- stage.
ment to accommodate a good one, and If we commented every time we of-zone movies to your own zone. To do
For instance,
tableLED
of contents
on page
3. Each article
title
is a alink.
your budget is not exactly poverty
row. check
foundthe
a blue
too bright,
we would
so, you’ll
need
computer and a DVD
Click
on
a
title
and
whiz
right
over
to
the
article
itself.
The Koetsu Black is an old favorite need more pages in the magazine. We burner, so that you can burn a new,
of ours, and would easily fit into your can recall the first (then expensive) blue dezoned, disc. There are places where
check the table
of advertisers
on page
81.amplifiers,
Click on theyou
name
of buy
a product
or players, but they
budget. The Benz MicroOrReference
LEDs
on the original
Celeste
can
dezoned
company,
and
you
are
instantly
taken
to
the
corresponding
ad.
But
there’s
more.
3 might be an interesting choice too. but now everyone uses them and there probably won’t play some recent titles,
If the advertiser
has a Web
just click on
the ad. If you’re
connected
to the
We’ve heard good things about
recent seems
to besite,
a worldwide
candlepower
those
using the
RCE (Region Code
Internet,
your
default
browser
will
go
right
to
the
company
home
site.
upscale Dynavectors, though we have race. One component reviewed in this Enhanced) system.
no experience with them.
very issue had a blue “standby” LED that The two CEC 3300 units (reviewed
course,
there’s
obvious
drawback.
like this
one
in our last
issue)
are a hot choice for
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complete,
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bothare
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I’m calling on your advice to help me with around its circumference. That will form simply, the Rotels are not bad, and you
the world
you dust
live, and
including
anycan
applicable
taxes much
For details,
a radial
band,
which you
then want
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a greatin
source
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Our guess is that, at
on
this
link.
of used LPs, and this has got me thinking get rid of by brushing at 45 degrees to this point, your player is better than your
about upgrades.
it. We usually do this twice.
amplifier, and so upgrading the amp will
won’t
Or you can
issue right
from us
(click here).
I have a Goldring GR2 turntable,
andorder
the
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record
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giveItyou
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most the
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I am wondering what upgrades can be done. which — if nothing else — will keep the might be an interesting
choice, and (if
I replaced the stock thin feltarticle.
mat with a record from slipping (that’s handy when you are looking particularly at tubes)
Rega mat I had used on my old Dual table. you’re brushing the record too). We you could consider Antique Sound Lab
The Rega mat is easily twice as thick as the use a Michell clamp on both our Linn and Rogue, or possibly the Audio Space
original one that came on the unit. What do LP12 and our Audiomeca J-1. Rewiring amplifier reviewed in this very issue.
you think of tone-arm rewiring, or maybe a tone arm is not for the faint of heart, Several other companies make affordjust replacing the connectors (and the wall but changing the connectors is a great able tube gear, but it may be to your
plug)? And how about a record clamp?
idea.
advantage to look first to brands you can
I also have a Super Exstatic record It’s a funny thing about replacement go and hear.
brush, but I no longer have the card with the mats: they are nearly always thicker than
instructions for cleaning the brush. I recall standard mats. That raises the record, It has now been more than 15 years that I
it was so simple I didn’t bother keeping the which has the same effect as lowering have been regularly reading your magazine,
card, but now I can’t remember. What is the the tone arm. That in turn changes the every time with greater pleasure. Your
procedure?
vertical tracking angle of the cartridge, advice is always helpful.
When I upgraded to the Goldring table which will soften the highs and plump My source is a newly-purchased Shanling
earlier this year, I also picked up the ASL up the bass a little. That may or may not SCD-T200, the preamp is the Copland
This is an interactive issue!
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ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine Get UHF on your desktop
anywhere in the world!
output toward the floor and ceiling will
be reduced, thereby solving certain
acoust ical problems. However t he
multiple drivers throw a lot of energy
laterally, and placing them for the best
possible sound is a problem.
Your room is a large one. For the
benefit of US and other metrically-challenged readers, we can translate its size
to about 595 square feet, which is the
area of a room that would measure 21’ x
28’. A large room is an advantage in some
respects, because the standing waves will
not bunch up as they do in a small room
(see Acoustics in UHF No. 77). A large
room also gives you more flexibility in
placing the speakers, and we think you
are going to need that flexibility.
Without wanting to repeat the contents Paul Bergman’s Acoustics article in
this issue, we can say that most “absorbent” materials, such as carpets, absorb
high frequencies a lot better than lows or
even middle tones. How much good they
will do depends also on where they are.
To avoid the worst acoustical problems,
www.magzee.com
absorbent materials should be close to the
speakers, to avoid early reflections. We
suggest experimenting some more with
speaker placement, and perhaps avoiding
CTA-301 bought three years ago second What is my next best single upgrade those neat, symmetrical placements that
hand, my power amp is a Simaudio Moon around $2500-3000? I’ve just read your are shown in decor pamphlets. In both
W-5 (about eight years old), also bought review of the Bryston 2B SST. Would it be a of our reference systems the speakers
second hand. As for the speakers, I have wise move to replace the aging W-5 with it? are angled. That is, the imaginary line
the line array RS8 from Selah Audio with I need to have power to listen to at fairly live between the speakers are at 20° to 30°
ribbon tweeters, just purchased a month ago volumes. It is hard to find a choice of high end to the back wall.
(I also have KEF 104’s).
equipment here in Egypt, but I came across Experiment to see whether the
There is definitely something that has to two makes that I don’t know: Plinius, from speakers will behave better far apart or
be changed, because the sound is not comfort- New Zealand, and Vincent, from Germany closer together (that depends on both the
able, and is strident and a bit “megaphonic,” but made in China.
acoustics and the speakers themselves),
especially on male voices. Guitar and percusJean-Paul Haggar and also check to see whether toeing
sion are beautiful, piano and violin are not.
ALEXANDRIA, Egypt them in (or not) can help. Beyond that
you may want to check whether your
It is fatiguing to listen for more than a few
songs. A friend lent me a pair of Reference We do know (and like) Plinius ampli- cables, including power cables, are up
3a speakers but I got the same sound.
fiers, Jean-Paul. Vincent is unknown to to the standards of your equipment. But
My living room is about 60 square us, but in any case we are quite certain we would get the speaker placement
a piaster on
meters, L-shaped, with 3.1 m high ceiling. that neither your amplifier nor your pre- just right before we spent
e Free Adv ice on line.
plenatty mor
can getlook
you would
I’ve tried different position for the speakers
amplifier
to blame.
upgrades.
w that We
alreadyis kno
Perhaps you
too.speakers
questions
but in vain. The room has a natural wooden
the relationship
your
ask your ownbetween
And you can
floor with a lot of carpets, I also have carpets and your room.
Many thanks for making the learning of
city.of high fidelity an enjoyable and
and
r namethe
include
alwaysRS8,
on the walls and a fair amount of upholstered
that
Theyou
Selah
foryou
those
world
mustAudio
Remember
furniture . When listening with headphones not familiar with the marque, is a tall rewarding experience. I find your advice
directly from the CD player I get good speaker with eight woofers and eight extremely helpful and your sense of humor
results. I also bypassed the preamp and con- ribbon tweeters, arranged in a vertical priceless. Due to a chance encounter about
nected the CD player directly to the power array that recalls certain models from six months ago at a local hi-fi dealer, I
amp but with same result, with a less smooth Genesis and Infinity. Using an array was awestruck by the sound of high fidelity
sound than with the Copland.
has certain advantages, because acoustic music (which I’ve been missing for the last
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A lb er t pu rc h a sed t he M i r age
BPS150i, which was reviewed in UHF
No. 60. He keeps it at a very low level, so
that it just augments the bass headroom
a little, and the signal to the Kitharas is
not run through it.
You don’t mention what speakers you
are using now, though we can presume
that you don’t consider them to be up to
the level of your amplifier. Because your
Audiomat Opéra is a refined product,
you will want to choose speakers with
equal refinement. The Totem Mani-2’s
may be just what you are looking for, and
we don’t believe your Opéra would have
the slightest problem driving them. The
Mani-2’s tight control even in the very
deep bass is a quality you won’t find in
many other speakers.
The Reference 3a Royal Virtuoso
is also a highly refined speaker, and has
the further advantage of high efficiency,
which will give you the impression that
your rather large amplifier has nearly
limitless power.
We could suggest other models, but
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 11 Advice
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3+ decades!), and I am now on the path of
building my first (albeit late) system.
Now to the matter at hand. Largely
based on your very favorable review, I have
purchased an Audiomat Opéra integrated
amp from a very patient and helpful local
dealer. I also bought a CEC TL51XR CD
player and Actinote MB interconnects. For
the past few weeks I have been listening to
various speakers at dealers, trying to find
some that would do justice to my Audiomat
Opéra. Because there are so many variables
(source, amp, interconnects, speaker cables,
room), I found I could easily be discounting a
good speaker because of a poor source or amp,
etc. Therefore, I would like to audition some
speakers in my own listening room with my
equipment to eliminate these unknowns.
What would you recommend for a good
set of speakers for an Audiomat Opera in
about the $3000-$7000 range? My listening room is approx 14’ x 15’ with an 8’
wide archway in two adjoining walls (the
speakers face one of the archways across the
room). I was initially thinking of going with
floorstanding speakers (not overly large), but
after reading some of your back issues I am
intrigued by the stand-mounted Reference
3A MM De Capo-i and Royal Virtuoso,
and the Totem Mani-2 Signature. Please
comment on these possible alternatives and
any other stand-mounted or floorstanders
you feel would be a good fit.
Also, down the road a bit, I am thinking
of purchasing an outboard DAC and using
the TL-51XR as a transport only. I am
wondering how much of an improvement
I could expect with a better DAC and what
would be some recommended choices for
DACs considering the rest of my system? I
read your review of the Benchmark DAC1
but I am not sure if the improvement would
be worth the $1200 spent. Should I be looking at something considerably more expensive
like one of the Audiomat DACs, or is there
excellent quality to be had somewhere in the
middle?
From what I’ve read in UHF, HDCD
would be nice (not essential), but titles are few
and I’m not sure how long it will be around.
And perhaps down the road a bit further, a
turntable, a phono stage and tuner, but that’s
the topic of a future e-mail.
By the way, what subwoofer did Albert
buy for his Oskar Kitharas? Blair McKenzie
SHERWOOD PARK, AB
not the power itself, and no resistance is
added.
The Enacom is a parallel filter,
plugged into an unused outlet of the
same circuit of your system. Though
it may not be obvious, the GutWire
Maxcon is also a parallel filter, built into
the casing of a very high quality power
bar. The MIT Z-Center is also a parallel
filter. The Inouye SPLC, on the other
hand, uses a combination of series and
parallel filters.
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I asked you a question recently about
Totem speakers and the Copland CTA-405
amplifier. Thanks for your response.
I have since been in contact with Copland’s distributor, who suggested I look
at Reference 3a’s (which they also distribute),
MartinLogans, old Quads, and old Spendor
BC’s.
I can get a pair of BC1’s, supposedly in
great shape, for $400. I thought I should be
looking at more current speakers, but perhaps
I’m wrong. Are the old Spendors that great?
I am willing to spend up to $1000 on used
speakers. What do you think?
Colin Brophy,
TORONTO, ON
either of those two is unlikely to leave
you with any regrets.
Oh…either way, don’t forget good
stands.
Of course you will then have a CD
player which is a couple of notches
below the downstream gear, and adding
a good DAC, such as the Benchmark
or an Audiomat to its very competent
belt-driven transport may be a good
step. You are right that we are fans of
HDCD, at least as a transitional system.
(Transitional toward what? Best not
ask!) Though several one-box players
still include HDCD, the system is
pretty much extinct among standalone
converters.
I have started to upgrade my Cambridge
Audio equipment with the 840A and I am
waiting for the release of the 840CD. In
the meantime, while reading issue No. 77,
I have started to wonder about power cords,
power bars, Hubbell outlets and line filters.
I understand the value of upgrading the first
three but the Enacom line filter, or at least
where it goes, is a puzzle. I know you wrote
an article on this some time ago, but I forget.
This is an age thing! Sorry!
So, if I plug a Stingray power bar ( for
the power cables of my system) into one of the
duplex outlets, do I plug the Enacom into the
other plug of the duplex outlet? I don’t think
I want to know how this works, thank you,
just to know that it does. I suppose I could
purchase a power filter with outlets to avoid
the power bar and Enacom but there is a cost,
and I want a cost-balanced system.
Alastair D. Macdonald
THUNDER BAY, ON
Alastair, perhaps we can make its
operation painlessly clear by explaining that there are two ways to clean up
electricity from the power utility.
One way is with series components,
though which the current must flow on
its way to your equipment. The noise
is filtered out, though of course extra
resistance is added to the path from
the wall to your system. The other
way is with parallel components, which
are placed across the power line. They
short-circuit the noise, though of course
Actually, Colin, the Spendor BC1
really was a good speaker, one of those
products that sticks in your mind many
years later. It didn’t have the dynamics,
the punch, of many of the great speakers
of today. That said, it had a delightfully
natural tone, and depth that typically
extended beyond the rear wall. The
down side was that it just couldn’t play
very loud, but that wasn’t one of the
design goals.
We don’t know how good a negotiator you are, but we’ll offer you a tip: the
original Spendor BC1 used to sell for
about $220. It may be good enough to
rate a cost-of-living increase, however.
My system consists of a Linn LP-12/
Valhalla/Ittok/Asaka front end, Lehmann
Black Cube phono stage with custom power
supply (twice the power of the PWX), Space
Tech QA-113 tube preamp, Perreaux 3150
power amp, DCM TimeFrame 1000 speakers, Goertz cables, and an API PowerWedge
90 plugged into hospital grade outlets run off
of a dedicated 20 amp circuit. As you can see,
this is some pretty old gear, but there seems
You may have some difficulty getting
detailed information about the Shelter
cartridge, though it has been actually
getting some press in the last couple of
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years. Few dealers will tell you the truth
about the stylus, which is elliptical. Your
Linn Asaka has a line contact stylus, able
to read more of the groove wall. That
can give you lower groove noise, even
from used records, and certainly lower
distortion. At least that’s true if it’s in
good condition, which after a number
of years it may or may not be.
The Linn Ittok arm was a pretty
good one, and certainly pleasant to use,
though it can’t compare to the very best
arms. Quality aside, it is easier than it
used to be to match cartridges and arms,
and perhaps a bit of explanation is in
order.
A couple of decades ago, you could
get tone arms with very different mass:
monstrous ones built for stiffness, such
as the Empire, and low-mass arms for
minimum inertia, such as the Vestigal.
Cartridges, for their part, had highly
variable compliance, or springiness.
If you put a soft, compliant cartridge
such as a B&O into a high mass arm,
such as the Empire, there would be a
lot of records you couldn’t play. A tight,
low-compliance cartridge wasn’t a good
match for a light arm either. Since those
days the extremes have gone away (with
a couple of exceptions), and for good
reason. Popular arms have similar mass,
and cartridge compliance today varies
over a small range. The Ittok will fit right
in with a modern cartridge.
You’ve done considerable work on
your room, as we can see, and we know
first hand the difference that can make.
The DCM speakers are not the most
refined we have ever heard, but they have
nice coherence, and — as a result — an
excellent image and depth. We don’t
know your preamp, and the Perreaux
amp has never been our favorite, so it
might be worth at least having a listen
to newer electronics.
Beyond that, of course, Linn continues to offer upgrades to its iconic
LP12 turntable. Since we own one that
is equipped with the Cirkus and Lingo
II upgrade, we know how really good it
can get.
After reading your great magazine for a
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to be synergy among these units.
Perhaps the most important component
is the room, which I built when we moved to
our new home last year. The walls and ceiling
are 5/8” Gyproc with the ceiling suspended
on Res-Bars. The walls are insulated to R20
and the ceiling to R32. The carpet underlay
is the thickest and densest I could find and is
laid over concrete (the room is in the basement). The door is a custom-built unit, is 4”
thick and is filled with Styrofoam insulation.
This room is not 100% soundproof, but
damn close. I have to offer my sincere thanks
to UHF and especially to Paul Bergman,
whose articles in issues 30-36 provided so
much insight into the principles of sound
room acoustics, which allowed me to plan
and have built a very good listening environment. The irregular walls and sloped ceiling
make a huge difference and people who enter
the room notice the acoustics long before the
music comes on. The room is so quiet even
the faintest whisper is perfectly audible; you
have no idea how high the ambient noise level
is in most homes until you enter a room like
this.
This effort didn’t come cheap, but I have
a very supportive wife and managed to find
an excellent carpenter with a shared passion
for hi-fi who jumped at the chance to take
this project on. As a side benefit, the added
structural support of the secondary walls
and the additional insulation made the
whole house seem both more solid and a lot
quieter.
My question concerns my Asaka cartridge, which is quite long in the tooth and
will likely be replaced in the new year. My
first choice would be the Shelter 501 Mk.II,
but there is no dealership in my town that
can answer my questions, primarily about
whether or not the 501 would be a good
match for the Ittok arm. Any comments
you might have about cartridges, any obvious weaknesses in my system (aside from its
geriatric status), or on my room design would
be greatly appreciated.
Thanks once again for the Bergman
articles, and I look forward to reading the
rest of his latest installments.
M. M. Pratt
PRINCE GEORGE, BC
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couple of years and noting that your advice on
numerous topics always seems fairly unbiased
and straightforward, I have decided to ask
some questions.
I recently acquired a Clearaudio Emotion turntable with the stock Satisfy arm
and Classic Wood MM cartridge. I tried
it both through my Rotel RC 1070 stage
as well as a (DIY) Hagtech Bugle (which I
preferred!). However I wanted to try an MC
and bought a Denon DL-103. I am not all
that sure it was the right choice, as I have
lost some of the “bloom” and “air” that the
MM had. I have loaded it with 100 Ohms
on my Bugle, and have not tried anything
else (it requires soldering and desoldering!).
It seems that it’s a low compliance cartridge
and so I may be snookered anyway. Do you
have any suggestions for improvement here?
I could find some budget dollars for a different cartridge.
My second question is this. Since buying
the turntable, I am newly disappointed with
the sound from my Rotel RCD 1070. It has
nowhere near the high frequency extension
that the table does, and the inner details and
timbres are also lacking. Now I am consider-
ing either shopping for a new CD player, or
maybe picking up a DAC.
Byron Peterson
TORONTO, ON
Byron, you aren’t the first to discover
that vinyl, even with what may be the
“wrong” cartridge, can make listening to
digital seem like a lot more of an effort.
Even so you’re fortunate that your Rotel
player seems to lack high frequency
extension. For a long time that was true
of pretty much all of the better players.
The ones that did have an extended top
end let you have it with both barrels any
time there was action in the top couple
of octaves. To be fair, that situation
dates back well over a decade, and it’s a
reminder of how tough real music lovers
had it in those early days of “perfect
sound forever.”
All depends, of course, on what you
mean by “some budget dollars.” The
Classic Wood cartridge is the very
bottom of the Clearaudio line, though it
has received not inconsiderable praise in
some quarters. Like other recent moving
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M A G Zee
www.uhfmag.com/ElectronicEdition.html
magnet cartridges, it uses very powerful magnets, with the intent of making
the coils (which are fixed) as small as
possible. Big coils in a device that is supposed to reproduce high frequencies are
a problem, and then some. The Classic
Wood’s technical prowess is, of course,
limited.
The Denon is another sort of cartridge entirely. It’s the descendent of a
moving coil cartridge originally developed for (and in part by) NHK, Japan’s
broadcasting network, more than 40
years ago. Since then it has picked up
some improvements, notably an elliptical stylus to replace the spherical stylus
that long came with it. It is, however, a
low-compliance cartridge, because in a
broadcasting application a tightly sprung
cartridge is less likely to leap out of the
groove. It’s the same reason the original
World War II Jeep had no suspension.
Talk about low compliance! In your
Clearaudio arm, the low compliance
will push the arm-cartridge resonance
up close to the audible range, where it is
likely to color the entire bottom end.
So we return to the question of those
budget dollars. Unless that budget is
fairly generous, you may need to choose
which medium — CD or LP — contains
more of the sort of music you’ll want to
listen to over the next five years. You
may want to pick up a converter for your
Rotel player, such as a Benchmark or a
CEC for instance, but by the time you
buy that and a proper digital cable you
won’t be far from the price of one-box
players that can sound substantially
better than yours. Rega? CEC? There
are several possibilities.
Then there’s analog. If we accept
that the Classic Wood is essentially an
entry-level freebie, you could look for
an alternative (and sell the Denon if you
can). You might look a little further up
the Clearaudio line. Grado and Goldring
have interesting choices available at
reasonable prices as well.
I have put together a modest system
consisting of a NAD 541i CD player, NAD
716 A/V receiver run strictly in two-channel mode, Pro-Ject Debut 3 turntable with
Ortofon MC1 pickup, and Paradigm Studio
20 speakers on flimsy Sanus stands. It was
all purchased used except the turntable and
cartridge, and the speakers are the original
20’s, not the version 2 or 3.
My listening room is about 11’ x 27’ and
the speakers are about 7’ apart from each
other, and their backs are 2’ away from the
11’ wall.
Sometimes I find the sound very pleasing; for instance a mellow CD played at a
low volume level is quite satisfying for me.
But when the neighbors are away and I turn
it up, the musical experience ranges from
disappointing to horrifying.
I was wondering if the problem could
be a combination of the receiver not mating
well with the speakers and the room being too
large for the speakers. When I turn up the
volume it is like the speakers are shouting at
me. This is very pronounced with CD’s, but
it happens to a lesser degree with records. In
your review of the 3A Dulcet you mentioned
something like this “being shouted at” experience, I think.
I was thinking that the most cost-effective
solution would be to find a larger pair of
used speakers with a mellower top end. Or
would I be better off changing the receiver
for an integrated amp, or perhaps adding a
subwoofer?
Mike B.
VANCOUVER, BC
and package discounts.
I am new to the world of hi-fi and would
like some help for my first purchase.
I already own some Grado headphone and
I would like to buy a new amp, at $1300 or
less. I only listen to music with headphones.
My source would be my Squeezebox from
Slim Devices, which plays my uncompressed
AIFF files from my computer. My dealer
suggested that I buy the Grado Headphone
Amp or the Serenade from Jasmine, which
I could use directly from my computer. Do
you have any other suggestions?
Jean-François Leclerc
MONTRÉAL, QC
We suppose you won’t be listening
close to your computer, Jean-François,
otherwise you wouldn’t need the Squeezebox. And you no doubt know that the
Squeezebox has its own headphone jack.
It’s certainly serviceable, but we can
presume that you want something much,
much better.
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Mike, we should start by mentioning
that the comment (by Albert) in our
review of the Reference 3a Dulcet (UHF
No. 71) was not a reference to what the
Dulcet itself does, but a suggestion that
the Dulcet might be a cure for systems
that do seem to shout at you. If it makes
you feel any better, we know that syndrome all too well.
Well, what to do? New speakers may
be a good choice, but larger speakers
are either going to cost more than you
should spend on them, or else they’ll be
poorer. This time go for quality. Need
we add that “flimsy stands” are not the
way to go? And don’t even think of
adding a subwoofer until you get the
basic problems under control.
The receiver should be earmarked
for replacement too. Though NAD
does offer some reasonably good moderately-priced gear, different models are
designed with different markets in mind.
You’re using a home theatre product in a
two-channel music system, and it wasn’t
built by people who were concentrating
on your needs. You sort of expect movie
sound tracks to shout at you. All right,
we’re exaggerating, but not much. A
good integrated amplifier would make a
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Beyond that, paying attention to the
quality of your cables may be a good
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We confess we don’t know the Jasmine. We think the Grado would be a
reasonable choice, however, as would the
CEC HD53-R, reviewed in UHF No. 76.
The CEC has a bonus you may or may
not use: it has a second headphone jack,
Feedback
Free
Since the publication of the article
you mention, we’ve determined that
some rare LPs can be transferred to
DVD for superior sound, at least with
a great DVD player. With lesser players, you’ll get the added dynamics of
24/96, but you’ll miss out on some of the
finesse.
complete with its own volume control.
You might also consider the Benchmark
DAC1 converter. You could connect it
to the digital output of the Squeezebox, bypassing its own converter. The
Benchmark is also a headphone amp, and
a pretty good one too.
consider using for audio digitization. The
manual says that the audio recording format
is “2-channel Dolby Digital.” Dolby Digital
is admittedly a compressed format, but is it
any better than Red Book CD? Jean-Pierre Létourneau
QUÉBEC, QC
It is with great interest that I read
your paper on the “digitization” of analog
sources on DVD, using the 24 bit/96 kHz
format, because that is something I have been
planning to do for some time with my vinyl
favorites. But yesterday, while reading the owner’s
manual of my Rotel RDV-1040 DVD player,
I found out that it will output a 24/96 signal
from the digital out as “48 kHz, 16 bit,
stereo linear PCM (downsampling).” In
other words, only the player’s analog outputs
will benefit from the gain in resolution of a
24/96 recording, which seems to preclude the
use of a high performance 24/96 outboard
DAC like the Benchmark DAC-1 you
reviewed recently.
So in order to enjoy the benefits of high-def
DVD digitization, are we limited to one-box
DVD players like Linn’s Unidisk or Classé’s
new CDP-202? Is the data reduction of the
digital output of DVD players linked to
copy protection? Are there any DVD players
on the market that will output true 24/96
data from their digital output? And here’s another question. I have a
Panasonic DVD video recorder which I
Dolby Digital is, as you say, a compressed format, Jean-Pierre. It has two
advantages. 1) It provides for 5.1 channels instead of two, clearly not relevant
to you. 2) Because of the compression it
is compact enough to leave room for a
movie and those threats from the FBI
and Interpol. Not relevant either. Red
Book CD is better.
You’re correct that DVD players
can supply high-resolution (24 bits/96
kHz) information only internally. The
digital output is really meant for Dolby
Digital and DTS (compressed) signals,
and 24/96 information will be brutally
downsampled. When standards are set,
hardware manufacturers need to negotiate with content providers (the music
and movie industry), who are deathly
afraid of their data getting out into the
wild. (Of course it happens anyway.) The
result is that 24/96 PCM was accepted by
the DVD Forum (the standards-setting
body) as a format to be reproduced by
any and all DVD players, as long as that
signal didn’t come anywhere close to the
output jacks.
I have been a subscriber for about four
years now and, as has been said by many
others, I really enjoy the magazine. With
a combination of the magazine and “free
advice” from you in the past, I have put
together a system that I enjoy very much.
I now have a bug to upgrade some of the
system, but am having trouble deciding on
what to upgrade first. The sound is generally
very detailed and dynamic. A few of the
components are getting a few years old and
may or may not really need to be changed. I would appreciate you thoughts on
where you would upgrade first, then second. My system consists of an Oracle Mark II
turntable that I have upgraded to Mark V
for all components except the bushing, Rega
RB600 arm and Goldring Elite cartridge,
AcouTech PH-1P (premium) phono preamp,
Cambridge Audio DiscMagic transport,
Musical Fidelity Tri-Vista 21 DAC, VTL
5.5 preamp, Bryston 14B SST amp and
Gershman Acoustics Avant Garde speakers.
Cabling is mostly Harmonic Technology and
Cardas. Someday I would like to go to a single box
for CD to reduce components and wonder if
you can suggest a player that would provide
a significant enough improvement over the
Cambridge Audio and Musical Fidelity
combo. I have been considering the Meridian
G07 and the Naim CDx2. I have also been considering changing the
VTL 5.5 for the new Bryston BP26 with the
new power supply, or the Copland CTA-305. I know you have a fondness for the CTA-305
but have you heard the new Bryston BP26? I wonder if the synergies with the Bryston
14B would make the BP26 a good choice. Lastly, I do listen to a lot of vinyl and
sometimes consider upgrading the tonearm
and/or cartridge. But it is very difficult to
compare any turntable equipment with so
many combination and set-up issues. Can
you suggest anything here? I know this is fairly open ended but wonder
if you would offer your opinion on where you
would start and comment on the components
I am considering or suggest others. Randy Fowlie
WATERLOO, ON
It certainly is difficult to walk into a
store and do anything resembling a fair
comparison of phono cartridges, or for
that matter tone arms. Difficult? Perhaps
impossible? We do (sort of) know the
Goldring Elite cartridge, because it
is a detuned version of the superb but
discontinued Excel we use ourselves.
It’s good enough that, if you do make a
change, you’ll need to shop way upscale.
We would probably look at such brands
as Benz-Micro, Clearaudio or Koetsu,
three brands that come to mind. We
keep hearing good things about Dynavector too.
We would look at a CD player
upgrade before we would even consider
changing that VTL preamplifier. The
DiscMagic was a pretty good economy
transport, and it had that extra connector that enabled one of the company’s
own (discontinued) DACs to talk to it,
but there is better.
Yes we have, though not at the same
time. We liked them both, in fact. The
Mimetism has far more power, and in
some rooms and with some speakers
it can prove superior in dynamics and
especially headroom. It runs a lot cooler,
too.
The Opéra throws off a lot of heat,
but it has a certain measure of magic we
especially liked. Note that the Opéra
needs to be placed on the floor in order
to match the Mimetism’s deep bass
extension, not on a shelf.
I’m taking the leap into vinyl after tinkering around with a SystemDek for a few
years. I’ve purchased a Music Hall MMF-7
table and am now researching cartridges.
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Most likely I’m going to purchase a highoutput moving coil cartridge.
My question is regarding the challenge of
finding a good phono preamp at an affordable
price. Instead of buying a dedicated, standalone phono preamp in the C$700 range,
I was wondering if better sound could be
achieved through purchasing a used preamp
from the late 80’s or early-to-middle 90’s
with a built-in phono stage, and running
it into my existing preamp. I was thinking
about a Conrad-Johnson PV10B or PV11,
as an example, and was wondering if you
folks had particular favorite older preamps
that had an exceptional phono section. I’m
drawing on your collective wisdom of having
been closely associated with audio equipment
during that era. I’m using the suggestion of a
Conrad-Johnson preamp as just one example
of many possible options, as I’ve heard their
preamps were always strong in this regard.
However, I would certainly like to hear
your suggestions. Older Bryston preamps
perhaps?
Lately, another thought was seeing if I
could purchase a YBA phono section for an
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 17 Feedback
Advice
Free
I would appreciate your opinion on
the Mimetism 15.2 amplifier versus the
Audiomat Opéra. I am planning to upgrade
to an Opéra from an Arpège, but I think I
should consider the Mimetism. No one in
Toronto has one in stock, and so I would
appreciate your assessment, as I know you
have tested both.
Cel Azzoli
TORONTO, ON
Up to *320% more conductivity
than the RCA or Banana plug
you presently use.
Intégre and have a technician wire it to an
outboard power supply so I can use it as a
stand alone phono preamp. What would your
thoughts be on this?
Rick Meyers
VANCOUVER, BC
Advice
Feedback
Free
Older phono preamps could be
trouble, Rick. Certainly, pretty much
any preamp before 1980 suffered from
weird interactions between cartridge
and circuit, and even that was only the
tip of the iceberg. As for adapting a full
preamplifier for service as a phono stage,
who needs the extra circuitry, and the
extra cost?
We presume you'll want a moving
magnet pickup, or a high output MC,
because that's what would match your
Music Hall turntable. We've reviewed
several interesting MM phono stages in
the last while. Models from Marchand
Electronics and Antique Sound Labs
come to mind.
I've just got back my old turntable from
a friend — the Revolver ( first edition, with
MDF platter), with a Linn Basik tone arm
and a K9 cartridge (in pretty good shape).
