Stereophile february 2017

SPECIAL ISSUE

60

AUDIOPHILE-QUALITY RECORDINGS RECOMMENDED

STEREOPHILE VOL.40 NO.2

ONLINE AUTHORITY: WWW.STEREOPHILE.COM

THE SUPER-SOUNDING S5 MK.II LOUDSPEAKER

MAGICO MAGIC IN REVIEW GOLD NOTE TUSCANY

FEBRUARY 2017

GOLD LOW-OUTPUT DIGITAL AUDIO MOVING-COIL CARTRIDGE FROM AR, EAR, k P.24 PS AUDIO, SCHIIT ANALOG AUDIO MI,, FROM AUDIO ORIGAM GOLD NOTE, REGA AUDIO AMPLIFICATION FROM BOULDER, DAN D’AGOSTINO SPECIAL FEATURE THE SHAPE OF HEADPHONES TO COME k FEBRUARY 2017

10 years of pedigree in integrated amplifiers a solid foundation

In 2007 we introduced the SS-010 and SS-101 - both exceptionally well reviewed and rewarded.

While SS-010 was replaced by SIA-025 - the SS-101 has been in production for 10 straight years.

In 2010 we introduced the RI-100 and SIA-025 - both exceptionally well reviewed and rewarded and still in production to this date - both have 7 years of being our best selling products.

vitusaudio.com

AS WE SEE IT

THERE ARE AS MANY OPINIONS AS THERE ARE EXPERTS

BY JOHN ATKINSON THIS ISSUE :

High-performance audio products are getting increasingly expensive.

The Price Event Horizon

L

est level will also, in effect, cease to exist, as far as readers of ast July and September I made two loudspeakerthis magazine are concerned. related road trips: first to Rockport Technologies, I make no moral judgment here. I discussed the everin Maine, to audition their new Lyra; and then to high-end dealer-distributor GTT Audio, in deepest, increasing prices of the highest-performance audio comdarkest New Jersey, to audition YG Acoustics’ new Sonja ponents in “The Upward Price Spiral,” my April 2011 “As XV. Both speakers offer innovative, proprietary drive-units We See It.”3 As I said in that essay, if an audio manufacturer and heroic audio engineering, especially regarding their enhas to gross a certain amount of revenue each quarter to meet payroll, cover fixed expenses, invest in parts for the closures, which are constructed from aluminum. Both expenext quarter’s production, and pay the interest on any capital riences took place in superbly well-designed and optimized they’ve borrowed, the least risky business strategy is to bring listening rooms with front-end and amplification compoto market a very small number of very expensive products. nents that were beyond reproach. The sound quality offered by the Rockport and YGA speakers was simply superb, both But, as I said in a talk I gave at the late Brooks Berdan’s store, in Monrovia, California, also in 2011, if all someone stepping entirely out of the way to offer maximum comis offered is a $150,000 pair of speakers—let alone speakers munion with the music. priced at a quarter-million bucks—that person will walk But . . . Rockport’s enclosure-within-an-enclosure Avior away from this hobby, or build his or her system by buying costs $149,500/pair, and YGA’s four-enclosure Sonja XV only used equipment. Either consumer costs $266,000/system! choice turns the price spiral into a On the drive home from GTT, I thought long Either consumer death spiral for manufacturers. and hard about the implications of these prices.

Where is the boundary? At what Yes, we have reviewed speakers that cost more choice turns the price does a high-end product cease to than the Rockport Aviors—Wilson Audio Speprice spiral into exist for the “normal” audiophile? In cialties’ Alexandria XLF, which Michael Fremer 1 a death spiral for the November 2016 issue, Art Dudley reviewed in January 2013 (and subsequently said of the Auditorium 23 Hompurchased) currently retail for $210,000/pair— manufacturers. and at the times of my visits, both Rockport and mage Cinema speaker, which uses YGA had full order books for their new models. re-creations of classic Western Electric But I couldn’t help wondering what relevance such speakhorn-loaded drive-units and costs $55,490/pair with its field-coil power supply, that, “given the work and materials ers—one costing more than a quarter of a million dollars— that have gone into the Cinema, the price seems fair.” In have for readers of Stereophile. this issue, Michael Fremer reviews a Boulder amplifier that I’ve written before that while I worked full-time as a costs $99,000/pair, and even my frugal self waxes rhapsodimusician before taking my first magazine job four decades ago, my formal education was in the sciences. I try to keep cally about a pair of Magico speakers priced at $42,750/pair up with what’s happening in that world, particularly in phys- in the high-gloss finish featured on our cover. Heck, in the December 2016 issue, I nominated, as my Editors’ Choice ics.2 And while I’d always accepted as logical the fact that the post–Big Bang universe is expanding, I’d also accepted as of 2016, Vandersteen Audio’s Model Seven Mk.II speaklogical that the gravitational force produced by all the matter ers ($114,000/pair with dedicated M7-HPA monoblock in the universe would cause the rate of that expansion to amplifiers)! On the other hand, Wilson Audio’s Sabrina slow. It came as a shock, therefore, to learn, in 2011, that the loudspeaker, which costs a much more affordable $15,900/ universe’s rate of expansion is accelerating. It’s not just that the pair, was our Loudspeaker of 2016, our Overall Component farther away anything is from us, the faster it is receding, but of 2016, and the Editors’ Choices of two of our Contributing that the faster it moves away, the more its velocity increases.

Editors (Audio).4 Physicists have postulated that this is due to something they All I can say is that Stereophile will continue to cover as call Dark Energy—but giving an unknown a name doesn’t broad a spectrum of audio products at all price levels as posexplain how it does it, or what it means. sible. As we always have done. Q What do these cosmological musings have to do with On May 1, 2017, John Atkinson (Jatkinson@enthusiastnetwork. audio? com) will have been Stereophile’s editor-in-chief for 31 years.

Think about it. In an increasingly expanding universe, 1 See www.stereophile.com/content/wilson-audio-specialties-alexandria-xlfthere will come a point when a distant galaxy’s speed of loudspeaker. recession from us equals the speed of light. From that point 2 To this end, I enthusiastically recommend Hidden in Plain Sight, the series of on, light from that galaxy will therefore never reach us, and inexpensive e-books by British physics professor Andrew Thomas, available on that galaxy will, to all intents and purposes, cease to exist for Amazon. With a minimum of math, Thomas brings clarity and comprehension to modern physics. us, just as we will cease to exist for it. Similarly, if the prices 3 See www.stereophile.com/content/upward-price-spiral. of cost-no-object audio components are not merely increasing, but growing at faster and faster rates, those at the high4 See www.stereophile.com/content/stereophiles-products-2016. stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

3

SWISS INNOVATION SINCE 1951 Contact us at (800) 813-1663 • rene.laflamme@nagraaudio.com US dealers: The Audio Salon, Santa Monica CA | Audio Salon, Miami FL | David Lewis Audio, Philadelphia PA | EarsNova, New York NY David Michael Audio, Detroit MI | Don Better Audio, Cleveland OH | Goodwin’s High End, Boston MA | JS Audio, Washington DC Musical Artisans, Chicago IL | Music Lovers, San Francisco CA | Ne Plus Ultra, Austin TX | Arizona Hi-Fi, Phoenix AZ Canada dealers: Audio Eden, Toronto ON | Element Acoustics, Vancouver BC | Filtronique, Montreal QC

FEBRUARY

2017

Vol.40 No.2

p.124 p.93

p.82

p.55

FEATURES 45

Of Headphones to Come

Thoughts from InnerFidelity’s Tyll Hertsens on what cans can and can’t do.

55

115

EQUIPMENT REPORTS

Schiit Audio Yggdrasil D/A processor

by Herb Reichert

124

Boulder Amplifiers 2150 monoblock power amplifier

by Michael Fremer

Records2Die4

With 2016 being a year of unprecedented death in the world of music, we’ve nicknamed this year’s edition of our beloved “Records To Die For” feature “The Records That Make Life Worth Living.” As a celebration of a life in music, then, welcome to our annual R2D4 extravaganza, in which the entire Stereophile writing staff chooses records that they can’t live without. Be prepared for a few surprises!

82

p.115

p.105

FOLLOW-UP 132

Acoustic Research AR-M2 hi-rez portable player

by John Atkinson

132

PS Audio DirectStream D/A processor (Torreys Upgrade)

by John Atkinson

Magico S5 Mk.II loudspeaker

by John Atkinson

93

NEAT Acoustics Iota Alpha loudspeaker

by Ken Micallef

105 EAR Acute Classic CD player-D/A processor

by Art Dudley

SEE OUR EXCLUSIVE EQUIPMENT REPORT ARCHIVE AT WWW.STEREOPHILE.COM stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

Stereophile (USPS #734-970 ISSN: 0585-2544) Vol.40 No.2, February 2017, Issue Number 445. Copyright © 2017 by TEN: The Enthusiast Network Magazines, LLC. All rights reserved. Published monthly by TEN: The Enthusiast Network, LLC., 261 Madison Ave., 6th Floor, New York, NY 10016-2303. Periodicals Postage paid at New York, NY and additional mailing offices. Subscription rates for one year (12 issues) U.S., APO, FPO, and U.S. Possessions $19.94, Canada $31.94, Foreign orders add $24 (including surface mail postage). Payment in advance, U.S. funds only.

POSTMASTER: Send all UAA to CFS. (See DMM 707.4.12.5); NON-POSTAL AND MILITARY Facilities: send address corrections to Stereophile, P.O. Box 420235, Palm Coast, FL 32142-0235. Mailing Lists: From time to time we make our subscriber list available to companies that sell goods and services by mail that we believe would be of interest to our readers. If you would rather not receive such mailings, please send your current mailing label, or an exact copy, to: Stereophile, Mail Preference Service, P.O. Box 420235, Palm Coast, FL 32142-0235. Subscription Service: Should you wish to change your address, or order new subscriptions, you can do so by writing to the same address. Printed in the USA.

5

TM

SONJA XV 15 Year Anniversary eXtreme Version

4 elegant towers consisting of 12 interlocked modules 8 proprietary, breakthrough technologies including the revolutionary BilletDome™ tweeter XOWUD VWLij GULYHUV DOO &1& PDFKLQHG LQ KRXVH 6,000 meticulously assembled precision-parts 10 liters (600 cubic inches) of pistonic air movement KRXUV RI LQ KRXVH &1& PDFKLQH ZRUN 1.3 tons shipping weight

www.yg-acoustics.com +1-970-367-6077

FEBRUARY

2017

Vol.40 No.2

p.132

p.21 p.29 p.37 p.132

p.21

3 As We See It

CD, LP, and Blu-ray to celebrate the 40th anniversary of this epic event in rock history.

High-performance audio products are getting increasingly expensive, ponders John Atkinson.

11 Letters Readers remember John Bedini and comment on MQA, the Grateful Dead, and why Stereophile is or is not worth reading.

G YOUR ET ON VISIT THSOAPBOX! AT WWWE FORUMS .STEREO PHILE.CO M

15 Industry Update High-end audio news, including the shows and dealer-sponsored events taking place in February and March 2017, plus violinist Ida Levin remembered, a report from the Polish audio show, and changes at Wilson Audio.

Want to know more? Go to the “News Desk” at www.stereophile.com for up-to-the-minute info.

21 Analog Corner Michael Fremer drives vinyl deniers crazy with reviews of Dan D’Agostino’s Momentum Phonostage and Gold Note’s Tuscany Gold MC cartridge.

29 Listening Art Dudley reviews Audio Origami’s UniArm unipivot tonearm and the Little Fwend tonearm lifter.

133 Manufacturers’ Comments Magico, NEAT Acoustics/High Fidelity Services, and EAR USA respond to our reviews of their products.

138 Aural Robert With download sales static and those of physical media sinking (excepting LPs of course), the major record labels have taken to selling what were once called bootlegs, and wow, have they uncovered some gems. Robert Baird listens to the latest live discoveries from Bob Dylan and Frank Sinatra.

INFORMATION 136 135

135 134

Audio Mart Manufacturers’ Showcase Dealers’ Showcase Advertiser Index

37 Gramophone Dreams Herb Reichert auditions the new version of Rega’s classic Planar 3 turntable.

p.131

131 Record Reviews For February’s “Recording of the Month,” we’ve chosen The Last Waltz, the 1976 farewell concert from The Band, which is both a great film and a great live album. Both have now been reissued on stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

Follow Stereophile on Facebook: www.facebook.com/stereophilemag.

7

Hear it all, without hearing all about it.

EDITOR JOHN ATKINSON MUSIC EDITOR ROBERT BAIRD DEPUTY EDITOR ART DUDLEY SENIOR CONTRIBUTING EDITORS MICHAEL FREMER, MICHAEL LAVORGNA, KALMAN RUBINSON WEB PRODUCER JON IVERSON EDITORIAL COORDINATOR JANA DAGDAGAN FOUNDER J. GORDON HOLT COVER PHOTO ERIC SWANSON ART DIRECTOR JEREMY MOYLER MANAGING EDITOR RUSTY KURTZ

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS (AUDIO)

JIM AUSTIN, BRIAN DAMKROGER, ROBERT DEUTSCH, LARRY GREENHILL, JON IVERSON, FRED KAPLAN, DAVID LANDER, ERICK LICHTE, SASHA MATSON, PAUL MESSENGER, KEN MICALLEF, THOMAS J. NORTON, HERB REICHERT, JASON VICTOR SERINUS

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS (MUSIC) DAVID ADLER, LARRY BIRNBAUM, THOMAS CONRAD, RICHARD LEHNERT, ROBERT LEVINE, FRED MILLS, DAVID SOKOL, JOHN SWENSON

ADVERTISING

GENERAL MANAGER KEITH PRAY (212) 915-4157, KPRAY@ENTHUSIASTNETWORK.COM ADVERTISING MANAGER ED DIBENEDETTO (212) 915-4153, EDIBENEDETTO@ENTHUSIASTNETWORK.COM ADVERTISING MANAGER MARK ALING, MAC MEDIA SOLUTIONS. CENTRAL & WEST COAST MANUFACTURERS, NATIONAL RETAILERS, CLASSIFIEDS (289) 828-6894 EMAILING.MARK@GMAIL.COM SALES COORDINATOR ROSEMARIE TORCIVIA (212) 915-4160, RTORCIVIA@ENTHUSIASTNETWORK.COM ADVERTISING OPERATIONS MANAGER MONICA HERNANDEZ ADVERTISING COORDINATOR LORRAINE MCCRAW DIGITAL INQUIRIES KEITH PRAY, KPRAY@ENTHUSIASTNETWORK.COM MUSIC MANAGER ILKO NECHEV (212) 490-2079, ILKO@MITCHELLADGROUP.COM

MANUFACTURING OPERATIONS

VP, MANUFACTURING OPERATIONS GREG PARNELL ARCHIVIST THOMAS VOEHRINGER

ENTERTAINMENT GROUP MANAGEMENT PRODUCTION DIRECTOR KASEY KELLEY VP, FINANCE, SPORTS & ENTERTAINMENT GROUP MATT CUNNINGHAM DIGITAL GROUP DIGITAL DIRECTOR, ENGINEERING JEFF KIMMEL SENIOR PRODUCT MANAGER MARC BARTELL DIGITAL CONTENT STRATEGIES MANAGER KRISTOPHER HEINEMAN

FEBRUARY 2017

TEN: THE ENTHUSIAST NETWORK, LLC CHAIRMAN PETER ENGLEHART CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER SCOTT P. DICKEY CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER BILL SUTMAN PRESIDENT, AUTOMOTIVE SCOTT BAILEY EVP/GM, SPORTS & ENTERTAINMENT NORB GARRETT CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER JONATHAN ANASTAS CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER ERIC SCHWAB GENERAL MANAGER, VIDEO PROGRAMMING BOBBY AKIN MANAGING DIRECTOR, STUDIO TEN JERRY SOLOMON EVP, OPERATIONS KEVIN MULLAN SVP, EDITORIAL & ADVERTISING OPERATIONS AMY DIAMOND SVP/GM, PERFORMANCE AFTERMARKET MATT BOICE VP, FINANCIAL PLANNING MIKE CUMMINGS SVP, AUTOMOTIVE DIGITAL GEOFF DEFRANCE SVP, AFTERMARKET AUTOMOTIVE CONTENT DAVID FREIBURGER SVP, IN-MARKET AUTOMOTIVE CONTENT ED LOH SVP, DIGITAL, SPORTS & ENTERTAINMENT GREG MORROW SVP, DIGITAL ADVERTISING OPERATIONS ELISABETH MURRAY SVP, MARKETING RYAN PAYNE

CONSUMER MARKETING, ENTHUSIAST MEDIA SUBSCRIPTION COMPANY, INC. SVP, CIRCULATION TOM SLATER VP, RETENTION & OPERATIONS FULFILLMENT DONALD T. ROBINSON III

IMPORTANT STEREOPHILE TELEPHONE NUMBERS US & CANADA SUBSCRIPTIONS (800) 666-3746,

Stereophile@emailcustomerservice.com Stereophile, Box 420235, Palm Coast, FL 32142-0235 Please include name, address, and phone number on any inquiries INTERNATIONAL SUBSCRIPTIONS (386) 447-6383 EDITORIAL Tel: (212) 915-4156, Fax: (212) 915-4167 JOHN ATKINSON jatkinson@enthusiastnetwork.com ROBERT BAIRD rbaird@enthusiastnetwork.com BACK ISSUES, LPS, CDS (888) 237-0955 STEREOPHILE WEBSITE www.stereophile.com REPRINTS

For high-quality custom reprints and eprints, please contact The YGS Group at 800-290-5460 or TENreprints@theygsgroup.com SUBMISSIONS

Any submissions or contributions from readers shall be subject to and governed by TEN: The Enthusiast Network’s User Content Submission Terms and Conditions, which are posted at http://www.enthusiastnetwork.com/submissions/ BACK ISSUES

To order back issues, visit TENbackissues.com PRINTED IN THE USA. COPYRIGHT © 2017 BY TEN: THE ENTHUSIAST NETWORK MAGAZINES, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Fathom® IWS In-Wall Subwoofer Systems

CANADA POST

Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: IMEX Global Solutions, P.O. Box 25542, London, ON N6C 6B2 SUBSCRIBER LIST

Occasionally our subscriber list is made available to reputable firms offering goods and services we believe would be of interest to our readers. If you prefer to be excluded, please send your current address label and a note requesting to be excluded from these promotions to TEN: The Enthusiast Network, LLC, 831 S. Douglas St., El Segundo, CA 90245, Attn: Privacy Coordinator.

February 2017 © 2015 JL AUDIO, Inc.

Q

stereophile.com

TH E N EW

E VEN CLOSER TO PER FEC TION.

“Class A – Recommended Component” – Stereophile, April 2016 (Fathom f113v2)

Our critically-acclaimed Fathom® subwoofer formula has been fortified with 20% more amplifier power, improved drivers, a powerful DSP engine and an all-new, high-resolution Digital Automatic Room Optimization system.

The resulting performance leap is profound.

Contact your authorized JL Audio retailer for an audition, and remember that great subwoofers are best enjoyed in pairs.

© 2016 JL AUDIO, Inc. For more information on our complete line of subwoofers, please visit your local authorized dealer or www.jlaudio.com.

Authorized JL Audio Dealers do not sell via the Internet. Subwoofers pictured with grilles removed. Customers in Canada should contact GemSen Distribution: www.gemsen.com.

dynaudio.com

Close your eyes and see It’s an authoritative, three-way design. At the bottom sit two brand-new 24cm MSP woofers with varying diaphragm thickness and optimized geometry. At the top, like the jewel in the crown of every other speaker in the new Contour range, is the magnificent Esotar2 silk soft-dome tweeter. All the drivers are powered by low-mass, high-durability aluminium voice-coils.

Technical innovations abound to deliver improved mechanical stability and dispersion, and remarkably impressive sound – at any volume level.

Commanding, clear-cut, absolute.

This is Contour 60.

LETTERS

FEEDBACK TO THE EDITOR

Erratum Our apologies to readers: The “Contents” page of the December 2016 issue listed Herb Reichert’s Follow-Up reports on Audeze’s LCD-X and LCD-4 headphones and Pass Labs’ HPA-1 headphone amplifier as appearing on pp.119 and 143, respectively. In fact, Herb’s comments on these products were included in his “Gramophone Dreams,” which begins on p.41 of that issue.

—John Atkinson

Thanks for your thoughtful letter, Wolfgang.

When it comes to listening enjoyment, having too much musical choice at our disposal can be as distracting as playback distortion. Falling in love with a piece of music is a process that often occurs over time, which ain’t happening if we’re rushing to hear everything. The trick, I think, is to resist the fear of missing out on all the great music that’s out there, just waiting to be discovered at the push of a finger. —Robert Schryer

Discovering Stereophile John Bedini Editor: John Bedini died suddenly on Saturday, November 5, 2016: see www.energeticforum.com/renewable-energy/20629-endera.html. Thought you’d want to know.