I have two options: new cartridge (Goldring Eroica H or a Shelter 201) with either
the Graham Slee 2SE, or the Lehmann
Black Cube SE preamp. My other option
would be sell the old table and buy either the
TecnoDec (JA Michell) or the Horizon SE
(Nottingham), both with the Rega 250 arm
and an even better cartridge (Shelter 501 or
Goldring Elite), and even possibly a better
phono preamp (Tom Evans Micro Groove
which is around C$1300).
My cur rent system consists of an
Audiomat Arpège amplifier, Wadia 503,
and MartinLogan Aerius I speakers. I’m
hoping to get better sound than my current
CD player. I listen to pop, jazz and some
classical.
What would you recommend? Would
refreshing the old table be a wise investment?
And would the sound be comparable to that
of my Wadia player?
A while ago I tried to buy UHF No. 11
(unfortunately out of print), to see what you
thought of the original Revolver (I have the
second review of UHF that had the updated
Revolver review).
What is the limiting factor with my current setup, the Linn Basik arm, or the actual
Revolver design? Do the arm and table
warrant a $1000 cartridge, and would I get
the performance I want out from them?
J. Cespite
TORONTO, ON
Actually both of them are limitations.
We liked the Revolver, a well-designed
simple turntable, not unlike the Rega P2,
say. As for the Linn Basik arm, it worked
reasonably well and was consistent in
manufacture, which is more than we
can say for some of its competitors. The
Linn K9 cartridge was a natural match,
though it could also take a K18, which
provided a much more natural top end.
The TecnoDek is also an entrylevel turntable, so making the change
probably isn’t worthwhile. The Eroica
or Shelter might be a good bet, but we
couldn’t go beyond that with either the
Linn Basik or the RB250. The Black
Cube, if you can find one, is a good
bet.
Can such a turntable compare in
performance to a Wadia player? If it’s
properly set up, then in a number of
interesting respects it may actually be
superior. However, as you can probably
guess, analog can be better yet.
Thanks for solid advice on where to invest
our quality “sound money.”
My phono-only upgrade from a NAD
2030i amp (its switch was starting to buzz)
to a Pro-Ject Phono SE, with front end being
Rega P-3 with factory arm… Wow, what
a huge improvement! The Vandersteens 2c’s
are singing now.
They are driven by my son’s (don’t
laugh) JVC RX 6010V receiver and JVC
XLV161 CD player). The next upgrade
would be…what? Repair the NAD’s power
switch and toss the RX, and/or replace the
Corus Black with an MC, and/or toss the
XLV161 CD player and blow five bills on
a Cambridge player, and/or upgrade the
preamp and save for a new power amp?
I’m confused again.
Phil Botham
DUNDAS, ON
Phil, you know us, and how much we
like to put the emphasis on the front end
of the chain. But that’s true only if there
isn’t something downright toxic downstream, and you already have a hunch
that the receiver should get a first-class
funeral. Or a funeral, anyway.
If the NAD can be fixed inexpensively, we’d start there (perhaps it’s not
the power switch, perhaps it has a bee
in its bonnet). You could then do better
than a JVC CD player. Beyond that, you
should indeed consider a new preamp
and save for a power amp. At least that’s
true if your ultimate budget will be large
enough. If not, take a look at some of
the terrific integrated amps we’ve been
reviewing lately.
I’ve just purchased an Airy 3SB cartridge
with 0.24 mV output voltage, an internal
impedance of 4 Ohms and output impedance
of >100 Ohms.
I’m looking for a suitable phono board
and I am confused by impedance. Do I need
to get a phono preamp that allows an exact
4 Ohm input impedance setting? Tom Evert
TORONTO, ON
No you don’t, Tom. The cartridge’s
impedance is low because the smaller
the coil the less mass, and therefore
inertia, it will have, and also the lower
will be its inductance, which is a good
thing as well. A cartridge like yours is
often referred to as having low output,
but it would be more accurate to say that
it has low impedance. That translates to
low voltage (less than a quarter millivolt
in the case of your cartridge) but higher
current. Most phono preamplifiers don’t
know about the current, however, and all
they see is the low voltage.
If the cartridge tried to drive a 4 Ohm
load, it would have a hard time of it, and
it would then exhibit high distortion. In
fact it is designed to drive a 100 Ohm
load, and that’s what the second figure
is about.
Some MC phono preamps have
variable input impedance, and they are
typically set for 100 Ohms. The ones
that are not adjustable also, typically,
have about that impedance.
I’m wondering what your opinion is of
Niles loudspeaker selectors for multi-room
systems.
I am giving a relative a Harman/Kardon
HK3480 receiver as a gift. The home currently has an odd assortment of loudspeakers
Will it ever! The poor amplifier and
speaker have a hard enough time with a
conventional speaker cable and possibly
dodgy connectors between them. Add
more wires, switches and extra speakers,
and most of the musical quality will get
squeezed out of what emerges
But do all the rooms need hi-fi, or
are some of the speakers used for background listening? An alternative suggestion is to have the Harman/Kardon
running only the main speakers. Keep
the Sony around, and drive it from the
H/K’s tape out jacks. At least the main
speakers will sound right.
What have y’all listened to that you’d
recommend as far as small computer speakers
are concerned?
Bose?
Just kidding! Seriously, I’d like to buy
some and I would be interested in hearing
your shortlist!
Barron Thompson
BURLINGTON, ON
It depends on what you’ll be listening to, Barron. If it’s material that is
highly compressed, like Internet radio,
then we’ve seen some inexpensive active
speakers with names like Koss and
Advent that sounded surprisingly good,
at least at close range. They’re not,
please understand, made by companies
called either Koss or Advent, but by
someone (who knows who or where?)
using those names under license. These
products come and go, and by the time
we recommend one you won’t find them
anymore.
If you want something better, perhaps to listen to lossless music on
iTunes while you work, however, you’ll
want something superior. We suggest
a low-powered but reasonable quality
integrated amplifier, plus a couple of
small but well-designed speakers. We
have a pair here that carry the Energy
name, and we know B&W makes similar speakers (the LM1 for instance), as
do Visonik (the David), Castle, and a
few other companies. It’s worth the
stretch.
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in three rooms, all wired somehow to a single
Sony amplifier. Miraculously, nothing
seems to have clipped to death in the current
setup, but, even though the Marantz is far
more powerful than the amp the household
currently has, I’m worried about what
would happen were all these speakers connected to it…especially since I’m also giving
a nice pair of speakers to go with the amp.
Hence the thought of including a Niles
selector. My question is whether the Niles SS4 selector will degrade the sound of the H/K
receiver to a significant extent.
Jonah Steinberg
Feature
The Long, Long, Long Disc
R
emember how long the
first CDs seemed to
run? They could hold
up to 74 minutes of
music (legend has it the length
was chosen because that was how
long it took Herbert von Karajan
to conduct Beethoven’s Ninth).
It was a lot more than the 40
minutes of the typical LP, and
that’s for sure.
Now multiply that by six.
We’re about to show you how
you can take the five-disc set of
Mozart piano sonatas you see on
this page and scrunch their contents down to the single disc in
the foreground. And by scrunching we don’t mean using lossy
compression, throwing away
most of the music to save space.
We don’t mean using MP3 or
AAC compression, though that’s
one way to get a lot of music onto
one disc. We mean keeping the
music in its original pulse code
modulation format, with nothing
missing. We’re talking about
a seven-hour disc that sounds just like
the original disc. Or we should say the
original discs.
How is it done?
You may already have guessed that
the disc hidden inside the single jewel
box is not a Red Book Compact Disc but
a DVD. Though you’re probably familiar
with the DVD from its movie form, and
as the DVD-ROM on which your latest
software no doubt came, in fact the DVD
is also an audio format. And we mean a
standard DVD, not a special DVD-Audio
or an SACD.
Here’s how we did it.
We began by creating a new folder
on our computer (we used a Macintosh,
but it’s done exactly the same way with
Windows). We then inserted the five
CDs of the set, one after the other,
and we copied the tracks over to the
newly-created window. You may recall
that some years back this couldn’t be
done…you would simply have wound up
with tiny files pointing to the tracks on
the CD. That’s because a Red Book CD
doesn’t contain files the way a computer
disc does. Windows and the Mac OS use
sleight of hand to make it look as though
the CD is built like a computer disc.
(Note that a CD-ROM, unlike a Red
Book CD, does actually contain discrete
files, because it is built differently from
an audio disc.)
Can you put
seven hours of
uncompressed music
onto one disc?
Once your tracks have
been imported, they will
have been converted from
the CD’s original pulse
code modulation (PCM)
format to either WAV (on
a Windows computer) or
AIFF (on a Mac). The conversions are done without
loss, and the two formats
are actually similar.
Now you w ill need
soft ware that can burn
an audio DVD. For this
article we used Roxio’s
Toast Titanium 7. You
can also use Roxio’s Easy
Media Creator, which runs
on Windows, or Nero 7
Premium, another popular
Windows media-burning
program.
But wait a minute, can
you just burn the DVD
with the free utility that
may have come with your
computer? For instance,
Mac OS X can burn a DVD
(or CD of course) right from the Finder,
no other software required. You just
mount the blank disc and drag the files
to it. What you’ll wind up with, however,
is a data DVD: in other words, a DVDROM. You’ll be able to open it on any
computer, but a standalone DVD player
won’t be able to make heads or tails of
it.
At the top of the next page you can
see the window of Toast Titanium, ready
to burn an audio DVD of more than six
hours. In order to get it to look like that,
we dragged the files from the hard disc
to the Toast window a group at a time.
What we then got was a set of what Roxio
calls “playlists,” each corresponding to
the contents of one of the original CDs.
This is a convenient way of doing things
if you are, like us, copying a boxed set,
because within each playlist (or chapter,
in DVD parlance), the tracks will be
numbered starting with track 1, just as
on the original CDs. That will make it
easier to find the tracks you want.
If you are making a “favorites” disc,
however, you may prefer to have the
tracks numbered in consecutive order.
In that case, simply drag the whole set
to the software window at once, as we
did in the lower window.
To get things to happen the way you
want, you’ll need to set the software
preferences certain ways, and how you
do that will of course depend on what
software you use. From the main window
we chose Audio, and from the sliding
drawer at left we chose Music DVD. We
checked the Play all items continuously
box, so that we wouldn’t have to select
each track individually.
There’s a menu labelled Menu Style,
and we left it at No Menus. DVD-burning
software often includes theme menus:
vacation, cinema, picnic, etc. You may
want to make your own menus if you’ll
be listening to the disc with your video
display lit. That’s not our thing, however,
and menus take up space on the disc.
Notice that, near the bottom of the
drawer, there’s a bit of text, Audio PCM.
Of course that’s what we want, but if it
had said something else, it turns out that
bit of text is actually a menu. Click on it,
and you see this dialog box.
Feature
Feedback
The video encoding choices are not
pertinent, naturally, but this is where you
select the audio PCM format, which is
uncompressed. The other menu choice
is Dolby Digital, which is — as you no
doubt know — mightily compressed. Of
course, a magazine different from ours
might point out that, by simply selecting
Dolby Digital, you could run maybe 36
hours of music without changing discs.
There is also a box for selecting a
96 kHz sampling rate and 24-bit rate.
We used that option when we made
high-resolution audio DV Ds (UHF
No. 77), but since our source is made
up of Red Book audio tracks there’s no
point in upsampling them.
Time to do some housecleaning.
You’ll have noticed that the tracks
imported from your CDs take up a lot of
space on your hard disc, potentially over
4 gigabytes. Once the DVD is done and
you’ve checked it out, you can of course
trash those files. But before you do we
strongly suggest burning an extra copy
of the DVD as an archive. If you want to
play it really safe, burn the second copy
onto a different brand of DVD.
How good is a DV D audio like
this?
Doing comparative listening, we are
tempted to say that it is perfect, or as
perfect as a CD original can be, but we
played it on a Linn Unidisk, which gets
good things from all formats. Our guess
is that, the better your DVD player, the
better your long, long, long music disc is
going to sound.
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 21 Acoustics
Part II
Taming Reverberation
W
hat makes one listening
room different from
another is the way that
sound bounces about
from one surface to the other. That this
happens is a good thing, not a bad thing,
as I attempted to explain in the first
instalment of this series in the previous
issue. The alternative would be to listen
to your system in a meadow, an experience unlikely to please. We will wish,
however, to control the bouncing, and
this for several reasons.
In the previous article I dealt with
the phenomenon of standing waves, sound
waves that appear to stand still, because
their wavelengths are submultiples of
one or more room dimensions. I alluded
to the fact that it will be useful to control
reverberation at the very frequencies at
which standing waves occur. I am afraid,
however, that much more explanation
will be required before we arrive at the
stage of actually taking such actions.
Sound in the room
Let us begin at the beginning, then,
with a sound source (we can assume a
loudspeaker for our purposes), emitting
a sound in a closed room. Though we
are probably positioned in front of the
speaker, the speaker itself neither knows
nor cares about this, and it radiates sound
in all directions (this is not always quite
true, but let us assume that in this case
it it).
We can see instantly that the room
boundaries will have to deal with a great
deal of acoustic energy. Even so, because
the drawing is two-dimensional we don’t
see the energy aimed at the floor and
ceiling. Within an instant, the waves
have bounced off the room boundaries,
and then bounced again.
The acoustic patterns of the room
have now become quite busy. You will
notice that I have shown only one bounce
for the ray, but of course there will be
many more, occuring at each point where
the wave meets a room boundary. Sound
in air travels at a speed of 345 meters/
second. If we consider the room that
was our example in the previous issue
(5 x 3 x 2.6 m), we can see that a sound
wave will take 0.014 second to cross the
room’s longest dimension. To put it in a
slightly different way, the wave can cross
the room along its length 69 times in a
single second. We can already suppose
that it will not be desirable to allow this
bouncing to continue indefinitely.
Yet it could continue indefinitely,
according to the Third Law of Thermodynamics, which states that energy can
neither be created nor destroyed. Your
loudspeaker has taken electrical energy
from your amplifier and turned it into
acoustical energy. There it will remain,
unless and until it is transformed into
some other form of energy.
Fo r t u n at e l y t h e t r a n s f o r m a tion will take place, through several
mechanisms.
The first is transmission. It is hardly a
secret that you cannot play your system
without it being heard in adjacent rooms
by Paul Bergman
or even adjacent apartments. When
acoustical energy strikes a wall, some of
it will be reflected, but a certain percentage will pass through. It is that energy
your neighbors will hear.
Another phenomenon that concerns
us here is diaphragmatic action. Unless
the room boundaries are perfectly rigid,
which of course they are not, they will
flex very slightly under the pressure from
sound waves.
The f lexing will be particularly
marked at lower frequencies, because
large walls panels can be moved most
easily by large waves, which is to say
sounds with long wavelengths. Under
some circumstances that “lost” energy
can be re-radiated in acoustic form,
which is what happens if, for example,
a window pane rattles. In most cases
the flexing results in the production of
heat, however, and it is dissipated in that
form.
I have actually read well-meaning
articles in consumer audio magazines
which presented this flexing exclusively
as a flaw, recommending that a room be
made as rigid as possible, with concrete
notably, to avoid loss of energy at low frequencies. You will doubtless have spotted the error. Unless we want acoustic
energy to stay around indefinitely, which
emphatically we do not, we do need a
loss of energy in the room. In practice,
designers of studios and performance
halls use carefully-designed diaphragms
to dissipate energy. I might add that, in
modern acoustical circles, concrete’s
reputation as a building material has
dropped considerably.
Yet another energy-dissipating phenomenon is that of resonance, whether it
is accidental or deliberately designed.
Let's see what happens to the sound wave
that manages to get past the wall of your
room (gypsum board in most modern
homes), and into the space between it
and whatever is behind it.
In most books on acoustics, you will see sound waves treated as though they
were light rays. That is, they will be represented by straight lines.
They are, however, called sound waves. Should we not represent them by waves
like those in a lake?
It may be evident that the second representation (the ray) is the easier of the
two to draw, and that may possibly be a consideration. In reality, however, there
are good reasons to use both.
Audible sound covers a good many octaves: the range from 20 Hz to 20 kHz
covers nearly 11 octaves. It should not be surprising that acoustic waves at the two
extremes behave quite differently. Low frequency sounds, in air, behave like waves
in a pond, and are best represented in that fashion. High frequencies, on the other
hand, behave more like light rays, as shown at right.
There is, however, no sudden boundary at which waves become rays. What the
two representations show is not truly what sound is like, but how it can best be
shown schematically.
To express it a different way, the higher up you go in frequency, the more convenient it will be to consider sound to be a ray, like light.
frequencies, which will be determined
by its dimensions. That space, in effect,
will have its own modes, just like the
room we studied in the previous article,
and standing waves will form within it.
What happens to that energy depends
on a number of factors, but a substantial
amount of it will turn into heat. If the
gap is filled with mineral wool or other
fibre insulation, as may well be the
case with an outside wall, the vibrating
air will rub against the fibres, and the
friction will accelerate the conversion
of acoustic energy into harmless and
inaudible heat.
Finally there is dissipation in the air
itself. Vibration in air is not a frictionfree process, and with each bounce more
of the energy will be dissipated. The
higher the frequency, the more energy
is scrubbed off in the air.
Reverberation time
How many times the sound will be
able to cross the room before dying
out depends on two factors: the size of
the room, and the reverberation time,
expressed by acousticians as RT60. Of
course the “RT” stands for reverberation
time. RT60, measured in seconds, is the
A certain percentage of the energy
will in fact penetrate beyond, but the
enclosed space will resonate at certain
Sound: Waves or Rays?
Acoustics
A Room With Flat Response
If you place a microphone at your normal listening position, play tones through
your loudspeakers, and measure what arrives, you will be shocked to discover that
the result will be nothing close to the flat frequency response curve you would
expect from an amplifier or a CD player. Speaker measurements are usually done
using noise filtered over a third of an octave, to average out the standing waves.
Even if you do this, however, the result will seldom be a flat curve. The speaker
manufacturer can be of limited aid, since what you are measuring is a combination
of the loudspeaker and your room.
You could, of course, use an equalizer to solve this problem. If the response dips
5 dB at 160 Hz, simply boost the equalizer by 5 dB at 160 Hz. If there is a peak at
500 Hz, take the level down at that frequency.
There have, in fact, been recording studios designed with such active compensation. The method is particularly associated with studio designer Tom Hidley, but
others have used similar schemes to deliver rooms with what was purported to be
flat frequency response. To do so properly, however, requires not the usual home
type of equalizer, but a parametric equalizer, like the one shown here.
This one is a “virtual” EQ,
intended for use with Cakewalk
recording software. It does not have
sufficient bands for room equalization purposes, but the principle is
the same. Unlike a normal equalizer, each of whose knobs is set at
a fixed frequency, a parametric EQ
has added controls, three of them
in fact. You can set: a) the actual
centre frequency of each one of
the bands, b) the “Q” of each band,
which means how steep or gentle
the sides of the band are, and c) as
usual, how much you want to boost or reduce the level. The six-band EQ shown
here is perfectly adequate for studio use, since each one of its filters can be shaped
the way you desire.
For room correction you would want a 24-band equalizer, each band covering
a third of an octave. Ideally, you would want to adjust it in real time: feed pink
noise through the loudspeakers, place a microphone at the listening position and
connect it to a spectrum analyzer so that you can see the actual response curve of
the speaker plus the room, then carefully adjust the 72 equalizer controls until the
curve looks flat. Then you would have a perfectly flat room.
Though the technique was popular, it is not without problems.
In most rooms, perfectly flat response when you are seated right behind the
recording console may not be so flat for the person sitting next to you, who may
be the producer making the creative decisions, nor for the musician who comes
and sits in the back of the control room to hear how she sounded.
A second problem is that time and amplitude interact in strange ways. By “time”
I mean phase, and perhaps I can best explain it this way.
Let us say you measure a peak at 410 Hz. If we suppose that the speaker is
without fault, it must then be the fault of the room. There is a standing wave at
410 Hz, and the acoustical energy stays around longer than it should, therefore
seeming louder. However it is not truly louder. Rather, energy is being stored, and
what you hear is old sound. If you EQ out the peak, you will actually have a dip at
410 Hz, which appears to be filled in by old information stored by the room.
time required for an initial sound to
drop 60 dB below its initial intensity. (It
should not be referred to as “RT60” time,
since the “T” already stands for “time”).
The greater the energy lost with each
bounce, the shorter the RT60 will be.
However the dimensions are of great
importance in the significance of RT60. If
we consider a concert hall with a depth
of 245 meters, we can see that it will
take a sound wave 0.71 second to cross it
once. In that same 0.71 second, a sound
wave can cross our 5 m long room 49
times! We can conclude that the concert
hall can safely have quite a long RT60,
whereas the same RT60 in our small
listening room would yield unbearable
confusion.
There is one other factor affecting
RT60, however, and that is frequency.
We hope you’ll want to continue
reading this, the second in Paul Bergman’s continuing series on acoustics. It
is of course complete in the print issue,
and in the paid (C$4.30, taxes included)
electronic issue.
The rest of the article will, in this
free PDF, look like Latin, but no Latin
scholar is likely to make sense out of it.
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In the first instalment of this series on acoustics, I supplied the formula for
calculating the wavelength of an acoustic wave in air. It’s a simple one. The wavelength (l) is equal to the speed of sound (s) divided by the frequency. Thus:
l = s/f
Unfortunately, in the process of typesetting the formula got turned upside down.
Since the article explains the relationship between frequency and wavelength, I
presume that the error was evident.
To use the formula, keep units consistent. If the speed of sound is expressed
in metres per second (about 345 m/s at sea level in typical barometric conditions),
the wavelength will be in metres. If the speed of sound is in feet per second (1130
ft/s), the wavelength will be in feet.
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Determining absorption
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“Acoustic” materials
Absorbing sound
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The Inverted formula
Quick Room Mode Charting
Acoustics
In the first installment of this series I outlined a method for determining the
room modes, or standing waves, of a room of any given dimensions. The method
was made considerably easier by the use of a computer and a spreadsheet, such as
Excel.
However a company called RealTraps, which makes acoustic absorption materials, offers a free Windows program that plots the room modes in seconds. Called
ModeCalc, it needs only the three dimensions of the (rectangular) room, and it
shows an instant graph like the one below.
ModeCalc is calibrated for feet, but you can enter the room dimensions in
metres adding an “m” as shown above. The dimensions shown here are those of
the sample room we analyzed in the last issue.
There are fewer modes shown than you could see in the chart in my earlier
article. That is because the RealTraps program does not show all room modes, only
the ones for which two of the three integers are zero (the modes shown in yellow
on my table). Those are of course the most important ones. Note that RealTraps’
recommendation for minimum room size is 70 m3, or 2500 ft3, considerably larger
than most normal rooms. Even many studios are smaller than this, though in the
absolute the advice is no doubt sound.
You can download the program from www.realtraps.com/modecalc.htm.
“Noble” materials
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The Listening Room
Integris CDP Player
T
his unit is part of the Integris 300B system, reviewed
in the pages ahead, but it
is more than that. It is also
available as a distinct product, and we
can suppose it will outsell the 300B. It
isn’t exactly inexpensive, but when you
consider that it replaces a high end CD
player and a preamplifier, it’s an attractive possibility.
It’s clear that a lot of thinking has
gone into this unit. Its solidity and
excellent workmanship reflect the price,
something we should be able to take for
granted, though we have learned not to.
The connectors are first rate. The thick
top cover slides back and forth with ease,
each time emitting a little whoosh like the
doors on Star Trek. The CD is held down
by a light pallet. It’s easy to manipulate,
though it isn’t magnetic like the one on
our CEC transport.
The front panel is attractive, despite
a plethora of tiny buttons that give you
access to every function (one of them,
indeed, isn’t even a button but an exceedingly bright blue standby light). The
remote control, as you’ll see in the next
review, is a programmable Harmony,
itself a costly piece of gear.
At the rear (shown on the next page)
you can see the six different inputs, as
well as the balanced and unbalanced
preamplifier outputs (the Integris 300B
amplifier uses the unbalanced outputs).
There are two digital outputs, coaxial
and optical. Moreover there are four
digital inputs, in order that you may use
the CDP’s converter with an external
digital source: two coaxial, one balanced
AES/EBU, and one optical. It’s nothing
if not versatile.
The fuse (a gold-plated Isoclean) is
user-replaceable, and there is even an
accessible switch to select the line voltage: 120, 230, or 100 volts (this last one
for Japan).
We would of course listen to the CDP
as part of the complete Integris system,
but we began by placing it in our Omega
system. We would compare it to our
corresponding reference components,
the Linn Unidisk 1.1 player and the
Simaudio Moon P-8 preamplifier.
(The P-8, we should explain, is in our
Omega system on a trial basis, alternating with the Copland CTA-305 that has
been our long-time reference, and is also
found in our original Alpha system.)
We pulled out half a dozen CDs
we consider particularly challenging, and settled down to some serious
comparisons.
We began with Now the Green Blade
Riseth (Proprius PRCD9093), a choral
recording that, at one show, caused
red faces after it shamed a player of the
same size and price as this one. No red
faces this time, though. The soprano
voices were crystalline, but in the best
sense, and even in the finale they didn’t
seem in the least screechy. The rhythm
was strong, and the counterpoints were
nothing less than exquisite. The music
just flowed.
The CDP didn’t quite match our reference, which didn’t surprise us. Certain
consonants pronounced by the singers,
especially “S” and “C,” were a little more
prominent. “It’s not our reference,” said
Reine, echoing a comment by Albert,
sax in Stimela, from
Hugh Masekela’s dramatic jazz piece
about the coal train bringing African
men to work in the Johannesburg mines.
That was his only criticism, though,
and he found the ambience of this live
recording spellbinding. “You can make
out the sound of the spectators in the
club,” said Reine, “and you can tell that
this is a very special event.” Indeed,
Masekela’s unique blend of narration,
humor, pathos and musicianship was
nothing less than bewitching. The
rhythm, which is so important to this
landmark piece, was powerful and communicative. The sound effects (created
by a clever blend of percussion and voice)
were haunting. “It’s close to perfection,”
said Gerard.
We ended with Tears in Heaven from
Eric Clapton’s Unplugged album. Was his
voice altered somewhat? Albert thought
it was breathier, though it remained
every bit as expressive, and with a natural
warmth we liked. There was a slight veil
over his voice, but it was entirely natural — Clapton sings like that. There was
a fine synergy between his guitar and the other
accompanying instruments. The rhythm
was very good, and the magic that is
characteristic of a live performance was
there to be enjoyed.
We took the CDP to the test bench,
and there we saw something that was
not quite right. Check the noise curve
on this page. Over much of the band the
Summing it up…
Brand/model: Aurum Integris CDP
Price: C$13,200/US$12,000
Size (WDH): 55 x 57 x 63 cm
High level inputs: 2 balanced, 3
unbalanced, plus CD
Most liked: great finesse, nearly flawless performance
Least liked: Higher than average lowfrequency noise
Verdict: A great partner for any high
end system
Room
Feedback
Listening
“but it’s very, very good.”
We continued with Norman Dello
Joio’s wonderf ul wind band piece,
Fantasies on a Theme by Haydn (Klavier
K11138). The piece includes a ferocious
passage for tympani, and Albert feared
that it would be exaggerated by the CDP.
Certainly the impact was powerful, but
it was also natural. “The lows are really
solid,” said Albert, “but they contain
detail too, they’re not just thumps.”
We were happy with the way the brass
was reproduced as well. “It’s just a little
different from our reference,” said
Gerard, “and I think our reference is
probably correct, but all the same this
is excellent.”
A player and preamplifier need to be
able to cope with very dynamic levels
like those on the wind band recording,
but it must also be able to make sense
of very low levels. We found some on
another Klavier recording, Tournier’s
Vers la source dans le bois from the Caprice
harp album (K11133). In its own way this
remarkable CD is nearly as dynamic as
the Dello Joio, but the soft passages can
easily get lost in the fog.
There was no fog, as we were delighted
to discover. The huge dynamic range
was handled with ease and finesse, with
richness and power. The title of the
piece refers to a stream gurgling in the
wood, and the CDP did full justice to
the theme, letting Susann McDonald’s
notes cascade through like droplets
glinting in the sun. “It sounds just the
way McDonald wanted it to,” said Albert,
and we all nodded. We haven’t heard it
better than this.
Next we listened to Doug McLeod’s
Gospel Blues Master’s Plan (from Come
to Find on Audioquest AQCD1027).
McLeod’s guitar has been captured
in especially realistic fashion on this
recording, and the CDP did it full
justice. His voice was clear as well,
letting us hear unambiguously not
only the tiny inflections at the ends of
syllables, but also the subtle alternation
of seriousness and wry humor. Albert
thought McLeod’s voice had been richer
and more solid with our reference, but
he nonetheless pronounced the CDP’s
reproduction magnificent.
Albert also thought there was a certain loss of warmth in the trumpet and
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 29 noise is 100 dB below full level, which is
excellent. At lower frequencies, however,
noise — specifically hum — was much
higher, closer to -70 dB at the primary
hum frequency of 60 Hz. That was true
no matter which input was selected. The
hum was never audible, and indeed few
modern homes have a noise floor low
enough to let you even detect that level
of noise, but it isn’t quite right, and it
affected other technical readings as well.
Our CDP had been around, however,
and we suspect it picked up a bad ground
along the way.
Our low level signal reading (a 1 kHz
tone recorded 60 dB below full level
(shown at left above), might have been
quite clean but for some noise contamination, most of it fortunately out of the
audible band.
The 100 Hz square wave (above right)
was very good, with only minor ringing.
The tilted top of the wave indicates a
minor rolloff of top frequencies, in line
with what we see from most (though not
all) players, even expensive ones.
Finally we played our Pierre Verany
test disc, the one with tracks that are
deliberately damaged with a
laser. The first (undamaged)
track seemed to indicate low
jitter, though we could see
the effect of that mysterious
residual hum. Beyond the
first track, the CDP paused
before playing each of the
damaged tracks, as though
it had to decide how to make
sense of it. That aside, it
took a 2 mm slice through
the track before the CDP suffered from
uncorrected noise bursts. A slice double
that width caused mistracking. That is
very good performance, and certainly
adequate to play pretty much any commercial disc.
The CDP makes an excellent front
end for the Integris 300B system, as we
shall see in the pages ahead, but there
is more to it than that. Swapping it
for your existing player and preamplifier will, in all likelihood, let you hear
nuances that you didn’t know were on
your recordings.
Room
Feedback
Listening
CROSSTALK
Here’s a CD player-preamp that is absolutely fabulous. First impression: a perfect
image, extending in height and depth as
well as breadth, letting through a profusion
of details, many of them hidden by lesser
equipment. You don’t miss any of it, not the
faintest tremolo of a final syllable, not the
trailing ends of a musical phrase. That is
what I call limpidity.
Sounds are gorgeous right across the
audible spectrum. You can even make out
— and this is not a trivial detail for an audiophile — the mood of the musicians. Were
they sad? Joyous? Exuberant? Were they in
a humorous frame of mind? You’ll know.
Brass is brilliant, strings velvety, percussion extraordinary. Rhythm may be gentle
or frenetic, but always involving. Drums,
snares, tympani and all other stretched
membrane instruments are bewitching.
Counterpoints are sublime, and you can
follow each voice or instrument that make
them up.
Human voices are warm and natural,
lyrics clear. In one piece I was overwhelmed
by an emotional explosion by the singers,
and I don’t think I was the only one. It was
like a liberation from a thousand torments
so long repressed. It’s almost inexplicable,
this ability to communicate to the listener
a range of emotions with such authenticity.
To succeed, the artists must count on the
faithfulness of the audio equipment. The
CDP serves them admirably.
I also want to underline the firmness of
impact and the power. There was a minor
attenuation of the very bottom end, but it’s
so minor that I need hardly have mentioned
it.
I know, I could simply have summed it
up by saying that I love this player passionately. It’s not too late, is it? I love this player
passionately.
—Reine Lessard
What a treat! Gone was my intention of
comparing sound for sound with our reference. I just couldn't get into that analytical
mode, as I was constantly taken with the
beauty this unit delivered.
It was different, yes, and it was wonderful to find it superb anyway, to follow the
melodies and the harmonies through the
crystal clear layers of sound. It was easy to
stop writing and simply to forget why I was
there — even if the color of voices and some
wind instruments was reproduced differently from what I know them to be.
“Read my lips” became “hear my lips,”
as lyrics stood out with such ease and clarity that I thought I was seeing them written in space between the speakers. And that
space was always wide and deep.
—Albert Simon
I suppose it would have been a shame if
the full Integris system had been held back
by a source component that was less than
adequate. Didn’t happen.
Put aside the question of the big system
for the moment — we’ll get to it in the pages ahead. This remarkable player-preamp
deserves to be praised all by itself. It gets
a lot of detail off the disc and transmits it
without adding stuff you don’t want. It’s a
delight to use, too, and that doesn’t exactly
hurt.
Is it too expensive for its performance?
Not a bit. Several companies make CD
players that come with internal preamplifiers, and they charge about this much for
them. As nearly as I can recall, not a single
one sounds this good.
—Gerard Rejskind
Back Together Again!
It’s so good when old friends find each other again! CEC, with its
unique and so musical belt-driven CD player, and Audioville.
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Where can you finally see and hear one? Audioville. Of course!
Margie’s
back!
You can have it
all in
Ottawa
Creek
Cyrus
DNM
Eichmann
Epos
Ringmat
but only at
And she’s at
The
Audiophile
Store
1194 Bank St.
Ottawa, ON, CANADA
K1S 3Y1
TEL: 613-731-HIFI
www.planetofsoundonline.com
Room
Feedback
Listening
Aurum
Integris
Active 300B
I
f you know us well, you are aware
that we almost never review complete systems. Oh, we comment on
them when we run across them at
shows such as CES, but our full-blown
reviews are always of single components,
which we drop into one of our very high
quality reference systems. We even resist
uncontrolled variables, such as changes
in power cords or other magic tweaks
not used with our reference. We do that
because we are convinced that this is the
best way to inform readers as to what
they are likely to hear if they buy this
CD player or that loudspeaker.
The Integris Active, however, cannot
be reviewed that way. Except for its
front end (which we have reviewed
separately on the preceding pages), it is
a single system whose parts cannot be
interchanged. Note: not must not, but
cannot.
Our other principle is that we don’t
review products that don’t already have
considerable distribution. This is an
exception, because by its unique nature it
cannot be in every store, and we consider
it important enough to give it considerable room. We have no plans to make it
a habit.
Though the CDP player/preamp,
reviewed on the previous pages, is available as a separate product, the rest of the
system is not. Because the loudspeakers
contain no crossover networks, they
cannot be used with a conventional
amplifier. Nor can you connect these
amplifiers to some other speaker. Active
systems, in which the amplifier and
speaker are melded together, are reasonably common, especially in the pro audio
world, and to a lesser extent in home
audio — think of Meridian. In virtually
every case, however, the amplifier is
built right into the speaker enclosure.
In the case of the Integris, the parts are
separate…or at least they look separate.
We’ve discussed biamplification and
triamplification before. Back in UHF
No. 22, we reviewed the Bryston 10B
electronic crossover, and we also tried
Linn’s Aktiv crossover, along with Linn
Kaber speakers, whose internal crossovers could be easily bypassed.
There are major advantages to be had
from triamplification…if the designer
knows what he’s doing.
How it works
The Integris loudspeaker is built
much like other three-way speakers,
with a woofer for the low frequencies, a
midrange for intermediate frequencies,
and a tweeter for the highs. If it were
conventional, there would be a set of
internal filters, which would split up the
different frequencies so that they could
be sent to the driver intended to reproduce them. Such filters are made from
coils, capacitors and possibly resistors.
But this is an active loudspeaker,
and it contains no such filters. Instead,
the frequencies are divided up before
amplification by a circuit referred to
as an electronic crossover. Of course then
we need a power amplifier for each
driver…six amplifiers for the entire
system. Each amplifier amplifies only the
frequency band assigned to it.
For all the drivers except the woofer,
Derrick Moss has selected the 300B
output tube (hence the system name),
and he runs it single-ended. Though
single-ended tubes have somewhat
higher distortion at full power than
the usual push-pull tubes (or transistors), they are less likely to suffer from
anomalies at very low power. Note that
“full power” here has a relative sense,
because the four tube amplifiers on this
large chassis offer the gargantuan power
output of…five watts each! “That’s four
watts more than you really need,” says
Moss.
Of course using that sort of power
for a woofer would not bring the happiest of results, particularly since the
woofer is in a sealed box and cannot be
expected to attain high efficiency. To
drive the woofer, therefore, Moss has
used a solid state amplifier, essentially
Bryston’s famous 2B LP. Because of the
large power supply, Moss claims it can
hit 100 watts rather than the usual 50.
The loudspeaker, as you can see, has
panels that are not parallel, to
reduce internal standing waves
and also to compensate for
phase errors. It is extremely
heavy, made all the heavier by
a massive aluminum stabilizer
bolted onto the bottom (not visible in our photo). The picture
at right can give you a good idea
of the thickness of the front
panel, which is sharply bevelled
to avoid image-destroying
diffraction.
When we received them
we wondered what sort of
exotic wood veneer they were
made from, but in fact that
isn’t natural wood at all. The
pattern is the result of high
pressure treatment in Italy.
The enclosures themselves are
from Denmark.
The woofer and midrange
are paper, with a stiffening treatment
added, respectively a 26 cm Seas and
a 16 cm B&C. The tweeter is the softdomed Seas Excel.
The challenge
We knew that the Integris system
would be facing a major hurdle.
Ordinarily, if a component approaches
the musical performance of our reference, we give it a rave review. But this is
no ordinary system, and if the Integris
approached or even equalled the performance of our Omega system, we would
give it an F. Why go to the trouble of
using triamplification if it can’t yield
better results than we get with a single
amplifier and a passive crossover? To
earn a pass, then, the Integris would
need to sound better than anything we
had reviewed before.
Could it?
Getting down to listening
We selected a number of what we
considered particularly challenging
recordings, and listened to them on our
Omega system. We then used a hand
truck to remove our Suprema speakers,
substituted the Aurum speakers, and
dropped the rack gently into the centre.
The speakers were a little boomy and
lifeless initially, but pulling them forward about 30 cm woke them up in a
most satisfactory fashion.
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 33 Room
Feedback
Listening
The details
The Integris system comes with a
full set of cables, only some of which
can be easily changed. All are from
Cardas, including the power cords. The
woofer connectors on both amplifier
and speakers are from Cardas too: you
put the cable’s spaces into a slot and
simply tighten the large knob. (Want
bananas? Forget it.) The medium and
high frequencies are carried over a single
cable which connects with an XLR plug.
Optional grilles are supplied, though
installing them means taking out and
replacing some of the speaker bolts.
Like the CDP, the rack is optional,
but it is so well designed and beautifully finished that you may want to take
the whole package. Derrick Moss is a
mechanical engineer, and it shows.
Even the remote control (shown on
the next page) is more than the usual
off-the shelf unit. Our system came with
a Harmony remote, preprogrammed
to run the Integris and whatever else
you want to have it do. We reviewed a
Harmony remote in UHF No. 74, and
we subsequently bought two of them. We
learned from experience not to program
them to turn a unit on or off when it is
simply selecting a function. The remote
occasionally goes to sleep. You wake it
up by pushing the music button (the one
with music notes on it), but then you
have to turn the system on by pushing
the off button…not exactly intuitive.
Fortunately that can be fixed: connect
the remote to your computer, open a free
account on the Harmony Web site, and
tell the remote what you want it to do.
The remote has a lot of buttons,
with some functions you could easily
overlook. There is, for instance, a button
to reverse absolute phase, to correct
recordings that were recorded out of
phase. Try it and see what you think.
You can see from the picture that the
CDP and the amplifier seem to be “floating” above the rack shelves. Moss supplies a set of ceramic cones from Golden
Sound, held in place by gravity and blind
faith. They are difficult to position even
for two people, and we dropped one right
in between two of the 300B output tubes.
One silly centimetre over, and the review
would have screeched to a halt right
there! By the way, we tested these cones
in UHF No. 65 and we were appalled.
We wouldn’t be surprised to see them
designed out.
Moss was going to shows wit h
this system long before it was close to
production, when all the ink was on
the expenses side of his ledger.
During those years he was sweating the details. Even the fuses got
special attention. They’re Isoclean
fuses, with gold plating, costing
some $30 each (there are three
of them). Each has a directional
arrow, and was installed with the
arrow pointing inward. Before
we did the review, he wrote to say
he had found the system sounding slightly better with the fuses
the other way. We have no clue
why that could possibly be, and
we didn’t make the comparison
ourselves, but we’re not here to
make trouble.
We also weren’t here to secondguess Moss’s design decisions. He
invited us to substitute our own
cables if we wished, but we decided,
instead, to treat the system like a
black box, and simply to evaluate
what came out. We did, however, plug
it into our GutWire MaxCon filter and
not straight into the wall.
Room
Feedback
Listening
Our first three recordings were LPs. For this part
of the session we ran a 2 m
length of Atlas Navigator
All-Cu interconnect from
our Audiomat Phono-1.5
phono stage to an input
on the CDP. We began
with an old favorite, the
Chorus Line Medley from
the Dallas Wind Symphony’s Beachcomber double
LP. We figured that if anything was going to overload
the tube amplifiers on this
system, that would do it.
Time for us to invite
you to read the rest of this
review in our print issue, or
else in the full electronic
issue. We don’t think you'll
be disappointed
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ex er incilis essim numsandrem verosto
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tisi.
exerat acidunt dolesto ex er incilis essim
numsandrem verosto eummy nim
velendre er ing euis nonulla faccumm
olortionulla feuipsum eu facipis cipit,
volobore erillaor in utpatie vel iustisl
dipisim.
The instrument tests
Summing it up…
Brand/model: Aurum Integris 300B
Price: C$33,000/US$30,000, not
including CDP
Dimensions (WDH):
Speakers: 40 x 114 x 47 cm
Amplifier: 48 x 57 x 24 cm
Rack with CDP: 55 x 57 x 63 cm
Most liked: To commy nim iustio
duipis num nostrud
Least liked: Fiddly feet
Verdict: Duis ad dolor adiam quatiscidunt praestie er ametummod tat.
elenisi.
luptat.
Feedback
Listening
Rud doloreet wis alit ut lum in heniscidunt aut ing et lorper sequis non ut ilit
lore facilis sequat. Duis ad dolor adiam
quatiscidunt praestie er ametummod
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ex et enisit prat vulputat iure dunt verit
lutpat nullam velesto commolortie
dolorpe riurem zzrit, senit nonsequis
nibh er sum nim aliquis at accumsa
ndrercipsum vent nullam, venis nim
ipisim irit num euisis nisl ing elit wis
adionullamet praestrud tie consequatue
faccum autet, quis aliquat irilismolore
ad doluptat. Quat ip eugait.
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ven im eug iate
dolore dionseniam
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ex exerat, sequat
nosto do euisciliqui etum delit nos
nonse tem iriureet,
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zzriustrud tat, suscips ustrud tie vel
dolore modo conse
modolortio et nos
nit utem zzrit irit
pratueros dolorem
diat, quipit nonsequate magna facip
exer summodion vullaore duis euismod
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dipisit inciduis aliquam eum doloborer
sed tionsenit lum nos dolore eum niam
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eu feugait ulputat, volortisisi.
Conclusions
vullaore duis euismod ignibh esting et,
vel estrud estrud dipisit inciduis aliquam
eum doloborer sed tionsenit lum nos
dolore.
Room
Feedback
Listening
CROSSTALK
Tum veliquat ulpute dolore volore facipsum esequat. Ut lan veliquat praese facilit
lutpat nibh euguero ea feuguer suscing enismod dolorero odiamco rtiscil lamconsequat
wismod modion vel ulputat. Utpation utpat
augait am, core tisi.
An hendreet nonsenim dit, ver sustrud
dunt utet autem quam, sis augue magniam
consequat adipis adiam, consed te ming
esent loborper iure commodio commodit
lum zzriure vullumsan henim iustin utatum
feuipsu scipit ad molorem ex ero odolobore
dolobortie digna conullaor si bla consecte
et exerit lum alismolore ming esent vullamc
onullan henisl ute core vent volor si.
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nissequam ero eraestrud dolore ese dolore
dolutat, volobore diat praestismod te facilla
facil inci blan et aliquis ciliquiscil dignis am
quis niamet nisse eniamet, sis nibh eraesen
dionum zzrilla feuipis modolut adip euis
dolessi.
quissent aliquisi te doluptat ing enit ea alis
accumsan velessectem dolorpe rostrud dipis
nonsenisi.
mincilit acing er accum vulput in utat, quat
ad eril doloreet lan euismol ortinim digna
autpat lobor sectetum quamconulla commy
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consequi bla coreet, vent iriusci bla feu
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laor ilit lutpatin el in velisci ncilla facinibh
feummod do coreros eugait il ex eugait wisi
ex et num quisim aut atum del del dolobore
eros endigniatue dolor secte ex eugiat. Illa
corperostrud tisi.
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facilis sequat. Duis ad dolor adiam quatiscidunt praestie er ametummod tat.
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et enisit prat vulputat iure dunt verit lutpat
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You’ve probably spotted one of its
many features, the front-panel headphone jack. There is more, however,
lots more. The AS-3i is built in the
classic way, with soldered point-to-point
wiring, and not the “modern” circuit
boards. The power supply is put together
with a choke — a large inductor — and
not merely a series resistance.
One way it is different from classic
amplifiers is in the quality of its connectors, which are better than you could
expect at this selling price. Another has
to do with a couple of features on the
front panel. There are two switches you
don’t often see on amplifier front panels,
and indeed this is where the AS-3i gets
really interesting.
amplif iers, but wit h an important
difference, which will take a little
explanation.
The original amplifier tube was a
triode, with three elements: the cathode
was heated so it emitted electrons which
were attracted across a vacuum, to a
positively-charged anode. In between
them was the grid, to which the signal
to be amplified was applied. Depending
on its charge at any given time, the
electron flow would increase or decrease,
thus mimicking the input signal itself.
Modern output tubes are mainly pentodes, however, with two more elements.
One of the added elements is the screen
grid, which has its own positive charge
and accelerates the electron f low to
increase the amplification. A pentode,
however, has a narrower linear range,
and in an audio circuit it probably won’t
sound as good as the classic triode.
So what do you do?
You can just connect the screen grid
to the anode, and then you have what
is in effect a triode, though not a very
high-powered one. Or you can adopt a
mode known as “Ultralinear.” A special
output transformer is used, with taps for
the screen grid, placing it (electrically)
midway between the anode and the
positive power supply. The best of both
worlds? Nearly. Some amplifiers, therefore, incorporate a switch letting you
choose pentode operation or Ultralinear
operation.
The Audio Space switch, placed right
on the front panel, is different: it lets you
choose between Ultralinear and triode
operation.
Interesting?
The good stuff
Nearly all amplifiers use a feedback
loop. The loop takes a sample of the
output signal and brings it back to the
input in reverse phase, partly cancelling
it out, but also correcting distortion.
Large amounts of feedback produce
negative effects, as is well known. So
do you want a lot of it or a little? Audio
Space lets you choose, via a switch right
there on the front panel. We chose low
feedback (and therefore higher gain), but
feel free to experiment for yourself.
Then there’s a mode switch, not
unlike that found on some other tube
Lending it an ear
We had picked out a small stack of
CDs we wanted to use in this session,
but first we wanted to determine how we
would do our listening, with triodes or
in Ultralinear. For this purpose the test
selection was the Dixieland piece Comes
Love, drawn from Opus 3’s Showcase
SACD (CD21000).
We had to go back and forth several
times, because switching to triodes
drops the volume, and the amplifier’s
volume control is not calibrated. We
agreed finally that triodes really did
sound better. And if it turned out that
Audio Space AS-3i
Room
Feedback
Listening
W
e’ve seen a lot of amplifiers coming out of China
in recent years, most of
them using tubes. Many
of them sound very good, and at the very
least they offer great value for money.
This one, however, is a little different.
For one thing it is from Hong Kong,
not the booming Shanghai industrial
region. Though Hong Kong has been
part of China for close to a decade, it
has a different tradition and culture. The
difference is reflected in a number of
aspects of this unusual tube amplifier.
Chinese amplifiers are often strikingly attractive, to the point where
you could buy them on looks alone.
The Audio Space is gorgeous too, but
in a much more understated way. It
has chrome touches, rather like classic McIntosh tube gear, and in fact it
could have been designed back in the
60’s. Understand that this is in no way a
criticism.
The Audio Space tube amplifiers
are available in a dizzying number of
configurations, with different output
tubes, different power outputs, and of
course different prices. We picked this
one because it uses EL-34 output tubes,
one of our all-time favorites. The price
was right too. We hoped it would sound
at least pretty good. It does…and then
some!
trud dipis
nonsenisi.
Iril iure molobor sust ismod
molore mincilit acing er accum vulput
in utat, quat ad eril doloreet lan euismol
tat.
Andigna feuguer sustrud dolore conum
ex et enisit prat vulputat iure dunt verit
Summing it up…
Brand/model: Audio Space AS-3i
Price: C$1599 (equiv. US$1425)
High-level inputs: 3
Rated power: 32 W/ch (Ultralinear),
16 W/ch (triode)
Most liked: Sutatum vel ilis aut loborperilla feum do odolore
Least liked: No remote control
Verdict: Lorem eum iurer iure tatue
modigna feugait eros
lutpat nullam
vele sto commolortie dolorpe
riurem zzrit, senit nonsequis nibh er sum
nim aliquis at accumsa ndrercipsum vent
nullam, venis nim ipisim irit num euisis
nisl ing elit wis adionullamet praestrud
tie consequatue faccum autet, quis aliquat irilismolore exerat acidunt dolesto
ex er incilis essim numsandrem verosto
eummy nim velendre er ing euis nonulla
faccumm olortionulla feuipsum eu
facipis cipit, volobore erillaor in utpatie
vel iustisl dipisim zzrillutetue corpera
esendit ipisi blandrer susci te magna
feugait vel ut iniam, velis amcore facilisl
erit venit augait lute tem ing ercilit,
velisci liquatuer il utatue consequat.
elenisi.
Feedback
Listening
16 watts per channel was not enough,
well…double that power would be just
the flip of a switch away.
The first recording would tell us how
good the amplifier is at keeping sounds
smooth…as opposed to hard, harsh or
grainy. It’s the Dvorak Romantic Pieces
(Analekta FL 2 3191). Even Stradivarius
violins can turn into buzz saws in the
wrong hands, but nothing even close to
that happened.
Of course we do have much more to
say about this amplifier, and you can get
the whole story in either of our editions,
paid or electronic. We now switch to
Latin, but if we were you we wouldn’t
even happen to attempt a translation.
When we had finished, one fact
struck us. We had just listened to an
amplifier that costs like the sales tax on
our reference power amp and preamp.
It does have its faults, but it has no one
fault you can readily point to, and that’s
why it sounds so satisfying.
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consed tetue eu faccum.
Room
Feedback
Listening
CROSSTALK
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Good enough
UHF uses
them!
Can it pass
your test?
Creek EVO
Room
Feedback
Listening
Amplifier
T
he EVO model name stands
for “evolution,” and a lot of
high end audio manufacturers have had to evolve in the
face of globalization. That is especially
true of manufacturers for whose customers price is an object. The direction of
evolution: China.
But this new integrated amplifier has
no label of origin on it. It couldn’t really
be British, otherwise it would have a
Union Jack sticker on the rear, proclaiming it was “proudly built in the UK.” So
is it Chinese, as it also doesn’t say? In fact
the EVO originates from more than one
place.
Its circuit board actually is from
England, where company founder Mike
Creek spent two years developing and
“voicing” it. He also built the prototype casing, which was sent to China
for manufacturing and final assembly.
Creek has two engineers on the spot to
oversee the process and test the final
units. There is no design input from the
Chinese plant, if only because that plant
doesn’t make any other audio products.
All of this comes as no surprise,
because even before we plugged anything into the EVO, we figured that
European manufacture of an amp like
this couldn’t come with this sort of
price tag in the 21st Century. The EVO
is an attractive package, with a wellbuilt case, a microprocessor-controlled
input selector and volume, and even
a headphone jack. The volume is not
done with a chip, however, but with a
computer-controlled analog resistance
array. The output binding posts are of
quite reasonable quality. The same can’t
be said of the input jacks, but that would
be true of competitors as well. Selected
input and volume setting are shown on
a fluorescent display.
Much of the EVO’s not inconsid-
Can true music
lovers still find real
bargains?
erable weight is
due to its power transformer,
which is big enough to allow the EVO
to deliver nearly double its rated power
into 4 ohms. Beyond the transformer
the power supply splits in two, with
one hefty section for each channel.
The output section uses a Darlington
bipolar configuration, and not the
MOSFETs familiar from some other
Creek designs.
A feature that is increasingly rare: the
EVO can be ordered with an inboard
phono stage, adaptable to MM or MC
pickups. The phono input then replaces
the auxiliary input.
The rear panel includes a switch for
line voltage selection, and aside from the
usual connectors there is a preamplifier output. There is also a tape loop, a
feature that is on the endangered species
list.
A n electronic protection circuit
plus a relay keeps the amplifier from
blowing up in case of a short circuit or
other malfunction. We should note that
such circuits, some years ago, would call
attention to themselves by polluting the
sound, though such faults seem to be a
thing of the past. Its presence probably
does impose a small performance hit,
if only because of the relay, but then
burned transistors aren’t good for performance either.
We used the same stack of CDs and
SACDs as we had for the other integrated amplifier reviewed in this issue.
We began with Dvorak’s Romantic Pieces
(Analekta FL 2 3191) for solo violin and
piano. James Ehnes plays a Stradivarius,
and it should sound like one.
To a gratifying extent it did, with a
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luptat.
Summing it up…
Brand/model: Creek EVO
Price: C$1150 (US$1025 equivalent)
High level inputs: 4 plus tape loop
Claimed power (8Ω): 85 W/ch
Most liked: Power, clarity, music
Least liked: So-so phono jacks
Verdict: A bargain in a class where
there are few bargains left
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consed tetue eu faccum vel utat. Ut aci
Feedback
Listening
tone t h at wa s
smooth and even airy. It might
even have been too smooth, if such a thing
is possible, but it remained captivating.
“The piano is slightly more distant,”
said Gerard, “but it certainly is beautiful.” The notes of both instruments
were clearly distinct from one another,
without confusion or compression.
Albert asked for a little more volume,
to see whether he might hear more
clearly what he had readily heard with
our reference amplifier. It was clear
that the EVO, despite its slim profile,
had lots more to give. “What I don’t
hear as clearly,” he said, “are the little
variations in bowing technique. But the
music is refined and musical, and so far
I’m happy.”
Could this slim amplifier do justice
to a large and robustly-recorded pipe
organ? We sicked it on the Bach Toccata
& Fugue in D Minor (Opus 3 CD22031).
There was no sign that the Creek was
having difficulty with the loud parts
(which abound), but it also didn’t have
much trouble with the soft parts. The
reverberation came through with great
clarit y, seemingly from all around
us. This was turning out to be fun!
(We now invite you to join the fun, by
ordering one of our full editions, printed
or electronic.)
Room
Feedback
Listening
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CROSSTALK
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idunt praestie er ametummod tat.
iniam, velis amcore facilisl erit venit augait
lute tem ing ercilit, velisci liquatuer il utatue
consequat.
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utatum ip el ex eu feui eu facipsusto ea faccums andignis dit illaore do odit ilis dipit
do euis eui te feugait niamcom modolor
perilluptat. To commy nim iustio duipis
num nostrud magna facip euis exerosto
dolor sequipit augait lor se commodo lobore
dolore conse conumsandit aliquisci tet lore
tio eugait ad magnit utpat la feum nisl exercil
utpat wisit praestie feuisim num do od exer
augait duisse et lumsan etuercilisit nonsectet
wissi blamcon utpat verostio et wisi tetueros
nos autat lutat prat, commy nullamet adip
esto delis dignisl dolorpe rcilis eum eu feu
feugiam zzrit utat, con elenisi.
THE UHF CLASSIFIEDS
SONY PRO CASSETTE RECORDER
It was once the way to record in the field if
you wanted quality. The TC-158SD is a large
but easily portable recorder (AC or battery)
with huge meters, Dolby B, and switchable
limiter. In excellent condition, but without
cassette well cover. Includes instruction
manual and service manual. $250 plus
shipping. Call UHF during (EST) business
hours, at (450)651-5720, or e-mail:
uhfmail@uhfmag.com.
ROKSAN, DYNACO
Roksan Kandy MkIII, imaculate condition,
$950. Roksan Gandy MkIII integrated
amp, immaculate condition, $950. Dynaco
PAS3 preamp, $350. Phone Graham at
(780)4294653, or gkellyd9@telus.net.
NORDOST SPEAKER CABLES
NORDOST RED DAWN speaker cable,
3metres, bi-wired, shotgun ready to use. $450
cdn. Call Steve Bourke at (450)671-4572.
products. (250)-878-6252, Kelowna, BC.
www.creeksideaudio.net.
CUSTOM BUILT TUBE POWER AMPS
High quality "custom built" vacuum tube
power amplifiers by Ideal Innovations.
Please visit our website at http://www.
idealinnovations.ca. For further information,
e-mail idealinnovations@rogers.com, or
phone (519)485-6137 after 6:30PM EST.
VECTEUR IN VANCOUVER
Cambridge Audio, TEAC, Parasound
Halo, Angstrom, James Loudspeakers,
Audio Art custom-built actively tri-amplified
loudspeakers, Richard Gray AC, cables,
stands, accessories. Custom installation
and home theater. David Elderton Audio
Video Consultant, (604)808-7394, evenings
(604)988-6666.
AUDIOMAT, VECTEUR
Creekside Audio for all your stereo/theatre
needs. Audiomat, Vecteur, Atlantis
Acoustique, Gershman and lots more!
Discover the magic in music with our fine
MUSEATEX REPAIRS
Museatex/MeitnerAudio factory service and
updates. Please check our web-site at www.
museatex.com. E-mail me at john@museatex.
com or phone (403)284-0723.
Room
Feedback
Listening
Six Loudspeaker Cables
H
ow hard can it be to make
a high performance loudspeaker cable? It’s harder
than you’d think, notwithstanding all those claims that a wire
purchased from Home Depot turned out
to sound as good as expensive specialist
cables. It would be nice if it were true.
And in fact we have in the past tried
such wires ourselves. They work pretty
well, which is to say that, unless you
connect them wrong, the signal does
make it all the way to the speaker, and
the speaker produces music.
Or at least it produces sound.
Like most audiophiles we have a
substantial investment in the wiring
that connects our audio components
together, and if hardware store wire were
just as good we would have had little
trouble finding other ways to spend that
money. So our response to the claims we
still hear is, “Been there. Seen it. Done
it. Not impressed.”
The other claim you’ll see is that
no blind test has ever shown consistent
differences among audio cables. That is
outrageously false, in fact, and we wondered whether we could once more take
six speaker cables and put them, as we’ve
done before, through a blind test.
In neither of our two listening rooms
would this be easy, because neither is set
up to allow concealment of the wires
used. Indeed, it is difficult to do without
using a screen in front of the speakers,
a problem we need hardly underline.
We had previously reviewed interconnects in a blind test, where concealment
was easier. Even so it was not what is
known as a double blind test. In a true
double blind test, even the experimenter
(Gerard in this case) doesn’t know which
product is which. We don’t know of a way
to do this with speaker cables except by
using a switching system. Need we say
more?
So here’s how we proceeded. The six
test cables were presented in random
order, not going from cheapest to most
expensive, for instance. Each cable
pair was assigned a number, which was
printed on a label obscuring the cable
name. Reine and Albert were told nothing about the test cables, and by the time
test day rolled around Gerard was no
longer sure what order they were in. Of
course the cables don’t all look the same,
but three of them (Atlas Hyper) are very
similar, and two more expensive cables
(Atlas Ascent) look nearly alike too. We
followed the same procedure as in previous blind tests: Gerard, who might or
might not know the cable being listened
to, identified them strictly by number,
and said nothing until the two other
Back Issues
THE ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION:
Issues No.7-19 (except 11, 15, 17 and 18, out of
print): nine issues available for the price of five
(see below). A piece of audio history. Available
separately at the regular price.
No.77: Electronics: The Simaudio Moon P-8
preamplifier, the successor to the legendary
Bryston 2B power amp, the Antique Sound Lab
Lux DT phono stage. Plus: the Reimyo DAP-777
converter, an affordable CD player/integrated
amp pair from CEC, and five power cords. Also:
Paul Bergman on room size and acoustics, how
to dezone foreign DVDs, and how to make your
own 24/96 high resolution discs at home.
No.76: Loudspeakers: we take a new look at the
modern version of the well-loved Totem Mani-2,
we try an affordable ELAC speaker with a Heil
tweeter, and we are surprised by the even more
affordable Castle Richmond 3i. Plus headphone
amps from Lehmann, CEC and Benchmark, a
charger that can do all your portable goodies,
and the Squeezebox 3, which gets true hi-fi
music over the air from your computer to your
stereo system. And: Paul Bergman on speaker
impedance and how to measure it.
No.75: Amplifiers: The new Simaudio Moon W-8
flagship, and integrated amps from Copland (the
CTA-405) and CEC. Speakers: the Reference 3a
Veena and the Energy Reference Connoisseur
reborn. Plus the Benchmark DAC converter. And
also: Bergman on the changing concept of hi-fi
and stereo, a chat with FIM’s Winston Ma, and
the rediscovery of a great Baroque composer,
Christoph Graupner.
No.74: Lots of amplifiers: The Mimetism 15.2,
Qinpu A-8000, Raysonic SP-100, Cyrus 8vs
and Rogue Stereo 90. More reviews: Atlantis
Argentera speaker, Cyrus CD8X player, GutWire
MaxCon Squared line filter, Harmonic remote,
Music Studio 10 recording software. Cables:
Atlas, Stager, BIS and DNM, including a look
at how length affects digital cables. Plus: the
(high fidelity) digital jukebox, why HDTV doesn’t
always mean what you think, and Reine Lessard
on The Man Who Invented Rock’n’Roll.
No.73: Integrated amplifiers: The great Audiomat
Récital and the affordable but musical Exposure
2010S. Analog: Turntables from Roksan (the
Radius 5) and Goldring (the Rega-designed
GR2), plus two cartridges, and four phono stages
from CEC, Marchand and Goldring. More: The
Harmonix Reimyo CD player, the Audiomat
Maestro DAC, the ASW Genius 400 speakers,
and the Sonneteer BardOne wireless system.
Plus: Paul Bergman on the making of an LP and
why they don’t all sound the same, the many ways
of compressing video so it looks (almost) like film,
and the story of the accordion.
No.72: Music from data: We look at ways you
can make your own audiophile CDs with equipment you already have, and we test a DAC that
yields hi-fi from your computer. We review the
new Audio Reference speakers, the updated
Connoisseur single-ended tube amp, upscale
Actinote cables, and Gershman’s Acoustic Art
panels. How to tune up your system for an inexpensive performance boost. And much more.
No.71: Three small speaker: Reference 3a
Dulcet, Totem Rainmaker, and a very low cost but
surprising speaker from France. We do a complex blind cable test: five cables from Atlas, and
one Wireworld cable with different connectors
(Eichmann, WBT nextgen, and Wireworld). The
McCormack UDP-1 universal player, muRata
super tweeters, the Simaudio I-3 amp and
Equinox CD player. Paul Bergman reveals the
philosophical differences behind two-channel
stereo and multichannel.