—Jefferson Kolle kolle1@comcast.net Sad news. As well as making amplifiers, John Bedini made products, such as his Clarifiers that raised some audiophiles’ eyebrows but were praised by others for their positive effects on sound quality. Jonathan Scull reviewed the Bedini Ultra Clarifier for Stereophile in February 1996. —John Atkinson

Truckin’ with the Dead Editor: While traveling in northern Laos, I downloaded the December 2016 issue of Stereophile to find that Robert Schryer’s excellent “As We See It” connected nicely to my situation. Rather than with panic attacks, I’m typically stricken with an overdose of listening: terabytes of recommendations, downloads, streaming services—way too much for a single lifetime. So, when traveling, I go cold turkey, not taking along any of my own music, instead enjoying the local sounds, from cowbells to blaring pop on shaggy buses.

I grant myself one exception, though: During November, I download a daily dose of Grateful Dead from their free “30 Days” offering (www.dead. net/30daysofdead), thus building a minute collection along the way. Listening to just those few songs, I am able to grant them the attention they deserve, while I “just keep truckin’ on . . .”

Thanks for many insights over the years from your magazine.

—Wolfgang Eschner w.eschner@web.de stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

Editor: Back in the 1970s, I began subscribing to Stereo Review magazine. It had a great influence on my life. I dreamed of having a record collection like that often seen in the monthly cartoon (lots of records on shelves), and I have been blessed to see that dream come true. I still enjoy records that I bought because of the positive reviews in Stereo Review. I was quite disappointed when Stereo Review was transformed into Sound & Vision magazine in 1999. I did not care about the “vision” part at all—I didn’t even own a TV! Eventually, I quit subscribing.

A few years ago, realizing that my stereo system is antiquated and is not compatible with the new world of albums being released only in download format, I decided to subscribe again to Sound & Vision, in order to learn about current audio technology. In my first issue, I was disheartened to read that they had merged with Home Theater magazine.

NO!!!! I was quite sad to see how difficult it was to get information just on audio.

Sometime after my Sound & Vision subscription began, I got a piece of mail introducing Stereophile magazine, which I was not familiar with. Upon reading it, I discovered that it was only about audio— just what I had missed from Stereo Review!

So I subscribed to it.

Stereophile has been a joy to have ever LETTERS TO THE EDITOR should be sent

as faxes or e-mails only. Fax: (212) 9154167. E-mail: STletters@enthusiastnetwork.com. Please note: We are unable to answer requests for information about specific products or systems. If you have problems with your subscription, call (800) 666-3746, or e-mail Stereophile@palmcoastd.com, or write to Stereophile, P.O. Box 420235, Palm Coast, FL 32142-0235.

TAKE HEED! Unless marked otherwise, all letters to the magazine and its writers are assumed to be for possible publication. In the spirit of vigorous debate implied by the First Amendment, and unless we are requested not to, we publish correspondents’ e-mail addresses.

Stereophile has been a joy to have ever since the first issue. since the first issue. The first thing I noticed was that there is something to read.

The articles in Sound & Vision are so short that I feel like they barely scratch the surface, making me always want more. The articles in Stereophile are much more in depth, which I have greatly appreciated.

It is great to have actual reading material in a magazine, and the more in-depth information helps educate me more in the ways of 21st-century audio.

I really look forward to receiving Stereophile in my mailbox each month. I’m getting a good education, while it gives me the background information I need to know for replacing my current system.

Keep up the good work, and don’t succumb to the trend of making articles so short there’s not enough to read, not enough detail. Oh—also, I’ve run across some words that I’d never seen before, so you’re expanding my vocabulary, too— something else I like! —J. Lee Harshbarger jleeharshbarger@gmail.com

Abandoning Stereophile Editor: I received a postcard asking me to resubscribe. I won’t be doing it, because Stereophile has reached the bottom of the bottom of the barrel, and is chiseling through the wood. It’s become a sad perversion of “the rag” J. Gordon Holt founded.

—William Sommerwerck grizzledgeezer@comcast.net

Adopting MQA Editor: Why don’t more companies feature MQA? Is the licensing very expensive?

—Stew Margolis smargo77@yahoo.com Not as far as I know. The slowness of the format’s adoption is due to hardware manufacturers not wanting to commit until there are lots of recordings available, and record companies not wanting to commit until there is a large base of hardware owners. —John Atkinson 11

RECORDS TO DIE FOR

COLLECTION

PLAYING THE MUSIC YOU LOVE SONUS FABER PRINCIPIA COLLECTION GREAT MUSICAL PERFORMANCES FOR EVERYONE

sonusfaber.com

INDUSTRY UPDATE

AUDIO NEWS & VIEWS

US: SANTA MONICA John Atkinson

I am sad to report that, 19 years to the day after I recorded her performing Erwin Schulhoff’s Sonata for Solo Violin for the Stereophile label, Ida Levin passed away on Friday, November 18, 2016, after a lengthy battle with leukemia. She was 53. Our condolences to her family, her fellow musicians, her students, and to all who, like me, were thrilled by her playing.

At the recording session, Ida played the demanding Schulhoff Sonata with passion and fire. As the Nagra-D’s reels turned and I followed the score, I was struck by how privileged I was to be able to witness a true virtuoso in action, breathing life into the dead notes on the printed page, her violin lighting up the warmly sympathetic acoustic of Santa Fe’s Loretto Chapel to fill it with glorious sound.

Ida’s Schulhoff performance, along with her interpretations of Janácek’s Sonata for Violin and Piano and Enescu’s Sonata 3 for Violin and Piano, both with pianist Diane Walsh, appeared on our Duet CD, which was released in 1998.1 From the booklet notes: Ida Levin was born in Santa Monica, California. She began her violin studies at age three, and made her professional debut, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, at age 10. The recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and a former Levintritt Artist, Levin was invited by Rudolf Serkin to appear

POLAND: WARSAW Paul Messenger

In early November, I flew to Warsaw, Poland, for the 20th edition of the Audio Video Show (November 4–6; www.audioshow.pl), whose sponsors claim is now the second-largest audio event in Europe after the Munich show. It had been 20 years since I’d last visited Warsaw, and I was astonished at how much it has improved—modern stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

with him in a joint recital for President and Mrs. Reagan, broadcast by PBS as In Performance at the White House.

She made her Carnegie Hall debut as soloist with the American Symphony Orchestra, and appeared as soloist with the New York String Orchestra under Alexander Schneider at both Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center. Ida was a longtime participant in the Marlboro Music Festival, and in Open Chamber Music, in Cornwall, England; she was a member of the Boston Chamber Music Society, and a regular guest with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and Houston Da Camera. In her too-short life, Ida recorded for Philips, EMI, Dynamic, Music Masters, and Nonesuch, as well as for Stereophile.

In my last e-mail from Ida, in February 2016, in response to my mentioning her poor health, she responded, “Yes, I have been to hell and back this last year and a half, but, thank God, am doing much, much better and gradually resuming my normal life!” Sadly, that normal life turned out to be all too brief. You can find appreciations of Ida at www.theviolinchannel.com/ ida-levin-violinist-died-obituary/, and a short video interview from 2014 in which she discusses her love of Tchaikovsky’s string quartets at www. youtube.com/watch?v=Ka3dMTioy08.

1 Stereophile STPH012-2; see www.stereophile.com/ content/idueti-and-two-carry-your-soul-away.

cars and modern architecture have completely transformed what had been a decidedly ugly city. Though there are still signs of Soviet influence, they’re now swamped by all the new stuff.

Poland is, right now, a very busy hi-fi market. Although plenty of manufacturers from other countries were represented, especially from near neighbors Germany and Denmark, few overseas principals had made the

Those promoting audio-related seminars, shows, and meetings should e-mail the when, where, and who to JAtkinson@ enthusiastnetwork.com at least eight weeks before the month of the event. The deadline for the April 2017 issue is January 20, 2017.

SUBMISSIONS:

CALENDAR OF INDUSTRY EVENTS ATTENTION ALL AUDIO SOCIETIES:

We have a page on the Stereophile website dedicated solely to you: www.stereophile.com/audiophilesocieties. If you’d like to have your audio-society information posted on the site, e-mail Chris Vogel at info@ XLinkAudio.com.

Please note that it is inappropriate for a retailer to promote a new product line in “Calendar” unless this is associated with a seminar or similar event.

california ] Sunday, January 22, 1–4pm: The Los Angeles & Orange County Audio Society will hold its monthly meeting, presented by San Diego’s Alma Music and Audio in the beautiful Penthouse Ballroom of the Holiday Inn Buena Park (7000 Beach Boulevard). The acoustics are excellent, and there will be seating for all. Our host, Fabio Storelli of Alma Music and Audio, will demonstrate examples of top-of-theline equipment, including: speakers

by YG Acoustics; electronics by Dan D’Agostino, darTZeel, and MSB Tech; and cables by KubalaSosna. An industry presenter has been invited to address the Society.

Eastwind Import will be on hand to offer hand-selected vinyl and CDs for sale. A raffle is planned, and an extraordinary lunch will be served.

Parking is free. Guests, visitors, and new members are invited. For more information, visit www.laocas.com or call Bob Levi at (714) 281-5850. ] Sunday, February 12, 2–5pm: The Los Angeles & Orange County Audio Society will hold its monthly meeting at Scott Walker Audio (1215 Tustin Avenue, Anaheim 92807).

Building on last year’s outstanding success, Scott will host “The Best in Affordable High-End Audio: Part III.” He will have six demonstration rooms showcasing some of the highest-value high-end gear currently CONTINUED ON PAGE 18

15

INDUSTRY UPDATE

journey. I’ve thus focused mainly on Polish companies, even if rather too many were touting little more than interconnects and speaker cables.

A quick scan of the handsome show guide indicated more than 160 demo rooms—a daunting prospect to cover in what turned out to be two busy days, and an increase of 50% over the 2014 show. The Audio Video Show occupied three sites: two neighboring hotels, with a very busy shuttle bus running between them and the national football stadium, built in 2012 and boasting hospitality suites repurposed as generously sized demo rooms.

Most of the Polish manufacturers occupied the smaller rooms in the Sobieski Hotel, where I saw record players, tubed amplification gear, and a number of speakers with single full-range drive-units. Saturday was very crowded, with many visitors who seemed a good bit younger than those usually seen at British audio shows—all good news for hi-fi in Poland.

The most intriguing newcomer was the Polish company Yayuma Audio, based in Jaworzno. Their website, yayuma.eu, is worth a look: According to Yayuma, the laws of physics mean

that while all of today’s recordings lack some vital elements of musical information, these elements can be restored by applying to the signal Yayuma’s Analogue Sound Processor (ASP). The company is being cautious about revealing too much while awaiting global patent protection, and my remarks will be cautious until I’ve tried an ASP in my home system—the demonstration at Yayuma’s press conference wasn’t entirely convincing. The ASP seems to be a very complex beast, and its price is high: €25,000 ($26,400 at time of writing); less costly variations are planned.

If Yayuma’s claims were radical, the rest of the exhibitors’ claims tended to be rather more conventional. One surprise was the obvious enthusiasm for vintage equipment—one room displayed an entire wall of classic FM tuners, and several others featured 1970s amplification. Arguably the best sound I heard at AVS was produced by two enormous speaker systems based on vintage JBL drive-units modified by Pracownia Wzmacniacz Lampowych, and driven by LampizatOr tube amplifiers.

I spent some time chatting to Bartosz Rutkowski, lead engineer of RT Proj-

ect, a relatively new Polish company.

RT has developed two new DACs— one solid-state, the other tubed—that should be available early in 2017. The key to their claimed high performance, Rutkowski said, is in the exceptional accuracy of their clock circuits, which is said to closely approach the standard set by rubidium atomic clocks.

I was particularly taken by the Dutch brand Pink Faun, which is expanding into Polish manufacture by opening a facility at Rydzyna, midway between Poznan and Wroclaw, in southwest Poland. Pink Faun’s compact, all-black electronics reminded me of the early days of Naim Audio.

Of the many tube amplifiers I saw, two very different brands competed for the title of “most stylish.” In the many models produced under its Egg-Shell brand, Encore Seven, based in BielskoBiaáa, in the far south of Poland, positions the tubes like the pistons in a V-8 engine and encloses them in a glass case—they look great. In complete contrast, the PP10 Stereo integrated amplifier, made by DIMD, of Riga, Latvia, is based on small EL84 output tubes operating in push-pull. It not only looks very elegant, with or without its

PHOTOS: PAUL MESSENGER

INDUSTRY UPDATE

Clockwise from top left: The wall of vintage FM tuners; Michal Sevcik with Block Audio’s 198-lb amplifier; DIMD’s PP10 Stereo integrated amplifier uses EL84 output tubes operating in push-pull.

tube covers in place, it also includes high-quality components and pointto-point wiring throughout. Although the PP10’s output of 10Wpc might be adequate for sensitive speakers, some might prefer Block Audio’s 198-lb, solid-state Mono Block, made in the Czech Republic—it delivers 200W in class-A, or 500W in class-A/B. In the Holophony be touched speaker models from Avatar Audio, in eastern Poland, not far from Belarus, the moving masses of the driver diaphragms

are minimized through the use of “vintage” paper cones from the 1950s and ’60s, to keep inertia low and sensitivity high (94–97dB). They should be great matches for single-ended-triode tube amplifiers.

When I first visited Poland, in the mid-1990s, I felt I had stepped back in time some 30 years, to the 1960s. My recent visit dramatically narrowed that time gap—Poland has come a long way in the last two decades, while still seeming to be refreshingly immune from the fashions and fads that are all too prevalent in these troubled times— without entirely erasing that gap. In terms of hi-fi, that may be a good thing: At Warsaw’s Audio Video Show, I experienced an enthusiasm for hi-fi— from visitors and exhibitors alike—that I found almost nostalgic.

US: UTAH

Jason Victor Serinus On November 11, 2016, Wilson Audio Specialties announced that Daryl C.

INDUSTRY UPDATE

Wilson, 38, son of David Wilson and Sheryl Lee Wilson, has succeeded his father as CEO and president of one of the world’s leading high-end loudspeaker manufacturers. Daryl, along with COO Korbin Vaughn, will now actively manage all aspects of Wilson Audio.

Neither Dave nor Sheryl is about to fade into retirement, however. Dave will continue to work with Wilson’s design and engineering team, serve as ambassador for his new magnum opus, the WAMM Master Chronosonic loudspeaker (successor to his original, paradigm-shifting WAMM,2 and become chair of Wilson’s executive board. Sheryl Lee, in turn, will serve as the board’s vice-chair. Together, they will work as consultants to Daryl and Vaughn, and help set overall goals for the company. Dave will also continue to consult with the R&D team.

18

Dave Wilson explained that “Sheryl Lee and I didn’t even think about succession until a son or daughter would show genuine interest and accomplishment in working toward that goal.

Even before he turned four, Daryl had

available. Complete systems will range from $1500 to $15,000; presenters to be announced. Eastwind Imports will be on hand to offer carefully selected LPs and CDs for sale. A raffle is planned and a wonderful lunch will be served. Parking is free. Guests, visitors, and members are invited. For more information, visit www.laocas.com or call LAOCAS president Bob Levi at (714) 281-5850.

] Monday, January 30, 6–9 pm: Naplesbased Dynamic Sounds Associates will hold a reservation-only exhibit of its complete line of electronics in Meeting Room C of the Pelican Marsh Community Center (1504 Pelican Marsh Boulevard, Naples 34109). The system and participants are as noted for the January 28 event. RSVP to David Sckolnik at david@dynamicsoundsassoc.com or (386) 873-2388.

florida

georgia

] Saturday, January 28, 1–4pm: The Suncoast Audiophile Society and the Sarasota Audiophile Society will hold a special joint meeting in the Community Center of the Sun City Center (1009 N. Pebble Beach Boulevard, Sun City Center 33573). Douglas Hurlburt (founder and designer) and David Sckolnik (sales and marketing), of Naples-based Dynamic Sounds Associates, will present the exact same system heard at the 2016 Capital Audiofest and Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. Featured are the new 125W, pure class-A, solid-state Amp I monoblocks, along with the Phono II phono preamplifier and Pre I line stage. The rest of the system comprises top-of-the-line components from Kanso, Luminous, Ortofon, Spendor, Tweek Geek, and VPI. RSVP to: Ernie Kautzmann (SAS) at ekautzmann@yahoo.com, Jeff Cantor (SAS) at Jeff_Cantor_99@yahoo.com, or David Sckolnik (DSA) at david@ dynamicsounds-assoc.com or (386) 873-2388.

] Sunday, February 19, 2–5pm: The Audio Video Club of Atlanta; Mike Burns, founder of Wolfson Audio; and Gary Dayton, of Bryston Ltd., will host a seminar and demonstration at the Dunwoody North Driving Clubhouse (4522 Kingsgate Drive, Dunwoody 30338) of several Bryston products: the BP26 preamplifier with MPS-2 power supply, 4B3 power amplifier, BDA-3 DAC, BDP-ʌ streamer, BLP-1 turntable, and BP-2 phono preamp.

Speakers will include the Ryan Speakers R610 two-way and R630 three-way floorstanding models. Cables will be DH Labs Silver Sonic and Air Matrix.

Guests welcome. For more information, contact John Morrison, President, at (770) 330-3919 or jhm3@bellsouth.net; or Chuck Bruce, VP, at (770) 550-1434 or cchucksaudio@mindspring.com. Visit the Club’s website for latest details: www.a-vcoa.org.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 15

a passion for coming out to listen to music with me. He was the first of our children to show a commitment to developing the skills necessary to take over design and leadership.”

“The trials of the founder are very different from the trials of the successor,” said Daryl. “Our dealer network is already built. My biggest priority is maintaining the authenticity of our culture, which means that the quality that people have come to expect and demand from Wilson will remain.

We’re working that much harder to refine our loudspeakers, so people get more of what we can deliver. I don’t think product development is going to lag; I only see things getting better.” Q Daryl (left) and David Wilson.

illinois ] Friday–Sunday, April 21–23, AXPONA

2 We reviewed the WAMM in 1983; see www. stereophile.com/content/wilson-audio-modularmonitor-wamm-loudpeaker-system.

2017 takes place at the Westin O’Hare, in Rosemont. Details at www.axpona. com.

minnesota ] Tuesday, January 17, 6:45–9pm: The Audio Society of Minnesota will hold its annual “Bring and Brag” meeting.

For this event, members and visitors are encouraged to bring in their favorite vinyl and CD selections to play on our high-performance audio system. This is one of our most popular meetings of the season, so mark your calendar now to attend. It will be held at the Pavek Museum of Broadcasting (3517 Raleigh Avenue, St. Louis Park 55416). Refreshments will be served; guests, visitors, and new members are always welcome to attend. For more information, visit our website: www. audiomn.org.

canada ] Friday–Sunday, March 24–26: The Montréal Audio Fest 2017 takes place downtown, in the newly renovated Hotel Bonaventure Montréal. This marks the 30th anniversary of audio shows in Montréal. Details at http:// montrealaudiofest.org.

czech republic ] Friday–Sunday, March 31–April 2, 10am–6pm: The Audio Video Show Prague takes place at the Hotel Don Giovanni Prague (www.hotelgiovanni. cz). More details at www.audio-videoshow.cz/en/.

February 2017

Q

stereophile.com

Looking for‌

‌and more?

Call for good advice and ask for a free catalog. 1-800-229-0644

sound better

ANALOG CORNER

INSIDER VIEWS ON EVERYTHING VINYL

BY MICHAEL FREMER THIS ISSUE : Dan D’Agostino’s Momentum Phonostage and Gold Note’s Tuscany Gold MC cartridge.

Driving the Vinyl Deniers Crazy!

A

t the beginning of this century, when the vinyl resurgence was at best nascent and few believed it would be as strong as it is today, Boulder Amplifiers manufactured a phono preamplifier that cost $29,000. I reviewed that model, the 2008 (now discontinued), in the July 2002 issue.1 With a power supply that would probably be more than adequate for a high-wattage power amp, it was built to a standard approached by few other makers of phono preamps. and memory in which to store those More than a decade later, today’s settings for each input. audio market is well populated with D’Agostino then asked me about luxury phono preamps costing $30,000 equalization curves. I delivered my and up. That this fact drives the antiusual lecture about consumers’ abuse vinyl crowd absolutely crazy only adds of EQ curves, but concluded with “If to our pleasure. people want them, why not?” Still, I With his lines of power amplifiers implored D’Agostino not to pass on and preamplifiers well established, the misinformation about various nonDan D’Agostino—the founder, CEO, RIAA curves being used well into the and chief designer of the company that stereo era. bears his name—set about designing a Some time later, D’Agostino phono preamplifier. At an audio event announced a forthcoming phono a few years ago, he asked me a quespreamp, and said he hoped to send tion that I thought, at the time, was me a review sample in August 2015. It rhetorical: What would I like to see in arrived more than a year after that, in a phono stage designed for the top of September 2016. Ironically, the delay the market? was caused by the need for additional My answer: a phono stage with work on the preamp’s digital switchmultiple, easily selectable inputs, easy-to-set loading and gain options, ing, not its signal-path electronics. stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

The Momentum could be the solid-state phono preamp to win over tube lovers.