No.70: How SACD won the war…or how DVD-A
blew it. Reviews: Linn Unidisk 1.1 universal
player and Shanling SCD-T200 player. Speakers:
Reference 3a Royal Virtuoso, Equation 25,
Wilson Benesch Curve, preview of muRata
super tweeters. Other reviews: Simaudio W-5LE
amp, the iPod as an audiophile source. Plus:
future video screens, and the eternal music of
George Gershwin
to copy music, and how it may be vanishing.
Choosing a DVD player by features. And all about
music for the movies.
No.69: Tube Electronics: Audiomat Opéra ,
Connoisseur SE-2 and Copland CSA29 integrated amps, and Shanling SP-80 monoblocks.
Also: Audiomat's Phono-1.5, Creek CD50, as
well as a great new remote control, GutWire's
NotePad antivibration device, and a musicrelated computer game that had us laughing out
loud. Paul Bergman on the return of the vacuum
tube, and how music critics did their best to kill
the world’s greatest music.
No.60: Speakers: Monitor Audio Silver 9,
Reference 3a MM De Capo, Klipsch RB-5,
Coincident Triumph Signature. Plus: a Mirage
subwoofer and the Audiomat Solfège amp. Paul
Bergman on reproducing extreme lows.
No.68: Loudspeakers: Thiel CS2.4, Focus
Audio FS688, Iliad B1. Electronics:Vecteur
I-6.2 and Audiomat Arpège integrated amplifiers, Copland 306 multichannel tube preamp,
Rega Fono MC. Also: Audio Note and Copland
CD players, GutWire MaxCon power filter. And
there’s more: all about power supplies, what’s
coming beyond DVD, and a chat with YBA’s
Yves-Bernard André.
No.67: Loudspeakers: A new, improved
Reference 3a MM de Capo, and the awesome
Living Voice Avatar OBX-R. Centre speakers
for surround from Castle, JMLab, ProAc, Thiel,
Totem and Vandersteen. One of them joins our
Kappa system. Two multichannel amps from
Copland and Vecteur. Plus: plans for a DIY
platform for placing a centre speaker atop any TV
set, Paul Bergman on the elements of acoustics,
and women in country music.
No.66: Reviews: the Jadis DA-30 amplifier, the
Copland 305 tube preamp and 520 solid state
amp. Plus: the amazing Shanling CD player,
Castle Stirling speakers, and a remote control
that tells you what to watch. Also: Bergman on
biwiring and biamplification, singer Janis Ian’s
alternative take on music downloading, and a
chat with Opus 3’s Jan-Eric Persson.
No.65: Back to Vinyl: setting up an analog
system, reviews of Rega P9 turntable, and
phono preamps from Rega, Musical Fidelity
and Lehmann. The Kappa reference system for
home theatre: choosingour HDTV monitor, plus
a review of the Moon Stellar DVD player. Antivibration: Atacama, Symposium, Golden Sound,
Solid-Tech, Audioprism, Tenderfeet. Plus an
interview with Rega’s turntable designer, and a
look back at what UHF was like 20 years ago.
No.64: Speakers: Totem M1 Signature and
Hawk, Visonik E352. YBA Passion Intégré amp,
Cambridge IsoMagic (followup), better batteries
for audio-to-go. Plus: the truth about upsampling,
an improvement to our LP cleaning machine, an
interview with Ray Kimber.
.
No.63: Tube amps: ASL Leyla & Passion
A11. Vecteur Espace speakers, 2 interconnects (Harmonic Technology Eichmann),
5 speaker cables (Pierre Gabriel, vdH ,
Harmonic Technology, Eichmann), 4 power
cords (Wireworld, Harmonic Technology,
Eichmann, ESP). Plus: Paul Bergman on
soundproofing, how to compare components
in the store, big-screen TV’s to stay away
from, a look back at the Beatles revolution.
No.62: Amplifiers: Vecteur I-4, Musical Fidelity
Nu-Vista M3, Antique Sound Lab MG-S11DT.
Passive preamps from Creek and Antique Sound
Lab. Vecteur L-4 CD player. Interconnects: VdH
Integration and Wireworld Soltice. Plus: the right
No.61: Digital: Audiomat Tempo and Cambridge
Isomagic DACs, Vecteur D-2 transport. Speakers:
Osborn Mini Tower and Mirage OM-9. Soundcare
Superspikes. And: new surround formats, dezoning DVD players.
No.59: CD players: Moon Eclipse, Linn Ikemi and
Genki, Rega Jupiter/Io, Cambridge D500. Plus:
Oskar Kithara speaker, with Heil tweeter. And:
transferring LP to CD, the truth on digital radio,
digital cinema vs MaxiVision 48.
No.58: Amplifiers: ASL AQ1003, Passion I10
& I11, Rogue 88, Jadis Orchestra Reference,
Linar 250. Headphone amps: Creek, Antique
Sound Lab, NVA, Audio Valve. Plus: Foundation
Research LC-2 line filter, Gutwire power cord,
Pierre Gabriel ML-1 2000 cable. And: building
your own machine to clean LP’s.
No.57: Speakers: Dynaudio Contour 1.3,
Gershman X-1/SW-1, Coincident Super Triumph
Signature, Castle Inversion 15, Oskar Aulos.
PLUS: KR 18 tube amp. Music Revolution: the
next 5 years. Give your Hi-Fi a Fall Tune-Up.
No.56: Integrated amps: Simaudio I-5, Roksan
Caspian, Myryad MI120, Vecteur Club 10, NVA
AP10 Also: Cambridge T500 tuner, Totem Forest.
Phono stages: Creek, Lehmann, Audiomat.
Interconnects: Actinote, Van den Hul, Pierre
Gabriel. Plus: Paul Bergman on power and current…why you need both
No.55: CD players: Linn CD12, Copland CDA289, Roksan Caspian, AMC CD8a. Other
reviews: Enigma Oremus speaker, Magenta
ADE-24 black box. Plus: the DSD challenge for
the next audio disc, pirate music on the Net, the
explosion of off-air video choices.
No.54: Electronics: Creek A52se, Simaudio
W-3 and W-5 amps. Copland CSA-303, Sima
P-400 and F.T. Audio preamps (the latter two
passive). Musical Fidelity X-DAC revisited, Ergo
AMT phones, 4 line filters, 2 interconnects. Plus:
Making your own CD’s.
No.53: Loudspeakers:Reference 3a Intégrale,
Energy Veritas v2.8, Epos ES30, Totem Shaman,
Mirage 390is, Castle Eden. Plus: Paul Bergman
on understanding biamping, biwiring, balanced
lines, and more.
No.52: CD players: Alchemist Nexus, Cambridge
CD6, YBA Intégré, Musical Fidelity X-DAC,
Assemblage DAC-2. Subwoofers: Energy ES-8
and NHT PS-8. Plus: Paul Bergman on reproducing deep bass, Vegas report, and the story
behind digital television.
No.51: Integrated amps: YBA Intégré DT,
Alchemist Forseti, Primare A-20, NVA AP50
Cambridge A1. CD players: Adcom GCD-750,
Rega Planet. An economy system to recommend
to friends, ATI 1505 5-channel amp, Bergman on
impedance, why connectors matter, making your
own power bars.
No.50: CD: Cambridge DiscMagic/DACMagic,
Primare D-20, Dynaco CDV Pro. Analog: Rega
Planar 9, Linn LP12 after 25 years. Also: Moon
preamp, Linn Linto phono stage, Ergo and Grado
headphones. Speaker cables: Linn K-400,
Sheffield, MIT 750 Also: 15 years of UHF.
No.49: Power amps: Simaudio Moon, Bryston 3B
ST, N.E.W. DCA-33, plus the Alchemist Forseti
amp and preamp, and McCormack Micro components. Our new Reference 3a Suprema II reference speakers, and a followup on the Copland
277 player. Plus: how HDCD really works.
No.48: Loudspeakers: JMLabs Daline 3.1,
Vandersteen 3a, Totem Tabù, Royd Minstrel.
CD: Cambridge CD4, Copland CDA-277. Also:
An interview with the founder of a Canadian
audiophile record label.
No.47: FM tuners: Magnum Dynalab MD-108,
Audiolab 8000T, Fanfare FT-1. Speaker cables:
QED Qudos, Wireworld Equinox and Eclipse,
MIT MH-750. Parasound C/BD-2000 transport
and D/AC-2000 converter. And: Upgrading your
system for next to nothing.
No.46: Electronics: Simaudio 4070SE amp &
P-4002 preamp, Copland CTA-301 & CTA-505,
N.E.W. P-3 preamp. Digital cables: Wireworld,
Audiostream, MIT, XLO, Audioprism, and
Wireworld’s box for comparing interconnects.
Also: YBA CD-1 and Spécial CD players. YvesBernard André talks about about his blue diode
CD improvement.
No.45: Integrated amps: Copland CTA-401,
Simaudio 4070i, Sugden Optima 140. CD:
Adcom GDA-700 HDCD DAC, Sonic Frontiers
SFD-1 MkII. Interconnects: Straight Wire
Maestro, 3 versions of Wireworld Equinox.
Plus: Yamamura Q15 CD oil, and “Hi-Fi for the
Financially Challenged”.
No.44: Digital: Rotel RCD970BX, Counterpoint
DA-10A DAC. Speakers: Apogee Ribbon Monitor,
Totem Mite, more on the Gershman Avant Garde.
Also: Laser-Link cable, “The Solution” CD treatment, AudioQuest sorbothane feet, Tenderfeet,
Isobearings. Plus: Inside Subwoofers, and castrati, the singers who gave their all for music.
No.43: The first HDCD converter: the EAD
DSP-1000 MkII. Speakers: Gershman Avant
Garde, Totem Mani-2 and Rokk, Quad ESL-63
with Gradient sub. Plus: Keith O. Johnson on the
road to HDCD, and our editor joins those of other
magazines to discuss what’s hot in audio.
No.42: Electronics: Spectral DMC-12 and Celeste
P-4001 preamplifiers, amps and preamps from
Duson. Also: Sonic Frontiers SFD-1 converter,
power line filters from Audioprism, Chang, and
YBA. Plus: Inside the preamplifier, and how the
tango became the first “dirty” dance.
No.41: Digital: Roksan DA-2, EAD DSP-7000,
McCormack DAC-1, QED Ref. Digit. Cables:
Straight Wire LSI Encore & Virtuoso, Wireworld
Equinox, van den Hul The 2nd & Revelation,
Cardas Cross & Hexlink Golden, Transparent
Music-Link Super & Music-Wave Super. Plus:
Bergman on recording stereo.
No.40: Integrated amps: YBA Intégré, Rotel 960,
Sugden A-25B, Sima PW-3000, Linn Majik, Naim
NAIT 3, AMC CVT3030, Duson PA-75. Stereo:
what it is, how it works, why it’s disappearing
from records.
No. 39: Speakers: KEF Q50, Martin-Logan
Aerius, Castle Howard, NEAR 40M, Klipsch
Kg4.2. Plus: QED passive preamps, followup
on the Linn Mimik CD player.
No. 38: CD players: Roksan Attessa, Naim CDS,
Linn Mimik, Quad 67, Rotel 945, Micromega
Model “T”. Plus: why women have been erased
from music history.
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panelists had completed their comments
and had written them down.
We did this test series for ourselves
too, because these cables might be candidates for our Audiophile Store. As usual,
however, we select only products we like
ourselves. Any wire that didn’t pass this
blind test wouldn’t get any further.
The prices of these speaker cables
varied from truly affordable to almost
startlingly expensive. As we shall see,
audio quality was not always proportional to price.
The session was done in our Alpha
room, with the cables connected between
our Simaudio Moon W-5LE amplifier
and the outboard crossovers of our
Living Voice OBX-R speakers. The
speakers were fitted with Atlas singlecrystal jumpers. We played two record-
1: Atlas Hyper 1.5
Room
Feedback
Listening
A
tlas is a Scottish cable company, particularly known for
using continuous cast copper,
in which each strand is made
from a single crystal, and yet keeping
its prices relatively low. The price of
copper has tripled in recent months,
however, and that is lifting some cables
to price levels that will intimidate anyone
without especially deep pockets.
Hence this new series of cables from
Atlas. The copper used is oxygen-free
(important, in order to avoid gradual
deterioration), but is not continuous cast.
The insulation is Teflon, with a PVC
exterior.
Atlas uses the same diagram for all
three cables in the Hyper series, with
the number, 1.5 in this case expressing
the conductor cross-sectional area in
square millimeters. List price of Hyper
1.5 is US$18/metre.
All of the Hyper cables are available
in bulk, but our 5 m sample was supplied
with Atlas’s own banana connectors,
which are crimped under pressure.
Several manufacturers use what appear
to be similar connectors, whose conductors are hollow tubes with the strict
minimum amount of metal. The tube
has a certain spring action, and it fit our
amplifier and speakers reasonably well.
We quickly determined that they might
be a little loose in some other binding
posts.
Of course we began by listening to
the two selections through our usual reference cable, an Actinote LB, 5 m long,
the same length as all six of the other
cables. Then we substituted “cable 1”
and listened again.
What we heard was not bad. The
choral recording’s legendary depth
(especially in its SACD version) was still
present, though everything seemed more
distant. Albert and Reine asked for more
volume, though we had agreed on a lower
ings on our Linn Unidisk 1.1 player:
1) The SACD version of Now the Green
Blade Riseth (Proprius PRSACD9093), an
old favorite.
2) You Keep Coming Back Like a Song
from Margie Gibson’s CD of Irving
Berlin songs, Say It With Music (Sheffield
CD-36).
On to speaker cable 1. And let the
chips fall where they may.
volume with our reference cable.
Once we had piled on an extra 3 dB
of power, we listened with considerable
interest. We could hear everything,
including the beguiling counterpoint
of the solo flute with the singers. Even
the triangle, which is so subtle it can
easily get lost, was easy to follow. As for
the singers, their voices sounded by no
means grainy, as they so often can even
with expensive systems, and there was
good separation of the timbres of the
male and female singers. Everything was
in balance.
Still, we could have done without
the hardening up of the sound when
the singers rose in both volume and
pitch. Albert was particularly unhappy.
“Everything is there,” he said, “but I’m
the one who is absent.”
The Margie Gibson song was altered
as well. The piano introduction was
more Casio than Steinway, and anytime
her voice rose we realized we were a
long way from the reference. Sibilance,
often a problem with this recording, was
normal. We could hear a lot of detail
in both the voice and the cello accompaniment. “Yes, but the detail comes
at a cost,” said Albert. “It roughens
Gibson’s voice, when her voice should
sound silky smooth. And there’s a certain lack of warmth.” Reine noted the
same shortcomings but judged that the
song’s emotional impact came through
nevertheless.
Had Hyper 1.5 earned its way to
our Audiophile Store? Gerard thought
it might have, though he had second
thoughts after the results heard with
another cable that was not that much
more expensive. Albert was against it.
“I really didn’t like it,” he said.
Hyper 1.5 is much better than many,
perhaps most, cables in its price range.
But is that enough?
2: Atlas Ascent 2.0
T
he original Atlas A scent
was a shielded single-crystal
cable, which we reviewed in
UHF No. 74. We considered
it good value, which is to say it wasn’t
expensive (C$48/metre at our store), and
we thought it was a reasonable bargain.
But now it’s gone, to be replaced by
not one but two cables. The less expensive of the two, the Ascent 2.0 (once
again the number refers to the crosssectional area in mm2) has a suggested
list price of US$115/meter. The copper is
no longer single crystal, despite the fact
that the price has more than doubled.
Like the other Atlas samples, this
one came factory-finished, as shown in
the picture, with rather fancy fittings.
They’re expensive too. The “cable stoppers,” those bullet-shaped devices placed
at each end where the two conductors
break out, have a list price of US$65
a pair. And since they are metal we
wondered whether they are a great idea
from the design standpoint. The bananas
seem to be the same ones as on the Hyper
cables.
The price of this cable would come
as a bit of a shock, but of course we did
not then know it.
Once again our choral recording
didn’t seem quite as loud as we wanted,
3: Atlas Hyper 2
Like the other Hyper cables the
Hyper 2 is not expensive with a suggested
list price of US$27/metre. Though it is
thicker than the Hyper 1.5, it is also limp
and easy to place. Our sample was fitted
with the usual Atlas bananas. The factory-assembled Hypers, for some reason,
have no markings to help you tell left
from right.
Once more the choral recording
didn’t sound quite as loud as it has with
our reference cable, but we were getting
to expect that, and up went the volume
by 3 dB.
It was evident to all three of us
that we were listening to a cable vastly
superior to the two previous ones. The
great depth of Now the Green Blade Riseth
was back. The voices had body, but this
time the amplitude was natural. The
counterpoint between the solo f lute
and the singers was nothing less than
magnificent. The music flowed effortlessly, and for the first time since we had
left our reference cable, we could relax.
Whatever this cable was, it was doing
the job right.
With Say It With Music, the performance was not far from what we
had heard with our reference. Gibson’s
voice was warm and vivacious, without
undue stress on the sibilance. All three
of us noticed the cello, whose natural
texture was delightfully moving. Lincoln
Mayorga’s piano was excellent as well.
Feedback
Listening
T
he three Hyper cables look
nearly alike, and as already
noted they have nearly identical construction. We might
have expected them to sound nearly alike
too, but as we shall see that is not the
case. We don’t know why they sound
so different from each other, but blind
tests don’t lie.
and we agreed to augment the volume
by 3 dB, which seemed to make the
difference. The voices were reasonably
smooth, with only a hint of granularity.
There was no sign of the hardness we
had feared, even in the finale. There was
plenty of detail, but we were less than
satisfied.
What was missing? The depth was
much reduced for one thing. The snap
of the plucked bass didn’t have its usual
impact, and perhaps for that reason the
rhythm was rather less effective, as was
the whole piece. “It’s like the previous
cable, not involving,” complained Albert.
“Listen to that finale…it’s dazzling, like
fireworks, but there’s no substance.”
The Gibson song wasn’t satisfying
either. Though her voice was clear and
even expressive, each of her syllables
was somewhat emphasized, with an
articulation that was more tiring than
revealing. Reine thought the Ascent
was less satisfying than the much less
expensive Hyper 1.5.
Would we have come to the same
judgement if we hadn’t known what this
cable costs? We were glad we hadn’t.
Need we even bother you with a
conclusion?
Above all, Gibson and her accompanists
seemed alive and present. It’s odd what a
fragile illusion that is.
When we discovered the price of the
Hyper 2, we knew we wanted to add it to
The Audiophile Store.
We also decided to pick up its near
twin, Hyper Biwire (US$46/meter). As
with Ichor cable, the main wires are
used for low frequencies, and a smaller
solid core wire is used for the highs. We
were not able to include it in our blind
test because it had been assembled on
the assumption that the speaker binding
posts are close together. That is not the
case of either of our reference speakers.
Well, we had one winner, and only
one. Would there be more?
4: Actinote LBD 530
and both the male and female voices were
reproduced with a natural timbre that
was at times startling. That is of course
due to the quality of our Alpha system,
including the acoustics of the room, but
the cables let everything flow through.
Our notes were peppered with rather
flowery adjectives, such as “superb” and
“magnificent.” We actually went back to
listen a third time, and noted the delightful counterpoint between the solo flute
and the singers. “You don’t have to make
an effort to maintain the illusion,” said
Albert. “The music just flows.”
We moved on to the Margie Gibson
recording, and we weren’t surprised by
the particularly attractive way it was
reproduced. “I was really taken by the
piano arpeggios,” said Reine, “though
the piano sounded great through the
whole piece.” The difficult “S” sounds
were about as perfect as we have heard.
Of course in a song like this it’s the
voice that really counts, and Gibson’s
voice was warm and expressive. “I liked
the cello too,” said Albert. “It sounds
more convincing when it plays along
with her, matching the tone of her voice.
Fine as each of the sonic elements were,
what pleased us most was the way everything came together. Gibson seemed
alive and full-sized.
But was this updated cable actually
superior to our older Actinote cable?
We returned to our reference to
compare. The similarities seemed more
evident than the differences, as often
happens. Both cables let though a clear,
deep, lifelike sound that pleased us
immensely. There was a small difference,
but we weren’t able to agree which of the
two cables was superior.
This Actinote cable is expensive,
more expensive than can be justified in
most systems. If you read this review to
the end, however, you’ll discover that it
is not the most expensive cable in this
review of six cables. It is merely the
best.
Room
Feedback
Listening
T
r y as we m ight, we just
couldn’t disguise this cable.
The photo doesn’t quite
do justice to its size, and it
looks so much like our reference cable,
the Actinote LB, that it wasn’t difficult
to guess that it had to come from the
same family.
It is, in fact, the successor to our
LB, though Reine and Albert were told
that only after the session had ended.
Actinote didn’t provide much information about the construction (“just listen
to it” seems to be all we’re likely to be
told), either this time or last time. This
isn’t the sort of company that publishes
white papers. Our LB had clunky terminal boxes near each end. What was
in them? Other companies using such
boxes, including MIT and Transparent,
fill them with what is billed as network
termination. The boxes are now gone,
and Actinote says their contents have
been integrated in the cable itself.
The other change is in the connectors. Our LB cables came with WBT’s
elegant angled locking bananas. The
new model comes with what is referred
to as a lab standard banana, which has
about the profile of the wire itself. That
choice is in line with the current trend,
which is to avoid a large chunk of metal
at the end of the wire. The connectors
don’t fit as tightly, however, and they felt
a little loose in both our speaker binding
posts and in the WBT binding posts of
our Moon amplifier. Because the wire is
so stiff, one banana will pop out when
you try to insert the second. The solution is to guide them both in together.
The wire is a bit fragile, too, and sharp
bends are best avoided.
The cable we reviewed has a list
price, for the supplied 5 metre length,
of C$1990 or US$1800. A 3 m length,
the LBD 317, would cost C$1590.
We listened to Now the Green Blade
Riseth, and one fact struck us right away:
this Actinote cable really does sound like
our reference, and this time we didn’t
need to turn up the volume in order to
hear everything.
Well, perhaps we should correct that.
We did note that, unless we ticked up
the volume control by 3 dB, the music
really was softer. We had settled for a
lower volume originally because the
great clarity of our reference cable had
allowed us to hear so much detail. After
a first listen with the LBD, we listened
again at the higher volume, and we liked
what we heard even more.
Where to begin? With this cable
everything was in its place. Depth was
excellent, as it should be with this wonderfully-recorded SACD, and the image
was of remarkable precision. The bottom
end was ample but clear at the same time,
5: Atlas Hyper 3
sonably good cable. But then again…
We listened once more. This time we
had our doubts, and the more we listened
the more our doubts grew. Oddly, the
singers and the accompanists no longer
seemed to be together. “Could it be a
hallucination?” asked Reine. “I could
swear the singers are a step ahead.”
The final crescendo, which often
sounds so wrong, was too hard and
confused. “The actual sound seems
acceptable,” said Gerard, “but musically
it doesn’t work.”
We moved on to the Gibson song,
and the story was much the same. The
piano, which never plays very loud, was
very good, and its tone was warm. Every
oes this cable look just like The cable’s labelling had been cov- time Gibson’s voice rose in pitch and
the (very good) Hyper 2? ered up with tape that identified it only volume, however, we gnashed our teeth.
Of course it does, because by number, and so this was truly a blind “It hurts my ears,” said Reine.
it is built the same way, only test for all of us.
The Hyper 3 costs US$36/metre,
with slightly more copper. The con- On the choral recording we were but by the time it was unmasked we
nectors are the same ones. We would initially impressed by the warmth of didn’t much care. This cable should have
expect it to sound pretty much like the the sound, by the plausible timbres of performed much like the Hyper 2,
but it
no
n claim thatit the worst
epronounced
Hyper 2.
the voices, and by the not inconsiderable didn’t.cab
Gerard
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o
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m one cable
s claimcable
But we would be wrong.
depth. This might turn
out
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in
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ferences are instruments no better than mediocre.
blind test h
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“The flute sounds pure,” she said,
a
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to another,
clearly auad lack of
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is thatygood?”
Gerard
il
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o
sh
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a
a
h
sn
are
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s, anbody
as well as a general
one.
sts of cable
te
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r we have d
e
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m
b
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n
v
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coherence
in
the
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o
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In fa
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es. This te
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“It’s
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hange make the music interesting.”
ey w ill cdoesn’t
th
k
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th
e
at w
now…not th
Albert also liked the way the cable
Let them k
reproduced the Gibson song. He found
her voice warm, and also liked the lower
notes of both the piano and the cello.
Only at the end did he find the sound a
little too underlined.
Gerard and Reine disagreed once
again. “You can feel the effort,” said
Reine. “She’s not so velvety anymore,
and neither is the cello.” Gerard shook
his head. “The ‘S’ sounds are all wrong,”
he said, “and the various elements of the
song just don’t come together. Where’s
the presence? Why doesn’t it sound as
though she’s really here?”
his other Ascent cable looks up there with the Actinote. Oh oh!
nearly identical to its less We began with the choral recording, This was the only cable in this sixexpensive sibling, and once and it was soon clear we wouldn’t agree. way blind test on which we disagreed,
again its identity was masked Albert gave the Ascent quite good marks, but in the end our divergence scarcely
by a number label. Its structure is similar praising its alloy of smoothness and mattered. None of us thought that the
to that of the Ascent 2.0, but with — you clarity. He also called the reproduction Ascent came anywhere near the perforguessed it — more copper. More dollars of depth remarkable.
mance of the two Actinotes. We know,
too! The price is US$200/meter, not Reine and Gerard disagreed sharply. because we listened to our own cable
counting connectors. That puts it right Reine found the timbres of voices and again…and we all laughed!
D
Yes!
?
t
s
e
t
d
A blin
6: Atlas Ascent 3.5
Feedback
Listening
T
Rendezvous
Derrick Moss
UHF: Is it difficult to develop a high end
product well outside a large centre?
Moss: Technically it’s a little more
difficult, because you don’t have instant
access to resources, but FedEx can get
to you in just one day extra, so it’s not a
big deal. On the marketing side it’s more
difficult. Marketing means making connections with stakeholders on that side of
the business. They don’t exist in an outof-the-way place like Newfoundland. It
would be a lot easier if the business were
set up along the highway 401 corridor,
so I could be in Toronto tonight, and I
could be in Montreal tomorrow. In Newfoundland, I’m two to three days — and
some expensive freight — away.
So that made the process a lot longer,
because you have to develop your techniques and your marketing simultaneously. But the challenge has been mainly
on the marketing side.
UHF: You’re an audiophile from way
back?
Moss: I bought my first stereo in my
first year of university. That’s where all
the evil started!
UHF: What was that system like?
Moss: It was a very modest system.
The only part of any quality was a pair
of Boston Acoustics A40 speakers. I
had a cheap Pioneer receiver, because
I couldn’t even afford an NAD at the
time. And I borrowed a tape deck from
my parents’ system.
Gradually I began subst it ut ing
pieces, but around that time I began
reading more and more magazines,
including UHF, and that guided me to
upgrading my source. That ran against
popular wisdom, which said you should
spend the most money on your speakers.
I dedicated myself to building a really
good vinyl front end, and several turntables and preamps later I had a system
whose cost was maybe 70% front end.
UHF: By then you were in engineering
school?
Moss: Yes I was, and I made several
equipment upgrades during those years.
I’d visit audio stores, in Ontario in
particular, and in Michigan. It seems a
natural thing for someone out where we
are, to pop into an audio store and get a
look at what you can’t get at home.
UHF: That was still in Newfoundland?
Moss: Yes, I did my engineering degree
at Memorial University in St. John’s,
but that’s a cooperative degree, with
six work terms. I did a couple of those
work terms in Ontario. That was my first
degree. Some years later I went back to
get an MBA.
UHF: So you were ready for both the engineering and the marketing.
Moss: Yes. But right after I finished
engineering I started to tinker with
designing speakers, and within a couple
of years I felt I could design a pretty
good speaker. But then I looked at the
business side…
UHF: There are a lot of speakers out
there.
Moss: Yes. I didn’t know anything about
the business end, and there really were
a lot of speaker builders out there with
the resources to do what they do. Did I
From my research in speakers, I
concluded that a simple dynamic driver,
one per slice of the frequency range, was
the way to go. When you look at our
speaker now, it’s a three-way with a 10"
woofer and rather large 6" midrange, it’s
a concept that you can identify right back
to 50 years ago. By itself it doesn’t look
that innovative, but I say that’s because
it’s good.
I don’t like multiple drivers for
the same bandwidth. I’ve done the
d’Appolito arrays, I’ve tried ribbons, I’ve
tried bandpass enclosures for woofers.
Well, what I settled upon as sounding
best is a single sealed enclosure, with
good quality but simple drivers, just
cones and domes. So I saw the opportunity to apply these low-powered triode
amplifiers. Not using a passive crossover
is an advantage on several levels. With
no crossover in the way, your amplifier
is giving you 100% power transfer and
100% control.
I like to make a mechanical analogy: the passive crossover is a sponge.
Without it, you’re controlling your
speaker with an iron rod — everything
the amplifier does gets transferred to the
speaker. With the crossover, you’re trying
to move your speaker with a sponge in
the way. Single-ended amplifiers are not
that strong at control anyway, so adding
a passive crossover adds a significant
variable. And when you match a highimpedance amplifier to a speaker, you’re
introducing a frequency response error
which is a mirror image of the speaker’s
impedance curve. In our case, we don’t
allow you to switch speakers. We know
exactly what the speaker’s response is
going to be.
Anyway, we’re operating the driver
only within the linear part of its range,
where it’s mostly resistive. Active design
opens more possibilities in driver selection. With a passive speaker you want to
choose drivers that have about the same
sensitivity. The woofer usually has the
lowest sensitivity. If the midrange or the
tweeter has more sensitivity that’s of no
use to you, because you’re going to have
to bring it down to match the woofer.
That means you add more crossover…
UHF: The sponge gets bigger.
Moss: Exactly.
UHF: Did you at any point consider making
the system modular, rather than a closed
system?
Moss: Well, that goes back to the earliest
days of its development. Like all audiophiles, I was a “component thinker.” We
bought systems as components because
that would allow one to improve the
system.
UHF: And you had upgraded your system
over the years in exactly that way.
Moss: Yes, and I still am, but now I’m
doing it at the internal level, inside the
box. That’s something consumer can’t
do. You can make crude improvements as
an end user, but we make improvements
at the circuit level, choosing capacitors
and resistors, and fine-tuning the layout.
Consumers can only dream of that.
It did start out as an individual
component system, but as we began to
define what we are from the marketing
concept, we defined ourselves as system
developers, not component builders. All
the electronics are aboard one chassis.
To do this in a component fashion, you’d
have six amplifiers and crossovers.
UHF: And a lot more cables.
Moss: It would be terribly complex.
I guess most people don’t know what
they’re missing. Every day they’re fiddling with three or four remotes and
various cables, and that’s what they’re
used to. With our own simple implementation, it’s really easy to use. When I go
to someone else’s house to help with their
system, I go, wow, what a nightmare!
U H F: How did your background in
mechanical engineering shape the Integris
system?
Moss: It enabled me not to view it
from the perspective of an electronics
engineer. Many electronics engineers
are textbook-oriented, believing that a
circuit is a circuit. Theirs is an “objectivist” view, and they're not looking outside
the box. As a mechanical engineer, I’m
looking outside the box.
UHF: By the time you launched the system
you had done courses in marketing. Did
you anticipate what might be necessary to
market a complete system, rather than the
components that other companies make?
Moss: It was during my studies for my
MBA that I came up with the concept.
Once I finished the degree I had to
make a decision: am I going to pursue
this or not? I did decide to pursue it,
Rendezvous
have the resources to try and compete,
to think I can design something just
as good as anyone else, and was that a
reason to get into it?
So in the 90’s my speaker design was
a serious hobby but I wasn’t going to
elevate it to a business. At the end of the
decade, when I was working on my MBA,
I was taking marketing courses, and I
was still reading many magazines, reading editorial points of view as to what’s
good and what’s bad. And gradually I
was able to figure out why this company
is doing what it’s doing, and why another
company is failing. So the MBA has been
at least as big a help as the engineering
degree. But it was then I had a light bulb
go off, and I got the idea for what would
become the Active 300B project.
UHF: What turned you on to the idea of
multiple amplifiers?
Moss: Well, building speakers all
those years I was certainly aware of
active loudspeakers, though I hadn’t yet
designed one. But I was reading all those
audio magazines, and tube amplification
was making a resurgence. In particular,
the single-ended triode phenomenon was
ascending, especially using the 300B.
Of course at that time there were
people saying that these tubes were just
distortion generators, and people who
bought them just liked distortion, and
look at the things they do wrong, and
how could anybody love these? The
other camp was saying, the hell with the
specs, it sounds great.
I looked at the single-ended tube,
and thought it definitely had some
strengths, but it also had some weaknesses. I believed the weaknesses could
be uniquely addressed in the context of
an active loudspeaker.
UHF: Why?
Moss: Because the beauty of the singleended triode is its simplicity — just one
device handling the entire signal, with
a minimum number of parts that can
cause contamination. But it is necessarily
a low-powered amplifier, and there’s no
denying that with virtually all speakers
you need significant power.
Of course you can use some exotic
speaker technology, but you’ve just
moved the problem somewhere else,
because high-efficiency speakers — such
as horns — have their own problems.
Feedback
Rendezvous
of course, but it has taken more time
than anticipated, and more money than
anticipated too.
I took a long, hard look at the market
and saw that there were lots of companies
doing conventional components, and
I didn’t want to meet them head on.
From the marketing perspective, what
makes this system different is in fact its
strength. We’re in a niche, and there’s
hardly anybody here.
It’s unique but useful, and that’s
the challenge, demonstrating to audiophiles that our approach is more useful
than conventional components. Many
people understand this but still keep on
going back to the old “component” way
of doing things. But we don’t need to
persuade everybody.
UHF: You’re prepared to survive what is
inevitably a niche market.
Moss: Yes, the whole plan is to target
a niche. With time we’ll see how the
marketplace develops. We’re looking at
a market that hasn’t has any technology
shifts in quite some time. The last big
shift was the introduction of the Compact Disc in the early 80’s, and the one
before that was the stereo LP. We’re not
that developed an industry, but change
will certainly come. We can see changes
in the way music is being distributed. Are
we always going to go to the record store
to buy CDs? I don’t think so.
UHF: So what’s coming?
Moss: It’s going to be more and more a
digital world. At the moment the only
digital thing we audiophiles deal with
is the CD, and we quickly turn that into
analog. As bandwidth increases, we’ll
have high-resolution downloads, and
we’ll see people adopt digital packages
more fully. In the meantime what we’re
offering is a highly refined version of the
old analog world system.
UHF: Are you the designer of the whole
system, or do you have partners?
Moss: I’m the chief designer, and some
areas, such as the speakers, are entirely
my work. For the electronics and digital
aspects I sought out specialists. Though
I’m a mechanical engineer, I’ve learned
a lot of other stuff on my own, and I
think I can do a pretty effective job. You
don’t have to be an electronics engineer
to do it.
I’ve certainly sought out specialist
suppliers. When we decided to add
a front end, we sought out Anagram
Technologies in Switzerland, who have
a fantastic technology for resampling
CD or other digital data sources. It’s a
lot more sophisticated, in software and
hardware, than the typical upsampling
chip.
UHF: Your player is Red Book CD only.
Moss: That’s the result of looking at the
bigger picture and realizing that CD is
the dominant format. We’ve thought
about SACD and DVD-Audio, but really
we audiophiles march to the beat of the
mass market drum. What the audiophile
market does is refine and perfect mass
market technology.
Besides, we wouldn’t want addition
of other formats to compromise our CD
playback. That’s a real factor too.
UHF: Is including the preamplifier in the
CD player a natural outgrowth of the system
concept?
Moss: That’s exactly right. We started
with the amplifiers and speakers as
a package. With the back half done
we needed a front half, and that could
easily be done in a single package. With
a solid state preamp — and I do prefer
solid state for preamps — the circuit
meshes perfectly with what comes out
of the DAC. And we’ve simplified the
user interface.
UHF: Will there be further models?
Moss: Yes. The Active is a statement of
what we can do, but there are other ideas
in the pipeline. I don’t anticipate making
a passive loudspeaker, though.
Cinema
Tomorrow’s Cinema Sound
W
e get ma il f rom
people who wonder
whether it’s actually
worthwhile to buy
top-grade amplifiers and speakers
for home theatre. After all, they note,
we’ve always said that the source is
the key to great sound. Garbage in,
garbage out, and isn’t DVD sound
essentially on the trashy side?
Our answer is that it would be best
to improve the sound source, but if we
can’t do that — and we couldn’t up till
now — we could improve what we hear
with better downstream equipment.
How bad is DVD sound, then?
Most DVDs use a codec (compressor-decompressor) licensed by Dolby,
once known as AC-3, and now known
by the rather more commercial name of
Dolby Digital. Like MP3 and AAC, the
common audio codecs, Dolby Digital
throws away the vast majority of the
original audio information.
What are the effects of this one-way
(lossy) compression? You can check this
out for yourself on certain films. Some
DVDs have alternative sound tracks
encoded with dts (Digital Theater
Sound), which still compresses the
signal, but much less. Examples are
Moulin Rouge and Master and Commander.
On a good system, the dts tracks are
substantially superior. Some DVDs,
especially those of music concerts,
give you an uncompressed option. For
example on the Eagles concert, Hell
Freezes Over, you have the choice of
Dolby Digital, DTS, or uncompressed
PCM (pulse code modulation, the
system used for CDs). Considering the
concert is strictly two-channel stereo,
the choice is a no-brainer.
But that’s the DVD, the disc that has
been with us forever (well, to all intents
and purposes about six years). On the
horizon, and actually here for a few
Let’s look at DVD HD, the
for mat backed by t he DV D
Forum. There are t wo audio
systems promised for it, known as
Dolby TrueHD and dtsHD. But
don’t rush out to buy a new player
hoping to get them, because the
first ones can’t deliver.
early adopters) are the two competing
high-resolution discs, HD DVD and
Blu-Ray.
The HD DVD player is available
now, though in small numbers, and
Blu-Ray is…well, perhaps you’ll be able
to find one by the time you read this.
If you’re into action films, you can find
discs in both formats at Wal-Mart, a sign
of mass-market acceptance…or perhaps
just a quixotic product placement effort
by the movie studios.
The movie studios are the ones who
are pushing for action on high-definition
discs, perhaps because they are seeing
their sales of conventional DVDs dropping like a stone. Why? Is it because
people are renting and copying rather
than buying? Or is it because, well, Hollywood has not been ringing bells very
often lately.
However the people in charge of the
hardware standards don’t seem to be
betting the farm. Above is the FAQ on
HD DVD on the DVD Forum’s Web
site, as of mid-November.
Want to find out details about the
two discs? You’ve probably heard all
about the increased image resolution.
And it’s real enough, at least on demo
units. Commercial gear may be another
matter. Reviewers have been complaining about some new players providing
slightly better images.
Now what about sound? Can we,
finally, leave behind the extreme compression of Dolby Digital and even dts?
Yes we can…potentially.
Sound from HD DVD
Potentially, the format holds out the
promise of much, much better sound
than we can get from the “old” DVD,
but we must stress the word potentially.
The DVD Forum has done with HD
DVD what it did with the ill-fated
DVD-Audio, namely pack every format
it could think of into the standard. Some
are mandatory, which means that every
disc and every player must respect them.
Others are optional, and that’s wide open
to interpretation.
First on the list of mandatory codecs
are the ones that are already on conventional DVDs (no surprise, since the
players must be backward compatible
with conventional DVDs). HD DVD
must therefore be compatible with Dolby
Digital (AC-3), dts, and MPEG Audio
(that’s the two-channel sound you get if
you simply connect a bare-bones DVD
player to an amplifier).
But there are lossless codecs that are
also mandatory. There’s linear PCM, the
same format as on some music DVDs.
And there’s MLP (TrueHD). If you
remember DVD-Audio, you’ll recall
that “MLP” stands for “Meridian Lossless Packing, the reversible compression system used on DVD-A. So far so
good.
But there’s a catch. Those codecs are
mandated for two-channel audio only. If
you want surround sound, the industry
can get away with giving it to you only
in the same lossy format you get on
conventional DVDs.
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 55 Cinema
Feedback
There are, however, optional formats
manufacturers may support but don’t
have to. They include Dolby TrueHD
and dtsHD, and there the details look
interesting. For two-channel recordings,
the standards allow recording at 24/192
(24-bits with 192 kHz sampling rate).
For multichannel (up to eight channels)
you can still get 24/96 resolution. That
may be overkill, since for the moment at
least movie sound is recorded at the old
“pro” sampling rate of 48 kHz.
(As an aside, another mandatory
codec is Dolby Digital Plus, which supports rates up to 6.144 Mbit/s, much
more than AC-3’s 640 kbit/s, with as
many as 13.1 channels (be sure to stay
friends with your loudspeaker dealer).
DD+ is not lossless, however.
Will lossless multichannel sound
make it onto real-world discs? For
the moment the HD DVD holds just
15 Megabytes, and a lot of that is spoken
for by the higher resolution image. Multi
layer discs will of course hold more,
but studios are prone to “shovelware,”
adding every useless extra they think
will add the illusion of added value.
As the big companies like to say, “the
market decides.” That sounds good until
you realize that “the market” isn’t you, it’s
usually them.
Sound on Blu-Ray
Yes, we have the goods on Blu-Ray
sound too, and on HDMi. There the
news is anything but good.
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THE AUDIOPHILE STORE
INTERCONNECTS
ATLAS NAVIGATOR
Oxygen-free continuous
cast (OCC) cable: each
strand is a single copper
crystal. Two separate
internal conductors,
plus double shielding
(“semi-balanced,” though we prefer “pseudo-balanced”). The
double shielding is copper mylar plus close-lapped 99.997% pure
OCC copper multi-stranded screen providing 100% RFI protection.
The premium “All-Cu” version (shown here) uses solid copper
connectors that are also continuous cast. The copper is then silverplated and double-shielded.We use two in our reference systems.
Special-order lengths from the factory.
ORDER: AN-1 pair, 1m, $265, AN-2 pair, 2m, $330
ORDER: ANA-1 All-Cu, 1m, $390, ANA-2 All-Cu, 2m, $450
ORDER: ANAB-1 All-Cu balanced, single crystal XLR, $699
TWO CABLES INTO ONE JACK
Need to feed two preamps into two
amps? This solid Y-adapter (two
jacks into one phono plug) is gold
over brass, with Teflon dielectric.
ORDER: FYA, one pair Y adapters, $20
SPEAKER CABLES
ATLAS HYPER SPEAKER CABLES
A big winner in one of UHF’s blind tests of speaker cables is
Hyper 2, an oxygen free stranded wire in Teflon dielectric.
Inexpensive too. (Sorry, no picture yet). Plus connectors (we
recommend Eichmann Bayonet Bananas, $57.95/set.
ORDER: AH2, Hyper 2 cable, $29.95/metre
Want to biwire? Hyper Biwire is a great way to go
ORDER: AHB, Hyper Biwire cable, $49.95/metre
ATLAS ICHOR SPEAKER CABLE
ATLAS VOYAGER
A cable with superior performance at an
economical price. Oxygen-free copper,
continuously cast, double-shielded with conductive
PVC plus close lapped 99.9997% pure OCC copper
multi-stranded screen, for 100% coverage against
RFI. Direct gold-plated, non compressing, doublescreened, self cleaning RCA plugs. Also available
with the All-Cu connectors like those of the
Navigator (above).
ORDER: AV-1, Voyager 1m pair, $235, AV-2, 2m pair, $285
ORDER: AVA-1, All-Cu 1m pair, $375, AVA-2 2m pair, $420
ATLAS QUESTOR
This could be the world’s lowest-cost
interconnect with single-crystal copper. It has
the same connectors as the Equator (below),
and we thought it sounded like a much more
expensive cable.
ORDER: AQ-1, 1 m pair Atlas Questor, $125
ORDER: AQ-2, 2 m pair Atlas Questor, $155
ATLAS EQUATOR
We figured it was perhaps the
best $150 interconnect cable
you could buy. Only it costs
just $90. And yes, that’s in
Canadian funds. Other lengths
on order.
ORDER: AE-1, 1 m pair Atlas Equator, $85
ORDER: AE-2, 2 m pair Atlas Equator, $115
ACTINOTE MB INTERCONNECTS
PRISMAL DUAL INTERCONNECT
This Swiss-made cable is back, at a big discount The connectors
are especially good, with Teflon dielectric. 174 strands of oxygenfree copper, braided shield. Toss out your “free” interconnects!
ORDER: PD-1, 1 meter pair Prisma Dual Interconnect, $39.95
ORDER: PD-05, 0.5 meter pair Dual Interconnect, $29.95
CONNECTORS
J. A. MICHELL BANANAS
No tools needed. Put the wire
into the hole, tighten the
back button, and the wire is
clamped. Gold-plated. Only a few left!
ORDER: GBO kit 4 gold bananas, $30
EICHMANN BAYONET BANANAS
The Eichmann Bayonet
Banana uses a minimum of
metal, and tellurium copper
at that, but clicks tightly
into any binding post with
spring action. For soldering or
crimping, or both.
ORDER: EBB kit 4 bayonet
bananas, $57.95
FURUTECH CONNECTORS
Continuous-cast single-crystal cable, ready for biwiring. It costs
just $235 per meter of double cable (a 2 m pair has 4 meters of
wire). We suggest adding the Eichmann Bayonet bananas, $57.95
per set of 4, or WBT connectors (at right).
ACTINOTE LBD SPEAKER CABLE
We bought Actinote for our Alpha system! With gold bananas.
ORDER: LBD-317, Actinote 3m pair, $1590
ORDER: LBD-530, Actinote 5m pair, $1990
SINGLE CRYSTAL JUMPERS
Not biwiring? Dump the free
jumpers that came with your
speakers. Atlas jumpers are
made from single-crystal
copper, gold-plated spades.
ORDER: ACJ, four single
crystal jumpers, $99.95
DIGITAL CABLES
ATLAS COMPASS DIGITAL
Excellent performance at an affordable price. Single crystal pure
copper. The 1.5m version sounds way better than a 1m.
ORDER: ACD-1.5 digital cable, 1m, $120
ATLAS OPUS DIGITAL
These cables use WBT NextGen locking connectors, and they are a
virtual match for our own reference cables.
ORDER: MB-130, 1.3 meter pair Actinote MB, $740
57
We dumped our reference cable for this one! And to work right it
has to be this length.
ORDER: AOD-1.5 digital cable, 1.5m, $360
CONNECTOR TREATMENT
ProGold cleans
connections
and promotes
conductivity as well.
Small wipes for
cleaning accessible contacts, or a squirt bottle for connections you
can’t reach. We use both regularly.
ORDER: PGW box ProGold wipes, $35
ORDER: PGS, can ProGold fluid (now called DeoxIT), $35
ORDER: PGB, both when ordered at the same time, $56
www.uhfmag.com/AudiophileStore.html
Rhodium-plated banana tightens under pressure.
Installs like WBT-0645 banana. The spade's great too!.
ORDER: FTB-R, set of four bananas, $70
ORDER: FTS-R, set of four spades, $70
EICHMANN BULLET PLUGS
The first phono plug to maintain
the impedance of the cable itself, by
using metal only as an extension
of the wire. Hollow tube centre pin
and tiny spring contact for ground.
Two easily accessible contacts for
soldering, two-screw strain relief. Gold over pure copper. Got silver
cable? Get the unique Silver Bullets!
ORDER: EBP kit 4 Bullet Plugs, $54.95
ORDER: EBPA kit 4 Silver Bullets, $139.95
EICHMANN CABLE PODS
Minimum metal, gold over tellurium
copper. Unique clamp system: the back
button turns but the clamp doesn’t.
Solder to it, or plug an Eichmann
banana into it, even from inside!
ORDER: ECP, set of four posts, $54.95
MICHELL BINDING POSTS
Michell’s Big Mother posts (at left) are machined to stay tight. Gold
or rhodium plated. Want to upgrade the binding posts on your
amplifier? The Michell MAO (at right) is what you need.
ORDER: Big Mother, 4 gold posts for speakers $55
ORDER: Big Mother-R, 4 rhodium posts for speakers $69
ORDER: MAO, 4 binding posts for amplifiers $40
POSTMAN WRENCH
Think you can tighten
your speaker and amp
binding posts with your
fingers? Try the Dynaclear
Postman wrench (for 1/2”
or 7/16” hexagonal posts)
and find that yours weren’t tight after all. Retighten often.
ORDER: Dynaclear Postman, $13
58
WBT CONNECTORS
The unique WBT phono plugs have a collar which you turn so
that the plug tightens around and into the jack! The cable would
tear before the plug would come out.
The Topline series (heaviest construction, 5-layered gold
plating), includes the 0108 (above), which uses reliable crimping
technology, not soldering. Slip a gold-plated sleeve over the
bared wire, and crimp it on with the special WBT crimping tool.
The crimped end is held in the plug with a Torx screw. Buy the
tool at the same time as the connectors, and we’ll buy it back at
the price you paid when you’re through.
ORDER: WBT-0403 crimping tool (refundable), $125.
The sleeves are shown here, actual size.
WBT-0431 0.75 mm sleeve $0.50
WBT-0432 1 mm sleeve
$0.50
WBT-0433 1.5 mm sleeve $0.50
WBT-0434 2.5 mm sleeve $0.50
$0.60
$0.70
WBT-0437 10 mm sleeve $0.85
WBT-0438 15 mm sleeve $0.95
ORDER: WBT-0108, kit 4 Topline crimp plugs, $190
ORDER: WBT-0101, kit 4 Topline solder plugs, $190
ANALOG PRODUCTS
REGA FONO
We can’t
get over
how good it
is…and how
affordable.
The Rega
Fono is a
superb way
to add vinyl to your system. MM version and high sensitivity MC
version for cartridges with low output. While stocks last.
ORDER: RF-MM Phono preamp, NOW SOLD OUT
ORDER: RF-MC high sensitivity phono preamp, $565
GOLDRING
PHONO
Basic MM phono,
amazingly good, and
especially not shrill.
Besides, it’s very affordable.
ORDER: PA-100, $225
LP RECORD CLEANER
NEW! The high-tech minimum metal “nextgen” phono plugs.
Easy to solder, with locking collar. Silver version available.
Concentrated cleaner for LP vacuum cleaning machines.
Much safer than some formulas we’ve seen! Half litre, mix with
demineralized or distilled water to make 4 litres.
ORDER: LPC, $19.95
the Goldring
Super eXstatic. It
includes a hard
velvet pad to get
into the grooves,
plus two sets of
carbon fibre tufts. We’ve worn one out already, because we use it
every time!
ORDER: GSX record brush, $36
J. A. MICHELL RECORD CLAMP
ORDER: WBT-0110, kit 4 nextgen copper plugs, $170
ORDER: WBT-0110Au, kit 4 nextgen silver plugs, $280
WBT makes banana plugs for speaker cables, all of which lock
tightly into any post. All use crimping technology.
ELECTRONIC STYLUS GAUGE
When we got our
sample of this
new gauge, we
discovered that
our (discontinued)
plastic pressure
gauge had been
lying to us. Glad
we checked!
ORDER: ALM, electronic stylus gauge, $185
ZEROSTAT ANTISTATIC PISTOL
A classic
adjunct to
the brush is
the Zerostat
anti-static
gun. Squeeze
the trigger
and release: it
ionizes the air,
which becomes
conductive and drains off the static charge. By the way, it works
for a lot more than LP’s. No batteries needed.
ORDER: Z-1 Zerostat antistatic pistol, $94..95
LP SLEEVES
EXSTATIC RECORD BRUSH
The 0144 Midline version has “only” three layers of gold plating,
smaller and lighter, with the same locking action.
ORDER: WBT-0144, kit 4 Topline solder plugs, $90
MORE ANALOG…
Clamp your LP to the
turntable platter.
We use the J. A.
Michell clamp,
machined from
nearly weightless
aluminum. Drop
it on, press down,
tighten the knob.
ORDER: MRC Michell
record clamp, $75
Keep your records clean and
scratch free. Replace dirty,
torn or missing inner sleeves
with soft-plastic-in-paper Nitty
Gritty sleeves.
ORDER: PDI, package of 30
sleeves, $30
TURNTABLE BELT TREATMENT
What this is not
is a sticky goo for
belts on their last
legs. Rubber Renue
removes oxidation
from rubber belts,
giving them a new
lease on life. But what astonished us is what it does to even a brand
new belt. Wipe down your belt every 3 months, and make analog
sound better than ever.
ORDER: RRU-100 drive belt treatment, $14.95
VINYL ESSENTIALS TEST LP
This precision-made German test record lets you check out channel
identification, correct phase, crosstalk, the tracking ability of your
cartridge (it’s a tougher test than the old Shure disc was, and the
resonance of your tone arm and cartridge. When we need to test a
turntable, this is the one we reach for.
ORDER: LP 003, Image Hifi Test LP, $48.95
TITAN STYLUS LUBRICANT
ORDER: WBT-0644 Kit 4 Topline straight bananas, $90
ORDER: WBT-0645 Kit 4 angled bananas, $110
ORDER: WBT-0600 Kit 4 Topline bananas, $180
ALSO AVAILABLE: a full line of quality binding posts, phono
jacks, etc. Plus a spade lug that connectors under pressure.
Amazing, but true: dabbing
a bit of this stuff on your
stylus every 2 or 3 LPs makes
it glide through the groove
instead of scraping. Fine artist’s brush not included, but readily
available in many stores.
ORDER: TSO-1 Titan stylus oil, $39.95
IF WE DON’T LIKE IT
YOU WON’T SEE IT HERE
CLEANER POWER
MAXCON POWER FILTER
GUTWIRE G CLEF POWER CABLE
2
Looks great,
and does a
wonderful
job. Made
from milled
aircraft-grade
aluminum,
with Furutech and Hubbell connectors. Parallel filtering, so it can
be used even with very large power amplifiers. List $1299, but…
ORDER: GMC, MaxCon2 power line filter, $995
Needs IEC power cord: order one at the same time at 20% off!
Multiple shielding, including an external electrostatic shield
connected to a clip… you may get get best performance with or
without. The G Clef is used by UHF. Now in an upgraded version,
with performance “squared.” Length 1.7 m, longer cords on order.
G Clef 2 has 195 conductors, with 3 shields providing 98% shielding.
Can be ordered with a 20A IEC plug (for amplifiers requiring this
special plug)
ORDER: GGC G Clef, Square 1.7m, $385
59
HOSPITAL GRADE CONNECTION
When we put a quality
AC plug on our kettle,
boiling time dropped by
90 seconds! The best AC
plug we have ever seen is
the Hubbell 8215 hospital
grade plug. It connects to wires under high pressure, and it
should last forever.
ORDER: AC-P2 Hubbell cord plug, $25.95
GUTWIRE/UHF B12
Amazingly good at a much lower price are these two cord plugs
from Eagle. No hospital rating, but a rather good mechanical
connection. Male and female versions.
Gutwire’s B12 is a fat pipe, well-shielded, to which we’ve added
a Hubbell 8215 hospital grade wall plug and the Furutech IEC
connector. We use one ourselves, and we love it!
Optionally available as an easy-to-assemble kit, with the blue jacket
pre-stripped and shrink-wrapped at one end.
ORDER: GWB12, 1.5 m B12 power cord, $285
ORDER: GWB12K, 1.5 m B12 power cord kit, $240
ORDER: AC-P1 Eagle male cord plug, $5.95
ORDER: AC-PF Eagle female cord plug, $5.95
Making your own power cords for your equipment? You’ll need
the hard-to-get IEC 320 connector to fit the gear. We have two
sizes.
ENACOM LINE FILTER
Economy price, but astonishingly effective, we wouldn’t run our
system with less. It actually shorts out the hash on the power line.
ORDER: EAC Enacom line filter, $105
STINGRAY POWER BAR
Most power bars knock
voltage to your equipment
way down, and generate more
noise than a kindergarten
class. The Gutwire Stingray
Squared doesn’t. 12 gauge
double-shielded cable,
Hubbell hospital grade connectors at both ends. Indispensable!
ORDER: GSR-2 Stingray Squared power bar, $285
EICHMANN POWER STRIP
We dumped our
cheap power
strip, added a
GutWire 16 power
cord, and made
our system sound better, even though no major component was
plugged into it. ORDER: EPS power strip, $61.95
Take $10 off any one of our IEC power cords or cord kits with
an EPS purchase
MORE POWER TO YOU
Better access to
electrical power.
Change your 77-cent
duplex outlets for
these Hubbell hospital
grade outlets. Insert a
plug and it just snaps
in. A tighter internal
connection as well.
Possibly the cheapest improvement you can make to your system.
ORDER: AC-DA Hubbell duplex outlet, $23.95
ORDER: AC-DB (more than one outlet), $21.95
ORDER: AC-D20 20A duplex, red color, $28.95
INSTANT CIRCUIT CHECKER
Plug it into an AC outlet, and the three lights can
indicate a missing ground, wrong polarity, switched
wires — five problems in all, some of which can be
fatal. None of them is good for feeding your music
or home theatre system. The first thing we did after
getting ours was phone the electrician.
ORDER: ACA-1, Instant Circuit Checker, $21
GUTWIRE 16
No budget for the cable you’d like? Make your own!
Double-shielded, to
avoid picking up or
transmitting noise.
GutWire 16, assembled
or as a kit. (If you are
not comfortable around
electricity, we suggest
the assembled one.) Both
versions include the
Hubbell 8215 hospital
grade plug and the
Schurter 15 A IEC 320 connector.
ORDER: GW16-1.5K, GutWire 16 gauge power cable kit, $79.95
ORDER: GW16-1.5 GutWire 16 cable, assembled, $119.95
IEC ON YOUR DVD PLAYER
Why do big name DVD
players come with those
tiny plugs for their cords. A
good shielded power cable
will do wonders! Take $18
off if you order it at the
same time as a G Clef or
Basic Clef cable, or $8 off if you order one with any of our other
AC cables.
ORDER: DVD-A, GutWire adapter, $39
SUPER ANTENNA
Unlike a whip, a dipole is bidirectional, so you can orient it. Ours
has no switch to muck
things up, and with a
1.8m low-loss 75 ohm
cable and gold-plated
push-on F connector, it
has low internal loss. Its
broadband design covers
the channels 2-69 TV
bands as well as FM.
ORDER: FM-S Super
Antenna, MkII, $55
ORDER: AC-P3 10 ampere IEC 320 plug, $9.95
ORDER: AC-P4 15 ampere Schurter IEC 320 plug, $18.95
SILVER SOLDER
This is a lovely solder, from the
company that makes Enacom
line filters (which we also like).
Wakø-Tech solder contains 4%
silver, no lead.
ORDER: SR-4N, 100 g solder
roll, $59.95
BETTER DIGITAL
IMPROVED CD WITH FINYL
This is the most famous of all the treatments for
Compact Discs. The maker of Finyl claims it reduces
surface reflections and provides a higher contrast
image for the laser cell of your player. Use it just
once. We get a lot of repeat orders on it. One kit can
treat over 200 discs. Or order the refill.
ORDER: F-1 Finyl kit, $40.00
ORDER: F-1R Finyl refill, $35.00
CLEAN YOUR PLAYER
After as little as three
months, your new
player will have more
trouble reading your
CD’s. Why? Dust on
the lens. We’re happy
to have found the
new Milty CD lens
cleaner. Unlike some
commonly-available
discs, the Milty is nonabrasive, so we use it and rest easy. Wet or dry.
ORDER: 2021 Milty CD lens cleaner, $35
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SUPPORT SYSTEMS
THE SUPERSPIKE
TENDERFEET
Machined cones are wonderful
things to put under speakers or
other audio equipment. They
anchor it mechanically and
decouple it acoustically at the
same time. Tenderfeet come in
various versions: tall (as shown)
or flattened, in either anodized
silver or black. Tall Tenderfeet
have threaded holes for a machine screw, or for the optional
hanger bolt, which lets you screw it into wood. If you have a
fragile hardwood floor, add the optional Tendercup (shown
above) to protect it.
ORDER: TFG, tall silver Tenderfoot, $15
ORDER: TFGN, tall black Tenderfoot, $16.50
ORDER: TFP, flat silver Tenderfoot, $10
ORDER: TCP, silver Tendercup, $10
ORDER: THB, hanger bolt for Tenderfeet, each $0.80
This is unique: a sealed unit containing a spike and a cup to
receive it. It won’t scratch even hardwood floors. For speakers
or equipment stands, on bare floors only. Four sizes of threaded
shanks are available.
ORDER: SSKQ, 4 Superspikes, 1/4” shank, $75
ORDER: SSKT, 4 Superspikes, 5/16” shank, $75
ORDER: SSKS, 4 Superspikes, 6 mm shank, $75
ORDER: SSKH, 4 Superspikes, 8 mm shank, $75
WHAT SIZE SUPERSPIKE?
Do you prefer spikes for your speakers. Target spikes and sockets
mount in wood. Available with or without tools.
ORDER: S4W kit, 8 spikes, sockets and tools, $39
ORDER: S4WS kit, 8 spikes and sockets, $30
AUDIO-TAK
It’s blue, and it’s a sort of modelling
clay that never dries. Anchor
speakers to stands, cones to speakers,
and damp out vibration. Leaflet with
suggested uses.
ORDER: AT-2, Audio-Tak pack, $10
A good ruler will let you figure it out. The stated size is the outer
diameter of the threaded shank. Then count the threads:
1/4” shank: 20 threads/inch
5/16” shank: 18 threads/inch
M6 (6mm) shank: 10 threads/cm
M8 (8mm) shank: 8 threads/cm
We have also have a Superspike foot
(at right) that replaces those useless
feet on CD players, amps, etc., using
the same screws to fasten them. And
there’s a stick-on version (not shown)
for other components.
ORDER: SSKF, 4 Superspike replacement feet, $80
ORDER: SSKA, 3 stick-on Superspike feet, $50
AN ON-THE-WALL IDEA
Need to fasten a speaker
securely to the wall? Nothing
beats the Smarter Speaker
Support for ease of installation
or for sheer strength. And
it holds the speaker off the
wall, so it can be used even
with rear-ported speakers.
Easily adjustable with two
hands, not three, tested to an
incredible 23 kg! Glass-filled
polycarbonate is unbreakable.
Screws and anchors included,
available in two colors.
ORDER: SSPS, pair of black speaker supports, $29.95
ORDER: SSPS-W, pair of white speaker supports, $29.95
FOUNDATION STANDS
Absolutely the
best speaker
stand known to
us. They’re filled
with a proprietary
material that
deadens the stand
completely. Matte
black, with spikes
adjustable from the
top. Height 61 cm
(24”).
ORDER: FFA, one
pair Foundation
stands, $1125
SEE EVEN MORE PRODUCTS
IN OUR ON-LINE CATALOG
www,uhfmag.com/AudiophileStore.html
AUDIOPHILE RECORDINGS, RECOMMENDED BY UHF STAFF
REFERENCE RECORDINGS
30th Anniversary Sampler (HDCD)
A collection of excerpts from recent Reference albums.
Beachcomber (LP/HDCD) �
Fennell and the Dallas Wind Ensemble.Includes Tico Tico, A Chorus
line, and a version of 76 Trombones you’ll remember for a long time.