DAN D’AGOSTINO’S MOMENTUM PHONOSTAGE ARRIVES: Cradled care-

fully in its Pelican road case, the Dan D’Agostino Master Audio Systems Momentum Phonostage ($28,000) dazzled me, even when the only things visible were the vents machined into the thick, solid-aluminum top panel.

As in all D’Agostino products, the Momentum’s appearance, craftsmanship, and fit’n’finish are eye-poppingly gorgeous. I wanted to run my hands across the main enclosure’s surfaces, just to feel their cool, satiny finish. And I did. The review sample was finished in gleaming silver; it’s also available in dramatic black.

But that main enclosure is only one of three of the Momentum’s components. The first is the external transformer box, an unglamorous case 1 See www.stereophile.com/phonopreamps/621/ index.html.

21

ANALOG CORNER

(4" wide by 2" high by 10.5" deep) that’s intended to be separated by “at least a couple of feet” from the main enclosure, according to the owner’s manual.

The main enclosure (15.5" wide by 3.5" high by 12.75" deep) contains the signal path. It’s supported by large screw-on cones that nestle into openings in the top of the curvaceous power regulator base (13.5" wide by 2.5" high by 11" deep), which is machined from aluminum and which supplies DC to the main unit as well as physically supporting it. (I know some readers who don’t think that such cones do anything, and who would prefer energy drains like those from Stillpoints, but that’s another story.) An XLRterminated cable connects the main enclosure to the power regulator base; the latter connects to the outboard transformer with another umbilical, terminated with multi-pin DIN plugs.

Stacked, the main unit and base stand 7" high and weigh 48 lbs.

This arrangement of main enclosure and base/power supply, as well as the Phonostage’s industrial design, mirror those of D’Agostino’s Momentum line-level preamplifier,2 even

if, ironically, necessity dictated that D’Agostino’s signature round analog meters be replaced by digital displays.

The Momentum Phonostage’s front panel features six of those displays— small, rectangular, tiny-red-dot LED screens similar to those used by the military—with a row of four at the top and two more below. In the upper row, the two leftmost screens display resistive loading for moving-coil cartridges (10 choices, from 5 ohms to 47k ohms) for inputs MC1 and MC2, while the two on the right display the same for moving-magnet cartridges (16 choices, from 23k ohms to 391k ohms) for inputs MM1 and MM2.

(Adjustable resistive loading for MM cartridges is something that’s found on few phono preamps because it’s widely and wrongly assumed that 47k ohms is always the correct load for MM.) The two lower screens indicate gain (the user can fine-tune it, with a range of ±6dB) and the MM capacitive load (16 choices, from 18.75 to 281.25pF). Below each of the six screens are Up and Down buttons for making settings.

The array of screens is flanked by two machined knobs. On the left is Input: MC1, MC2, MM1, MM2. On

the right is Equalization Curve, with settings labeled R.I.A.A., F.F.R.R. (or ffrr, for pre-stereo Decca/London LPs), RCA Orthophonic, Columbia, and D.G.G. (Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft).

On the Main rear panel are four sets of inputs—two each MC and MM, single-ended (RCA) and balanced (XLR)—and a single pair of balanced (XLR) outputs. If you run singleended, you’ll need correctly configured RCA-to-XLR adapters for the Momentum Phonostage’s output. A toggle switch selects between single-ended and balanced input.

The Momentum’s specifications include a wide frequency response of 20Hz–100kHz, ±1dB; low distortion of <0.003%, 20Hz–20kHz; and a signal/noise ratio of 75dB (standard reference, unweighted). The specified gains are 70dB MC and 50dB MM, adjustable as described above.

ELECTRONIC NOTES: The Momentum is hand-built at the company’s Arizona factory, and features “throughhole” circuit boards stuffed with components carefully selected by Dan D’Agostino based on their reliability and sound quality.

elusivedisc.com A Trusted Name Since 1989!

For all your Analog needs!

What you can expect from us: • Expert Cartridge Installation & Set Up. • Excellent Customer Service.

• Speedy & Safe Delivery.

• Expert Help & Advice

Clearaudio Concept Turntable & Money-Saving Packag s Combos & All Clearaudio Tables Available!

MMF 2.3, 5.3 & 7.3 Series Turntables All Music Hall Tables, Arms & Accessories Available!

Cayin CS-55A Tube Integrated Amp & USB DAC All Cayin Amps, Phono Stages & CD Players Available!

NEW VPI Avenger Turntables & JMW-10 3D Tonearm All VPI Tables, Arms & Dust Covers Available!

G o o o s Latest Evolution of the Multi-Award Winning Arm!

ANALOG CORNER

Instead of transformers, the Momentum’s MC input stage uses multiple parallel direct-coupled, current-mirror, bias-regulated, differential field-effect transistors (FETs).

Equalization is passive. The output/ gain stage is identical to the one in the Momentum line stage. To ensure the quiet performance essential for a phono stage, there are three layers of power-supply regulation.

PLUG PROBLEMS: The RCA jacks for the Momentum’s inputs are costly ones from Cardas, and the first time I used them I had the oddest experience: When I pushed in the Furutech RCA plugs that terminate the phono cable of the Schröder CB tonearm supplied with the Döhmann Helix 1 turntable I’m currently reviewing, they fell right out again. I then tried the locking WBT plugs on the Swedish Analog Technologies arm, but no matter how much I tightened them, they, too, fell out of the Momentum’s sockets. How odd was that? I thought about using adhesive tape to hold them in place, but you know what happens if one plug falls out with the volume up. I didn’t want to destroy my speakers.

So I used a Cardas RCA-to-XLR

van den Hul Frog Gold MC Cartridge 0.75mV

Shelter 501 MkIII MC Cartridge 0.4mV

adapter. The fit was snug, and of course the XLR connection was secure. I reported all this to D’Agostino via e-mail, and a week later Bill McKiegan, the company’s president of sales, who was already scheduled to drop by, paid me a visit.

I removed the RCA plugs from the adapters and again pushed them into the Momentum’s RCA jacks. Now they fit perfectly. Same thing with Furutechs and WBTs. I think it was a problem of warm-up: the jacks needed to expand to room temperature to produce an ideal fit. Other than that, the Momentum Phonostage performed flawlessly in every way. Its convenience features made for a reviewer’s ergonomic dream.

FAMILIAR SOUND? Over the years, I’ve found that there’s usually a strong sonic correlation between a company’s line-level and power-amplification products on the one hand and its phono preamplifiers on the other.

That only makes sense: aside from the RIAA implementation and a heroic effort to eliminate noise from the ultra-low-level signal path, the phono preamp’s gain-stage implementation can, more likely than not, be derived

Hana SL Shibata MC Cartridge 0.5mV

7UDQVÀ JXUDWLRQ 3KRHQL[ MC Cartridge 0.4mV

from the company’s line-level products. That’s what Dan D’Agostino has done in the Momentum Phonostage.

Switching from Audio Research’s Reference Phono 3—a hybrid design with a FET input stage and a tubed output stage—that I reviewed in January to the all-solid-state D’Agostino Momentum Phonostage could have produced a jarring difference in sound character. It didn’t. While the D’Agostino’s sound was different from the ARC’s, it didn’t have the threadbare, speedy, analytical qualities so often heard from solid-state. Instead, like the other D’Agostino products I’ve reviewed, the Momentum Phonostage had a relaxed, almost tube-like richness in the midband, without sacrificing the transient clarity, detail, speed, and, especially, the transparency I expect from a top-shelf solid-state design.

The Momentum couldn’t quite match the Reference Phono 3’s vibrant, richly saturated harmonic presentation—nothing else I’ve heard does—but it produced taut bass lines, dynamic slam, and resolution of microdynamics and inner detail that the 2 See www.stereophile.com/content/dan-dagostinomaster-audio-systems-momentum-line-preamplifier.

Koetsu Onyx Platinum MC Cartridge 0.3mV

VAS Nova MC Cartridge 0.8mV

MUST HAVE GEAR & ACCESSORIES! Sutherland 20/20 MM/MC Phono Stage 6WHUHRSKLOH 5HFRPPHQGHG 7$6 (GLWRUV· &KRLFH

Clearaudio Maestro V2 MM Cartridge 4.2mV

Lyra Delos MC Cartridge 0.5mV

elusivedisc.com

Cartridge Trade-In & Package Pricing Available!

Soundsmith Zephyr MkII MI Cartridge 2.4mV

Grado Prestige 1 Gold MM Cartridge 5.0mV

NEW VPI ADS Analog Drive System Extremely accurate speed control for your VPI Turntable!

Air Tight PC-1 MC Cartridge 0.6mV

Call Today!

Clearaudio Concerto V2 MC Cartridge 0.8mV

800-782-3472

fax: 765-608-5341 Info: 765-608-5340 • 4020 frontage rd anderson, in 46013 • sales@elusivedisc.com • m-f 9-6 sat 11-3 est

ANALOG CORNER

tubed Ref 3 could not. In audio, you can’t have everything.

Tonally and texturally, the Momentum sounded closer to the Ypsilon VPS-100 phono preamplifier, with its metal-encased tubes, than to ARC’s Ref Phono 3, and that’s about as strong an endorsement of a solid-state phono preamp as I can make.

To get such richly developed textures from a solid-state phono preamplifier is, in my experience, highly unusual. Take, for instance, a recent reissue of Johnny Hartman’s Once in Every Life, originally released in 1980 (Bee Hive 7012/Analogue Productions APJ105). (The album was recorded by the late Ben Rizzi, who went on to run Mastersound Astoria Studios—where, in 1993, I recorded the narration for The Ultimate Test CD (ESX ESD-7059), later mocked on Late Show with David Letterman.) I know Once in Every Life well. It’s an intimately set sonic stunner, and AP’s reissue is even more so.

Hartman’s career was past its peak, and he died three years later, but in 1980 his voice was still supple and his phrasing impeccable, even if he didn’t always get the lyrics 100% correct. He’s backed by top veterans: Frank Wess on tenor sax and flute, Joe Wilder on trumpet and flugelhorn, guitarist Al Gafa, pianist Billy Taylor, bassist Victor Gaskin, and drummer Keith Copeland.

Hartman thrived in small combos, and, as an intimately miked studio recording that used lots of isolation, this one is exemplary. In “Easy Living,” Hartman’s voice is out front, rich, round, and full-bodied, but with an extra, mike-induced sibilance on s sounds (it’s on the CD, too), with Taylor’s piano well back at stage left, and Gaskin’s bass—sounding as if its pickup was plugged directly into the board— tightly plumbing the depths.

The Momentum did this LP full justice, presenting a transparent window onto the recording. Hartman’s voice was three-dimensional, and possessed all the warmth in his lower register, even as his precise articulation was fully delineated, and the slight bit of added reverb was put in proper context.

In the second chorus, as Billy Taylor’s piano subtly floats down in the mix, behind and off to Hartman’s side, to create a relaxing bed, and as Wilder’s three-dimensional flugelhorn emerges from pitch “black,” I heard the Momentum’s reproduction of air and honest texture (not too soft, not too etched) and harmonic rightness— not quite as ripe as through ARC’s Reference Phono 3, but sufficiently developed to make the case. But in terms of dynamics and transparency, the Momentum won.

When I reviewed D’Agostino’s Momentum line preamplifier in the August 2014 issue, I said that it had “delicacy, transparency, three-dimensionality, and especially liquidity and freedom from grain without softening transients—all floating above the blackest backdrops.” All of this was also true of the Momentum Phonostage, which served all musical genres. The latest vinyl from the Electric Recording Company is Leonid Kogan’s recording of the Brahms Violin Concerto, with Kiril Kondrashin conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra (ERC027), first released in 1960 on EMI/Columbia. Following its usual practice, ERC pressed only 300 copies of its reissue— which, the label says, will never see another pressing—priced at £450 ($563 at time of writing). Expensive? Yes, but an original pressing of this album sold in February 2016 for $3750.

I haven’t heard an original pressing, but I imagine that ERC’s restored, vintage, all-tube mastering chain is far superior, as are the its plating and pressing. The reissue, too, will only appreciate in value. The sound of Kogan’s violin is silky-smooth, effortlessly transparent, and realistically sized on the soundstage in ways that no digits manage, which helps explain the original’s rising price.

Granted, the ARC Reference Phono 3’s harmonic presentation knocked this one out of the park, but both the D’Agostino Momentum Phonostage and the Ypsilon VPS-100 produced more finely focused images, greater transparency, and more supple instru-

GOLD NOTE TUSCANY GOLD LOW-OUTPUT MOVING-COIL CARTRIDGE Before reviewing Gold Note’s TusJapanese-made motor in a cartridge cany Gold—a highly sophisticated, body machined in Italy. However, like low-output moving-coil cartridge many cartridge makers, Aterini does ($8030)—I had its designer, Maurizio get his stylus/cantilever assemblies Aterini, clarify for me that it is, in fact, from Japan—in this case, an Adamantmade in Florence, Italy, and is not a Namiki MicroRidge stylus measuring 24

mental attacks, particularly of Kogan’s violin, which glistened with a delicate silky sheen—as well they should, for twice the ARC’s price ($13,995) in the case of the D’Agostino, and nearly that in the case of the Silver edition of the Ypsilon ($52,000). I mostly used Lyra’s Etna SL moving-coil cartridge, but also used Miyajima Laboratory’s Madake, which somewhat ripened the musical fruit.

I also listened to large-scale orchestral music—eg, Mahler’s Symphony 3, with Zubin Mehta conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Master Chorale, California Boys’ Choir, and contralto Maureen Forrester, recorded in 1978 in UCLA’s Royce Hall (2 LPs, London/Decca/ Analogue Productions APC 117).

(This might have been Lenny Kravitz’s recording debut—he was a member of the Choir, and is on this recording.) While Mehta’s interpretation of Mahler’s sprawling ode to nature is considered good if not one of the best, the sound produced by the Decca team in the specially treated hall makes it one of the best-sounding Thirds on record, if not the best.

The Momentum’s ability to effortlessly reproduce full-scale orchestral dynamics, and to control the flow of the majestic double basses, all had me thinking it could be the solid-state phono preamp to win over tube lovers, especially given its ergonomic flexibility.

I tried the Ypsilon MC-16L step-up transformer into one of the Momentum’s MM inputs. That produced a different but equally spectacular sonic picture that worked really well, especially for hard rock.

CONCLUSION: Of the solid-state phono stages I’ve heard, the Dan D’Agostino Master Audio Systems Momentum Phonostage is the one that most effectively bridges the gap between tubed and solid-state models. For sure, it’s expensive, but its industrial design, ergonomic flexibility, build quality—and, of course, the sound—make it, for me, the most enticing solid-state phono preamp I’ve reviewed.

2.5 by 75μm in a boron cantilever.

Aterini won’t like this part of the review. My skepticism about his cartridge was based on prejudice: His flagship turntable, the Bellagio Conquest, looks way too much like Clearaudio’s February 2017

Q

stereophile.com

THE NEW SPENDOR

D9

45 YEARS IN THE MAKING D9

Forty-five years ago, Spendor developed the first loudspeaker with real transparency, articulation and natural sound specifically for BBC engineers who were mixing orchestras for live radio playback and needed to hear exactly what each musician was playing.

Over time and through their exhaustive R&D efforts, Spendor engineers achieved a series of technical breakthroughs and the company went on to become one of England’s leading loudspeaker manufacturers.

Spendor continually developed landmark loudspeakers, always remaining true to the Spendor sound but also consistently improving transparency and thus creating “better” loudspeakers.

D7

As a result, the D7 became the most critically acclaimed Spendor ever, earning Stereophile’s coveted Class A recommendation - a remarkable accomplishment for a $6,000 loudspeaker.

Today, the new D9 takes the D7’s brilliance a step further. An elegant, modern, 3-way loudspeaker, the D9 delivers music with exceptional resolution and a vibrant realism with any genre. Easy to drive and highly efficient, the D9 is also remarkably flexible and can be placed in any living environment. This is a speaker 45 years in the making. This is the Spendor D9.

Visit www.bluebirdmusic.com to learn more about Spendor or find a dealer near you.

Three years ago, Spendor introduced the D7 which delivered an articulate, coherent and natural presentation, with a level of transparency never before heard in a conventional dynamic loudspeaker.

DISTRI BUTED I N NORTH AM E RIC A BY BLUEB I RD MUSIC LIM ITED

•

WWW.BLUEB I RDMUSIC.COM

•

TE L: 416.638.8207

ANALOG CORNER

Statement for my comfort, and, for reasons that make little sense to me, has “the longest platter spindle ever.”

(I’ve heard a good argument for a short spindle: less wobble.) And this part won’t please Clearaudio’s Peter and Robert Suchy: If you’re going to copy many of the design elements of a very expensive turntable, why that one?

Gold Note, in business since the early 1990s, has sophisticated manufacturing capabilities and makes a complete line of turntables, tonearms, and other audiophile-quality products. The Tuscany Gold is a bespoke, high-tech cartridge that measured extremely well and provided me with great listening experiences.

The Tuscany Gold weighs 11gm, outputs 0.25mV, has a claimed frequency response of 5Hz–55kHz, an internal impedance of 4 ohms, a compliance of 10x10 – 6cm/dyne, and channel separation of greater than 35dB. In other words, while its construction includes a number of unique and carefully considered elements, the Tuscany Gold is an in-the-pocket, lowoutput MC. The titanium pipe that holds the cantilever is machined to have four spokes, around which are hand-wound microcoils of silver wire, held in place by a Teflon spacer for perfect alignment and high rigidity. The steel suspension wire is held in place by a gold-plated nut in an arrangement that the inelegant translation in Gold Note’s literature makes somewhat difficult to understand. The Tuscany Gold’s tall, blocky, aluminum-alloy body is, per Gold Note, damped with “strategically” injected fluid polymers.

The cantilever is tucked well back of the body’s front edge, which makes setting up the Tuscany Gold and cleaning its stylus somewhat difficult.

With the tonearm parallel to the record surface, the Tuscany Gold’s stylus rake angle (SRA) measured 91°—a good start. Raising the arm post about 5mm achieved the desired 92°.

Maximum channel separation and equal crosstalk between the channels were achieved with the headshell slightly angled from parallel to the record surface—another indicator of high build quality, though I measured a channel separation of 32dB, not the claimed 35dB or more. The former is more typical of the measured results I’ve seen, compared to the overoptimistic ones often specified by cartridge makers; it’s no cause for concern. stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

With everything else set, and based on my listening to the Tuscany Gold, I ended up using a vertical tracking force (VTF) of 1.9gm. (Gold Note recommends a range of 1.8–2.1gm.) I ran the cartridge into both the Audio Research

The Tuscany Gold had a fine, beautifully balanced sound.

Reference Phono 3 and the Dan D’Agostino Momentum Phonostage phono preamp.

If you associate Italy with romance, you’ll be surprised when you hear the Tuscany Gold. It didn’t sound at all on the warm, romantic side—nor, for that matter, on the lean, analytical side. Instead, it was firmly in the zone of tonal neutrality—just where I like cartridges to be—yet had a subtle, speedy richness that gave body and grippy stiction to the well-focused aural images it produced. Its bottom end was fully and firmly extended, and superbly controlled. Its midrange was on the correct side of generous, and notably transparent.

Imaging and soundstaging are what you hope for from an $8030 cartridge.

Combine the Tuscany Gold’s wide, deep stages and solid, three-dimensional images with its dynamics, which were equal to those of other great cartridges at or near this price, and you have a Class A cartridge easily able to favorably compete with the others in this class. The Gold Note was a good tracker, too, gliding silently through the grooves.

The Tuscany Gold split the difference in bottom-end solidity and weight between Ortofon’s Anna ($8924) and A95 ($6499)—a good place to be. It did the same in terms of detail retrieval and tonal color. It

had almost the exuberance of the Transfiguration Proteus ($5599), with somewhat greater refinement on top, and the transparency of the Lyra Atlas, though without that cartridge’s slam, or the silky refinement of Lyra’s Etna SL ($9995).

Overall, Gold Note’s Tuscany Gold

had a fine, beautifully balanced sound free of gross colorations, and it’s well designed and built. Though priced near the top of the heap, it’s easily good enough to compete with all of the costly, high-performance cartridges just named. I thoroughly enjoyed the several months I spent listening to it. Q Michael Fremer (fremer@analogplanet. com) is the editor of AnalogPlanet.com, a Stereophile website devoted to all things analogical.