Dick Hyman - Fats Waller (LP)
Analog version of this famous recording, cut to CD during the performance. Keith Johnson simultaneously recorded the performance on
his own hand-built analog recorder.
Blazing Redheads (LP)
Not all redheads, this all-female salsa-flavored big band adds a lot of
red pepper to its music.
Holst (LP) �
From the composer of The Planets, 3 suites for wind band, plus the
Hammersmith Prelude and Scherzo. Fine power playing by the Dallas
Wind Symphony.
Felix Hell (HDCD)
The young organ prodigy turns in mature versions of organ music of
Liszt, Vierne, Rheinberger and Guilmant. Huge bottom end!
Trittico (HDCD) �
Large helping of wind band leader Frederick Fennell doing powerhouse music by Grieg, Albeniz, Nelhybel, etc. Complex and energetic.
American Requiem (HDCD)
Richard Danielpour's awesome Requiem mass is all about war, and
about the hope for peace too, with a dedication tied to 9/11.
Fennell Favorites (LP)
The Dallas Wind Symphony: Bach, Brahms, Prokofiev and more.
Fireworks on this rare Reference LP.
World Keys (HDCD)
Astonishing young pianist Joel Fan amazes with music from all the
world, including that of Prokofiev and Liszt
The Oxnard Sessions, vol. 1 (LP) �
Pianist Michael Garson, of Serendipity fame, takes on familiar standards, backed by five fine musicians. Inventive and beautiful.
Ikon or Eros (HDCD)
Huge suite for orchestra and chorus, by John Tavener. Inspired by
Greek Orthodox tradition. Overwhelming HDCD sound.
Serendipity (LP) �
The original Micharl Garson recording, in which he gets upstaged by
saxophonist Gary Herbig! Exceptional!
PLUS THESE HDCD RECORDINGS:
Pomp&Pipes (HDCD) �
Requiem (HDCD) �
From the Age of Swing (HDCD) �
Swing is Here (HDCD) �
Copland Symphony No. 3 (HDCD) �
Medinah Sessions, two CDs for one (HDCD)
Ports of Call (HDCD)
Tutti (HDCD)
Bruckner Symphony No. 9 (HDCD) �
Ein Heldenleben (HDCD) �
SHEFFIELD
Say It With Music (CD) �
Margie Gibson sings Irving Berlin in what may be one the greatest
jazz vocal recordings of all time. And Sheffield put her there in your
living room!
Growing Up in Hollywood Town (XRCD) �
FIM's XRCD version of the original Amanda McBroom direct-cut
release. Great to see it back!
Drum/Track Record (XRCD2) �
OPUS 3
Unique Classical Guitar Collection (SACD)
An SACD, mastered from analog, of some of Opus 3’s long-discontinued classical guitar LPs. Terrific!
Showcase 2005 (SACD)
The latest Opus 3 sampler, with Eric Bibb, Mattias Wager, the Erik
Westberg Vocal Ensemble and lots more, in glorious SACD.
Peder af Ugglas (SACD/LP)
Ugglas plays a number of different guitars, and borrows from jazz,
Blues, and (yes!) country. Piano, organ, trombone, bowed saw, etc.
Organ Treasures (SACD) �
All those showpieces for big organ you remember hearing through
huge systems…only with all of the power and the clarity of Super
Audio. 4.1 channels, plus 2-channel CD.
Just Like Love (SACD/LP) �
The newest from Eric Bibb, less oriented to Gospel and more to Blues.
Bibb’s group, Needed Time, is not here, but he’s surrounded by half a
dozen fine musicians. A nice recording. Hybrid SACD.
Comes Love (HDCD) �
Another disc by the terrific Swedish Jazz Kings, led by saxophonist
Tomas Ornberg, proving again Sweden understands jazz. The sound
is luminous, sometimes dazzling.
It’s Right Here For You (HDCD) �
Is there, anywhere, a better swing band than The Swedish Jazz Kings
(formerly Tömas Ormberg’s Blue Five)? Closer to Kansas City than to
Stockholm, they are captivating.
Test CD 4 (SACD)
A sampler of Opus 3 performers, clearer than you’ve ever heard them
before. Hybrid disc.
Test CD 5 (HDCD) �
Another of Opus 3’s wonderful samplers, including blues, jazz, and
classical music. A number of fine artists, captured with the usual pure
Blumlein stereo setup. A treat.
Showcase (SACD/LP) �
Available as a hybrid SACD/CD disc, or a gorgeously-cut LP, with
selections from Opus 3 releases.
Good Stuff (DOUBLE 45 LP/HDCD/SACD) �
As soothing as a summer breeze, this disc features singer Eric Bibb
(son of Leon), singing and playing guitar along with his group. Subtle
weaving of instrumentation, vivid sound.
Spirit and the Blues (DOUBLE 45 LP/CD/SACD) �
Like his father, the legendary Leon Bibb, Eric Bibb understands the
blues. He and the other musicians, all playing strictly acoustic instruments, have done a fine recording, and Opus 3 has made it sound
exceptional.
Tiny Island (HDCD/SACD)
If you like Eric Bibb and his group Good Stuff as much as we do, pick
this one up.
20th Anniversary Celebration Disc (HDCD) �
A great sampler from Opus 3. Includes some exceptional fine pieces,
jazz, folk and classical. The sound pickup is as good as it gets, and the
HDCD transfer is luminous.
Levande (LP/CD) �
The full recording from which “Tiden Bara Går” on Test Record No.1
is taken. Believe it or not, this great song isn’t even the best on the
album! A fine singer, doing folklike material…and who cares about
understanding the words?
Concertos for Double Bass (CD/SACD) �
This album of modern and 19th Century music is a favorite for its
deep, sensuous sound. And the music is worth discovering. It is sensuous and lyrical, a delight in every way.
61
Across the Bridge of Hope (SACD)
An astonishing choral recording by the Erik Westberg Ensemble,
famous for its Musica Sacra choral recording.
Vivace (CD) �
Classical or rock? Claude Lamothe plays two cellos at the same time
in an amazing recording of modern compositions.
Tomas Ornberg’s Blue Five (CD)
Musica Sacra (HDCD/SACD) �
Test Record No.4 (LP) �
Clarinet Concertos (LP/CD)
Pauline Viardot-Garcia (CD) �
Soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian steps into the role of 19th Century
singer and composer Pauline Viardot so convincingly that listening
to her is like going back in time. One of the best classical recordings
of all time!
PROPRIUS
Antiphone Blues (CD) �
This famous disc offers an unusual mix: sax and organ! The disc
includes Ellington, Negro spirituals, and some folk music. Electrifying performance, and the recording quality is unequalled.
Antiphone Blues (SACD/HDCD) �
This is the Super Audio version, with a Red Book layer that is HDCDencoded. The best of both worlds!
Now the Green Blade Riseth (CD/SACD) �
Religious music done a new way: organ, chorus and modern orchestra. Stunning music, arranged and performed by masters, and the
effect is joyous. The sound is clear, and the sheer depth is unequalled
on CD. The new SACD version is the very best SACD we have yet heard!
Jazz at the Pawnshop (LP/CD/SACD-HDCD) �
A double album of live jazz, with nearly perfect sound. It has been
famous among audiophiles for years. Also available as double SACD/
HDCD gold disc on FIM label, or single CD.
Jazz at the Pawnshop 2 (CD/SACD) �
From the original master, another disc of jazz from this Swedish pub,
with its lifelike 3-D sound. Now a classic in its own right.
Good Vibes (CD)
The third volume of Jazz at the Pawnshop. And just as good!
Cantate Domino (CD/SACD) �
This choral record is a classic of audiophile records. The title selection is stunningly beautiful. The second half is Christmas music, and
includes the most stunning version of O Holy Night we’ve ever heard.
Bergsten & Nordahl Play Lars Gullin (CD)
Piano and sax performance of the bebop music of the late Swedish
composer Lars Gullin.
Sketches of Standard (CD)
ANALEKTA
Graupner: Vocal & Instr. Music vol.1 (CD)
Geneviève Soly and Les idées heureuses play music from a lost genius
whose reputation once outshon Bach’s.
Graupner: Partitas, vol.1 (CD)
Geneviève Soly plays some of Christoph Graupner’s incredibly rich
harpsichord music
Graupner: Vocal & Instr. Music vol.2 (CD)
Graupner: Partitas vol.3 (CD)
Graupner: Christmas in Darmstadt (CD)
SPECIAL PRICE ON ALL 8 CDs (see last page)
Violonchello Español (CD) �
I Musici de Montréal comes to Analekta, with a stunning album of
Spanish and Spanish-like pieces for cello and orchestra: Glazunov, de
Falla, Albéniz, Granados, and more.
Beethoven: Hammerklavier Sonatas (CD)
Anton Kuerti tackles the two impressive sonatas.
Brahms Lieder (CD)
Canadian mezzo-contralto reveals what she truly is: one of the truly
great voices.
Beethoven: Symphonies 5 & 6 (CD)
Tafelmusik steps outside its usual repertoire of Baroque on period
instruments. Under Bruno Weil, this orchestra turns in a gorgeous
rendition of two of Beethoven’s most memorable symphonies.
Mozart: Auernhammer Sonatas (CD)
A double CD of sonatas for violin and piano. It’s Mozart, of course, but
it is also gorgeously played.
Bach Sonatas for violin & harpsichord, vol.1 (CD)
Two Analekta superstars come together: violinist James Ehnes and
harpsichordist Luc Beauséjour. Irresistible
Bach Suites, Airs & Dances (CD)
Keyboard music from J.S. and C.P.E. Bach, arranged for concert
accordion by Canadian virtuoso Joseph Petric. Incredibly gorgeous…it just had to be done!
Mendelssohn: Cello & Piano (CD)
The Duo Similia is made up of striking blonde twins, who play flute
and guitar. Familiar airs from Mozart, Fauré, Elgar, Ravel, lots more.
Fine listening.
Romantic Pieces (CD) �
How does James Ehnes manage to get such a sweet sound from his
Stradivarius? Czech pieces from Smetana, Dvorak and Janacek.
The playing is as glorious as the tone, and the sound is sumptuous.
Bonus: Analekta’s 10th sampler is included.
Once Upon a Time… (Video DVD)
Violinist Angèle Dubeau et her La Pietà string group with a spectacular video of music inspired by the Underworld…with the devil
himself in attendence. Includes other videos plus two CD’s worth of
uncompressed music. Superb!
Cantabile (CD)
The Duo Similia is made up of striking blonde twins, who play flute
and guitar. Familiar airs from Mozart, Fauré, Elgar, Ravel, lots more.
Fine listening.
Nota del Sol (CD) �
The Labrie twins are back, with a delightful recording of flute and
guitar music by Piazzola, Pujol and Machado. Joyous works, wonderfully played and recorded
Fantasia (CD)
A third, gorgeous, recording by the twins, on flute and guitar.
Fritz Kreisler (CD)
Possibly the best recording of Kreisler’s delightful violin music: James
Ehnes and his Strad bring a new magic to this fine disc.
62
French Showpieces (CD) �
Awesome violinist James Ehnes, with the Quebec City Symph. takes on
Saint-Saëns, Berlioz, Chausson, Massenet, and more. A recording to
die for, awesome both artistically and sonically!
A Los ancestros (CD)
Cuban-born Carolos Placeres, with influences of Africa and lots of
other places. Six musicians in all, and all acoustic.
Bach: Coffee Cantata (CD)
The celebrated Tafelmusik ensemble does two secular cantatas
(inluding Peasant Cantata). Fine singers, lifelike sound!
Tadeo de Marco sing and play, drawing their influence from Africa as
well as their native Brazil. Clear, close-in sound.
features Susann McDonald playing Fauré, Glinka and Liszt, is a powerhouse! Engineered by Keith Johnson, a great transfer by Bruce Leek.
Djembé Tigui (CD)
This gold disc features the voice and percussion of African artist
Sekou Camara, captured by the famous Soundfield microphone.
Camara died just before the disc was released.
Sonatas for Flute and Harp
These same great artists with sonatas by Krumpholz and Damase, as
well as Spohr and Glinka. Oh yes, and a spectacular solo harp version
of Ibert’s hilarious Entr’acte .
Styles (CD)
Is this ever a surprising disc! Violinist Marc Bélanger worked up these
string études for his music students, but they actually deserve to be
put out on a gold audiophile disc! The more strings he adds, the better
it gets.
Norman Dello Joio (CD) �
This contemporary composer delights in the tactile sound of the wind
band, and the Keystone Wind Ensemble does his music justice. So
does the sound, of astonishing quality!
Mozart: Soprano Arias (CD)
Soprano Lyne Fortin, with the Orchestre Métropolitain, totally at ease
with all three soprano roles from The Marriage of Figaro (including a
duet with herself!).
Fable (CD)
Easygoing modern jazz by Rémi Bolduc and his quartet, on this gold
disc. Some exceptional guitar and bass solos.
Handel (CD) �
Superb soprano Karina Gauvin is joined by the Toronto chamber
ensemble Tafelmusik in a series of glowing excerpts from Handel’s
“Alcina” and “Agrippina.” The sound is smooth and lifelike, with an
acute sense of place.
Musique Guy St-Onge (CD)
One-man band St-Onge plays dozens of instruments — scores for
fourteen films which never existed outside of his imagination. Fun
pretext, clever, attractive music that makes you wish you could see
the films!
Little Notebook of Anna Magdalana Bach (CD) �
Over 30 delightful pieces, most by Bach himself. Soprano Karina
Gauvin’s voice is mated to Luc Beauséjour’s harpsichord work. The
sound is deep, detailed and warm, truly of audiophile quality.
HI-RES MUSIC (FOR DVD PLAYERS)
Vivaldi: Motets for Soprano (CD) �
In this disc by wonderful soprano Karina Gauvin, she tackles the
gorgeous but very difficult vocal music of Vivaldi: two motets and a
psalm. It is a moving interpretation, on this jewel of a recording.
Vivaldi: Per Archi (CD)
Telemann Sonatas for 2 Violins (CD)
Mendelssohn: 2 Violin Concertos (CD
Opera for Two (CD)
Villa-Lobos (CD)
AUDIOQUEST
Mississipi Magic (CD/SACD)
The legendary Blues, Gospel, rock and world beat singer and musician Terry Evans, in an energetic recording we loved.
Come to Find (CD) �
The first disc by bluesman Doug McLeod is every bit as impressive
as the second, and no blues fan should resist it. Over-the-top guitar
work, great rhythm, all-acoustic backup. Great sound, too.
You Can’t Take My Blues (CD) �
Singer/songwriter Doug MacLeod and his colleagues present one of
the most satisfying blues records ever made, with touching words and
devilish rhythms. Mostly acoustic instruments.
Unmarked Road (SACD)
The third disc from the great blues singer and guitarist Doug McLeod
is every bit as good as the first two.
Whose Truth, Whose Lies (SACD) �
The third disc from the great blues singer and guitarist Doug McLeod
is t as good as the first. These songs have powerful rhythm, and can
make you smile and cry at the same time.
Bluesquest sampler (CD)
SILENCE
Tres Americas (CD)
A gold audiophile disc of lively Latin fusion music. Irka Mateo and
Brazilian Soul (24/96 DVD)
Guitarists Laurindo Almeida and Charlie Byrd, plus percussion and
bass, in an intimate yet explosive recording of samba and bossa nova
music. Great!
Jazz/Concord (24/96 DVD)
It's 1972, and you have tickets to hear Herb Ellis, Joe Pass, Ray Brown
and Jake Hanna at the Concord Jazz Festival. You won’t ever forget it.
You can be there, with this high resolution disc that goes in your DVD.
Rhythm Willie (24/96DVD) �
Guitarists Herb Ellis and Freddie Green, With bassist Ray Brown and
others. This is an uncompressed 24 bit 96 kHz disc that can be played
on any video DVD player. Awesome!
Trio (24/96 DVD) �
Pianist Monty Alexander with Herb Ellis and Ray Brown. “Makes CD
sound seem as if it’s coming through a drinking straw.” Playable on
any DVD player, uncompressed.
Seven Come Eleven (24/96 DVD)
Herb Ellis and Ray Brown again, but this time with guitarist Joe
Pass (he and Ellis alternate playing lead and rhythm), and a third
guitarist, Jake Hanna. This is a live recording from the 1974 Concord
Jazz Festival.
Soular Energy (24-96 DVD/ 24-192 DVD-Audio) �
Perhaps the world’s greatest bassist, the late Ray Brown, playing with
pianist Gene Harris, whom Brown called one of the greats. The proof
is right on this 24/96 recording, made from the analog master. Side 2
has a 24/192 DVD-A version.
KLAVIER
Poetics (CD) �
A superb wind band recording which includes a breathtaking
concerto for percussion.
Ghosts (CD) �
This haunting(!) wind band recording features a suite of music that
could be the soundtrack to a film that will keep you awake nights. A
recording of astonishing dynamics and depth
Caprice (CD) �
Can harp be spectacular? Believe it! This famous Klavier recording
Carmina Burana (CD)
The celebrated Carl Orff oratorio sends chills down your spine, thanks
to the huge orchestra, gigantic choir, and of course the clarity and
depth of the Klavier sound.
Obseción (CD)
The Trio Amadé plays Piazzola, Berstein, Copland, and Emilion
Cólon…who is the trio cellist. The Colón and Piazzola is definitely
worth the price of admission. Lifelike sound.
Misbehavin’ (CD)
The superb Denver Brass does Gershwin (Cuban Overture, Porgy and
Bess), plus On the Town, Sweet Georgia Brown, and of course Ain’t
Misbehavin’. Great sound.
Hemispheres (CD)
The North Texas Wind Symphony with new music by contemporary
composers who know how to thrill. Some of the best wind band sound
available.
Illuminations (CD)
Absolutely great chamber musicians take on music by Villa-Lobos,
Malcolm Arnold, and some composers you may not know but you’ll
wish you did. Sublime sound, nothing less.
Mozart Serenade and Divertimenti (CD)
Lowell Graham (of Center Stage fame, Wilson Audio) conducts a
glowing version of these pieces, including the famous “Grand Partita.”
The engineering, by Bruce Leek, is absolutely first-rate.
Kickin’ the Clouds Away (CD)
Gershwin died more than 60 years ago, but you can hear him playing
piano in glowing stereo. Nineteen of his pieces are on this fine CD,
including a solo piano version of the Rhapsody in Blue.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS MUSIC
Film Spectacular II (XRCD)
The orchestra of Stanley Black plays some of the greatest film music
of bygone years. From the original Decca Phase 4 tape.
Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante (XRCD)
Igor and David Oistrakh with the Moscow Philharmonic, in a glorious
1963 recording, from the original master tape
Artistry oi Linda Rosenthal (HDCD) �
The great violinist Rosenthal plays favorites: Hora Staccato, Perpetuum Mobile, Debussy’s Beau Soir, etc.
Suite Española (XRCD) �
The Albéniz suite, gorgeously orchestrated by Rafael Frühbeck de
Burgos, who conducts the New Philharmonia. Beautifully remastered
from the original 1963 tape.
Audiophile Reference IV (SACD) �
A stunning sampler, with recognizable audiophile selections you have
never heard sound this good!
63
Songs My Dad Taught Me (HDCD)
Jazz pianist Jeremy Monteiro and three other musicians, with a retro
collection of unforgettable tunes.
Only Trust Your Heart (HDCD)
Intimate sax variations by Greg Fishman, wonderfully accompanied
by the excellent pianist Jeremy Monteiro.
A Time for Us (HDCD)
Orchestral versions of music from great movies. Easy to love!.
Neil Diamond: Serenade (CD)
Just eight songs on this European CBS disc, but what songs! I’ve Been
This Way Before, Lady Magdalene, Reggae Strut, The Gift of Song,
and more. Glowing sound too.
Café Blue (HDCD/CD) �
A gold HDCD version of iconoclast jazz singer Patricia Barber’s 1994
classic, an audiophile underground favorite. Or get the original CD,
at lower cost.
MISCELLANEOUS
All We Need to Know �
Jazz singer Margie Gibson’s first album since Say It With Music, on
Sheffield. No one sings the way she does!
Classica d’Oro
All of the classical world’s most important heritage, on 50 audiophilequality gold CDs, at under $4 per CD. Fine artists from Germany,
Austria, the UK, Eastern Europe. See the list on our Web site, and
listen to excerpts on line.
Blues for the Saxophone Club (HDCD) �
Swing jazz pianist Jeremy Monteiro, with guest artists, including
saxophonist Ernie Watts. The HDCD sound is explosive!
guese, French and the ancient Aymara language.
Coeur vagabond (CD)
Bïa sings French songs in Portuguese, Brazilian songs in French. A
delight, as usual from this astonishing singer
Audiophile (CD) �
The CD release of Secret of the Andes, the Nautilus disc we wouldn’t
review a speaker without. Pianist Victor Feldman and a whole set of
jazz greats. Second LP, Soft Shoulder, also included
Harry Belafonte (CD)
We haven’t heard Belafonte sound like this except on analog. The 16
songs include Island in the Sun, Jamaica Farewell, Midnight Special,
Michael Row the Boat Ashore, Brown Skin Girl, etc.
Nightclub (CD) �
Patricia Barber, doing nightclub standards rather than her own
songs. But can she do them!
Sources (CD) �
A wonderful recording by Bïa (pronounced Bee-yah). She’s Brazilian,
lives in France, recorded this terrific album (in 5 languages!) in
Montreal. Just her warm voice and guitar, plus a handful of other fine
musicians. Sound to match.
Modern Cool (CD)
The previous release from Patricia Barber, including songs she does
live on the Companion live disc (see below).
Les matins habitables (CD)
Acadian singer Marie-Jo Thério sings (mostly) in French. Includes a
stunning version of Évangeline, about the deportation of the Acadians
two and a half centuries ago.
La mémoire du vent (CD)
The original recording by Bïa, in French, Portuguese and English. If
you love her second one, don’t hesitate.
Carmin (CD) �
The third by Bïa. Different this time, with more money for production,
but it has been spent wisely. Superb songs, gloriously sung in Portu-
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teacher and a composer, and several of
his works will be published. Recognizing early on the exceptional musical
aptitude of his son, he becomes his
first harmony teacher. As for George’s
mother, Aimée del Sarte, she is said to
be highly intelligent and she has a good
reputation as an amateur pianist. It is
from her that Georges will learn the
basics of the piano as well as the skill
of sight reading, which he will master
thoroughly. His uncle, François del
Sarte, is an indifferent singer but an
excellent singing teacher whose reputation is Europe-wide. François’ wife
Rosine holds a first prize for piano from
the Conservatory, and was a student of
Fromental Halévy in harmony. She is a
remarkable musician, and music has a
place of honor in their home.
The family context, then, is auspicious for the development of a promising
talent.
The Opera
by Reine Lessard
d’Auvergne, on October 25, 1838. His
godfather added the name Georges,
which he will always prefer to the recherché string of names he has received at
birth. He will, however, use his “official”
names for administrative purposes —
signing “A.C.L. Georges Bizet” on his
papers at the Conservatory in 1854 and
1855.
His father, Adolphe-Armand Bizet
is a barber and wigmaker according to
his military papers, but by the time he
marries in 1837 he is already a voice
If you know only one
opera, odds are it’s
this one
Software
E
nticing, impudent, provocative,
wily, irresistible, her powerful
and ironic gaze drew in the naïve,
the bold, the daring. She collected
her passing conquests as others would later
collect baseball cards. The difference was
that, in one case, the price to be paid was
life itself.
Her own life.
The character is Carmen, the Gypsy,
which the celebrated French author Prosper
Mérimée (1803-1870) immortalized in an
eponymous short story that would become
the libretto to Georges Bizet’s most famous
opera.
Who was Bizet? What did he leave the
musical world, beyond this, an opera that
could, alone, justify his glory?
***
A lexandre-César-Léopold Bizet
is born in Paris, at 26 rue de la Tour
The Conservatory
Georges is unique not only in that
he is an only child, but also for his
rare intelligence, his pronounced individuality, and his precocious musical
abilities — by the age of four he is able
to read music. He is too young to be
admitted to the Conservatory when he is
nine, but he is allowed to sit in on piano
classes, a privilege he owes no doubt to
his uncle’s intervention.
But there is more. At Georges’
entrance exam, the examiner is stunned
to discover that the young Georges can
unfailingly identify a chord that is struck
on a piano behind him.
Georges Bizet spends five years at
the Conservatoire de Paris, where he has
the privilege of being the pupil of the
avant-gardiste pianist, teacher, musicographer and author Antoine François
Marmontel. Among Marmontel’s other
pupils will be Vincent d’Indy, Théodore
Dubois and Claude Debussy.
Between Georges’ admission to the
Conservatory and his conquest of the
Prix de Rome in 1857, he will collect
prizes for solfège and piano, and also for
organ, which he studies with François
Benoist (whose students include Delibes,
Franck, Massenet and Saint-Saëns). For
composition he is taught by Fromental
Halévy. For counterpoint he studies
Feedback
Software
with pianist and composer Pierre Joseph
Guillaume Zimmermann, as well as
Zimmermann’s son-in-law, one Charles
Gounod. The least one can say is that he
could have done worse!
Following a piano exam, the eminent
pianist Jean-Baptiste Weckerlin writes:
The pupils of Marmontel, that conscientious
and intelligent professor, competed with zeal
and skill. First prize was taken by a precocious little pianist named Bizet, who showed
a quite remarkable musical intelligence. He
is the best pupil of Marmontel’s class for this
year of 1852.
Political effervescence
That same year is marked by landmark historical events. Charles-LouisNapoléon Bonaparte, heir to the claims
of the famous dynasty, becomes President in 1848, and in 1851 overthrows the
Republic to become Prince-President,
with quasi absolute power. After a crushing victory in a plebiscite, in 1852 he
crowns himself Napoléon III, Emperor
of the French.
Despite the disturbances caused
inevitably by these radical events, Bizet
is raised in a richly diverse environ66 ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine
ment. Celebrat ions
and luxuries are once
again omnipresent in
the lives of the French.
T he ne w E mp eror
knows how to please
not only politicians
but also the artistic
community, which is
then obliged to show its
gratitude. Despite his
youth — he is but 14
when Napoleon III is
crowned — Bizet is not
won over. He will later
write to his motherin-law, Mme Halévy,
that the Emperor is “an
eccentric who has led
us to ruin and dismemberment” (a reference
to the war against Germany, in which France
was defeated and lost
the territories of Alsace
and Lorraine).
H is first compositions
are f rom t hat same
period. In 1854 he writes his Nocturne
No. 1 for piano, his Grande valse de concert, and an operetta titled La Prêtresse.
The following year sees a Symphony in
C Major, which is admirable but which
Bizet himself dismisses as mediocre. I
shall have occasion to mention it again.
In 1856, Jacques Offenbach, hoping
to revive French opéra-comique, launches
a competition which will mark the inauguration of his new theatre, Les Bouffes
Parisiens. All competitors must use the
same libretto, titled Docteur Miracle. The
young Bizet seizes the occasion to create
a lyric work that is a pastiche of styles he
already masters, those of Rossini, Meyerbeer, and of course Offenbach himself.
It is hardly surprising that he wins first
prize, tied with Charles Lecoq. Bizet’s
colleagues are amused by his creation,
but also impressed with the musical gags
that reveal his extraordinary talent.
But this admiration does not distract
himself from his more serious pursuit,
preparation for another competition,
that of the Prix de Rome. This legendary scholarship, awarded to talented
young musicians and other artists after
a series of grueling examinations, allows
the eventual winner to study abroad for
three years, two of them at the Académie
de France in Rome, founded by Colbert
in 1666. Since 1803 winners are housed
at the Villa Medicis, whose magnificent
gardens favor the development of young
talent.
Italy
Bizet wins only second prize in 1856,
with his cantata David, but the following year his Clovis et Clotilde wins him
the Grand Prix de Rome. He leaves for
Rome in December alongside four winners in other disciplines, and he falls in
love with the countryside he sees on his
voyage, which enchants him, and with
Rome itself.
Only a few weeks later he begins
work on a Te deum for soloists, choir and
orchestra, but is ill at ease with it. He sets
it aside, though he will later incorporate
elements of it in other works. His lack
of enthusiasm for sacred music can no
doubt be explained by his poor opinion
of the rituals of the Catholic Church.
The pomp of the ceremonies, the flashy
costumes of the priests he considers to
be laughable, the display of a piety that
seems mere affectation — all of that irritates him. On the other hand he delights
in the ambience of the Carnaval, and he
is quick to participate. His numerous
letters indicate that he is happy.
During his time in Rome he reads a
great deal and he composes, though, no
doubt for lack of confidence, he leaves
his first compositions unfinished. “More
pagan than Christian,” in his own words,
Bizet decides to replace the religious
work that is assigned to the prizewinners by an opera bouffe. His two-act
Don Procopio, a work that is very French
despite its Italian setting, is well received
by the organizers of the Prix de Rome (it
will, however, be performed only once,
in Monte-Carlo in 1906).
It is during this same period that he
begins to be afflicted with throat problems as well as periods of depression. He
continues to compose nevertheless. He
turns out his overture La Chasse d’Ossian,
a funeral march, a scherzo, and an ode
for choir, Vasco da Gama, with which,
exceptionally, he seems quite satisfied.
One of its sections, La marguerite a fermé
sa corolle, is a pearl.
Léon Carvalho
Yet there are good news too. That
year Carvalho commissions a five-act
opera for his Théâtre Lyrique on the
subject of Ivan IV, the first Russian
prince to take the title of Tsar. Bizet is
dissatisfied with the finished opera, titled
Ivan le Terrible, and refuses to let it be
played (its premiere will come 85 years
later, in 1946).
January 1863 sees the premiere of
his Scherzo, drawn from the Suite pour
orchestre that was the third of his works
from Rome. The following Sunday
Bizet himself conducts his Scherzo at
the Société nationale des Beaux-Arts.
Shortly after his ode on Vasco da Gama,
his homage to the celebrated Portuguese
navigator, will be premiered. If he is
lionized for the first, the critics demolish
the second, despite the presence of some
gorgeous motifs, like those of the horn
solo and the Boléro.
In September it is the turn of Les
pêcheurs de perles to be premiered. In that
opera Bizet has created some absolutely
divine arias, such as La Romance de Nadir,
a vehicle for light tenor voices, and Oui,
c’est elle, c’est la Déesse, with its exquisite
counterpoints with the choir. Despite
a lukewarm public reaction, those two
arias will remain favorites.
The unflappable Carvalho, in 1866,
offers a new commission for a four-act
opera, based on a novel by the Scottish
writer and poet Sir Walter Scott, La jolie
fille de Perth (it will be premiered the following year). Scott’s writing, it should be
noted, found its way into several operas.
Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor has a
libretto adapted from Scott’s The Bride
of Lammermoor, while the libretto of
Rossini’s Donna del lago was also inspired
by Scott.
Software
Paris, 1861
The welcome Bizet receives back in
Paris is encouraging. As director of the
Opéra-comique, Léon Carvalho commissions a one-act operetta, La Guzla
de l’Émir, which is however never performed. Did the Opéra-comique cancel
the production to avoid losing a major
subsidy? Legend has it that Bizet was so
unsatisfied that he actually destroyed
the score, and that — worse yet — he
destroyed it after rehearsals had begun.
It is tempting to believe this rather
dramatic story, because Bizet will often
either destroy or abandon a work in
progress, partly because of his ceaseless
research of perfection, but also because
of his lack of confidence in himself. At
the same time that he rejects the traditions of the Conservatoire de Paris, as
the Impressionist painters will also do
with the Academy, he is unable to bring
to full fruition the radical personal
language, the audacity and originality that enter spontaneously into his
compositions. He suffers at once from
public rejection, and from certain critics
who seem unable to espouse anything
that is truly new. Consequently some 15
projects that would have deserved to see
the light of day never advance beyond the
draft stage.
It may be useful to recall that he is
egotistical and hypersensitive, and that
he suffers from — in his own words — an
exaggerated susceptibility bordering on
paranoia.
Léon Car valho, director of the
Théâtre lyrique, commissions an opera,
Les Pêcheurs de perles, which will remain
as Bizet’s second best-known work.
Since his return to Paris he has been
living with his parents. He seems to have
put aside his claims for total freedom
in order to avoid offending them in
their sensibilities, but we need have no
illusions. Paris offers many clandestine
opportunities to find the pleasures of the
flesh in its many maisons de tolérance.
His mother’s health is declining
rapidly. She is tended to by her maid,
Marie Reiter, with whom George has
sex. Nine months later Marie gives birth
to a son, Jean Reiter. Georges attributes
the boy’s paternity to his father, Adolphe-Armand. Only at Marie’s deathbed
will Jean learn that he is in fact the son
of Georges Bizet.
Georges is a divine pianist, and his
sight reading of a score, even an orchestral
score, is phenomenal, and such luminaries as Berlioz and Liszt are dazzled by
him. He might have prospered as a mere
virtuoso, but despite repeated bouts
of depression and the cool reaction of
critics, he composes work after work.
His reputation as a teacher is excellent as well, with the result that he has
many students willing to pay what are for
the time generous fees. Yet his financial
situation remains precarious, and like
many a sublime composer before him,
he often writes so that he might eat. He
corrects proofs, he arranges the music of
others, he transcribes orchestral music
and even entire operas for piano. He
is hard-working, but these obligations
leave him exhausted. Despite his love of
other climes he has become sedentary.
His health has always been precarious,
and that is no doubt the cause.
The year 1861 ends badly. In September he loses his mother, leaving a wound
he will carry for the rest of his life. The
following year is not a happy one either.
He passes through a thousand worries,
and he is the victim of serious financial
problems.
A contemporary caricature of Bizet with Carmen
The Eternal City, once the City of
Emperors, now the City of Popes, is
admirable, and Bizet is so taken with
it that he is reluctant to obey the rule
requiring that the third year of studies
be undertaken in Germany. With the
aid of certain influential relations he is
allowed to remain in Italy. He is heartbroken when, at the end of July 1860,
he must leave for the north. He leaves
behind him friends, a style of life that
caters to his thirst for independence,
and a woman to whom he refers in his
letters simply as Zeph. The pain of their
separation prompts him to seek solace in
the bordellos.
In Venice he learns that his mother is
gravely ill, and when he returns to Paris
he is told that her malady is incurable.
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A portrait of Geneviève Halévy Bizet
Cupid’s arrow
It is during the rehearsals of that
opera that he falls in love with Geneviève, the daughter of his professor,
Fromental Halévy. He writes to a friend
that he is putting an end to his libertine
ways. No more evenings out, no more
adventures, no more mistresses. All of that is
over, absolutely over. I have met an adorable
girl whom I love. In two years she will be my
wife. (Time will tell that, if the spirit was
willing, the flesh was weak, and that this
unsolicited vow will not keep him from
spending time in houses that were not
homes, where he sought pleasures from
which love was absent.)
Léonie Halévy, Fromental’s wife
and Geneviève’s mother, suffers from
psychiatric problems that necessitate
numerous stays in a specialized establishment. She is persuaded that her
daughter’s suitor is without talent, and
that he must therefore be, above all,
interested in her dowry. She does all she
can to break off the engagement. It will
take several years and the intervention
of family friends, aided it is true by some
success enjoyed by Georges, that she will
finally consent to the union.
For better or for worse, then, the
marriage is celebrated on June 3, 1869,
in the absence of Mme Halévy, who is
once again undergoing treatment.
Installed for their honeymoon in
Saint-Gratien, near Enghien, in a house
lent by Geneviève’s uncle Hippolyte
Rodrigues, the young couple lives what
will no doubt be their greatest moments
of happiness. Bizet writes to him: Geneviève is marvelously well. We are in love
and we love you, “for it is you who sustain
us.” Come, come quickly! We call you and we
want you. There is, here, happiness enough
for three. The quotation marks are mine,
and they mark a passage that seems to
indicate that it is thanks to Rodrigues
if the wedding has taken place. Bizet,
in any case, has always appreciated his
originality and his open mindedness.
Of this union, which at least temporarily insulates Bizet from material
wants, is born a son, Jacques, in 1871.
(Jacques will, alas, lose his father when
he is four. He will study at the Lycée
Condorcet, where he will become the
first lover of Marcel Proust. Like Proust,
he will have a penchant for literature.)
reject two of his works, the three-act
opera Clarissa Harlowe, and Grisélidis, the
latter on a libretto by Victorien Sardou,
judging them too expensive to stage.
Also in 1871 Bizet will undertake to
keep a promise made to his mother-inlaw, to complete an unfinished opera
by her late husband, titled Noé. His
heart isn’t in it, and it will take a third
composer to complete the work ten years
after Bizet’s death. It may be regrettable
that Halévy never did finish his opera,
which is of course about Noah. We may
suppose that this Jewish composer, who
had composed the immortal lyrical
drama La Juive in 1835, had the talent
to make this opera into what might have
been a masterpiece. Noé was recently
recorded on CD, and in 2004 it was even
filmed. The critics savaged the film,
calling the production scatterbrained.
Having put Noé aside, Bizet finds
many ways to keep busy. To his piano
teaching, his transcriptions and adaptations, his copy work for publishers,
and to his own composing, he adds the
decoration of the apartment for himself
and his young wife, not to mention the
assiduous correspondence he maintains
with friends and business connections.
In Februar y of 1870, after t wo
interruptions in its composition, his
symphony Souvenirs de Rome is finally
performed at the Pasdeloup Concerts.
It is still incomplete, however, and it is
only in 1880 that it will be performed in
its entirety under its final title, Roma.
In 1870 the Opéra comique will
Turbulence
That year the war with Germany
will interrupt for a time George Bizet’s
career. Worried about Geneviève’s
health, he has moved with her to Barbizon for a time, and the news from Paris
is alarming. They return to the capital,
where Georges is conscripted into the
National Guard and given a desk job.
He long ago lost faith in the Emperor,
whose policies disgust him. There is a
vast bibliography on the subject, some
(but not all) by credible historians, and I
propose that those interested read more
on the subject, which is not mine.
Aside from the horrifying spectacle
of ruins and of thousands of dead, and
the inevitable privations resulting from
an armed conflict, the health of both
Geneviève and her mother are cause for
worry. Moreover, the idea that he might
lose his students and be a powerless witness to the closing of concert halls and
publishing houses terrifies him, as it does
his colleagues.
This period of great drama on several
fronts transforms Bizet. He develops
both morally and æsthetically, and
his new maturity can be sensed in his
music.
He composes a suite for piano four
hands, Jeux d’enfants, op. 22, an admirable work. Completed in 1871 it will be
published the following year. It is made
up of ten tableaux, to which two will
be later added, each with its own title.
He will later orchestrate it in brilliant
fashion into five sections: Trompette et
tambour; La poupée; La toupie; Petit Mari,
Petite Femme; and Le bal. There is nothing childish about this music. Rather it
observes the world of the child from an
adult perspective, an inspired manner of
translating this world into music.
Named choir master at the Opéra and
then conductor of singers at the Opéra
Comique, he composes for Carvalho
incidental music for l’Arlésienne, a stage
adaptation of Alphonse Daudet’s Lettres
de mon Moulin. The suite is splendid,
made up of a prelude, entr’actes, choruses, and melodramatic passages with
understand. Djamileh closes after only
ten performances.
Bizet’s dramatic overture Patrie,
composed following the defeat of France
by the German army, is nothing if not
brilliant. Performed at one of the Sunday
concerts of the 1873-74 season of the
Cirque d’hiver, it is a triumph. As for the
five-act opera Don Rodrigue, its production is cancelled because of a fire at the
Opéra de Paris. Like so many of Bizet’s
works, it will never be completed.
To add to the uncertainty as to
Bizet’s musical career, his heart problems increase in intensity, and his fits of
rheumatoid arthritis are both more acute
and more frequent.
B i z e t ’s d a y s a r e h e n c e f o r t h
numbered.
The novelist of death
Camille du Locle offers Bizet another
exotic subject: Carmen, on a libretto by
Meilhac and Halévy, based in turn on a
short story of the same title by Prosper
Mérimée. Mérimée, agnostic, materialist, believing only in science and reason,
who rejects all religions in general and
the Catholic Church in particular, built
his story around his eponymous heroine,
a libertine woman working in a cigarette
factory. Carmen is published in 1845 in
the Revue des deux mondes. The story is
set in Spain, a country Mérimée had
visited twice.
What can I add to all that has been
said and written about Carmen? The
music was written when Bizet spent his
summer in Bourgival. Tchaikovsky said
he loved the opera, and Brahms said he
would have traveled to the ends of the
earth to embrace its author. There are
numerous other testimonials from his
contemporaries. But…
How can we explain its lack of initial success of what would be the most
famous of all operas? My explanation is
worth what it is worth, but here it is.
First of all, the female characters,
including Carmen herself, are on stage
smoking. Shocking!
Second, the heroin is willing to face
death not to atone for her sins, but on
the contrary to rage against and defy
God and conventional morality. To make
matters worse, the first Carmen, soprano
Celestine Galli Marié, plays to Carmen’s
sexy and “depraved” character. Shocking
again! (It seems to me that polite society
was a little too quick to forget the hundreds of greedy and cynical courtesans
who long “graced” the stage. Then
again, has society changed since those
days? Recall the vitriolic comments
hurled against Julia Migenes, who played
Carmen in the 1984 Francesco Rosi film.
It was said of her as it had been said of
Galli Marié, that her body language was
obscene…more than a century later!)
Third, you can’t show the murder
of the heroine at the Opéra Comique!
Listen to the director of the theatre
speaking to the two librettists: “At the
Opéra-Comique, a family theater, a
theater for the promotion of marriages?
We rent five or six boxes every night
for these meetings of young couples.
You will put our audience to flight! No,
it’s impossible! Death has never been
seen on this stage, do you hear? Never!
Don’t let her die, my dear fellow, I beg
of you!”
But perhaps his plea was heard, for
things might have been worse. Had the
librettists not made a cut in Mérimée’s
tale, there would have been not one but
two murders. In the original, Carmen is
married to a Bohemian named Garcia le
Borgne, whom Don José kills.
The poor director would never have
gotten over it!
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dialogue, supported by the orchestra.
Premiered on October 1, 1872, it is only
a partial success.
Bizet whips his music for l’Arlésienne
up into a suite, which is performed
the following month at the Pasdeloup
Concerts. This time it is a hit, though it
will take another eight years to become
truly famous. It will, finally, become a
repertoire piece much admired by connoisseurs. In the suite, Bizet calls on
all of the instruments of the orchestra,
bringing them in one by one, each with
its characteristic sound, into a cortege of
exquisite and evocative melodies. There
is, I believe, only one recording of the
original music in its original setting, a
double-disc set from Decca. L’Arlésienne
is today mainly heard in a newer orchestration by Ernest Guiraud (1837-1892),
a New-Orleans-born composer and
teacher, who remained a friend of Bizet
until the latter’s death.
I yield to the temptation of an aside,
concerning an element drawn from this
orchestral suite. In the original suite,
there was a passage for saxophone. After
Bizet’s death, it was adapted to an Agnus
Dei, part of the Catholic Mass, with a
tenor singing the words to what had been
the saxophone melody. Now known as
Bizet’s Agnus Dei, it is often performed as
part of the Mass. It is a sublime religious
work by a composer who considered
himself incapable of writing religious
music.
The Opéra Comique commissions
a one-act opera to be titled Djamileh,
adapted f rom A lf red de Musset’s
Namouna. Bizet has always been attracted
to exotic subjects, and the result is a
towering work, premiered in May 1872.
This evocative Egyptian tale is the story
of a slave who works ceaselessly to bend
her master to become her lover. She will
go as far as refusing an offer of freedom.
To live with him or to die, such is her
law. All of the dramatic power that will
burst forth in Bizet’s future Carmen can
be found here: the melodic originality,
the realism of dramatic expression,
the flamboyance of the orchestration,
the depth of the characters, the added
sensuality of a ballet at once daring and
surprising. The fact is that Georges
Bizet is half a century ahead of his era,
and neither audiences nor critics can
Celestine Galli Marié, the first Carmen
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The hypocrites
We are in the 19th Century in Paris,
a city of pleasures if there is one, known
for its entertainments, its cabarets and
brothels, its corruption, its courtesans,
its naughty French postcards…in short
it is a city of lust. Oh but hold on, you
can’t show that on stage, and especially
not in a theatrical work. These antics,
revealed in the light of day, scandalize
polite society, upset the tartuffes who
wallow in degradation but — if you
please — discreetly. One can forgive a
kept woman like Violetta in Verdi’s La
Traviata, because she is redeemed by the
sacrifice she makes, and anyway she dies
for her sins. But how dare one show a
Gypsy cigarette girl, who is not kept by
a man though she is accused of being a
whore, and whose worst fault is in fact
to cry out for her right to freedom and
equality with men, to the point of defying God and Satan!
My conclusion: it is certainly not
because of Bizet’s music that Carmen is
not an instant success, but because of
the subject, the story, and the way it is
treated. Recall the Baron von Sweiten
who, in Amadeus, says to Mozart, “Music
is not the issue here. No one doubts your
talent. It’s your judgement of literature
that is in question.”
Among the critics, who are as always
divided, there are the puritans, whose
protestations today make us smile, and
those more honest, more numerous
too. We have perhaps been too quick to
forget this second group.
A mere pretext?
The official overture of the new
Paris Opéra — today called the Pavillon
Garnier — is set for January 5, 1875, and
the premiere of Carmen scheduled for
March 3rd. On the morning of March
3rd, Bizet receives the title of chevalier
of the Légion d’Honneur. A nasty legend
has it that the ceremony was moved up
to the morning so that it would not be
tarnished by what was certain to be a
fiasco later in the day.
That is, of course, mere legend.
There was no reason to suppose that
Carmen would be a fiasco (the word is not
mine), and the ceremony for an honor of
such magnitude is set always in advance.
But it is difficult to get access to evidence
one way or the other, and each is free to
write as he pleases.
Another story has it that the Paris fire
department gave as a reason for closing
the opera that the presence of smoking
on stage presented a hazard. True? Certainly there had been several fires at the
Paris opera. You’ll recall that it was one
such fire, in 1873, that persuaded Bizet to
abandon an earlier opera, Don Rodrigue.
Can it be, then, that fire authorities,
seeing the glow of live cigarettes on the
stage, sincerely feared for the security of
the audience and cast?
I shall remind you only that, in the
three months between the premiere and
Bizet’s death, Carmen was performed 30
times.
The end
Much ink has flowed over Bizet’s
problems of health: his chronic angina,
his rheumatoid arthritis. The latter
seemingly worsens after an unwise swim
in the Seine in May 1875, when the water
is still cold. Undermined by illness, this
magician of light, painter of such evocative sunny images of almost unbearable
beauty, master of counterpoint like no
other, remarkable melodist…Georges
Bizet dies in Bougival on the morning
of June 3, 1875.
He is not yet 37.
On the evening of his funeral there is
a special production of Carmen, at which,
witnesses say, the emotion hung heavy.
By now, the critics who condemned
the opera a few short weeks before are
acclaiming it as a masterpiece, and its
creator as a master.
It took only a little time before the
good judgement of true music lovers
won out over the petty intrigues and
false pretexts. Carmen, a leading light
of opera, begins its voyage around the
world, a voyage that will surely never
end.
Georges Bizet is buried at the Père
Lachaise cemetery in Paris.
Was Bizet happy?
I don’t think so. He was a handsome
child, certainly, gifted without a doubt,
but already marked by ill health. As an
adult he cut a seductive figure, with his
thick, curled nut brown hair, and a beard
that was almost red. As was the child, so
was the adult, often ill.
He was hypersensitive, easily hurt.
On the evidence he suffered from a
serious complex of inferiority, and he
was often uncertain of the value of his
work. All too often he didn’t receive from
musical society the credit due him. His
marriage was often turbulent, as much
because of his mother-in-law’s illness as
because of his wife’s nervous condition.
Let me return for a moment to his
wife, Geneviève. Her mother Léonie
suffered from serious psychiatric problems that perturbed her immediate
entourage. She was a frequent patient
at the clinic of Dr. Blanche (Charles
Gounod and Guy de Maupassant were
among its other notable patients, as was
Van Gogh’s brother). Some historians,
noting Léonie’s problems, conclude
that her daughter inherited her mother’s
unfortunate genetic baggage. Let’s
examine the myth.
There is no denying that Geneviève is
unstable, tense, always on the verge of a
nervous breakdown, but these problems
seem attributable more to emotional
problems than to some inherited mental
disorder. For example, her sister Esther
died at 20 under mysterious circumstances a few days after saving her mother
from drowning in a park basin. Relations
between Geneviève and Léonie were, to
say the least, complex, and the daughter
would suffer from a nervous crisis at her
mother’s very presence.
Bizet had his own psychological problems, namely his attacks of depression,
and he concluded that Geneviève was,
them. Jacques took his life at the age of
52. As for Geneviève, she outlived her
illustrious husband by half a century.
Some thoughts
Bizet’s many biographers, each
convinced he is right, deliver their
judgements on the value of his music. It
seems clear that they copy each other.
For instance, despite the cheap shots
and condescending remarks aimed at the
adolescent Bizet’s Symphony in C Major,
one discovers in the work of this adolescent youth, marvels that not only astonish but foreshadow his masterpieces to
come. It has become one my favorites.
The symphony arrived on the scene
late. Having slept on the shelves of the
Conservatoire de Paris for more than
half a century, it was finally published
in 1935 when the Austrian conductor
and neo-Romantic composer, pianist
and writer Felix Weingartner, presented
it at a concert in Bâle, Switzerland. A
few years later the Alsatian conductor
Charles Munch conducted it at the salle
Pleyel in Paris, along with another Bizet
work, Patrie. I have two recordings of the
symphony conducted by Munch, one of
them recent enough to be in stereo. I
heard it again with great pleasure.
Another work worth revisiting is his
Te Deum, composed during Bizet’s first
weeks at the Villa Medicis. It seems that
he found its creation difficult, which
seems odd for someone to whom all
came as by enchantment. If he himself
was dissatisfied with the Te Deum, it
was acclaimed as a major work after its
premiere, in 1975, under the dome of the
Invalides in Paris, on the centennial of
his death.
Among Bizet’s bitterest enemies are
those who, falsely, accused him of “Wagnerism.” Were they ignorant or in bad
faith! He has been blamed for being too
accommodating with his employers, for
accepting with indifference the insipid
librettos he was assigned. His concessions to public tastes were confused with
vulgar conformity…and he, the paragon
of anti-conformity!
Georges Bizet has risen above all of
that. His fiercest critics and his envious
adversaries have been long forgotten. By
his genius alone, he lives on.
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like her mother, on the edge of going
mad. He was so protective of her that in
the end he took away all her confidence
in herself. It may be that her husband’s
death was, in a sense, a liberation.
A beautiful and charming woman,
Geneviève moved in the orbit of the
cream of society: princes and princesses,
counts and countesses, artists and
celebrated men of letters. Proust used
her as the title character in Oriane de
Guermantes, and she was also the lead
character in Maupassant’s Fort comme la
mort. It was probably at a literary evening
at Maupassant’s home that she met the
brilliant Jewish lawyer Émile Straus,
who in 1886 would become her second
husband.
With her rich husband and the royalties from Carmen, she was able to take
part in the privileged society she had
always aspired to. She will even participate in politics, campaigning for a revision of the trial of Captain Dreyfus.
Émile Straus had for Jacques, the son
of Geneviève and Georges Bizet, a deep
and sincere affection, but some are so
vulnerable that even love cannot save
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by Reine Lessard
and Gerard Rejskind
The Other Mozart
Barbara Bonney
Decca 475 6936
Rejskind: “The other Mozart?” Of
course I thought for an instant of
Mozart’s demanding father Leopold,
who was also a composer, and who
taught his precocious son all he knew.
No, this is not the music of the father,
but of the son.
Actually Mozart had two sons. There
is Karl Thomas, the young boy represented as an only child in Amadeus, and
there is Franz Xaver Wolfgang, still a
baby when his father died. Their young
mother Constanze was determined to
give them access to musical studies. Karl
showed little interest and became a civil
servant, but “Wolfi” (as his mother took
to calling him, possibly for promotional
reasons) became both a singer and
composer. He even entered the famous
competition of the publisher Diabelli
(Beethoven wrote two entire volumes
for it), adding the name “Amadeus” to
Wolfgang.
American soprano Barbara Bonney,
who sings these lieder with piano accompaniment, set out two years ago on a
project for the Chamber Music Society
of Lincoln Centre. The 250th anniversary
of Mozart’s birth was coming up, and the
occasion was evident, but she didn’t want
to do what the entire world would be
doing. Didn’t any other members of the
Mozart family leave something worth
singing?
She thought of Leopold of course,
but he didn’t write for voice. She tried
to track down Mozart’s older sister
“Nannerl,” whose music lessons first
grabbed the interest of her three-year
old brother, but if Nannerl wrote any
music she couldn’t find any. But “Wolfi”
had, and she was able to find all but two.
Some were mere sketches, but Bonney
had what she was looking for, enough to
make a complete album.
These lieder are from seven collections, all of course from the 19th Century,
and you shouldn’t expect them to sound
like anything that came from his father’s
pen. They are in fact closer to the lieder
of Schubert, who was a younger contemporary, and they are a delight. The
texts, which are included in the booklet,
in German and in English and French
translations, are of the high Romantic
era, and rather sentimental, but that is
what you would expect.
I would listen to Barbara Bonney sing
nearly anything, and she does wonders
with these obscure songs. Pianist Malcolm Martineau seconds her perfectly,
with presence, but never upstaging her.
Buy all the music by his father that you
can, but don’t write off the son.
Concerto Nicolò for Left Hand
Skrowaczewski & Minnesota Orch.
Reference Recordings RR-103CD
Lessard: The plethora of new musical
productions doesn’t seem to slow the
arrival of new things in the domain of
recording. The two concertos on this
CD will be able to retain your attention
for a long time.
The first, for left hand only, is by
Stanislaw Skrowacewski himself. It
is a set of variations on Paganini’s 24
Caprices, which have inspired so many
composers (“Nicolò” was Paganini’s first
name). It was commissioned by Herbert
R. Axelrod, coauthor of a biography
of Paganini for the benefit of Gary
Graffman. A xelrod greatly admired
this celebrated prize-winning American
pianist.
Skrowacewski was not the first to
write piano music for the left hand.
Think of the Piano Concerto for Left
Hand, which Ravel wrote for his friend
Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his
right arm in the First World War.
Wittgenstein continued his career by
commissioning other one-handed piano
works by other composers.
As for Graffman, he was anguished to
discover one day a problem with two of
the fingers of his right hand. He could no
longer cover an octave perfectly, and his
playing became erratic. As a perfectionist
determined never to deliver less than the
best, he did as Wittgenstein had done,
and commissioned works adapted to his
handicap. The results include Richard
Danielpour's Piano Concerto No. 3, Luis
Prado’s Piano Concerto for Left Hand, and
Ned Rorem’s Piano Concerto No. 4.
The Concerto Nicolo is made up of
four movements. The piano delivers
magnificent arpeggios and groups of
notes making subtle allusion to the
famous five-note motif appear, and then
are echoed by the strings. I can promise
that all the movements, including the
Lento, will surprise you by their fullness
and volume. You will, however, be on the
edge of your seat when the tuttis enter.
They are numerous, with the strings
and brass full of power and energy,
radiating a certain fury, even a revolt.
One can’t avoid noticing the rather
pessimistic tone of this music, a tone
that is at once strange and captivating,
albeit letting through an occasional ray
of light. I cannot help commenting that
Graffman, in certain passages, seems to
have three hands, covering as he does so
many notes. It seems a safe bet that this
concerto will join the growing repertoire
of concertos for left hand.
The recording also contains Stanislaw
Skrowacewski’s Concerto for Orchestra.
Originally composed in 1986 to celebrate
the 10th anniversary of the inauguration
of Minneapolis's Orchestra Hall, it has
since undergone some touchups, which
would seem to guarantee it a popularity
beyond the original occasion.
This is a brilliant score, resolutely
modern, presenting numerous difficulties for the musicians, though the
orchestra, under the baton of the composer himself, seem to laugh them off. I
would warn you not to raise the volume
during the soft introduction, for the
music will quickly pick up in force and
volume. There are numerous passages of
muscular tension that keep you within
a shattering sonic world, with, here and
there, a passage that is moderate or even
peaceful.
The recording was done at Orchestra
Hall in Minneapolis, with often praised
acoustics. The HDCD recording, of
great quality is signed — as usual — by
Keith O. Johnson.
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Rhapsodies
Lefèvre/Bamert & Orch. Symph. De
Montréal
Analekta AN 2 9277
Rejskind: The Montreal Symphony
Orchestra turned out dozens of recordings (for London/Decca) during the
years it was conducted by Charles
Dutoit, but hasn’t done one since Dutoit’s
departure. Here it is on disc again, with
the home classical label, Analekta. This
time, however, the orchestra was playing live (under the baton of Matthias
Bamert) in its mediocre Place des Arts
concert hall.
In fact, though, the orchestra is
quite well served by this recording.
I have always found the multi-miked
Decca recordings lacking in anything
resembling ambience, and Place des
Arts is not so bad if you sit in one of the
front rows. The microphones, of course,
have a privileged position. The orchestra
sounds better than I have heard it for
many years, though I would have liked
Alain Lefèvre’s piano a little farther
back.
The recording contains three rhapsodies, including Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody
on a Theme of Paganini and Gershwin’s
Rhapsody in Blue, as well as the world
premiere of André Mathieu’s Rhapsodie
Romantique. Mathieu was a precocious
pianist and composer who was referred to as “the Mozart of Quebec,” and
Rachmaninov himself saw him as his
possible successor. His promise was
never realized, however. Alcohol and
grinding poverty killed him in 1968 at
the age of 39. He lived three years longer
than Mozart, note, but he didn’t leave the
same body of work.
Lefèvre has rescued from obscurity
several of Mathieu’s compositions. The
Rhapsodie Romantique is from 1958,
about the time he stopped composing,
and revised shortly before his death.
This version was orchestrated by Gilles
Bellemarre.
It is nothing if not Romantic. I must
say it reminded me less of Rachmaninov
than of Addinsell’s pseudo classical
Warsaw Concerto, composed for the film
Flight Into Danger. It is pleasant enough,
however, and hearing it premiered so
long after its composition made it an
event. Mathieu dedicated the Rhapsody
to his wife Marie-Ange, who is still
alive and was present at the launch (she
is shown at left).
I enjoyed the Rachmaninov much
better. I admit to having reservations
about the Gershwin, however. Lefèvre
likes to play with “the pedal to the
metal,” and his sound is high-powered
and reverberant, without the lightness
that Gershwin requires.
I asked Mario Labbé, the president of
Analekta, whether this album would be
a one-shot, or whether there would be
more Montreal Symphony recordings.
“I’d love to do more,” he said, “but it’s
very expensive.”
I’ve got my fingers crossed. Analekta
has the engineering firepower to do it
right.
Grieg Folk Songs & Dances
Havard Gimse
Naim CD059
Lessard: Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)
was certainly the greatest of Norway’s
composers, and he was called in his
lifetime “the Nordic Chopin.” Plausible?
Yes, no doubt, though in listening to
these dances, played by pianist Havard
Gimse, I couldn’t help making my own
comparisons with Chopin, who had his
own nickname, “the poet of the piano.”
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 73 Turnabout is fair play!
810 machine with custom heads, Siltech
Grieg was a Romantic, a creator,
wiring, and modified Manley preamps.
capable of wonder, of contemplation,
Symposium Acoustics anti-vibration
of joy. He was the king of folk themes,
platforms are used, and analog-digital
which he developed with his deep
conversion is done with a Weiss ADC2.
intuition and his Norwegian consciousThe target resolution is not Red Book
ness. He was a non-conformist, using
but 24-bit 96 kHz digital. The music is
intriguing dissonances and beautifully
burned onto a blank DVD, and that’s
audacious harmonies. He was the creator
what you get…an individually-made
of one of the most gorgeous of all piano
DVD. You can play it on any DVD
concertos, his first masterpiece. He was
player,
the creator of the incidental music for
I was eager to hear what would be left
Peer Gynt, the play based on the great
of these ancient tapes. Deterioration of
epic poem of his compatriot, Henryk audiophile recording is of a performance 1950’s tape was not as dire as it was with
Ibsen. He was a lover of a land of steep that is decades old, originally recorded, I later supposed “high tech” tapes like
crags, shining glaciers and unique fjords, need hardly add, with analog equipment. those of Ampex, but even the Earth’s
and he knew how to evoke them in his Indeed, these old recordings are pre- magnetic field can gradually erase high
music.
ferred to recordings of the early digital frequencies and increase the dreaded
Edvard Grieg was Norway.
era for reasons I hardly need go into.
print-through.
For our pleasure, Naim has here The HDTT recordings, however, The result is impressive. There is less
brought toget her some of Grieg’s are different from anything I’ve run sparkle than these tapes once had, but I
immortal pieces, 31 miniatures grouped across before. They are not made from was pleasantly surprised by the lack of
thus: Opus 17 (1-11, Folk Dances)`Opus original master tapes, nor are they in any noise and other artifacts. If the very high
41 (12-14, Songs); Opus 72 (15-20, Nor- way authorized. That no doubt requires quality of string tone is not as startling
wegian Peasant Dances); Opus 52 (21-23, some explanation.
today, it is no doubt because LP playback
Songs); and Opus 66 (15-20, Norwegian The stereophonic LP made its début has improved so much in the interval.
Folk Songs).
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impose themselves, one might say, into surface noise? With that in mind, such and impressive controlled energy in the
the creative verve of the distinguished record companies as RCA Victor and final Allegro con spirito. This is about as
Vanguard began recording in stereo. A good a version as you are likely to find,
composer.
Gimse lends himself flexibly to the company called Viking of Minneapolis and the fact that it sounds so good half a
demands of the music, with alternating built relatively affordable tape decks, and century later is more than just a bonus.
suavity and robustness. His playing is a small but lively new market was born.
moving, with powerful dynamics and a The quality would soon deteriorate,
as manufacturers went from two-track
rubato that is involving.
He played on a Steinway in the stereo to four track and then dropped the
Sofienberg Church in Oslo, with Ken speed by half, but those first tapes were
Christianson at the recording controls. magnificent. Even today, though they
This music goes straight to the heart, have hiss (Dolby was not yet born), they
and I recommend it.
offer natural timbres that only top-grade
LP playback can offer. I know, because I
Brahms Symphony No. 2
have a crate full of these tapes.
Munch & Boston Symph.
Now enter this company, whose
HDTT (not numbered)
name stands for “High Definition Tape
Rejskind: High-quality stereo recording Transfers.” The source is not a master
has been around for so many years that tape but a commercial two-track tape
it has become simple to go back in time release. It seems that the copyright on a Beethoven: Symphony No. 5
30 years or more, and find performances number of these performances expired Prohaska & Vienna State Opera Orch.
that are highly satisfactory both soni- and were never renewed. And so…
HDTT (not numbered)
cally and artistically. Many a classical The tapes are played on a Studer Rejskind: This is another of those
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Where
The Bach Gamut
Virgil Fox
Reference Recordings RR-107
Rejskind: I was surprised to see this
organ recording pop up in the Reference
Recordings catalog, and indeed it was
not originally recorded by “Professor”
Johnson. The original tape, analog of
course, was of a 1976 concert by the
famous organist at St. Mary’s Cathedral
in San Francisco. Johnson restored and
remixed the tape, and transferred it to
digital using HDCD processing. The
booklet warns that the sound is not up
to the company’s usual standards, but I
listened to it with full HDCD-decoding,
and its sound is amazingly good, with a
revealing image, gratifying depth, and a
bottom end that extends down to where
tsunamis begin.