CONTACTS Dan D’Agostino Master Audio Systems PO Box 89 Cave Creek, AZ 85327 Tel: (480) 575-3069 Web: www.dandagostino.com Gold Note Akamai S.r.l.

Via della Gora, 6 Montespertoli (Florence) 50025 Italy Tel: (39) 0571-675005 Fax: (39) 0571-675013 Web: www.goldnote.it US distributor CoolKyte 3045 Deakin Street, Unit M Berkeley, CA 94705 Web: www.coolkyte.com

27

LISTENING

IN SEARCH OF THE EXCEPTIONAL

BY ART DUDLEY THIS ISSUE : Audio Origami’s UniArm unipivot tonearm and the Little Fwend tonearm lifter.

LP12 lovers get a new unipivot tonearm

M

y first attempt at writing this piece began with a list of the Top Ten Audio Products I Wish Were Still in Production. Unfortunately, that proved unworkable. Although some of my selections—the Audio Research SP-6C preamplifier, the Stax ELS-F81 loudspeaker—were straightforward, it turned out that most of the others were burdened with complications. Examples: It’s no longer feasible to mass-produce Bakelite headshells for a revival of the original Ortofon SPU or similar phono pickup. It’s no longer possible to obtain the precisely correct vacuum tubes and other components required to return to production the Leak Stereo 20 amplifier. And I’m certain that a torch- and pitchfork-wielding mob would prevent the manufacture of an authentic Altec 604B drive-unit, unless those audio villagers were first allowed to “improve” the design.

So I scrapped my list—but not before noting that, on every version of it, the same product came out on top: the Naim Aro1 tonearm.

I owned a Naim Aro for a decade or more, and sold it only to help finance the purchase of something else—and then only because demand for the Aro, which Above: An Audio Naim discontinued in 2006, had pushed Origami UniArm on asking prices irresistibly high. Yet I can’t a nice-looking Linn LP12. Upper right: help regretting my decision: The Aro Art’s Denon cartridge was, by a not-inconsiderable margin, the required a lesser best-sounding tonearm I’ve ever used on offset angle than that of the UniArm’s a Linn LP12. It also allowed Bauer Auheadshell. dio’s enduringly recommendable DPS turntable to sound riotously good.

And, to pile guess atop guess: The Naim Aro, with its low overall mass (its effective mass appeared to be more or less medium), might have been the perfect tonearm for the remarkable Roksan Xerxes turntable, whose 1998 replacement by the less-accomplished Xerxes 10 seems to have been occasioned, at least in part, by the fact that the original’s arm-mount peninsula tended, over time, to sag under the weight of most other arms.

But I digress. These recollections were prompted by a phone call, last October, from Walter Swanbon, of the distribution and retail company Fidelis Music Systems. He wondered if I might be interested in reviewing “a modern replacement for the Naim Aro tonearm.” Of course, I said “Yes,” although I didn’t mention that, in recent months, I’d been thinking of selling my Linn LP12, which I’d bought new over a quarter-century ago.

So that evening, I retrieved the LP12 from our upstairs guest room and gave it, along with my 1980s Rega Research RB300 tonearm and my relatively fresh Denon DL-103 carstereophile.com

Q

February 2017

tridge, a complete going-over. Then I set about reacquainting myself with an old friend that had performed admirably for decades, mostly without complaint.

Getting it The arm of which Swanbon spoke was the UniArm, designed and made

by Scottish manufacturer Audio Origami, whose

I set about reacquainting myself with an old friend that had performed admirably for decades.

PU7 tonearm—a contemporary reimagining of the classic Syrinx PU3—had impressed Michael Fremer.2 The day the UniArm arrived, I did what I always do when I receive a tonearm: I stopped everything else I was doing in order to unpack, examine, and acquaint myself with the newcomer. I am, I confess, crazy about tonearms.

The UniArm, which seemed nicely made, has a lot in common with the Aro. Both are unipivot arms, and both use what I call a missionary bearing: a downward-pointing spike attached to the removable armtube, the spike sitting in an upward-facing cup on the stationary base. In both, the spike is tungsten steel, the cup sapphire. (Audio Origami suggests that the sapphire cup is the most expensive to make 1 Its full name is actually Naim Audio Tone Arm. I don’t know whether Aro originates from dealers, customers, or Naim themselves, but I assume it has to do with the distinctive, arrowhead-like appearance of the arm’s headshell area, as well as the fact that armtube stock was supplied to Naim by a company that supplied same to the field of competitive archery. See www.stereophile.com/tonearms/388/index.html and www.stereophile.com/tonearms/770/index.html.

2 See Mikey’s “Analog Corner” in the November 2014 issue of Stereophile.

29

LISTENING

of the UniArm’s parts.) Both arms are designed with miniature plugs and sockets for their signal wires, so that armtubes can be quickly and easily interchanged. The counterweight of each arm is mounted on a short rod below the point where bearing spike meets bearing cup, an arrangement that promotes cartridge stability. On both arms, antiskating force is provided by a monofilament thread and falling weight, and cartridge azimuth can be adjusted by means of a sliding weight that rides on a slender shaft affixed to the bell-like bearing housing.

But differences abound. Most notably, the UniArm’s bearing cup is at the top of a post that’s rigidly fixed in place, whereas the Aro’s cup is cemented to the top of a steel post that rotates—stiffly, thanks to a thin coating of a silicone-like damping lubricant— atop a ball bearing. Absent an official explanation from Naim, consumers and critics alike are forced to guess at the reason for this extra bearing—a mechanical diode for dispensing with unwanted energies? a mechanical filter that resists conducting high-frequency noise?—and to wonder which, if any, of the Aro’s musical and sonic characteris-

tics can be laid at its doorstep.

There are other, lesser differences: The UniArm’s aluminum headshell is made with two cartridge-adjustment slots of the usual sort, while the Aro’s aluminum headshell famously offers only two holes for the mounting bolts for the cartridge of choice, with no means of adjusting overhang or lateral tracking angle. The structure by which the UniArm is mounted to a turntable is larger and more complex—and thus, presumably, more massive—than the exceeding small, simple base of the Aro. The UniArm incorporates a lift/ lower mechanism for easy cueing, while the Aro, which lacks such a luxury, makes up for it with an elegant arm rest that makes it difficult, if not quite impossible, to damage one’s cartridge by accidentally dropping the arm while cueing. The UniArm is available with two different combinations of arm-mount schemes and alignment geometries—to Linn’s or Rega’s specs— but it is not, in either version, a drop-in replacement for the Naim Aro, which had its own unique mounting scheme.

Finally, there are aesthetic differences: Most surfaces of the UniArm are hard-coat anodized with a colorfast

finish—either silver or black—that looks quite nice (although the arm-mount area looks a bit busy); the Aro, in spite of sporting a slightly different shade of gray for each of its individual parts, somehow manages to look far more elegant, austere, and simple—almost Scandinavian.

The Audio Origami UniArm sells for $2495, which was the US retail of the Naim Aro ten years ago. A pretty good savings right there!

Getting it up and running I requested and received the Rega version of the Origami UniArm, seeing as how Rega’s RB300 is my go-to tonearm for my Linn LP12. (Fact is, now that I no longer own an Aro, and despite my flirtations with a vintage Decca International unipivot and my love for the review loaner of the AMG 9W2,3 the Rega is my only LP12 arm.)

Swapping out the Rega arm for the UniArm took about an hour and a half—slightly longer than I’d expected, because I encountered a few wrinkles along the way.

First, the Rega RB300’s mounting pillar—which is threaded to accept the arm’s single, large locking nut, fitted

PRO-JECT Debut Carbon fi $

CLEARAUDIO Concept $1,599

REGA Planar 3 $945

VPI Prime $3,995

REGA RP1 $345

MUSIC HALL MMF-5.3LE $1,399

2017 MUSIC DIRECT CATALOG Call us or visit our website to get a FREE copy of our new 276-page catalog.

LISTENING

from under the armboard—is 35mm long, measured from the flange that sits atop the armboard. The same part of the UniArm is perhaps 1mm shorter—and yet, during initial installation, that pillar was fouling against the right-rear gusset that’s integral to the LP12’s plinth. Because I’d never had trouble using an RB300 on a Linn, I wondered why an even shorter pillar wouldn’t work—until I remembered that I always use at least one 2mm spacer between my Rega arm and the top of the armboard, to raise the arm and better approximate the vertical tracking angle (VTA) required by cartridges of average dimensions. (Rega’s own moving-magnet cartridges are quite shallow, which I suppose is why the Rega arm, without 2mm mounting spacers, is so low-slung.)

Then I remembered something else: Packed with the UniArm is a plastic ring, looking for all the world like a checker with its middle drilled out. I measured it: just under 4mm thick, with an inner diameter of 24mm—just 1mm wider than the mounting pillar’s diameter. Hmmmm . . .

You may have gathered by now that the installation manual supplied with

the UniArm is sketchy. Its four pages contain a few good tips and a few good photos, but it’s neither as thorough nor as helpful as it might be—something that Audio Origami themselves acknowledge in this qualification: “Full video instructions will be available soon.”

Anyway, yes: The plastic ring was obviously meant for the job to which I applied it: raising the arm base a few millimeters above the armboard.

The fouling described above was eliminated; still, while setting up the LP12, I had to go easy and not deflect its spring-suspended components too harshly or too far.

Tonearm installed and turntable adjusted, I set about adjusting the UniArm’s overhang, lateral tracking angle, arm height, antiskating, downforce, and azimuth. That last one is notable: For whatever reason, the UniArm’s sliding-weight adjustment had a much greater effect on azimuth than the outwardly similar adjustment on the Naim Aro. The laminatedpaper protractor supplied with the UniArm—the Rega version of which has an effective length of 239.3mm and a headshell offset of 23°—offers separate alignment grids for the Löf-

gren and Baerwald geometries; results achieved with the latter agreed with my protractor of choice, the Baerwaldonly DBP-10 from DB Systems. That said, with both protractors, I found that my Denon DL-103 cartridge required a departure from the 23° angle of the UniArm’s headshell, though this was easily achieved. Relative to the Naim Aro, the fact that it wasn’t quite as easy to disable the UniArm’s antiskating apparatus was my only quibble, and an awfully mild one.

While using the LP Nude Graverobbers from Uranus, by Dick Dribble and the Doctrinaires,4 to check the resonant behavior of the pairing of Audio Origami UniArm with Denon DL103, I noticed that, in the lateral plane, the combination exhibited a very mild resonance from 11 to 13Hz; in the vertical plane, a resonance of similar mildness made itself known from 10 to 12Hz. Note that this test—and all listening—was performed without filling the sapphire bearing cup with the thick 3 See my review of the AMG 9W2 in the October 2014 “Listening”: www.stereophile.com/content/ listening-142.

4 The disc’s title is actually Hi-Fi News & Record Review Test Record (Hi-Fi News HFN001), but that’s a bit boring, so I decided to tart it up.

MORE TURNTABLES IN STOCK THAN ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD

VPI Player $1,199

800-449-8333 | MUSICDIRECT.COM

The Art of Natural Sound

Vienna Acoustics has been hand-crafting loudspeakers of distinction in Vienna, Austria, the ‘City of Music’ and the birthplace of western classical music, since 1989. Inspired by the city’s undeniably rich musical heritage, the company has a passion for sound and a true drive for perfection.

Founder and Chief Designer Peter Gansterer, still leads the company, having extensively studied acoustical engineering and the great concert halls of Vienna at a young age. His understanding of live music enables Vienna Acoustics’ speakers to precisely reproduce the dynamics and excitement of a recording. His team’s fanatical attention to detail, perfectionist engineering and no-compromise design, PGCVN[ HWNƂNU VJG EQORCP[oU CKO VQ DTKPI VJG NKUVGPGT ENQUGT to the music.

The company prides itself on exceptional standards too, such as furniture-grade cabinets crafted in state-of-the-art joineries, factory-built crossovers to carefully match the drive units, plus

an exhaustive, design, development and testing process.

Such patience and precision is vital to the world-famous Vienna Acoustics sound.

Vienna Acoustics’ customers receive loudspeakers of unrivaled quality, which can be seen as well as heard. Built by the highly skilled Vienna Acoustics ‘family’, each perfectionist team member is endowed with a great love of music; the company wouldn’t have it any other way!

But, it’s only by hearing Vienna Acoustics’ products in person, that the real immediacy of what makes its speakers so special comes to light. The company focuses individually on each and every product that leaves the factory, ensuring that its customers recieve the masterpiece that Peter Gansterer intended, wherever they are unpacked in the world.

Please visit www.bluebirdmusic.com to learn more CDQWV 8KGPPC #EQWUVKEU QT ƂPF C FGCNGT PGCT [QW

DISTRI BUTED I N NORTH AM E RIC A BY BLUEB I RD MUSIC LIM ITED

•

WWW.BLUEB I RDMUSIC.COM

•

TE L: 416.638.8207

LISTENING

silicone fluid Audio Origami supplies with the arm for users who feel the need to add to the bearing a degree of damping. My decision was based partly on the fact that the UniArm never sounded as though it needed such a Band-Aid, and partly because silicone is pernicious, unhealthy stuff, the use of which I resist whenever possible.

Scattered amid all that fiddling was a lot of listening—and by the time I got everything just so, the record on the platter was West Meets East (1966), by violinist Yehudi Menuhin and sitarist Ravi Shankar (Angel 36418).

With the UniArm spanning the gap between my Linn turntable and Denon cartridge, the sound was, as I noted on a nearby scrap of paper, “surprisingly good.” I wasn’t shocked by how well this LP12-based combo followed the sinewy melodies, nor was I surprised by the apparently perfect yet nonetheless human sense of timing with which it imbued these recordings. What did surprise me were the rich timbral colors, the no-less-rich textures, and the fine sense of pull I heard: In the album opener, Prabhãti—a conversation between Menuhin and tabla player Ustad Alla Rakha, with Prodyet Sen’s tambura heard faintly, the violin’s many long, sustained notes communicated the appropriate tension: they suggested musical momentum in a manner that’s hard to describe but, once heard, easy to identify.

Later, I would go back and compare the sound of that record on my usual player, a Garrard 301 turntable with EMT 997 tonearm and Shindo SPU cartridge, the latter driving an Hommage T1 step-up transformer.

(I used the Denon cartridge with the step-up transformers built into my Shindo Masseto preamp.) The one area in which the Linn-Origami-Denon player failed by comparison was in impact: the Garrard-based player allowed the tabla, in particular, a much greater degree of force. But the Linnbased player had that momentum, that pull—which, combined with luscious tone and superb tunefulness, just about made up for its relative lack of force.

When I repeated that comparison with a different and altogether largerscale recording—Dame Janet Baker singing Elgar’s Sea Pictures with the London Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Sir John Barbirolli (EMI ASD 655)—things shook out along more or less the same lines.

With the UniArm in place, the Linn stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

The UniArm’s signaldisconnect plug allows armtubes to be exchanged with ease.

I wasn’t shocked by how well this LP12based combo followed the sinewy melodies. player amazed me with its musical momentum and, especially, its very good texture and color—the bass clarinet at the end of “Where Corals Lie,” which tends to get lost in the shuffle with lesser gear, emerged realistically from the mix—although the pizzicato violins in “The Swimmer” weren’t as tactile or impactful as they might be. Still, the end result was sufficiently dramatic, and very pleasing overall.

A better comparison was with another Linn-friendly tonearm and the same turntable and cartridge.

After spending time with the Audio Origami UniArm, I steeled myself for another hour of LP12 setup misery and swapped back to my Rega RB300, long a favorite for its good sound and very high value. (Since I bought my sample over a quarter-century ago, the RB300 has been replaced with the RB330, which sells for $595.)

Love the Rega arm though I do, the differences were all in the Origami’s favor, and none was more crucial than the unipivot arm’s slightly meatier way with musical colors and similarly more substantial spatial presentation.

With “Alfie’s Theme,” from Sonny Rollins’s Alfie: Original Music from the Score (Impulse! A-9111), literally all of the instruments—Rollins’s tenor sax, Kenny Burrell’s guitar, the brass ensemble highlighted by J.J. Johnson, you name it—sounded just right with the UniArm but comparatively thin through the RB300, which is not, in

and of itself, a thin-sounding tonearm.

Those distinctions were repeated again and again with each subsequent record I played.

Did the Audio Origami UniArm sound exactly like the Naim Aro? The new arm had at least the same sort of musicality as its famous predecessor—the same ability to not just follow melodies but urge them on, with as much nuance as one can hope to hear from a record. And the UniArm’s frequency range was surely no less than the Aro’s—in addition to which, the new arm sounded just as poised on difficult records, at least with my Denon cartridge. I can’t quite say the UniArm made me forget my Naim Aro—or, for that matter, the excellent and similarsounding AMG 9W2 ($3500)—but it sounds as if cut from the same cloth, and, for a new product available in the here and now, it offers better value for the dollar than did the Aro in its later years. The UniArm is an excellent choice for the LP12—and, possibly, other, similarly musical turntables—and it makes me very interested in hearing Audio Origami’s PU7 (ca $3000).

Getting it up Neglectful, slipshod, remiss, altogether derelict—those words describe my behavior during the months between the end of the 2015 New York Audio Show and the beginning of that show’s 2016 edition.

Well, maybe not every minute of every day—but at least for a goodly chunk of time subsequent to receiving a review sample of the Little Fwend automatic tonearm lifter ($249), whose eponymous Norwegian manufacturer was among the exhibitors at NYAS 2015. The Little Fwend had im33

LISTENING

pressed me at that show, where it was demonstrated with a Thorens TD 124 turntable and Thomas Schick tonearm, examples of both of which I own.

I was even more impressed when I received the review sample. Not only is the Little Fwend beautifully made— its aluminum alloy and steel parts are machined with a degree of precision that would not be out of place in the finest tonearms—but its curiously shaped wood-and-paper packaging is equal parts smart, informative, whimsical, and helpful.

Inspired by the first such product to enjoy widespread success—AudioTechnica’s AT-6006 Safety Raiser, now discontinued—the Little Fwend is a damped, spring-loaded cueing platform mounted atop a tapered steel cylinder. Once it’s installed on the turntable’s plinth, chassis, or armboard, its user sets the lifter by pressing the cueing platform down to its lowest position—low enough that the armtube will pass over its neoprene rubber surface during play, with just a millimeter or so to spare. Then, when the stylus wanders into the lead-out area at the end of the side, the armtube presses against a short, upright length of piano wire, triggering a spring inside the Little Fwend that raises the cueing platform by about 2.5mm. It isn’t nearly as Rube Goldberg as I make it sound—within a second of contact between armtube and tripwire, the cueing platform briskly but not jarringly lifts the tonearm straight up from the record, stylus and all.

On their website, Little Fwend suggests that their lifter is suitable for use with vertical tracking forces (VTFs) of up to 5gm—precisely the recommended VTF for an EMT OFD 15 mono pickup head, which I happened to be using on my combo of Garrard 301 turntable and EMT 997 tonearm when I finally tried the Little Fwend.

Installation was not difficult but required, at first, a bit of time and care to orient things just so. To that end, the untriggered height of the Little Fwend’s cueing platform is adjustable within a range of about 9mm—and the lifter is available in two identically priced versions, High and Low, whose cylindrical bases are differently sized for different turntable-to-armtube dimensions. Also, because the Little Fwend is held in place by a powerful rare-earth magnet—it snugs against a very thin steel disc that self-adheres to the user’s turntable—it can easily be 34

spindle approach more closely the respective ideals of 0° and 0mm.

This sounds good—it is good—but for users of long tonearms such as I, it means that a careening tonearm is that much more likely to cause the cartridge’s cantilever to be taken out by the resolutely stationary spindle. Yikes!

Using a strip of paper whose stiffness I’d “measured” with the aid of an electronic stylus-pressure gauge, I tested the Little Fwend’s tripwire and found that it requires about 0.75gm of pressure to trigger the raising of the cueing platform. There surely exists a reader who’s clever enough to perform acceleration-and-impact calculations on tonearms of varying mass (my 12" EMT 997 is surely on the high side of the range) and at different platter speeds, to determine if the Little Fwend will work in most settings. I await their findings with thanks in advance.

The Little Fwend, the name of which you will hate or love, is one of the most well-conceived, wellpackaged, well-made audio accessories I have encountered. I recommend it without hesitation. Q Art Dudley (Stletters@enthusiastnetwork. com) lifts his tonearms off his LPs with extra care in snowy upstate New York.

The LIttle Fwend does more than just wave at armtubes as they pass overhead.

rotated to optimize the tripwire position, depending on where a particular record’s lead-out groove begins.5 Since the first day I tried it, a few weeks ago as I write this, the Little Fwend has performed reliably and smoothly, sparing my styli untold minutes of wear—and every minute counts. It even once saved the bacon of my EMT OFD 25, when I used it to play a record in my collection that I’d gotten from a local library.