Not everyone remembers Virgil
Fox, who died years ago. I do remember
him, and I can’t say I had a very good
opinion of him. In contrast to the more
nuanced European musicians, certain
American organists like Fox (and to a
lesser extent E. Power Biggs) went for
loud and impressive, or — in modern
terms — shock and awe. There were
American organ builders who catered
to their taste, using ever more powerful
pumps to obtain ever more pressure and
thus acoustic power, just as the cars of
the time were engaged in a horsepower
race to see who could boast the maximum (straight line) performance.
As I recall, Fox never apologized for
his showmanship at the console, and
in this live performance he is closer
to Liberace than to Bach. He wears a
sequined jacket that reflects the spotlights like so many stars, and after his
opening number, Bach’s Fantasy and
Fugue in G Minor, he takes the applause
and then reprises the main theme during
36 seconds!
But then why not? Styles come and
go, as we know. Large cinemas of the
pre-talkies era were outfitted with concert organs that could play louder and
deeper than any single instrument had
ever played before. They were pretty
much all dismantled, but their qualities
were later rediscovered, and many of the
old organs were pulled from crates and
refurbished. Does Virgil Fox deserve no
less?
The booklet includes a wonderfully
written tribute to Fox by Michael Alan
Fox (a relative?), who says he attended
his first Virgil Fox concert when he
was 14. You can’t read it and not want
to put the disc into your player. If you
do, you’re not likely to understand fully
what made Bach into such a landmark,
but chances are you’ll be impressed and
moved, shocked and awed.
A Un ique Classical Guitar
Collection
Stockholm Guitar Quartet, et al.
Opus 3 CD22062
Rejskind: I dropped this SACD into my
player, and the first notes were a shock. I
know these recordings. There were several
LPs for classical guitar in the early days
of the Opus 3 label, and I think I had
them all. The ones by the Stockholm
Guitar Quartet were long used in our
equipment tests. Four guitars? With
some components there was so much
confusion that you could make out just
three, if that. Besides, these wonderful
musicians would set up an irresistible
rhythm that would make those listening
sessions fly by.
There really were only three guitars
in the Stockholm Guitar Trio, of course.
Software
DVD 24/96 transfers from what were
commercially-released tapes. This one
is from Vanguard. I have never seen a
Vanguard tape, but the company began
early on to promote high fidelity, and I’m
not surprised that, like RCA Victor, it
moved to stereo when most competitors
had yet to catch on.
There are a lot of versions of this
most accessible of all of Beethoven’s
symphonies, and this one is rather better
than average. Except for some passages
in the 3rd movement when the brass plays
sharp repeatedly, this is a good orchestra,
with a particularly good string section.
The sound is very good, with a broad
stereo stage and good depth.
But I was particularly looking forward to the second work on the disc,
Haydn’s Toy Symphony, performed by
Antonio Janigro and I Solisti di Zagreb.
This wonderful small orchestra was the
crowning glory of Vanguard. I remember hearing them live and being thrilled.
When Yugoslavia broke up and there
were mortar battles in the streets of
Zagreb, I couldn’t help thinking about
these superb musicians. What is it about
humans that makes so many of us value
war more than music?
The Toy Symphony is a novelty piece,
and not truly a symphony at all. In the
original version there were only three
conventional instruments, two violins
and a bass (it has been considerably augmented here), plus a lot of noisemakers:
rattles, cuckoos, a toy trumpet, a whistle,
and those little gadgets you fill with
water to do bird calls. Children would
love it, I imagine.
In all probability it is not by Joseph
Haydn at all, but by his brother Michael,
or by Leopold Mozart, who was Michael
Haydn’s employer. Whatever, it’s great
fun.
This orchestra has of course done
more solid fare, such as the Rossini
Sonatas for Strings, but you can gauge
their superb musicianship in this piece
too. Few contemporary orchestras can,
as did these soloists, play as if they were
just one.
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Guitarist Peder Riis was all by himself,
but he sure held your attention. Duodecima (two guitars) also has one piece
on this collection.
The music is eclectic, much of it
by Bach (who loved to play his own
keyboard works on guitar), Brahms,
Debussy and Granados. There is a
Fantasie by Fernando Sor, whom music
books used to refer to as “the Beethoven
of the guitar,” and by Swedish composer
Wilhelm Peterson-Berger. All are a
delight.
These recordings were made the
same way: Jan-Eric Persson would put
his musicians in a good setting, take the
time to put his Blumlein stereo microphone pair in exactly the right place, and
hit the record button.
This new SACD is a wonder.
M•A on SA
Various artists
M•A MAonSA
Lessard: Would you like to listen to
three hours of good music without
worrying about changing the recording? That possibility gave an idea to the
producers of M•A. It could be done. It
began as a game, but took a serious turn,
and became reality. I shall say no more. If
you have the excellent idea of buying this
album, you’ll have access to this fantasy,
and you’ll discover how it’s done.
In the meantime here is some pertinent information. First of all, it’s possible
to put some 108 minutes of two-channel
DSD-encoded audio onto one layer of a
Super Audio CD. You can also put the
usual 74 minutes onto a Red Book CD
layer. Usually the music on the two is
identical, but what if it weren’t?
This recording is a curiosity…for the
moment. I would suspect the idea would
spread, if of course all music lovers have
the right player, one that can play both
layers. And they know how.
Which brings me to some philosophical musings. Imagine that, for
the purposes of providing a musical
background during a party or a dinner,
you could put on three hours of music
without changing the recording. It's
tempting, but you know what they say
about temptations. In an era when we are
in a panic over an explosion of obesity,
can we compensate our laziness with
some other form of exercise?
While we await the answer, let's benefit from the advantage of this doublelayered disc. It contains some excellent
music by high class performers, recorded
in masterly fashion. The producers have
neglected nothing to pull you in. Let
me mention a few tracks, chosen pretty
much randomly (I had no choice, because
every track holds a treasure).
From the CD layer:
The Prelude from the Partita in E
Minor from the second volume of Bach’s
music for lute, played by lutenist Eduardo Eguez.
Voglio di vita Uscir, a madrigal sung
by a truly terrific baritone.
The Allemande grave from the Suite
F. Ut fa dièz, or Le Ton de la Chèvre.
Another Prelude, this one in E Flat
Major, from the first book of Bach’s
music for lute.
From the SACD layer:
Capt ivat ing over and above all
expression, the voice of Sylvia Pérez
Cruz in a song titled Gitana.
Quien te amaba ya se va from Tonos
y Tonados, sung by a marvellous feminine voice accompanied by a gorgeous
group.
From a suite in A Minor Tombeau
pour Mr. De S.te Colombe, a fine bass viol
performance by Andrea De Carlo.
Tarrego’s variations on Paganini’s
Carnaval de Venise, performed by a subline guitarist, Gzegorz Krawicz.
A tender Berceuse by Chopin, by
Rumanian pianist Gabrielle Kafer.
I applaude the producers’ eclectic
tastes. Try listening for three hours
to the same one or two musicians, and
even the hardiest music lover may have
more than enough. Here, with such a
variety of styles, instruments, artists
and compositions, it’s impossible to be
weary. Note that the influences range
from Arab countries to Eastern Europe
to the Mediterranean.
Hot Club of 52nd Street
Pizzarelli, Frigo, Moore, Alden
Chesky JD271
Lessard: I don’t think I’m being too bold
in saying that nearly all jazz fans have
some familiarity with the first jazz group
ever to use “hot club” in its name. That
was of course Le Hot Club de France in
Paris, which included the top musicians
of Swing and Gypsy music of the time:
the brilliant violinist Stéphane Grapelli,
who contributed in a major way to getting the violin accepted in jazz circles,
and Django Reinhardt, Roma jazzman,
sublime guitarist and composer. Of him
the immortal French surrealist poet
Jean Cocteau, said, “He is a guitar with
a human voice.”
So totally complementar y were
All We Need to Know
Margie Gibson
Gibson Girl Music (not numbered)
Rejskind: Have we really been waiting 13
years for Margie Gibson’s second recording? I first heard her sing live in Chicago
in 1993, and I was stunned. I was all the
more astonished to discover that she was
even better on disc (it’s usually the other
way around). Gibson then lived in L.A.
and was discovered by the celebrated
audiophile label Sheffield. The reviews of
Say It With Music, her anthology of songs
by Irving Berlin, were warm (certainly
mine was), and Sheffield announced
plans to do a second disc, with Gibson
this time singing Gershwin.
A nd t hen t he roof fel l i n on
Sheffield.
Gibson is back in her native Chicago,
now where she sings in clubs and concert halls. She also works as an actress,
which should come as no surprise — you
can’t listen to two of her songs without
realizing that she has natural acting
talent. With advice from Doug Sax,
who engineered her first recording, she
produced the new one herself, and got
the CD mastered by Sax.
All these years later, Gibson’s voice
is a little deeper, but her tone still has a
beauty that makes you shiver, and her
prodigious control of pitch and nuance
has suffered not the slightest wear.
She understands how to do a song. On
her first album she reinvented all the
familiar Berlin songs, not as though she
were bored with their familiarity, but as
though she were discovering them for
the first time. It’s the same story here.
She is a lot more eclectic this time,
but four of the songs are especially
familiar.
Leon Russell’s A Song for You was a hit
for Karen Carpenter years ago. Gibson
gives it a more intimate mood: the star
who has sung before 10,000 people,
now singing just for the man she loves.
Goosebumps!
Columbus was wonderfully done a few
years back by Irish singer Mary Black.
Gibson doesn’t quite copy her, but the
style is not dissimilar. This song, about
the urge to flee when the going gets
tough, is a marvel, and it was probably
Black’s best song.
Gibson’s version of Sting’s antiwar
and antiviolence 1987 song Fragile is one
of the showstoppers on this recording,
dripping with understated emotion,
backed by a wonderful sax solo by Jim
Gailloreto.
I was surprised to see her include
Paul Simon’s El Condor Pasa, which has
been done by too many other singers
and musicians. Gibson gives it a totally
different twist, pushing it all the way
over into swing jazz.
There are two of Gibson’s own songs
on the album, including the title song,
and Such a Disappointment. Both require
attentive listening, and I recommend
them both. The first is a song of a mother
for her child, and its a heartbreaker. All
We Need to Know is a love song that draws
you in.
Gibson’s original CD has long been
used in our equipment tests because it is
so well recorded, and so revealing, and
besides we never get tired of hearing it.
This new recording has already been
used in our tests, and it will be again.
The sound? Well, I figure Doug Sax
gave her pretty good advice.
You know what, Margie? I’d still love
to hear you record that Gershwin album
you were going to do for Sheffield. You
were born to sing him.
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Reinhardt and Grapelli that they formed
what I would call a community. When
they were separated, it was by the War,
and by Reinhardt’s death in 1953. He will
never be forgotten. Grapelli continued
his brilliant career until his death only
a few years ago.
It is not by chance that we can hear on
this wonderful Chesky CD, the prodigious acoustic guitar of Bucky Pizzarelli,
who was well into his 80’s when it was
made (he died in January 2006). Neither
is it by chance that the recording features
another no less admirable musician of
the same age group, Johnny Frigo and
his enchanted violin. Nor do I want to
ignore the immense contribution of
bassist Michael Moore, one of the best of
all accompanists of small groups, and the
other famous guitarist, Howard Alden,
another star, who distills his notes with
exceptional virtuosity. These brilliant
musicians seemed to the producers to
be the ones most apt to recall the sound
of the original Hot Club (which began
in 1931 as a string quartet). Expect a
phenomenal performance, and you won’t
be disappointed. The nine tracks are
filled with verve, sensitivity, passion, and
rhythms that are lively and contagious.
I listened again with considerable
emotion yo such familiar airs as On the
Sunny Side of the Street, Nuages and Strike
Up the Band, as well as a more lyrical and
so moving Melancholy Baby. This is, in
short, a most pleasant entertainment.
At the console is the reputed, excellent engineer Barry Wolifson. But then
our readers know that Chesky recordings are always flawless.
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 77 Gossip&News
Radio Shack’s Long Road Back
The site is at radioshackisback.ca, and
when we went back for another look in
November, we smiled when we saw the
proclamation that “Change is good.”
Well, getting driven out of Canada by
Circuit City is certainly a change, and
on the evidence it’s been very good…for
Circuit City.
Note the link at left pointing to
“future plans.” Go there, and Radio
Shack will proudly tell you that “July 1st
2005 was a great day for Radio Shack.”
Hey, wasn’t that the day they went from
950 stores across Canada to zero stores?
How could it get any better?
Here’s the story. Radio Shack itself
hadn’t operated in Canada since 1986.
Instead, it had licensed its name and
goodwill to a company called InterTan,
which ran Radio Shack with great success for more than 30 years. But a couple
of years ago, InterTan was purchased by
Circuit City, which saw the acquisition
as a way to go up against Best Buy (which
was already in Canada) and its subsidiary,
Future Shop. Radio Shack was upset,
since Circuit City is a competitor in the
US, and in a show of brilliant business
acumen, terminated InterTan and every
single blessed one of its Canadian stores.
That’ll show ’em!
Not skipping a beat, InterTan took
down the Radio Shack signs from its
corporate and affiliated stores, and put
up new signs, The Source by Circuit
City. We don’t know how they’re doing,
but the stores are loaded with interesting
gadgets, which is more than we can say
for Radio Shack’s US stores.
Immediately, Radio Shack launched
the site whose home page you see above,
proclaiming that July 1st, etc. But Radio
Shack wasn’t back. Despite invitations,
100% of the dealers stayed with InterTan
and Circuit City.
Arguably Radio Shack Canada is
back, sort of. It now lists nine stores,
fewer than 1% of what it once had, all
of them around Edmonton, Calgary and
Toronto, plus a few affiliated dealers in small towns.
In the meantime, things haven’t been
going swimmingly for the mother ship
either.
Last February Radio Shack CEO
David Edmondson resigned when it was
discovered he had fudged his résumé (he
claimed to have degrees in both psychol-
ogy and theology, neither of which was
true). It didn’t help that had just been
arrested for drunk driving.
He was replaced by Claire Babrowski,
late of McDonald's, and she in turn
was replaced by Julian Day, who was
recruited from KMart.
Is change good? In the fourth quarter
of last year, earnings had fallen 62%,
in part because an ill-advised switch
in wireless providers led to an inventory write-down. The news sent the
company's shares to an almost three-year
low, just above junk status.
But let no one say that Radio Shack
is not clued in to the age of high tech.
In August, to save money that was growing increasingly scarce, Day fired 400
employees. He did it by e-mail!
A spokeswoman for Radio Shack
admitted ruefully that, “we realize that,
to some people, notification by e-mail
may seem cold and impersonal.”
Apologies,
Circuit City
When this incredible mess began,
we thought that interTan, under its new
owners, was headed for the rocks. It
hasn’t happened, and we apologize for
our pessimism.
W hat would happen once The
Source lost access to brands like Archer
and Realistic? Truth to tell, Radio Shack
no longer has those brands either. The
Source has bulked up on NexxTech and
Centrios, not to mention name brands
like Toshiba, Sony, Panasonic, Fuji and
lots more. Unlike Radio Shack, which
sold for slightly more than anyone else,
The Source competes.
And, despite what we expected, it still
carries all those little electronic parts
we would go and get when we needed
something.
Klipsch Gobbles Sues Web Dealers
There are dealer networks, and then
there’s the Internet. They coexist with
some difficulty.
When you consider goods above
the level of the mass market, a strong
network of dealers is important. That
is especially true of high end hi-fi,
where demonstrations are of no small
importance.
Now enter the Internet. A customer
can get a demo from a local authorized
dealer, and then trawl the Internet,
where unauthorized dealers offer them
the same goods for less money. Are these
companies parasites?
Klipsch, one of the original hi-fi
speaker builders, calls them unscrupulous, corrupt free-riders, and it is suing
three of the Internet dealers.
You might wonder what the grounds
can be. We recall Seiko years ago suing
a Canadian discounter for selling Seiko
watches even though it wasn’t a Seiko
authorized dealer. The claim: the discounter was infringing on Seiko’s trademarks and using Seiko’s copyrighted
materials.
Seiko lost that suit, by the way, but
that was in Canada, and anyway a lot
has changed since those days. A number
of high end audio manufacturers and
distributors hopes Klipsch wins. We
were, however, amused to find, on the
company site, a reference to the “Klipsch
eBay store,” which offers some products
“direct from Klipsch.”
In the meantime Klipsch made news
for a very different reason: it gobbled up
Canada’s largest loudspeaker company,
Audio Products International. API is
best known for its two major brands,
Energy and Mirage, as well as Athena
and Spherex.
Klipsch says it will maintain the
brands, which of course have a strong
market presence. We don’t know what
will happen to the plant in Scarborough.
Many API speakers are assembled in
China, now, and this worldwide trend
is not about to reverse.
The UHF Reference Systems
Equipment reviews are done on at least one of
UHF’s reference systems, selected as working
tools. They are changed infrequently.
Main digital player: Linn Unidisk 1.1
Additional CD player: CEC TL-51X
belt-driven transport, Counterpoint DA10A converter with HDCD card.
Digital cable: Atlas Opus 1.5m
Digital portable: Apple iPod 60 Gb
Turntable: Audiomeca J-1
Tone arm: Audiomeca SL-5
Pickup: Goldring Excel
Phono preamp: Audiomat Phono-1.5
Preamplifier: Copland CTA-305
Power amplifier: Simaudio Moon
W-5LE)
Loudspeakers: Living Voice Avatar
OBX-R
Interconnects: Pierre Gabriel ML-1,
Atlas Voyager All-Cu
Loudspeaker cables: Actinote LB/Eclipse
III
Power cords: Gutwire, Wireworld
The Omega system
It serves for reviews of gear that cannot
easily fit into the Alpha system, with its small
room.
Digital players: shared with the Alpha
system
Turntable: Linn LP12/Lingo II
Tone arm: Alphason HR-100S MCS
Pickup: Goldring Excel
Phono preamp: Audiomat Phono-1.5
Preamplifier: Simaudio Moon P-8 (on
trial), Copland CTA-305
Power amplifier: Simaudio Moon W-8
Loudspeakers: Reference 3a Suprema II
Interconnects: Pierre Gabriel ML-1,
Atlas Navigator All-Cu
Loudspeaker cables: Pierre Gabriel ML1 for most of the range, Wireworld Polaris
for the twin subwoofers.
Power cords: GutWire, Aurora
AC filters: GutWire MaxCon Squared,
Foundation Research LC-1
Acoustics: Gershman Acoustic Art panels
The Kappa system
This is our home theatre system. As with
the original Alpha system, we had limited
space, and that pretty much ruled out huge
projectors and two-metre screens. We did,
however, finally come up with a system whose
performance gladdens both eye and ear, with
the needed resolution for reviews.
HDTV monitor: Hitachi 43UWX10B
CRT-based rear projector
DVD player: Simaudio Moon Stellar with
Faroudja Stingray video processor
Preamplifier/processor: Simaudio Moon
Attraction, 5.1 channel version
Power amplifiers: Simaudio Moon W-3
(main speakers), Celeste 4070se (centre
speaker), Robertson 4010 (rear)
Main speakers: Energy Reference
Connoisseur
Centre speaker: Thiel MCS1, on UHF’s
own TV-top platform
Rear speakers: Elipson 1400
Subwoofer: 3a Design Acoustics
Cables: Van den Hul, MIT, GutWire,
Wireworld
Line filter: GutWire MaxCon Squared
All three systems have dedicated power
lines, with Hubbell hospital grade outlets.
Extensions and power bars are equipped with
hospital-grade connectors.
Gossip&News
The Alpha system
Our original reference is in a room with
extraordinary acoustics, originally a recording
studio. It allows us to hear what we couldn’t
hear elsewhere.
AC filters: Foundation Research LC-2
(power amp), Inouye SPLC.
SED Displays delayed?
Well, we always took the 2007 release
dency to slip. Too bad, because SED’s
date with a grain of salt anyway. When
real competitive edge is not price but
Canon first developed this completely
quality.
new HDTV display, it said it would be
The SED screen, you may recall, is
ready for prime time in 2010. But then
a cathode ray tube, with all the CRT
it formed a company called SED Inc. in
advantages, such as stunning 100,000:1
partnership with Toshiba, and Toshiba
brightness ratio. It’s thin, because instead
said that, no, the new target date was
of having three big electron guns back
2007…and, by the way, SED would
in the neck of a picture tube, it actually
be competitive with existing HDTV
has a tiny electron gun for every pixel.
technology.
Both Canon and Toshiba were show But that’s not going to be as easy Samsung brought out the first DLP ing SED at the last CES (that’s it in our
as it was even a year ago. The prices of rear projector three years ago. The new picture), and it is every bit as stunning
s
kes perhapEven
those other technologies are in free fall. generation is about half the
price. pa
And
on the 720p display
ge. Itastaclaimed.
link on our home
a
e
se
ll
u’
Yo
.
ve
ha
Remember when it wouldyhave
cost
you
don’t get us started on liquid
crystal.
we
saw,
the
image
was vibrant, with a
s
or
sit
vi
r
ou
of
Man
you did.
ll be glisadthat
you’result
kThe
in
$14,000 to pick up a plasma
display…at
the
SED
launch
dynamic
range
and
natural colors no
th
we
d
an
,
es
ut
20 min
Costco? Now you can get one, if you’re will be delayed “by more than a year,” other display can touch.
a good shopper, for as little as $1600. supposedly until January 2008, though Come on, Canon! Come on Toshiba!
Want DLP? It was “competitive” when we know how these things have a ten- We’re ready.
i-Fi Course?
H
r
u
o
n
e
k
a
t
Have you
New Analekta Season
Feedback
Gossip&News
The twin sisters shown below are
Nadia and Annie Labrie, who make up
the duo Similia. Their first two recordings (of flute and guitar) were gorgeous,
and we’re happy to hear they’re working
on a third one. To be titled La Dolce
Vita, it will include music by Paganini,
Giuliani and other Italian composers.
It’s once a year now that the boss of
the classical label Analekta, Mario Labbé
(shown above) throws a party to show off
what he plans to do in the year ahead.
This year the most spectacular news,
perhaps, was the announcement of the
first recording in years of the Montreal
Symphony Orchestra. London/Decca
used to have them. Now it’s Analekta.
Well, for one recording anyway. The
orchestra was recorded live, along with
pianist Alain Lefèvre, playing three
rhapsodies. Two of them are by Gershwin and Rachmaninov, the third by the
late Québec composer André Mathieu.
See Record Reviews in this issue.
Singing at the launch was a superb
baritone, Jean-François Lapointe, who
will be singing song settings of the
poems of Verlaine. Also coming: jazz
pianist Lorraine Desmarais, along with
trumpetist Tiger Okoshi, a new solo
album by violinist Angèle Dubeau, and
even a CD by the young…Pavarotti!
Sharp. Really sharp
What are these people looking at?
CNET brought back this picture from
the CEATEC trade show in Japan.
They’re looking at an LCD screen, but
it’s not an ordinary HDTV.
This 64-inch (162 cm) LCD set
actually has some nine million pixels.
Just when we were getting our hopes up
that we might have a medium that can
fill up a screen with 1080 lines, along
comes Sharp’s new display with twice
as many. Yes, it has 4096 by 2160 pixels,
four times those of the set you’ve been
saving up for.
But don’t look for it as your local Best
Buy. This is essentially an industrial
product. Film producers may buy it,
and so may hospitals that need to do
very high resolution imaging. But to
give you an idea of its capability, you can
actually put four pictures across its face,
and each picture will have full HDTV
resolution!
Come on, now, you know you’ve
always wanted to watch four movies at
once.
Blu-Ray Stumbles On
r books
u
o
n
o
t
n
u
o
c
is
Ge t a d
Almarro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Antique Sound Lab . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Applause Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
ASW. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cover 2
Atlas cables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Audiophileboutique.com . . . . Cover 3
Audiophile Store. . . . . . . . . . . 57-64
Audio Space. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Audioville. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Audiyo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Aurum Acoustics . . . . . . . . . Cover 4
BIS Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Blue Circle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
CEC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31, Cover 3
Charisma Audio. . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
CPUsed. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Cyrus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Diamond Groove. . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Divergent Technologies. . . . . . . . . 71
Eichmann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Entre’acte. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Europroducts International . . . . 11, 17
Everest Audio. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Fine Audio. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Furutech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Goldring. . . . . . . . . . . . . Cover 2
Hifisupply.ca. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Home Theater Cruise . . . . . . . . . 27
Justice Audio. . . . . . . . . . . Cover 2
Just May Audio. . . . . . . . . . Cover 2
MagZee. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Marchand Electronics . . . . . . . . . 31
Moon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
muRata. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Mutine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cover 3
Planet of Sound. . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Simaudio. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Signature Audio. . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Totem Acoustic. . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
UHF Back Issues. . . . . . . . . . . . 47
UHF Books. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Gossip&News
Really, when you consider that the before the player swallows a disc and is
Blu-Ray disc has been developed by ready to read it. There’s no rush…after
the home entertainment giant that a l l, the first five minutes are upfront
dominated the last half
ads and threats from the
century, you wonder why
FBI anyway.
But it turned
the system isn’t winout t here was
ning outright.
worse. Blu-Ray
Most Blu-Ray playdiscs played on
ers have been delayed until
it didn’t look at
January, or until
all like the ones
Hell freezes over,
we’ve all seen
not necessarily
in Vegas. In fact
whichever comes
first. But Samsung did release a player, they didn’t look any better than conthe BD-P1000, which was shipped to ventional DVD’s. Hey, that’s the way to
cooperating journalists. And (we sus- impress the journos!
pect) that’s about all.
Samsung says it was a glitch caused
So…if you’re building what is essen- by a noise reduction circuit (so Blu-Ray
tially a demo piece to dazzle the fourth is noisy — who knew?), and that there
u
yofew
estate, you’re going to make it good and would be free oupgrade
discsokfor
s, ifthe
our tw original bo
of
r
he
eit
on
nt
on
ou
al
hang the cost, right?
And we
the player, as opposed
to
de
discthought who had bought
we of fer the same
ve long of fered a $5
We haand
wal. Nitow
or a rene
n
Laurel
Hardy
were
dead!
getting
for
free.
(Upgrade
discs?
Like
tio
ip
cr
6.
bs
su
ge
a
pa
th
on
d them wi
the detailsCan these things crash
derethe
. Se
t: the Book
orOn
operational
for
a ecomputer?
e Arplayer
e of ththe
Statfront,
e:
m
lu
vo
ird
th
r
oudescribed charitably as “clunky.” You too? Can Blu-Ray mean Blue Screen?)
was
might expect that in one of the $26 DVD As Oliver Hardy might have said, “a
players at Wal-Mart, but the BD-P1000 fine mess you’ve gotten us into.” Fortuis supposed to be a premium product: the nately for the Blu-Ray crowd, though,
four digits in the model name seem to the HD DVD side is having troubles of
refer to the price in US dollars.
its own.
But hey, so what if it takes forever And they may be just starting.
ADVERTISERS
P
State of the Art
erhaps you’ve noticed that the
letters section of UHF has
always been mostly civilized,
with few of the ad hominem
flaming you see on Internet discussions
of audio. Well, we do get abusive letters,
but you seldom see them because they
are nearly always anonymous. Perhaps
their authors are afraid we would check
their educational credentials…meow,
meow!
No subject draws more flames than
reviews of cables. Yes, we review several
cables in this very issue, and somebody,
somewhere, will start up again: no blind
test has ever shown an audible difference
between expensive cables and ordinary
wire.
True? Uh uh.
It’s a fact that most high end publications don’t bother with the complexities
of blind tests, ones in which the reviewers don’t know what they are listening to.
But some do, and UHF has often used
blind testing where that was practical.
That was the case in the latest batch of
cable evaluations. There was little difficulty in spotting differences among
high end cables. Of course, none of the
militant pseudo-engineers who populate
Internet discussion groups are likely to
cite our tests.
The tests they typically do cite are
real enough, however. It’s true that blind
tests really have indicated that, under
certain test conditions, subjects could
not reliably distinguish between high
end cables and hardware store wire.
Similar blind tests have indicated that
they also could not distinguish differences among amplifiers and among CD
players.
At this point you’re probably smiling, but — hey — this is serious stuff.
These were double blind tests, so called
because not only did the evaluators not
know what they were listening to, but the
experimenter didn’t know either. This is
the level of evaluation used for prescription drugs, and we know how well that
always turns out. Can we account for
the discrepancy between those tests and
tests such as ours?
by Gerard Rejskind
There are several ways a blind test
can go wrong.
For a listener to identify significant
qualitative differences between two
products, one of the products needs
to sound good (duh!). If both of them
sound poor and musically unsatisfying,
it will be difficult to find a significant
difference, because there isn’t one. Note
that the double blind aficionados often
use that as a criterion: they don’t ask
whether one product sounds better than the
other, but whether it is possible to tell them
apart. The tester’s core beliefs may be
self-defeating. If you believe that CD
players and amplifiers sound alike, what
are the chances that your test system will
be musically satisfying?
(One might reply that this is all right,
because double blind tests have proved
amps and players sound alike. Sure, but
if you didn’t use a good system in the
first place, was that blind test valid? Extra
points for spotting the logical flaw.)
Then there’s the possibility that some
blind tests will be contaminated by the
procedure itself. The easiest way to do
a double blind test is to use a compara-
STATE OF THE ART:
THE BOOK
Get the 258-page book
containing the State of the Art
columns from the first 60 issues
of UHF, with all-new introductions.
See page 6.
tor switchbox like the ones found in big
box stores. I would say that those are
not transparent and therefore invalidate
the test. The testers would reply that the
switchboxes are transparent, because
double blind tests have proved it. Extra
points for spotting the…
There is one more problem. Fans
of double blind tests almost universally
believe that auditory memory is short
(this is an article of faith, not borne
out by my experience, nor yours I’ll
bet). They therefore feel compelled to
use very short snippets of music in the
comparisons. Trouble is, it is laughably
easy to use this sort of test to make very
different sounds seem similar. You may
recall a comparison in our pages some
years ago, in which we did a blind A-B
comparison of our reference system
against a cassette. No one could even
identify the moment of the switchover!
Here’s a possible explanation. You
are, let us say, a fan of the music of
Chopin, and I want to set up a blind test
to determine whether Chopin is best
served by Ivan Moravec, Arthur Rubinstein or Paul Badura-Skoda. I’ll play you
a snippet of ten notes from one of them
(without telling you whose it is), then the
same notes by the second pianist and the
same again by the third. I will then ask
you to tell me which pianist is better. Or
even to tell me which is which.
An absurd example? Not at all. You’ll
get a much better feel for the approach
of each pianist by listening to the
entire Scherzo No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, for
instance, and then listening to the same
complete piece by the other two pianists.
One thing you’ll discover, if you didn’t
know it already, is that auditory memory
isn’t short at all.
I will concede a point often made by
the blind test crowd, that claims by cable
manufacturers are (often) like those for
snake oil. So welcome to the world of
commerce. And while you’re at it, check
out the claims for expensive “sports utility” vehicles. What sport are we talking
about, here?
Snake oil, sure, but not all cars drive
alike.
Broadcast Canada
publisher of UHF
invites you to its other online boutique
that offers luxury audio electronics of unique value at unique prices.
The legendary Van den Hul amplifiers and preamps at less than half the original price
The international version of an acclaimed tube headphone amplifier. Come and see!
www.audiophileboutique.com
audiophileboutique.com
a division of Broadcast Canada
Box 65085, Place Longueuil,
Longueuil, QC, Canada J4K 5J4
(450) 651-5720
contact@audiophileboutique.com

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