(Someone, may God forgive him or her, had thought it a good idea to put plastic-tape Dymo Label Maker labels in the lead-out area of every one of that library’s LPs.) That’s a pretty good savings right there!

Not since the Dual 1218 turntable I owned ca 1972 have I had an automatic record player—ie, one whose tonearm lifted at the end of the record, with no coaxing on my part. Nor, since then, have I needed such a thing.

Until now. And it isn’t just a question of having 45 years on my odometer that weren’t there when I owned that Dual—which, incidentally, I could never get to play upside-down, as the salesman assured me it would.

(Let’s not go there.) Rather, it has more to do with my having bought, in recent years, a bunch of 78rpm records: things that spin fast enough that, on more than one occasion, my stylus has burst inertia’s bonds and blasted its way, NASCAR-like, over the lead-out groove and toward the spindle.

An interesting technical aside: As effective tonearm length increases and the arc of the stylus’s travel across the record thus more and more closely approaches a straight line, the offset angle of the cartridge and the distance by which the stylus overhangs the

5 Dimensions of which vary widely, as Keith Howard observed in “Arc Angles: Optimizing Tonearm Geometry,” in the March 2010 issue: www.stereophile.com/reference/arc_angles_ optimizing_tonearm_geometry/index.html.

CONTACTS Audio Origami Scotland, UK www.audioorigami.co.uk US distributor: Fidelis Music Systems 460 Amherst Street (Route 101A) Nashua, NH 03063 Tel: (603) 880-4434 www.fidelisav.com Little Fwend Jens Bjelkes Gate 47B 0578 Oslo Norway www.littlefwend.com US distributor: Music Direct 1811 W. Bryn Mawr Avenue Chicago, IL 60660 Tel: (800) 449-8333, (312) 433-0200 Fax: (312) 433-0011 www.musicdirect.com

February 2017

Q

stereophile.com

ACOUSTICSOUNDS.COM | 800.716.3553

GRAMOPHONE DREAMS

EXPLORING THE ANALOG ADVENTURE

BY HERBERT REICHERT

THIS ISSUE :

A classic LP player is reborn.

Rega Research Planar 3 turntable

U

K, 1976: Upon its release, Rega Research’s original Planar 3 turntable became the poor man’s Linn Sondek LP12. It opened a gateway of affordability to the exotic world of high-quality British record players. Forty years later, the new Planar 3 turntable and its “light and rigid” engineering aesthetic, as conceived by Rega founder Roy Gandy, still occupy an admirably working-class, pro-music position in an audio world increasingly populated by gold-plated tonearms and quarter-ton turntables.

Before Rega, the Linn LP12 was conspicuously rhythmic and musical in a way no other record deck could match.

Then, suddenly, the Planar 3 appeared— and seemed to out-boogie the pricier (more bourgeois) Linn decks. Unfortunately, back around 1980, I thought the upstart, blue-collar Rega gave up a lot of the Sondek’s rhythmic suppleness, deeper space, and “blacker” backgrounds to accomplish this distinction. I bought neither, and remained loyal to my Denon DP-80.

Now, with this investigation of Rega’s new Planar 3 ($945 with RB330 tonearm, $1145 with the RB330 and Rega’s Elys 2 moving-magnet cartridge), I believe I’m finally prepared to appreciate what Roy Gandy and Rega hath wrought.

The Planar 3 Writing on Rega’s website, Roy Gandy describes the new Planar 3 as “truly a new turntable for 2016 carrying over just two components from the previous model.” While it looks about the same as its immediate predecessor (the Rega P3), the engineering changes are subtle but wide ranging, and include, according to Gandy, “a new 24V motor with improved motor control PCB” that can be further enhanced by the addition of Rega’s optional TT-PSU power supply ($395), the latter also providing pushbutton selection of platter speed and an “improved advanced anti-vibration circuit.”

In addition to low mass and high rigidity, Gandy believes in having a totally inflexible connection between the platter bearing, the tonearm mount, and—since 1999, when Rega introduced its 24V motor—the motor mount. He believes in getting excess stylus-groove energy out and away as fast as possible. To that end, Rega now bolts the motor directly to the plinth. A short O-ring–type drive belt encircles a stepped motor pulley (one groove each for 331⁄3 and 45rpm) and a new polycarbonate subplatter. This subassembly drives Rega’s latest, 12mm-thick float-glass platter.

Listening with the Parasound Halo JC 3+ and Elys 2 cartridge Rega is famous for making high-quality, low-priced tonestereophile.com

Q

February 2017

arms. If, on a scale of 1 to 10, the Swedish Audio Technologies tonearm ($32,000) is an 11 and the SME M2-9 ($1199) is a 4 or 5, then the new RB330 arm ($595) on Rega’s new Planar 3 is probably a 6 or 7.

When I first unpacked the Planar 3, I examined the RB330 arm, to get a feel for its bearings, check the cartridge alignment, and set the antiskating with the aid of a blank LP side. (I set the bias so the tonearm moves slowly toward the label of the blank side.) Then, absentmindedly, I flipped the disc over and played J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto 6, performed by the Musicians of Aston Magna, directed

by Albert Fuller (3 LPs, Smithsonian N019A). Immediately, my ears perked up and my mind began running alongside Bach’s music. In 10 seconds, I went from not paying attention to complete absorption in Bach’s steady-flowing melodic invention.

I bought this three-disc set not because the performances are so spellbinding (they’re not), or because the many period instruments played sound so rich (they do). I bought it because side 6 is blank and I could use it to set antiskating bias.

But suddenly, out of nowhere, the Planar 3 with budget Elys 2 cartridge ($295) was forcing me to really appreciate these formerly overlooked recordings of Bach’s lively concerti grossi. Instantly, the Planar 3 was doing exactly what I’d expected it to: show me rhythms and musical structures and the force of players playing, and let me forget about “audio” and remember why Bach is sublime even when he’s not trying to be.

I then moved from German polyphony to Indian ragas: Kalpana Improvisations: The Instrumental & Dance Music of India, with Mrinal Sen Gupta on sarod and Lateef Ahmed Khan on tabla (LP, Nonesuch Explorer Series H-72022). The smallto large-scale contrasts and melodic intervals in Rag Misra Mand—Dhun felt correct and accurately proportioned in a 37

A CLASSIC MASTERPIECE OF SOUND REPRODUCTION A masterpiece doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just inspire emotions. It changes the way you feel and alters something inside you. Classic ESL 9 is MartinLoganâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s newest modern masterpiece. All the familiar elements are here, with some revolutionary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È&#x192;D PDVWHUSLHFH RI DXGLR performance. You will never be the same. martinlogan.com

GRAMOPHONE DREAMS

unique way that enhanced the momentum and impact of this exotic Indian music. Tempos felt metronomically enhanced, thereby keeping these punchy, pokey ragas just frolicking along.

If stepping along and reaching within are not the two most important qualities an excellent hi-fi needs to exhibit, I don’t know what are. If these purely musical (as opposed to sonic) qualities don’t make it out of the turntabletonearm-cartridge system, all is lost. As you must already know, stepping along is the raison d’être of all Rega turntables—but to be truly special, a turntable must also reach within the performance to reveal the creative human forces behind these lively movements.

Therefore, the first question I felt I must answer was: Does Rega’s new Planar 3 got soul?

Rega Elys 2 vs Rega Exact I tried, but I never warmed up to Rega’s Elys 2 cartridge ($295). It didn’t reveal the hearts of Nina Simone, Janis Joplin, or Amy Winehouse. The bottom four octaves sounded clean and tight, but the top five octaves were hard and opaque, robbing soulful female voices of texture and overtones.

The Elys 2 never got loose or tender or glamorous. So I called Tom McGehee, at Sound Organisation, Rega’s US distributor, and asked what he’d recommend to a customer who felt as I did. He didn’t hesitate: “I’ll send you an Exact.”

Rega’s moving-magnet Exact ($595) attaches to the headshell of the RB330 with three screws—it bolts right in and can’t be repositioned—and it has an output of 6.8–7.2mV, just like the Elys 2. I thought that I wouldn’t have time to properly break in the Exact. I needn’t have worried—the transparency and soulfulness of this cartridge jumped right out at me. So did the real Simone, Joplin, and Winehouse. Every criticism I had of the Elys 2 disappeared instantly. The Exact sounded sweet, very open, and easy rolling.

Listening with the Lounge Audio LCR Mk.III RIAA phono stage On every record player I’ve owned since the late 1970s, I’ve enjoyed the sociable, easy-rolling rhythms of René Clemencic and his Clemencic Consort playing Danses Anciennes de Hongrie et de Transylvanie (LP, Harmonia Mundi France HM1003). It’s a charming, good-sounding recording that I use frequently to assess system sound or a stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

recommended Regas to countless music-loving, nonaudiophile friends.

But I’ve always wondered—what is the source of that “pacey,” boogie-down Rega sound? Is it the AC motor? Is it simply that Rega platters tend to rotate a bit too fast, as some have found? Is it the player’s lightness and rigidity, as Rega claims?

Or something else? Curious, I decided that my review of the Planar 3 would be an investigation into what makes a Rega sound like a Rega.

I began with Dr. Feickert Analogue’s PlatterSpeed app. For some reason, I assumed that Rega had solved the whole “Regas run fast” thing. They haven’t. Powered by Rega’s standard wall wart, the Planar 3 played the Feickert app’s 3150Hz test tone at 3159.8Hz (see figs.1 and 2 on p.40).

Definitely fast. Rega’s optional TTPSU power supply ($395) slightly improved that figure, to 3158.2Hz. For comparison, Technics’ SL-1200GAE played the 3150Hz tone at 3150.2Hz. Most important, the Rega’s platter speed was exceptionally smooth and consistent with both AC sources. I heard only a small improvement with the optional supply, but I appreciated the TT-PSU’s knack for lower motor noise, and the convenience of changing speeds by pushing a button instead of removing the platter and moving the drive belt to a different groove on the pulley. I used the TT-PSU for 90% of my listening.

Except for the use of spacers or shims, Rega’s tonearms lack any way of adjusting a cartridge’s vertical tracking angle (VTA), stylus rake angle (SRA), or azimuth. Therefore, I couldn’t wait to try Musical Surroundings’ Fozgometer azimuth tester, which works by measuring crosstalk from one channel to the other. This test can’t tell whether an imbalance is caused by imperfect headshell azimuth or an imperfectly made cartridge; that said, the Elys 2, factory-installed in the RB330, was pretty darn good.

Then it got interesting. I’m puzzled by reviewers who test turntables by scratching the tonearm, or tapping the plinth with the volume turned up.

Such tests seem too far removed from the realm of normal, everyday music listening to be relevant. Nevertheless, I was curious about the possible side effects of Rega’s strategy of connecting A bird’s-eye view of the “metalised phenolic” top brace that extends from the Rega’s arm mount to its platter bearing.

component under review.

The Rega Planar 3 and Exact, heard through Lounge Audio’s LCR Mk.III phono stage ($300, review in progress), played these stately tunes with rich, fully resolved bass, eager finesse, and sculpted images whose solid presences were neither preposterously big nor distractingly small. Every instrument stood solid, framed by a substantial cushion of air.

Old records can be like vintage sports cars: Deccas are like Aston Martins, EMI ASDs are like Jaguar XK-150MCs, and old Deutsche Grammophon “tulip” LPs are like MercedesBenz Pontons. And no DG LP is more Ponton-tulip than baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing “Morir!

Tremenda cosa! Urna fatale del mio destino,” from Verdi’s La Forza del Destino, with Ferenc Fricsay conducting the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (LP, LPM 18700). The Rega-Lounge combo reproduced Fischer-Dieskau’s performance with full Germanic force and no hint of edge or stridency. The Planar 3 made this DG Ponton sound like an ASD Jaguar.

THE LARGER PICTURE: Despite all the direct-drive and idler-drive tables I’ve owned, I’ve always admired the musical capabilities of the Linn Sondek LP12, the Roksan Xerxes, and Rega’s original Planar 3. As you all know, admiration is the first step toward acquisition, and in that spirit, I recently purchased a Linn Sondek LP12, and am now considering a Roksan and a Rega. But . . . which Roksan? which Rega?

I know that Rega turntables have been positively reviewed around the globe. I’ve enjoyed every system I’ve heard that has included one, and I’ve

39

GRAMOPHONE DREAMS

the platter bearing, the tonearm mount, and the motor directly to a light, rigid plinth. So I tried my own little test. In the spirit of quasi-science, and with the platter spinning at 331⁄3 rpm and the Planar 3’s stock wall-wart supply, I listened to the plinth and the RB330 bearing housing with a stethoscope.

The sound of the vibrating motor was shockingly loud. When I listened again, this time with the TT-PSU supply, the apparent frequency of the noise had dropped by a couple of octaves, and by about 50% (–6dB) in volume.

Then, with the phono stage turned off and the Rega playing an LP of Gregorian chant, I held the stethoscope to the plinth. I could make out the words the choir was singing. I couldn’t believe it.

I performed these same tests on a VPI Scout Jr. ($1599), which was, even with its completely detached motor, only about 50% quieter than the Rega.

recordings, especially of opera, noticeably quieter and more transparent.

I tried the stethoscopeon-plinth test on the Roksan Radius 7 turntable ($2500): It was approximately 94% dead silent.

The Palmer 2.5 ($9300) was 98% silent. And when I put my ’scope on the armboard of my Linn Sondek LP12 Valhalla, it was the quietest of all.

Who would have guessed?

You know the audiophile expression ink-black Fig.1 (left) Rega Planar 3, stock belt, backgrounds? The Palmer speed stability (raw frequency yellow; 2.5 is totally high-end: It low-pass filtered frequency green).

Fig.2 (above) Rega Planar 3, stock belt, produces ink-black backspeed stability data. ground spaces and wide dynamic expression. In (Obviously, my equipment rack was other words, music emerges from an transmitting motor vibrations.) When extremely low noise floor. Meanwhile, the Roksan Radius 7 makes incredI moved the Scout Jr. to PS Audio’s PerfectWave PowerBase combination ibly textured and three-dimensional isolation base/power conditioner images that emerge from a substantial, ($999; review in the works), the noise almost-“black” space. I imagine a corwent down another 50% (–6dB total). relation between these desirable sonic The PS Audio Power Base was less effects and what I heard through my helpful with the Rega, but it made stethoscope.

GRAMOPHONE DREAMS

I believe the stethoscope test is musically relevant because, unlike tapping a plinth or scratching a tonearm—which are calamitous and externally caused— the distortion the ’scope reveals is constant and insidious in nature. Just as we can hear harmonic distortion in amplifiers or jitter in digital systems, I feel certain that any noise produced by the motor and transmitted to and by the plinth must contribute to any turntable’s basic sound character. How much? Only a little—I think. But maybe a big little.

The new Planar 3 played Music with a capital M. It rocked, it swung, it slipped and slid. It delivered human-scaled musical art. It played solo piano with stupendous rigor, weight, and expression. However . . .

I suspect that the noise of the Planar 3’s motor, coupled with that singalong plinth echo, contributed not only to the slight punchy opacity I

Fig.3 (left) Rega Planar 3, white belt, speed stability (raw frequency yellow; low-pass filtered frequency green).

Fig.4 (above) Rega Planar 3, white belt, speed stability data.

perceived, but also, maybe, to my perception and enjoyment of musical flow.

I wonder: if the Rega’s bearing, plinth, and tonearm are literally “playing along” with the music, could they not also be microscopically doubling the notes, hitting the beats extra hard, and reiterating the music’s rhythms a little more than those of other turntables?

I think these subtle noise effects I’ve uncovered might be emphasizing rhythms and encouraging us to tap our feet, nod our heads, and groove along. I think they might actually be good things.1 Perhaps these subtle, nearly subliminal mechanical emphases project the music’s timing and pace more pointedly into the listener’s consciousness. I imagine it’s like doubling a singer’s voice or emphasizing a kickdrum track. I wonder if this very subtle form of reverb might be the secret sauce, the true source of

1 As with optics, when a light wave reaches a boundary with a change in refractive index, when a soundwave encounters a change in medium it splits into two. Some of it is reflected back, some of it is conducted with a different velocity of propagation.

If you hear two similar sounds in a small interval of time, your brain perceives them as a single sound.

However, the late John Crabbe conducted experiments in the 1970s to examine this phenomenon and postulated that if the delay is sufficiently great, the reflected soundwaves actually add reverberation when they reach the stylus-groove interface.

—John Atkinson

GRAMOPHONE DREAMS

Rega turntables’ reputation for pacey, boogie-oriented sound.

The Rega RB330 tonearm When I raise a tonearm by its finger lift, I can feel its weight and rigidity. I can feel, very precisely, how stiff and stable it is. I can feel if it’s a one-piece casting, like the Rega RB330 ($595), or a thin, hollow, bubble-tea straw with a glued-on headshell and bearing yoke, like the Roksan Nima. As I lift the arm from its rest, I can feel all the way down the armtube, right through to the bearings. This is not subtle. If you try it, you’ll feel all this too.

Observing how incredibly different each tonearm feels from all other models can be radically enlightening.

Try imagining the feather-light aluminum armtube of the Roksan Nima; the thick, damped stainless-steel tube of the SME M2-9; the extruded, rectangularsection, solid aluminum of the Abis 1.2; the silky-smooth, bead-blasted finesse of Audio Origami’s aluminum-alloy PU-7; and, especially, the almost startling rigidity of Rega’s new one-piece RB330. (See what I mean?)

With gimbal-bearing arms, we can feel the tightness or looseness, the texture of their movements, and the relative amounts of friction.

When I move any tonearm, I can sense the weight of the attached cartridge. I can sense the position of the rotating bearing axis, the mass of the counterweight, and the force of the antiskating bias. Not only can I feel all this—I imagine I can hear all this mechanicalness going on as a record is being played. The RB330 impressed me greatly with its low-texture, nearly frictionless precision. The best arm I’ve ever groped was a Breuer Dynamic (discontinued): I’ll never forget how airysmooth yet perfectly true and precise that Swiss arm felt. I’ll never forget how invisible it sounded. The inexpensive Rega RB330, made in the UK, comes ridiculously close to my memory of the Breuer’s perfectly tight, perfectly loose invisibility—so close that I believe the high quality of Rega arms is the No.1 reason their record players continue to make so many people happy.

Big white belt Now how can this be? I didn’t touch the volume knob when I swapped out the Rega Planar 3’s stock black drive belt for the optional, thicker white belt ($59.99), but the volume seemed to increase. Every instrument on Danses stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

Anciennes de Hongrie et de Transylvanie was instantly bigger, more tangible, more focused, more textural. Suddenly, I noticed the inside volume of the drums! But using a thicker belt makes the turntable run a bit faster: the very slightly increased distance between the thicker belt’s centerline and the axis of the drive pulley very slightly changes the drive system’s “gear ratio.”

Using Dr. Feickert’s PlatterSpeed app, I measured the change in speed: from 3159.8 to 3171.3Hz (figs. 3 and 4 on p.41). Realistically, this is an increase in speed of less than 1%. However, I feel certain that this minute change is audible, and equally certain that Roy Gandy and Rega have built their reputation of making pace-rhythmand-timing machines on just this sort of engineering subtlety. I love the white belt and the way it makes my music feel. If you buy a Planar 3, don’t think—just buy the white belt and TT-PSU power-supply options. Both make recordings more enjoyable.

And you know what?

I love the way Rega Research’s new Planar 3 navigates my black discs. I love the way it honors musicians. I love the way each of the Rega’s engineering subtleties—in the tonearm, the floatglass platter, the light and rigid plinth, the nonadjustable tonearm, the motor and power supply, and the thicker white drive belt—combine to make listening to black discs enjoyable in a way that’s more psychic and emotional than audiophile-sonic. For me, the best record-playing system is the one that most vigorously directs my attention toward the humans behind the music—not the sound of my hi-fi. Rega’s new Planar 3 is exceptional at doing just that. Q Herb Reichert (STLetters@enthusiastnetwork.com) plays LPs old and new in Brooklyn’s hip Bedford-Stuyvesant ’hood.

CONTACTS Rega Research Southend-on-Sea Essex SS2 5TE UK Web: www.rega.co.uk US distributor: The Sound Organisation 159 Leslie Street Dallas, TX 75207 Tel: (972) 234-0182 Fax: (972) 234-0249 Web: www.soundorg.com

A Natural Evolution

The original NightHawk has captivated headphone enthusiasts around the world with its remarkable combination of comfort and naturally beautiful sound.

NightHawk Carbon refines its revolutionary design, adds a second pair of earpads (UltraSuede), and includes a far more durable cable with mic and smartphone controls.

NightOwl Carbon replaces NightHawk’s biomimetic sound-diffusing grille with an intelligently designed aperiodic damping system for excellent isolation of external noise.

Listen longer, later, and with greater freedom, enjoying even deeper immersion in your favorite music, movies, videos, and games.

(QMR\ WKH ([SHULHQFH

SDVVODEV FRP

S PECI AL S ECTI ON

OF HEADPHONES TO COME THOUGHTS ON WHAT CANS CAN AND CAN’T DO

BY TYLL HERTSENS

figured it was coming, but it wasn’t until just after I’d returned from the Audio Engineering Society’s 2016 International Conference on Headphone Technology1 — held last August in Aalborg, Denmark—and was writing up my report and summary on the event for InnerFidelity.com2 that I knew for sure: Headphones are about to change . . . a lot.

I’d like to take you on a little ride into the future of headphones, but first we’ll have to go back to the past, for some context. Until 1970 or so, headphones were mostly used in professional recording studios, audiology labs, broadcast studios, and the like. Consumers didn’t use them much. Stax’s first electrostatic earspeakers appeared in 1960, and slowly gathered a few fans among audiophiles, but that market niche was very small. In 1970, when Koss introduced the Pro4AA dynamic headphones, a few consumers began to take notice. I was one of them. With my paperroute money, I bought a pair of Pro4AAs in 1972, so I could

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

listen to Pink Floyd at night as my little brother slept in the bunk above.

Then, in 1979, with the introduction of the Sony Walkman, consumers for the first time began using headphones in large numbers. Of course, their attention was mostly on the Walkman itself—headphones were mere accessories to that device. It would take something much bigger for headphones to become a viable product in the minds of most consumers.

By 1990, little had changed—headphones remained hung on the accessories rack, next to the cables and adapters. But headphones did begin to appear in high-end audio. In Stereophile, Corey Greenberg fawned over Grado’s nifty SR60 model ($69),3 and Stax’s pricey electrostatic headphones sold reasonably well among serious audiophiles who needed The original to keep the noise level Sony Walkman down at night.4 TPS-L2 and Many will say that nondescript MDR-3L2 enthusiasm for highheadphones, end headphones really from 1979. began when I founded the sales and manufacturing company HeadRoom, in 1992, and started building a variety of portable and home headphone amplifiers for consumers.

But I’d say it began with the coming of the Internet and, a few years later, the online HeadWize headphone forum.

Enthusiasm for headphones as a hobby began with online camaraderie, and continues to this day in the virtual town squares of head-fi.org, head-case. org, superbestaudiofriends.org, r/headphones on Reddit, and elsewhere.

Back then, for the most part, audiophiles were reluctant to accept headphones as high-end transducers.

They had a point: The headphones of that era didn’t sound very good. It would be some time before the sounds of headphones began to rival those of high-end speakers. In fact, we might not quite be there even today.

Headphone geeks made a lot of noise online, but their numbers were 1 See www.aes.org/conferences/2016/headphones/.

2 See www.innerfidelity.com/content/aes-headphone-technology-conference-summary. To dive deeper, read my reports on many of the papers delivered: www.innerfidelity.com/category/aesheadphone-conference-2016.

3 See www.stereophile.com/headphones/532/index. html.

4 See www.stereophile.com/content/stax-sr-lambdapro-headphones.

45

O F H E AD P HON ES TO CO ME

slow to grow. Nonetheless, manufacturers became aware of the small but growing market they represented, and—likely due to the remarkable ability of hardcore enthusiasts to spread advice via the Web—began to improve and introduce products for enthusiastic listeners. While this was a time of slow, steady growth in premium headphones costing ca $250–$400, this market niche remained of secondary concern to manufacturers focused on cheap consumer products, expensive pro-audio gear, and special-purpose headphones.

Bottom line: Until the 2000s, the only really strong force driving headphones was portable players. And there, the attention was not on the headphones but on the players, as they morphed from cassette to CD to MP3.

Then, two big things happened.

In 2001, Apple introduced the iPod, and instantly made every preceding portable music player seem clunky and outdated. The focus of buyers’ awareness was still on the player, but a few years later, Apple’s “silhouette” ad campaign seemed to subconsciously attract consumers’ attention to the dancing white wires of the iPod’s earbuds. Not only was your physicalmedia player no longer cool, your stupid foamy-puff, on-ear headphones weren’t, either.

Then, in about 2006, Noel Lee, Head Monster of Monster Cable, got together with Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre to produce the first Monster Beats

by Dre headphone model. A massive guerrilla marketing campaign ensued, and sports photographers found ample opportunity to snap pics of superstars with headphones slung around their necks, providing millions of dollars’ worth of free advertising as fans ate up the images. The kids went wild—cans were cool—and it turned out that a large proportion of consumers were suddenly willing to spend $300 on headphones: easily ten times more than they’d have thought of spending just a few years before. Finally, consumers had awakened to the idea that maybe they ought to think about buying a pair of decent headphones, and Beats began to dominate the headphone market. Unfortunately, the sound quality of the first Beats models was far from decent.

The last ten years have seen a feed-

46

Audiophiles were reluctant to accept headphones as high-end transducers. ing frenzy around consumers’ willingness to shell out healthy wads of cash on headphones made by a plethora of new headphone manufacturers: AIAIAI, AudioFly, House of Marley, SMS, Sol Republic, and Soul, to name just a few. The rapid rise of the smartphone, which has put a music player in nearly every pocket, added more blood to the water. Prices rose, and manufacturers enjoyed higher margins of profit—but to remain competitive and relevant, they also had to improve product styling, comfort, reliability—even sound quality. As a result, progress in all aspects of headphone performance has been far more rapid in the last ten years than in the preceding decades.

Which brings me to today. Headphones now have strong cultural momentum. Consumers know they need a pair, and perhaps multiple pairs, depending on their use: sweat-proof for fitness, noise-canceling for travel, wireless for portable convenience, etc.

Some makers have focused on specific applications: Bose on noise cancelers, Jaybird on sports headphones, and Focal in the premium category.

Beats remains the 800-lb gorilla in the room, however, with extraordinary dominance in the various headphone submarkets. According to the marketresearch firm NPD Group, Beats’ sales revenues in 2015 dominated the markets: 46% of Bluetooth headphones, 49% of fitness models, and a whopping 60% of premium headphones (which NPD defines as headphones retailing for more than $100). Bottom line: Headphones are big money makers, which means that manufacturers are highly motivated to make the next cool headphone model.

Everything I’ve said so far describes what you see out there every day. But headphones have an inner meaning—of what they are and could be to those who design and desire them. The sounds you hear through headphones are not added to your natural acoustic environment, but replace it with a

new acoustical space that contains the audio from your music and movies.

The problem is that headphones don’t sound at all like a natural acoustic environment—all the sound is inside your skull. Headphone designers have always known that if they could crack the nut of making headphones sound like speakers—that is, as if the sounds were coming from outside your skull—it would mean big money.

That is a very hard nut to crack, but it hasn’t stopped manufacturers from trying. AKG, in their K1000,5 and Stax, in a number of models, have hung large planar drivers as far from the ears as possible, to mimic the effects of speakers. Gaming and home-theater companies have put multiple drivers in each earcup, to direct sound at the ear from multiple angles. None of these methods works convincingly.

The only commercially available system that convincingly takes sound out of your head is the Smyth Realiser A8.6 This system is custom-tuned to the response of your own ears: microphones are placed in your ears, to pick up the sounds of calibration signals played through the speakers of your surroundsound system. This is one of two keys to creating, through headphones, convincing external localization of sounds: having it tuned to the anatomy of a listener’s own ears by measuring that listener’s unique and specific headrelated transfer function (HRTF).

The HRTF is a set of a few dozen to a few hundred frequency-response measurements taken at various angles around the head. Traditionally, this has been done with the listener sitting in an anechoic chamber with his or her head stabilized in one position. A loudspeaker is then moved through various angles of azimuth and elevation around the listener’s head, with measurements taken at each position. The process is time-consuming and expensive, but when it’s done, and digital signal-processing (DSP) filters for that listener have been developed from the data captured, the result can be a convincingly immersive sound.

The other key technology required to use headphones to create a believable virtual sonic landscape is to add 5 See www.stereophile.com/content/ tale-four-headphones.

6 See www.stereophile.com/content/ music-round-45.

February 2017

Q

stereophile.com

U S A

A U D I O

S Y S T E M S

Ask twelve audiophiles for the best anything and youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll get twelve different answers.

But the audio experts at EISA do agree on one turntable, The Classic.

Vintage design meets modern technology.

For more information visit www.pro-jectusa.com

O F H E AD P HON ES TO CO ME

head-position tracking. Then, when you move your head, the acoustic image remains in place in the virtual room, and doesn’t move along with your head. The Smyth Realiser has a head tracker mounted on the headphones. Using input from the tracker, the Realiser adjusts the HRTF in DSP so that, as you turn your head gently from side to side, the positions of the virtual speakers presented to you through the headphones remain fixed in the real-world space around you.

Adding head tracking to personalized HRTFs is the holy grail of virtual audio via headphones.

So we have two key ingredients for the growth of the headphone market: 1) A rabid, wallet-opening strength of desire for headphones on the part of consumers, giving manufacturers lots of money to invest in product development. (Headphones are pretty high-margin products—there are lots of profit dollars to work with.)

2) A clear path for the future development of headphones with virtual-audio technology.

The problem is that virtual audio via headphones remains very difficult to achieve. The things that make today different from the past are the facts that researchers now understand the challenges fairly well, and that current DSP technologies have the computing power to do the job. The remaining task is to dig into all the bits and pieces of the problem, efficiently come up with practical solutions, then figure out how to get it all to work together. That last bit may be the hardest, because there are a lot of variables in this equation: k Individual HRTFs must be generated for each listener. The resulting file must be broadly compatible with equipment made by many manufacturers. k Headphones will have to be very well behaved in the time domain. Localization cues generated by DSP must be reproduced with no added garbage.

Impulse responses must be very clean, or we won’t be able to clearly hear the cues. (Actual frequency response is less problematic, as tonal-correction curves can be built into the headphones.) k Much of the intended use of these types of headphones is with smartphones and tablets. Decisions must be made about where the various computations are made. The virtual

48

Clockwise from left: the Zalman ZM-RS6F headphones, with multiple drivers to simulate front and rear left/right speakers; Sennheiser Lucas generic binaural synthesis using DSP; AKG’s K1000 headphones dangled small speakers away from the ears in an attempt to deliver an out-of-head listening experience; the Smyth Realiser A8 derives DSP filters from measurements of the user’s ear, and includes a head-tracking device.

audio reality may be rendered by the portable device, but it’s likely that all the changing HRTF cues occasioned by head movements will be rendered in the headphones themselves, which will have significant computing power. k New types of content and formats will have to be standardized so that they can be interpreted by hardware from a variety of manufacturers. k Perhaps most difficult of all, headphones will have to be transparent to sound in the real environment around the listener. One of the major goals here is a mixed reality, in which you can interact with your normal environment as usual, while hearing artificial sounds superimposed on the real sounds. Imagine, if you will, the kids hearing a Pokémon giggling in the bushes as they search for it.

So, along with being a difficult technical problem, there is also a significant convergence problem.

Numerous industry standards must be developed before creators can produce content with complex formats that can be transported to and rendered for individual consumers using a variety of devices.

I knew that three-dimensional

sound through headphones is tempting, but for a long time I thought the problem was just too complex, that it wouldn’t happen any time soon. I hadn’t yet put together in my head all the pieces I’ve described, and I doubted manufacturers would have the will to overcome the difficulty. After attending the AES conference, and digesting and reporting on many of the papers presented, I suddenly found myself believing that it would happen. There’s just too much at stake—too many cool things to come from this technology, and so much money to be made by those who figure it out. As I sat in a room with 100 highly paid researchers, each on a mission to develop ways in which people will hear sound through headphones in the future, I could feel the industry’s intense will to get this job done. Here’s a description of the Headphone Conference, from AES’s webpage: More than 300 million pairs of headphones were sold in 2015, and people are using headphones everywhere. The popularity of “smart and wearable” devices has driven developments in low-power processors and sensors that are enabling the augmentation of headphones with features more typically associated with hearing aids or smartphones. Therefore, this conference will focus on technologies for headphones with a special emphasis on the emerging fields of Mobile Spatial Audio, Personal Assistive Listening, and Augmented Reality. This conference will assemble scientists, developers, and practitioners who are involved in any head-worn hearing technology, be it in theory, technical design, application or evaluation. The conference will enable an interdisciplinary dialogue across the headphone and hearing aid industries.

February 2017

Q

stereophile.com

oldenEar’s World-Beating New Triton One Wins Stereophile’s 2015 Co-Loudspeaker-of-the Year! “… the mere fact that it is not unreasonable to compare the sound of the $4999 (pair) Triton One with the sounds of speakers costing tens of thousands of dollars more per pair says a lot about their level of performance …” – Robert Deutsch, Stereophile “ A Giant-Killer Speaker … Borderline Class A”

– Stereophile Magazine

Two 5.25˝ High-Definition CastBasket Bass/Midrange Drivers w/ Multi-Vaned Phase Plugs

Optimized Dual-Chamber Upper-Bass/Midrange Enclosure with Angled Rear Walls High-Velocity Folded Ribbon Tweeter (HVFR) w/ Zobel Network

Open-Cell Polyurethane Foam Damping Pads and Complex Internal Bracing

Three 5˝ x 9˝ Quadratic Sub-Bass Drivers in Semi-Line-Source Array

Hybrid Phase-Perfect Electronic/Passive Low Frequency Crossover

Linear-Phase Fully Balanced Crossover Network

Four Inertially-Balanced Quadratic Planar Infrasonic Radiators: Two On Each Side of Cabinet

1600-Watt 56-Bit DSP-Controlled Class D Digital Amplifier

Winning Stereophile’s Loudspeaker-of-the-Year, is perhaps, the highest honor that a loudspeaker can achieve. Plus, this is doubly significant for such an affordable loudspeaker as the One, when you realize that the co-winner sells for $25,000 a pair, winners often sell for $50,000, $100,000, or $200,000 a pair, and you have to go back to 2007 to find another winner under $20,000 a pair (at $18,000, not much under). And, of course, Borderline Class A is a similar, very special achievement, when you realize the average Class A speaker, this year, sold for $54,000 a pair.

“ An absolute marvel … shames some speakers costing ten times as much.”

– Caleb Denison, Digital Trends The Triton One is an evolutionary speaker that builds upon all the advanced technologies that have made the Tritons mega-hits around the world. This new top-of-the-line flagship was engineered to deliver even better dynamics and bass than the extraordinary Triton Two, along with further refinement of all aspects of sonic performance. How well have we succeeded? In the words of HD Living’s Dennis Burger, the Triton One delivers, “… the sort of upper-echelon performance that normally only comes from speakers whose price tags rival a good luxury automobile”.

Triton One “creates visceral, tangible waves of pure audio bliss” – Dennis Burger, HD Living Great sound is what it is all about and the Triton Ones are, as HiFi+’s Chris Martens raved, “jaw droppingly good … one of the greatest highend audio bargains of all time with a dazzling array of sonic characteristics that are likely to please (if not stun) the finicky and jaded of audiophiles”.

The Ones were specifically engineered to excel with all types of music as well as movies. Best of all, they offer previously unheard of value, as Brent Butterworth wrote in Sound & Vision, “I heard a few people saying the Triton One sounded like some $20,000-and-up high-end towers, but I disagree: I think they sounded better than most of them”. Darryl Wilkinson summed them up best, “A Masterpiece … GoldenEar has fully ushered in the Golden Age of the Loudspeaker”. Hear them for yourself and discover what all the excitement is about.

Accelerometer-Optimized Non-Resonant Cabinet w/ Non-Parallel Walls

Triton One Tower $2499 ea.

www.goldenear.com PO Box 141, Stevenson, MD 21153 (410) 998-9134 Like us on Facebook! facebook.com/goldenear

Follow us on Twitter! twitter.com/goldeneartech

Call us or check our website for your nearest dealer

O F H E AD P HON ES TO CO ME

Gaming and Pokémon stuff will certainly be profitable, but the real money is in developing something as ubiquitous as the smartphone. I draw your attention to the last sentence of the above description: “The conference will enable an interdisciplinary dialogue across the headphone and hearing aid industries.”

One of the ideas discussed at the conference was that of personal assisted listening, in which the sounds around you are modified in some way to improve your sense of hearing. Here is the crossover with the hearing-aid industry: There are many cases in which those who enjoy normal hearing might find it nice to hear even more clearly. One technique described was the canceling of incoherent, diffuse noise and the augmentation of coherent sources—sound sources that are spatially well defined. Imagine sitting in a loud, crowded restaurant, talking with your friends: their voices will be nearby and spatially coherent; the din of the crowd will be diffuse. It’s possible to suppress the background noise and augment the coherent sound of the friends sitting at your table, to allow you to clearly hear them even in such noisy environments.

Or imagine firefighters who could don special headsets that suppress the roar of the flames but augment the sounds of human voices, allowing them to more easily find survivors.

Rescue workers might be able to use such “bionic” hearing to help them locate the muffled voices of people buried in the rubble of collapsed buildings. And, of course, there are military applications.

Taking it a step further: Those traveling in foreign countries could use smart headphones to hear English translations on the fly of what people are saying. Or a step beyond that— cameras and autonomous-driver automotive technologies could be combined in a headset that would allow the blind to follow a trail of sonic breadcrumbs as the headset listens and watches for obstacles and traffic lights.

In short, we’ll stop thinking of headphones as a way to make phone calls and listen to movies and music, and start thinking of them much more as we do smartphones—as personal assistants, fitness-training aids, and reality enhancers.

50

Beats remains the 800-lb gorilla in the room.

Some of these devices will be fullsize headsets with dropdown visual displays similar to those displayed by Microsoft’s HoloLens, which superimposes virtual visual objects on the real environment. Such devices will permit the mixing of aural and visual realities.

But many such devices designed for everyday use will be more discreet, and mounted in the ear—mashups between hearing aids and in-ear monitors.

They’ll also likely have interchangeable cover plates of different colors and designs, to suit the user’s and the day’s fashion requirements.

What does all this have to do with traditional two-channel audiophiles?

Not all that much. I’m talking about something that will happen five or ten years from now, and two-channel recordings aren’t going to magically go away. But there are a few things that may affect the audio avocation we so love.

Just as, 30 years ago, the bestsounding headphones came out of the pro-audio market, it’s likely there will be an early drive for professional virtual-audio systems needed in content creation. A couple of generations on, these systems might sound very good.

We all know that room acoustics play an important role in the sound of a good stereo system; future headphone systems will be able to synthesize any number of room acoustics. While they may not replace a big, serious hi-fi rig, they may make a high-quality listening experience portable and at considerably lower cost, thus making highfidelity sound available to more people, more of the time.

One of the profitable areas left to music producers today is live concerts.

The same virtual audio/video headset hardware used for future gaming could also be used as a way to distribute payper-view “you are there” concert experiences. But the original content for these concerts (and music videos, computer games, and movies) will use an object-oriented encoding system similar to Dolby Atmos. In other words, sound won’t be assigned to a number

of audio channels to be reproduced by a matching array of loudspeakers, but rather as various movable aural objects emitting sound from positions in space.

Additionally, such technology will synthesize the acoustic response of the room or space in which the sounds are made. For audiophiles, this means that there will be ever-increasing pressure for content created with or recorded in new spatial-audio formats, which would then have to be downmixed for replay through two-channel or surround systems.

My inner audiophile cringes.

On the other hand, I could easily see world-class symphony orchestras making recordings using special soundfield microphones—recordings that would produce a very convincing immersive listening experience through a professional-quality virtual headphone system. I would argue that, given enough time for complete development, these systems might deliver a listening experience superior to twochannel or surround sound, as it can produce the illusion of a sound coming from any direction, seemingly enveloping you with sound. While high-end virtual audio systems may never sound as refined as the best two-channel systems, they may offer a heightened sense of immersion in a soundfield.

About that, my inner headphone geek gets enthused.

And as long as I’m making predictions: There’s currently only one company that controls a significant swath of the personal-audio market, from content sales through delivery to the hardware it’s played through and the software to control it: Apple Inc. and its subsidiary Beats Electronics. Given the Apple ecosystem of content, software, and hardware, and Beats’ extraordinary dominance in headphone sales, Apple is poised to develop and deliver a mixedreality experience without the need for any industry standards other than those used in content creation. I suspect that this gives Apple a built-in lead of three years on everyone else. I don’t expect that, in the long run, they’ll end up being the best at it; I do expect that they’ll do the job well enough for the average consumer, and that they’ll do it first. It’ll be the iPod/Beats by Dre phenomenon all over again. Q Tyll Hertsens is the editor of Stereophile’s sister site InnerFidelity.com.

February 2017

Q

stereophile.com

oldenEar Now Has Two Amazing SuperSubs!

The SuperSub XXL and the New SuperSub X ™

“They are superb … I was taken aback by the sheer power of the XXL … with musicality and dexterity, volcanic power and subtlety … exceedingly tuneful, pitch accurate and speedy … a must audition.” – Jacob Heilbrunn, The Absolute Sound SuperSub X is “a true compact wonder” – Mark Henninger, AVS When we began the SuperSub project, our goal was simply to create the “holy grail” of subwoofers: ultra-compact, beautifully styled and finished, and capable of extraordinary performance, both extremely musical and explosively powerful. The first SuperSub, the XXL, which had Digital Trend’s Caleb Dennison raving, “So musical and lightening quick … does the job of two or three subwoofers all on its own”, overachieved all these goals but one. While reasonably small, it is certainly not ultra-compact. Now, with the SuperSub X, barely larger than a 12.5˝ cube, we clearly have achieved our lofty goal.

“ Blew me away … the perfect balance of power and control, impact and unobtrusiveness, fury and finesse” – Dennis Burger, HD Living

SuperSub X $1249 ea.

Both the SuperSub X and XXL can effortlessly generate mega-bass pressure waves of extremely high amplitude, while delivering extraordinarily detailed, accurate and precise low-frequencies that are perfect at recreating dramatic cinema sound effects, as well as the subtle musical excellence of Ron Carter, Sting, or Yo Yo Ma. To achieve this, we have engineered a unique, patent pending 360 degree dual-plane inertially-balanced active driver and sub-bass radiator topology, and combined it with a very advanced 56 bit DSP controlled 1600 or 1400 watt Class D digital electronics package, originally developed for our Speaker-of-the-Year Award winning Triton One.

“ Like King Kong in a tux, GoldenEar’s SuperSub XXL looks classy and wreaks havoc!” – Caleb Dennison, Digital Trends Housed within the gorgeous piano gloss black enclosures are two horizontally-opposed 12˝ or 8˝ ultra-long-throw active drivers and two vertically opposed planar infrasonic radiators. This complete inertial balancing totally eliminates box movement and vibration (you can stand a nickel on top when blasting away), resulting in more bass energy and greater detail! This new achievement in state-of-the-art subwoofer performance, not only “rocks the house”, as Big Picture Big Sound’s Chris Boylan raved, but is also “strong, pure and controlled” as Sound & Vision’s Mark Fleischman wrote. Best of all, both these SuperSubs deliver GoldenEar’s hallmark: extraordinary value. Visit your nearest GoldenEar dealer today to see and hear what we mean.

SuperSub XXL $1999 ea.

www.goldenear.com PO Box 141, Stevenson, MD 21153 (410) 998-9134 Like us on Facebook! facebook.com/goldenear

Follow us on Twitter! twitter.com/goldeneartech

Call us or check our website for your nearest dealer

PLANCK. Again, a quantum leap. Few other machines on the planet play with such precision, breathtaking ease and superlative tonal substance.

WATT. Even more subtle. Even more transparent. With an even bigger sound stage and a force beyond equal.

AMPERE. Electricity, reinvented. For an epiphany of hitherto unheard stability, spatiality and musical purity.

Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s celebrate science together. Meet the sensational new SCIENTIST ultra high-end series that premiered with a BEST OF SHOW award at HIGHEND Munich on en.audionet.de for a life-changing audiophile discovery. A note to our U.S. readers: call up Bill Parish at gttaudio.com. And thanks again for your stable external power support.

Flagship Boutique for Audionet, Kii Audio, Kronos Audio, Mola-Mola and YG Acoustics.

All products on display. By appointment only.

Check our website for a full listing of brands represented.

Dealer inquires welcome.

R2D4

N

RECORDS TO DIE FOR 2017

2017

ever in the history of our venerable “Records To Die For” feature has the word Die come to mean as much as it has in the past year. Merle Haggard, Phife Dawg, Rudy Van Gelder, Maurice White, Glenn Frey, Otis Clay, Blowfly, Bob Cranshaw, George Martin, Steve Young, Chips Moman, Lonnie Mack, Prince, Leonard Cohen, Sharon Jones, Leon Russell, Ralph Stanley, David Bowie—all died in the past year. So to drive away any evil spirits that may be hovering over this year’s R2D4 extravaganza, we may need to think of this 2017 installment more as “Records to Live For.” The overall idea is fairly simple: For R2D4, each Stereophile writer is asked to choose two albums that move, animate, enlighten him or her. Any format is fair game, the only restriction being that it must still be available in the US, if only in the deep, dark recesses of the Internet. And speaking of byzantine spaces, the recordings that follow are what Stereophile’s illustrious writing staff consider the pillars of their music collections.

So by all means, listen, and draw your own conclusions! —Robert Baird

© iStock: stevecoleimages

NOTE: If a recording listed here was previously reviewed in Stereophile, whether in “Record Reviews” or in a past edition of

“Records to Die For,” the volume and number of the pertinent issue(s) appear in parentheses at the end of the review. For example, a listing of “(Vol.39 No.1)” indicates that a review of the recording appeared in the January 2016 issue.

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

55

R2D42017

DAVID R. ADLER

AL DI MEOLA, JOHN MCLAUGHLIN, PACO DE LUCÍA PASSION, GRACE & FIRE Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin, Paco de Lucía, acoustic guitars Columbia 38645 (LP). 1983. Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin, Paco de Lucía, prods.; Dennis MacKay, others, engs. AAA. TT: 31:49

Fusion guitar connotes amps cranked to 11, but John McLaughlin was deep into an all-acoustic phase when he partnered with Al Di Meola and Paco de Lucía for this studio session.

It’s more than just some of the most pyrotechnic playing you’ll hear—there’s a wondrous precision and nuance in every light-speed run, contrapuntal flourish, and rippling arpeggio.

The compositions (two by each player) all have an enigmatic, chamberlike beauty; McLaughlin’s “Aspan” and de Lucía’s “Chiquito” are particularly fetching and full of surprise, with echoes of jazz, flamenco, tango, and more.

It’s a genuine collaboration, not a shredding contest.

ESPERANZA SPALDING EMILY’S D+EVOLUTION Esperanza Spalding, bass, synth bass, piano, vocals; Matthew Stevens, guitar; Justin Tyson, drums; Karriem Riggins, drums, percussion; Corey King, synth, trombone, backing vocals; Emily Elbert, Nadia Washington, others, backing vocals

56

Concord 7238265 (CD). 2016.

Esperanza Spalding, Tony Visconti, prods.; Kyle Hoffman, Tim Price, engs. DDD. TT: 45:44

She could be making perfectly respectable, straight jazz albums, but Esperanza Spalding always shoots for bigger, with steadily more impressive results. This ambitious epic for power trio has a theatrical conceit that adds to its allure. What makes it a masterpiece, however, is its uncanny balance of earworm melodies and thorny musical twists, a feast for both the casual listener and the devotee.

The brash, dissonant rock of “One” and “Good Lava,” the restrained, grooving lilt of “Rest in Pleasure” and “Judas,” the nod to Willy Wonka with a warped “I Want It Now”: expression this deep and well conceived is a rare thing.

(Vol.39 No.6)

JOHN ATKINSON

FINZI INTROIT: ORCHESTRAL WORKS & ARRANGEMENTS Amy Dickson, soprano & alto saxophones; Nico Fleury, horn; Thomas Gould, violin; Tom Poster, piano; Aurora Orchestra, Nicholas Collon Decca 0289 478 9357 8 (CD, 24/96 AIFF files). 2016. Alexander van Ingen, prod.; Andrew Mellor, eng., mix, mastering; Robin Hawkins, Claire Hay, asst. engs.

DDD. TT: 76:33

“A musical portrait of Finzi without the words he loved so much is no portrait at all,” was

how one Gramophone critic dismissed this album, echoed by another: “If you’re one of those unenlightened souls who dismiss Finzi as a purveyor of generic ‘smooth classics,’ these arrangements will do nothing to change your mind.” Yet since I bought the hi-rez download of Introit, this collection of short instrumental pieces and specially commissioned instrumental arrangements of songs, produced in collaboration with the Finzi Trust “to aid wider appreciation of one of England’s best-loved composers,” has been in constant rotation. I’ve been a fan of this very English composer since I first heard the 1964 recording of his cantata Dies Natalis, featuring tenor Wilfred Brown and the ECO conducted by Christopher Finzi, the composer’s son. And yes, while Gerald Finzi did have a supreme gift for setting words to music, the soloists in the arrangements of vocal works on this album, saxophonist Amy Dickson in particular, shine a light on his genius from a different, no less worthy direction.

Her performance of “Come away, come away death” sends chills down my spine.

Musically, this collection succeeds on its own terms.

Recorded in the Fairfield Halls, Croydon, England, a few blocks from my office when I edited Hi-Fi News & Record Review in the 1980s, the sound is

lush, luminous, and richly detailed.

BRAHMS COMPLETE PIANO TRIOS Piano Trios No.1, Op.8 (rev. 1889 version); No.2, Op.87; No.3, Op.101 Christian Tetzlaff, violin; Tanja Tetzlaff, cello; Lars Vogt, piano Ondine ODE 1271-2D (2 CDs, DSD128 files). 2015. Christoph Franke, prod.; René LaFlamme, eng. DDD. TT: 83:05

In 1990 I produced Intermezzo, one of Stereophile’s first recordings: Robert Silverman playing Brahms’s Piano Sonata 1 in f, Op.5, and Three Intermezzi, Op.117. 1 As you can see from the opus numbers, the sonata is an early work, the Intermezzi from close to the end of the composer’s life, and I was struck by the contrast between them. The sonata is bombastic, filled with notes; the Intermezzi are sparsely written and, as a result, deeper in meaning and, paradoxically, more emotionally powerful. All three of the piano trios on this set are late works— although the original version of the Trio Op.8 was written when Brahms was a young man, the revised version dates from 1889, eight years before his death. And, as in the Intermezzi, the scoring is no more complex than it need be. The performances are intimate rather than 1 See www.stereophile.com/ musicrecordings/311/index.html.

February 2017

Q

stereophile.com

R2D42017

overblown, and the recording—I listened to the DSD128 download—sets the three musicians in a richly supportive acoustic, with satisfyingly neutral tonalities and a weighty but not overbearing left-hand piano register. Delicious, Romantic music-making.

JIM AUSTIN

HANK WILLIAMS JR. ALMERIA CLUB RECORDINGS Curb 78725 (CD). 2002. Hank Williams Jr., Chuck Howard, prods.; Jeff Watkins, eng. DDD? TT: 52:45

My Alabama family has a history of sorts with the Hanks Williams, on both sides. My father grew up on a dirt farm in Banks, Alabama, down an iron-ore–strewn clay road from the Sheppard place, where Audrey Sheppard lived before she married Hank Sr. When he wasn’t plowing or pulling peanuts, my father babysat protoBocephus (Hank Jr.) once or twice.

On my mother’s side, the old homestead—it’s still in the family—is a short walk down the street from the Almeria Club, the converted schoolhouse where, at one early performance, Hank and Audrey climbed out a window to escape a brawl.

It’s where my grandfather’s 80th birthday party was held, and many family reunions. It’s also where, in early 2001, Hank Jr. made Almeria Club Recordings.

This is not your typical

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

Hank Jr. It’s a country/ bluegrass jam featuring the great (the entire Nickel Creek lineup of Chris Thile and Sean and Sara Watkins) and the famous (Kid Rock, who, like Bocephus, has a deer-hunting ranch up the road). The playing is superb, including Hank’s own, on banjo and dobro: the old boy can play. The whole thing is amazing good fun, and seriously good in the way country blues/bluegrass jams can be. Then the terrorists attacked.

As the album neared release, 9/11 happened, and Hank decided to go into the studio and record “America Will Survive,” a remake of his 1981 hit, “Country Boys Can Survive.” It’s a cringeworthy song in terrible sound that doesn’t belong on this otherwise superb album. It’s easy to find used, and was reissued in October 2011.

JERRY JEFF WALKER ¡VIVA TERLINGUA! MCA MCA-919 (LP). 1973. Michael Brovsky, prod.; Martin Lennard, eng. AAA. TT: 37:43

I’m not in London and haven’t spent much time in Texas, but New York City is similar enough, and south Alabama and rural Florida have armadillos, too. This is the album that contains the definitive live version of Ray Wiley Hubbard’s “Up Against the Wall, Red Neck.” There’s nothing fancy here—no

mandolin virtuosos or fiddlers who can also play Bach—just drunken revelry and homesick lonesome fun. Listen on LP if you can—or, better still, on the AM radio in an old pickup truck. The latter might be hard to arrange, but used copies of the LP still pop up in record stores.

ROBERT BAIRD

THE ROLLING STONES BETWEEN THE BUTTONS Decca SKL 4852 (LP). 1967.

Andrew Loog Oldham, prod.; no eng. listed. AAA. TT: 38:42

BEGGARS BANQUET Decca SLK 4955 (LP). 1968.

Jimmy Miller, prod.; Eddie Kramer, Glyn Johns, engs. AAA. TT: 39:47

Let’s call it preventive record buying. As the toll from the musician death-plague year of 2016 mounts, several similarly obsessed friends and I have begun buying new and vintage LPs by music icons over 65—just in case. Sir Paul and Ringo, Stevie Wonder, Jagger and Richards—all fit squarely in that category. Listening to Stones records sent me back into the band’s late-1960s catalog, to a time when Between the Buttons and Beggars Banquet bristled with fascinating clues about what the band was about to become: rock superstars who’d make a trio of classic records between 1969 and

1972—Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, and Exile on Main Street. This pair of LPs also features some of the last audible contributions of the then increasingly troubled Brian Jones. Both records have been remastered several times for various reissues, but I still prefer the sound of the original British LP pressings. The 2002 SACDs, digitally remastered by Steve Rosenthal and mastered by Bob Ludwig, are also very good.

Frequently slagged for being too faux psychedelic (fuzz guitars, odd percussive effects, lots of arty open space) and trying too hard to emulate the Beatles—which perhaps was true—Between the Buttons is still a sort of secret pleasure for serious Stones fans. Almost folky in spots, it’s the last record where you can hear the ’60s band struggling to find their groove and the sound that would make them ’70s rock royalty. The original UK version of the album contained no obvious hits (the US edition includes “Let’s Spend the Night Together” and “Ruby Tuesday”), but greasy, sloppy, rocked-up numbers like “All Sold Out” presage “Midnight Rambler,” not to mention such Exile fare as “Tumbling Dice.” While “Connection” is the rocker, the album’s star track is “My Obsession,” with its great fuzzed-out bass riff. In “Who’s Been Sleeping Here?,” Jagger finds the voice and loud/ soft delivery that would lat-

57

R2D42017

er make “Sister Morphine” so effective. And the band’s ode to a groupie, “Miss Amanda Jones,” with its Kinks-like chorus of “Round and round she goes,” is the first of the many Stonesy portraits of females in song that were to come.

Beggars Banquet opens with the African drums and Jagger’s primate yowls of “Sympathy for the Devil,” and it’s immediately clear that a new confidence and more aggressive attitude are suddenly ascendant.

“Dear Doctor” is one of the band’s best country honks, a subgenre that would continue until “Faraway Eyes.”

“Jig-Saw Puzzle,” with its jaunty piano and keening guitars, is a forerunner of the otherworldly sound that makes Exile such a classic. “Salt of the Earth” is the rare Stones number in which both principals sing. While the cover of Rev. Robert Wilkins’s “Prodigal Son,” a traditional blues, is heartfelt, the JaggerRichards original “Stray Cat Blues” is a first-class blues-rock tune that’s been covered by numerous other artists. Then there’s “Street Fighting Man,” the first of many Stones anthems that would elicit fist pumping, hip shakin’, and adoration for a band that, despite a lot of shaky records in their catalog, have made their share of masterpieces and continue to write and record music even as the Glimmer Twins enter their mid-70s. Wasn’t it Jagger who said he’d prefer death to singing “Satisfaction” at age 45?

58

LARRY BIRNBAUM

THE SEEDS THE SEEDS

GNP Crescendo GNPD 2023 (CD).

1966/2005. Sky Saxon, Marcus Tybalt, prods.; Chuck Britz, Lanky Linstrot, Mike Durrough, engs.

ADD? TT: 34:44

Poised somewhere between garage and acid rock, this Los Angeles– based quartet, augmented by a studio bassist, packs a raw, raunchy punch in its debut album. Fuzz-tone guitar vamps, oddly tinkling keyboards, pummeling drums, and a chorus of wailing band members frame songwriter Sky Saxon’s gritty, yelping lead vocals as he aggressively bemoans his love/hate relationships with women.

Included is the group’s only national hit, “Pushin’ Too Hard,” but similarly bitter, angry songs—“No Escape,” “Excuse, Excuse,” and the fierce “Evil Hoodoo”—are no less potent. Unfortunately, The Seeds comes packaged with the band’s second album, the mellower Web of Sound.

COUNT BASIE THE COMPLETE DECCA RECORDINGS Decca Jazz 611 (3 mono CDs).

1937–39/2015. Bob Stephens, Orrin Keepnews, prods. A–D. TT: 3:05:28

Perhaps the ultimate early Basie collection, this one extends from January 1937, shortly after the bandleader’s arrival in New York from Kansas City, to February 1939, whereupon he switched labels,

from Decca to Columbia.

Tracing his musical evolution from riff-driven head arrangements to sleekly polished charts, it features such big-band classics as “Honeysuckle Rose,” “One O’Clock Jump,” “Jumpin’ at the Woodside,” and “Cherokee,” along with several bluesy small-combo sides. The star soloists include saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry “Sweets” Edison, trombonists Eddie Durham and Dickie Wells, and singers Jimmy Rushing and Helen Humes. The rhythm section—Freddie Green on guitar, Walter Page on bass, Jo Jones on drums, and Basie himself on piano— virtually defined swing.

THOMAS CONRAD

FRANCESCO CAFISO 3 Francesco Cafiso, alto saxophone, flute; 33 members of the London Symphony Orchestra; 21 others Artist First ALF 007-8-9 (3 CDs).

2014. Alfredo Lo Faro, prod.; Ricardo Piparo, Gary Thomas, Tony Maimone, engs. DDD? TT: 2:04:28

At 15, Francesco Cafiso was an astonishing child prodigy of the alto saxophone who made otherwise rational people think about Charlie Parker and reincarnation. But critics worried whether he could grow beyond bebop.

It happened in 2014, when Cafiso was 25, with this epic three-CD set. He had never been a notable composer, but 3 contains 29 vivid new songs, many inspired by

the traditional music of his native Sicily. It also contains new levels of virtuosity, passion, aggression, and freedom in his saxophone playing. This album allows Cafiso to assume his rightful place as the best alto saxophonist in jazz.

MARIA SCHNEIDER JAZZ ORCHESTRA COMING ABOUT Maria Schneider, composer, arr., conductor; 18-piece orchestra Enja ENJ-9069 2/ArtistShare AS0087 (CD). 1996/2008. Maria Schneider, prod.; Jim Anderson, eng. DDD. TT: 67:48

In the new millennium, Maria Schneider’s albums have won numerous “Record of the Year” and Grammy awards, and have established her as the foremost composer and jazz-orchestra leader of our time. Her second recording, Coming About, made before she was famous, has a fresh magic all its own. By 1996, her touch with pastel colors was already flawless.

Her pieces already unfolded with extraordinary patience, as unhurried as looming clouds. In a three-part suite like Scenes from Childhood, she was already able to employ orchestral sweep and complexity to render intimate autobiography.

And she already had worldclass soloists, the greatest of whom is Rich Perry.

JANA DAGDAGAN

KIDKANEVIL & DAISUKE TANABE KIDSUKE Project Mooncircle PMC107 (2 LPs). 2012. Gerard Roberts,

February 2017

Q

stereophile.com

R2D42017 Daisuke Tanabe, Rod BuchananDunlop, mix; Sven Friederichs, mastering. AAA. TT: 46:27

I first fell in love with the UK’s Kidkanevil (Gerard Roberts) and Japan’s Daisuke Tanabe separately, while scouring a massive list of Red Bull Music Academy artists. Discovering their collaborative project Kidsuke turned my entire world upside down.

Combine Kidkanevil’s driving hip-hop feel with Tanabe’s supreme intricacy, and the result is an unparalleled beat-driven offering.

Their driving forces of shy sensitivity and strong melodies are especially evident in “The Other Day We Thought of Our Friends

. . .” Kidsuke’s unique soundscape pulls at the otaku in me who grew up on video games, animé, and wind-up toys, re-creating a pixelated childhood world on the border between the delicate and the bold.

BIBIO SILVER WILKINSON Warp WARPLP235 (LP). 2013.

Stephen James Wilkinson, prod.; Guy Davie, mastering. AAA. TT: 48:54

Silver Wilkinson is a downtempo electropop dream. It’s comfortingly acoustic, with the subtle kick of electronic echo. Bibio, aka Stephen James Wilkinson, recorded most of the album in his

home studio, but also incorporated samples recorded in his sunny garden using a 12-string guitar, MPC sampler, microphone, and a cassette recorder. The last track, “You Won’t Remember,” is a beautifully melancholy composition that will stab you in the heart-wrenching vein reserved for the likes

ROBERT DEUTSCH

KRISTIN CHENOWETH THE ART OF ELEGANCE Concord CRE00148 (CD). 2016. Steve Tyrell, prod.; Jon Allen, Nick Cavalieri, Frank Nadasi, Woody Woodruff, engs. DDD. TT: 50:50

For any singer, doing a recording of classic songs from the Great American Songbook is at once enticing and daunting: enticing because these are wonderful songs, daunting because they’ve been recorded so many times by so many great singers. Kristin Chenoweth was up to the challenge. In this album’s liner note, she says that “this particular group of composers and lyricists has spoken to me my whole life.”

Listening, I can well believe it. Her love of this music is evident in her performance of every song. She has the voice and technique to do just about anything she wants, but while the technique allows her to sing long phrases without taking a breath, she’s able to put technique aside and sing from the heart. She gets great support from conductor Alan Broadbent’s arrangements, which sound fresh without trying to sound “different.” The sound quality is topnotch, placing Chenoweth’s voice front and center, as it should be, but in effective balance with the accompaniment.

SHE LOVES ME 2016 BROADWAY CAST RECORDING Jerry Bock, music; Sheldon Harnick, lyrics; Larry Hochman, orchestrations; Paul Gemignani, musical director Ghostlight 84502 (CD). 2016. Kurt Deutsch, prod.; Lawrence Manchester, eng.

DDD. TT: 67:17

Theater critic Peter Filichia describes She Loves Me as “the platinum show in the Golden Age of Musicals.” I heartily agree. I never tire of seeing it—most recently, the 2016 Broadway revival that was the basis of this recording. I not only have all five audio recordings of She Loves Me, but a treasured VHS tape of the BBC’s 1978 TV production, broadcast on PBS. Although I admire and enjoy listening to all of the recordings of She Loves Me, for me this newest one is now No.1. Laura Benanti and Zachary Levy comfortably inhabit the roles played by Barbara Cook and Daniel Massey in the 1963 original; Gavin Creel successfully emulates Jack Cassidy’s charming cad, Kodaly, and Jane Krakowski gives unexpected depth to the lovelorn Ilona. And Paul Gemignani conducts with a lilt that evokes the Hungarian-Viennese operettas of Lehár and Kálmán. Excellent sound.

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

of Elliott Smith and Nick Drake. Layers upon layers of chill, gentle, atmospheric samples come together to form what I think is Bibio’s best album.

BRIAN DAMKROGER

GEORG SOLTI VENICE

Works by Offenbach, Ponchielli, Rossini, Verdi Georg Solti, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden RCA Living Stereo LSC-2313 (LP).

1959. Michael Bremner, prod.; Kenneth Wilkinson, eng. AAA. TT: 54:21

I admit it: The original attraction of Venice was the sound of the London Underground—which, I kept reading in equipment reviews, was audible.

Whenever I tweaked my system or bought a new component, I listened to Venice over and over, painstakingly assessing how clearly I could hear the subway. But somewhere along the way I noticed that I was listening to the music. I began humming the excerpts from La Traviata, and still do—but I love all of this music, from beginning to end. Reissues and releases of Venice have appeared over the years, some of them excellent, but it’s this original RCA Living Stereo LP that I’ll die for.

JOHN FOGERTY PREMONITION Reprise 46902-2 (CD). 1998. John Fogerty, prod.; Elliot Scheiner, prod., eng., mastering; David

59

R2D42017

Nottingham, eng.; Stan Ricker, mastering. DDD. TT: 68:33

For those of us too young to have heard Creedence Clearwater Revival live, Premonition was a gift from the gods, and nothing at all like some nostalgic bone thrown to true believers. It was John Fogerty stepping back onstage and picking up right where he’d left off. Somehow dodging the passage of time, both he and his songs were as strong and powerful as they’d been 25 years earlier, and the band he’d assembled sounded like nothing so much as a better CCR. Premonition is a perfect mix of material from across Fogerty’s career, and the sound is as good as a live rock record gets.

ART DUDLEY

HANK MOBLEY MOBLEY’S MESSAGE Hank Mobley, tenor saxophone; Jackie McLean, alto saxophone; Donald Byrd, trumpet; Barry Harris, piano; Doug Watkins, bass; Art Taylor, drums Prestige 7061 (LP). 1956. Bob Weinstock, prod.; Rudy Van Gelder, eng. AAA. TT: 41:47 Electric Recording Company ERC023 (LP). 2016. Pete Hutchison, reissue prod.; C.J. Potter, G.D. Davie, reissue engs.

AAA. TT: 41:47

Less a landmark in innovation than a compelling snapshot of mid- to late-1950s hard bop, Mobley’s Message predates the tenor saxophonist’s more famous Soul Station and offers an interesting contrast of styles between bebop

60

musicians Donald Byrd (trumpet) and Barry Harris (piano) on the one hand, and the more laid-back Mobley on the other—a distinction especially evident in the group’s performance of Charlie Parker’s “Au Privave,” with Jackie McLean guesting on alto sax. But the real standouts are an inspired reading of Thelonious Monk’s “52nd Street Theme” and the up-tempo Mobley original “Alternating Current.” That said, Art Taylor’s drumming in “Bouncin’ with Bud,” captured in vivid, impactful mono sound by the late, great Rudy Van Gelder, may itself be worth the asking price, which, in the case of the wonderfulsounding ERC reissue, is considerable: £300, in a limited edition of 300 copies. Mobley’s Message has been reissued on LP before now, in both the US and Japan, but this all-tube British version would seem to stand alongside the original as an investment.

Boys,” recorded live at the 1970 Isle of Wight festival, and “Diamonds in the Mine,” the latter possibly the worst arrangement ever to smudge a Leonard Cohen album. The rest is pure, dark genius, from Cohen’s richly brilliant songwriting to the inspired contrast between the eerie relentlessness of his threefinger picking style and the dramatic ebbs and swells of Paul Buckmaster’s string and horn arrangements. And while Cohen was famously dismissive of the production of his early albums—Songs of Love and Hate was his third—no one before or since has better served a Leonard Cohen song than whoever was responsible for the sparing use of a children’s chorus in songs about suicide (“Dress Rehearsal Rag”) and artistic impotence (“Last Year’s Man”). From the day in 1971 when I bought my copy until now, this record remains indispensable.

LEONARD COHEN SONGS OF LOVE AND HATE

MICHAEL FREMER

Columbia C 30103 (LP). 1971. Bob Johnston, prod.; Neil Wilburn, Ed Hudson, Robin Cable, engs. AAA. TT: 44:25

Although the first pressing of this less-than-commerciallysuccessful album included an insert—on black paper, to match the black inner sleeve—that credited a backing band called The Army, those musicians are clearly audible only in “Sing Another Song,

SANTANA ABRAXAS

Columbia/Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab UD1S 2-001 (2 45rpm LPs).

1970/2016. Fred Catero, prod.; Dave Brown, John Fiore, engs.

AAA. TT: 37:32

The sinewy cover of Peter Green’s “Black Magic Woman” pushed Santana’s second album to the top of the album charts in 1970. The mix of rock, salsa, jazz, and blues placed this percussionheavy record at a cultural

crossroads that eventually led the National Recording Registry, established by an act of Congress in 2000, to select Abraxas for preservation. Though it’s musically and sonically uneven, this Mobile Fidelity “onestep” reissue, in which the metal part produced by the plated lacquer is used as a stamper rather than going through the usual two additional steps, results in one of the bestsounding LPs ever made, and one well worth its list price of $99.99.

RANDY NEWMAN THE RANDY NEWMAN SONGBOOK Nonesuch 7559 79496 5 (4 LPs).

2003/2011/2016. Mitchell Froom, Lenny Waronker, prods.; David C. Boucher, eng. DDA. TT: N/A

This limited-edition boxed set of four LPs comprises solo recordings by Newman, singing and playing piano, of songs from throughout his five-decade career.

The set includes all three volumes of The Randy Newman Songbook, respectively released in 2003, 2011, and 2016, as well as five bonus tracks.

The sequencing, however, is new, and the lacquers were cut by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman’s, from high-resolution files mastered by Bob Ludwig.

Only Newman’s voice and piano present these songs, fully exposing their raw, stinging, often tender emotions. The attractively packaged set includes an LP-sized booklet and a digital download card.

February 2017

Q

stereophile.com

R2D42017

STEVE GUTTENBERG

THE NICE LIVE AT THE FILLMORE EAST DECEMBER 1969

Virgin 693 1432 (2 CDs). 2009.

Eddie Kramer, orig. eng.; Libby Jones, Chris Maj, project coordinators; Mark Powell, Ben Wiseman, mastering, mix. ADD? TT: 93:51

The Nice’s studio albums weren’t too shabby, but Keith Emerson’s band never sounded better than they did in these live Fillmore East shows in late 1969. I love the from-the-audience perspective, but this is no amateur endeavor: engineer Eddie Kramer was manning the eighttrack tape deck. As for the music, it’s nascent prog

rock infused with classical, and played with ferocious abandon on keyboards, bass, and drums. With quieter fare like Tim Hardin’s “Hang On to a Dream,” the range of textures and sounds Emerson ripped from his keyboards never failed to keep me on the edge of my seat.

ANDY HULL & ROBERT MCDOWELL SWISS ARMY MAN: ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK Lakeshore LKS 346932 (CD).

2016. Brian McNeils, Skip Williamson, prods.; Robert McDowell, Jacob Gorski, Brent Kiser, Kevin Peters, Perry Levy, Elliot Thompson, engs. DDD? TT: 47:11

Swiss Army Man is a remarkable little film

LARRY GREENHILL

I CHING OF THE MARSH AND THE MOON

Sisi Chen, Yang Sing, Chinese dulcimer; Tao Chen, bamboo flute; Bao Li Zhang, er-hu; Joel Goodman, synthesizer, sampler Chesky W0144 (CD). 1996. David Chesky, Joel Goodman, Steve Guttenberg, prods.; Bob Katz, Phillip Sztenderowicz, engs.; Nicholas Prout, editing, mix. ADD. TT: 52:17

Of the Marsh and the Moon is one of the remarkable recordings produced by Chesky Records that I’ve collected over the years. Since its arrival 17 years ago in my listening room, I’ve used it in 14 reviews of preamplifiers, subwoofers, amplifiers, and loudspeakers.

Bob Katz recorded it at St. Peter’s Church, and Nicholas Prout edited and mastered—the recording’s ambience is serene, still, calm, and meditative. Tao Chen’s reedy bamboo flute, Sisi Chen’s stunningly resonant Chinese dulcimer, and the drone of Bao Li Zhang’s two-string er-hu, a Chinese violin, weave together intricately and atmospherically. The timbre of each instrument is accurately rendered, accompanied by Joel Goodman’s bass drum and rumbling synthesizer effects. “Running Water” begins with the startlingly clear image of a waterfall spilling into a pool. Only speakers with clean, fast midrange reproduction can make that waterfall sound real.

This disc has atmospherics that test the limits of the best equipment I’ve heard.

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

about a desert-island love affair between a man and a profusely farting corpse.

No worries—the score comes up smelling like a rose. Andy Hull and Robert McDowell composed the mostly a cappella music for their two voices, singing individually or layered into heavenly choirs in a deep, reverberant soundfield. Later tracks add synths, handclaps, drums, and other instru-

ments, but the voices always hold down center stage. Many film scores aren’t strong enough to stand on their own; this one does because it’s flatout gorgeous.

JON IVERSON

YELLO TOY

Polydor 4782160 (24/48 PCM download). 2016. Yello, prods.; Boris Blank, eng. DDD. TT: 61:04

PINK FLOYD DARK SIDE OF THE MOON Capitol CDP 5 83136 2 (LP, SACD/CD). 1973/2003.

Pink Floyd, prods.; Alan Parsons, Peter James, engs.; James Guthrie, 5.1-channel remix. AAA/AAD. TT: 43:00

Dark Side of the Moon, described in these pages as “a classic work of mythic proportions,” goes beyond the typical 1970s rock recording to build a story like an opera. Jon Iverson, in his June 2003 “Recording of the Month” review, stated that this SACD/CD, the album’s 30th-anniversary reissue, offers “everything the format can offer: two-channel CD and SACD layers, as well as a 5.1-channel surround mix.” The album’s universal appeal is shown by its many mentions in these pages: at least seven of our writers, including me, have used DSOTM as a tool to review subwoofers, class-D monoblocks, and floorstanding speakers. Recently, I’ve been able to retrieve the twochannel DSD64 signal from SACD in digital form, which enhances the recording’s three-dimensionality—I can separately follow the instruments, voices, and sound effects in the mix of “Breathe.”

The soundstage is as vast, wide, and bottomless as that of any other recording I own. In the remarkable opening of track 1, “Speak to Me,” at first there’s silence. Then, the faintest thumping is audible, before building into an ominously thunderous heartbeat. This track segues into “Breathe,” with Roger Waters’s brilliant lyrics, and then the album spins out of control in “On the Run,” a whirlpool of jackhammers, train-station PA-system bulletins that are almost understandable, subterranean detonations, and footsteps and heavy breathing crisscrossing the soundstage. Then silence again—until the faint ticking of multiple clocks mounts until they explode into jarring, earripping alarms. Much, much more follows on this extraordinary disc. If ever there was a record to die for, Dark Side of the Moon is it.

(Vol.26 No.6, Vol.38 No.2)

61

R2D42017

This is the thick, frosty chocolate milkshake of your sonic dreams. Toy will light up any audiophile system (and your earbuds) with an aural sweetness and luxuriant flavor that push out the soundstage walls for miles and reach as deep down into dark-chocolate depths as recordings can go. All of which would be a terrible waste if there weren’t so much rich, creamy songwriting at the heart of these frothily arranged tunes. And yes, there are whipped cream and several cherries on top: Malia, Fifi Rong, and the resonant Dieter Meier take turns on vocals.

THE TIKIYAKI ORCHESTRA STEREOEXOTIQUE Future Primitive FP-003 (CD).

2007. Jim Bachi, prod., eng. DDD. TT: 40:30

Lounge and exotica have always held revered places in audiophileland, but you’ve never heard them mixed—along with spaghetti western, space-age bachelor pad, and spy themes—into as potent a concoction as in this musical mai tai.

The drums and tropical percussion are saturated with deep, dark rum tones, while pineapple-flavored notes wrung from wooden and steel xylophones float and vibrate throughout.

There’s also twangy, lime-infused surf guitar, along with syrupy-sweet Hawaiian-steel glissandos and Curaçao-laced piano, all finished off with minty electric organ. Garnish

62

and serve with a straw and a tiny, brightly colored umbrella.

KEITH JARRETT & CHARLIE HADEN LAST DANCE Charlie Haden, double bass; Keith Jarrett, piano

FRED KAPLAN

I’ve been doing this bit every year since 2008, there are only so many records I’d be willing to die for, and I think I’ve covered pretty much all of them. So let me twist the assignment, in a way suitable for this season of holiday cheer and political drear, to the records I most live for— those albums that most incite music’s charms to soothe a savage breast (and excluding those I’ve listed before).

DUKE ELLINGTON & HIS ORCHESTRA THE FAR EAST SUITE: SPECIAL MIX Bluebird 66551-2 (CD).

1967/1995. Brad McCuen, prod.; Ed Begley, eng.; Orrin Keepnews, reissue prod.; James Nichols, remastering. ADD. TT: 61:16

Never mind that it should have been called The Near East Suite (inspired, as it was, by a journey through that part of the globe)—this is one of Duke’s finest albums, a glimpse of what fusion might have been, and heady, kaleidoscopic balm for the soul. I still think you can usefully divide the world into those who melt at Johnny Hodges’s solo in “Isfahan” and those who don’t. Four alternate takes are included, and the sound—an improved mix from the original four-track analog tapes—is excellent.

(Vol.18 No.10)

ECM 2399 (CD). 2014. Keith Jarrett, prod.; Martin Pearson, eng. DDD. TT: 76:07

At the end of particularly bruising days, I find myself spinning this disc (or Jasmine, recorded at the same sessions, and one of my R2D4s for 2013) as much as any other.

These piano-bass duets, mostly on standard ballads and pared down to the essence of the song, are less grandiloquent than most of Jarrett’s treatments, more attuned to Haden’s spirit: intimate, shiversome, transportingly gorgeous. The mix puts you right there in Jarrett’s small backyard studio.

(Vol.38 No.8)

DAVID LANDER

BUDDY COLLETTE BIG BAND IN CONCERT Buddy Collette, woodwinds; Al Viola, guitar; Fred Katz, cello; Gerald Wiggins, piano; Richard Simon, bass; Ndugu Chancler, Chico Hamilton, drums; 15 others on woodwinds, trumpet, trombone Bridge 9096 (CD). 2000. David & Becky Starobin, Anne McLean, prods.; John Tyler, mix; Adam Abeshouse, remastering. DDD. TT: 56:04

William “Buddy” Collette was a gifted composer and arranger as well as a saxophonist, clarinetist, and flutist. A West Coast Jackie Robinson of jazz, in 1949 he integrated the orchestra on Groucho Marx’s radio and TV quiz

show, You Bet Your Life, and helped effect the merger of the separate black and white locals of the Los Angeles musicians’ union. Collette grew up in L.A.’s Watts district alongside Charles Mingus, who switched from cello to bass at his suggestion. In 1955 and ’56, Collette was part of the Chico Hamilton Quintet, and for decades was a presence in his hometown’s recording and television studios. In 1998, L.A.’s mayor designated Collette “A Living Los Angeles Cultural Treasure.”

This CD was recorded at a 1996 Library of Congress concert in Washington, DC, where a consort of longtime colleagues joined Collette to play a program of selections composed and mostly arranged by him. Brimming with bold solos, it’s a basket of multihued musical gems.

MARTINU CELLO SONATAS 1–3 János Starker, cello; Rudolf Firkusny, piano RCA Victor Red Seal 61220-2 (CD). 1990/1992. David Frost, prod.; Tom Lazarus, Louise de la Fuente, engs.; Robert Rapley, Rudy Chalupa, John Klepko, editing. DDD. TT: 54:21

Maybe Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu never wrote religious music because he was a sexton’s son who grew up in a church-tower apartment. Nevertheless, his catalog is diverse, comprising a sweep of works ranging from chamber pieces and ballets to operas and symphonies.

In the early 1920s, Martinu

February 2017

Q

stereophile.com

R2D42017 moved to Paris, where audacious artistic sages were leading disciples in various directions. He ultimately espoused the neoclassicism reflected in these three lovely sonatas, composed in 1939, 1942, and 1952. The pianist Rudolf Firkusny, also Czech, performed the first of them in Paris, with Pierre Fournier, before fleeing Nazi-dominated Europe for New York City, where Martinu sought refuge soon afterward. Firkusny helped the composer settle in and continued to champion his compatriot’s music, which almost always included the piano. The graceful ensemble playing delivered

by Firkusny and cellist János Starker in this studio recording is everything you’d hope for from two top-ranked virtuosi.

MICHAEL LAVORGNA

NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS SKELETON TREE

Bad Seed Ltd. BS009V (LP). 2016.

Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, prods.; Kevin Paul, Jake Jackson, engs.

DDD? TT: 39:44

Nick Cave continues to grow as a singersongwriter. On Skeleton Tree, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds’ 16th studio album, he tackles love, loss, and pain. From the song “Distant Sky”: “They told us our gods would outlive us / But they lied.”

JACQUES COURSIL TRAILS OF TEARS Jacques Coursil, trumpet; Perry Robinson, clarinet; Mark Whitecage, alto saxophone; Bobby Few, piano; Jeff Baillard, keyboards; Alex Bernard, Alan Silva, bass; Sunny Murray, José Zébina, drums Sunnyside Communications B004ETVB1K (CD, Bandcamp download). 2010. Bruno Guermonprez, prod.; Jeff Baillard, Yvan Brard, Marc Escavis, Hubert Marniau, Thomas Vingtrinier,

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

Tony Viscardo, engs.; Christophe Hauser, mix. ADD? TT: 39:54

This is one of the saddest, most beautiful records I’ve heard.

Jazz trumpeter Jacques Coursil tells tales of suffering: “Every time someone is suffering, there is someone there who is making them suffer. It’s a common story, as much your story [or] my story.”

RICHARD LEHNERT

VAN MORRISON VEEDON FLEECE

Exile B0011365-02 (CD).

1974/2008. Van Morrison, prod.; Jim Stern, Dahaud & Jean Shaar, Elvin Campbell, Alastair McMillan, engs. ADD? TT: 56:36

TOM WAITS & CRYSTAL GAYLE ONE FROM THE HEART Columbia/Legacy CK 85813 (CD).

1982/2004. Bones Howe, prod., eng., mix, remix; Biff Dawes, eng.; Chris Bellman, mastering. AAD. TT: 50:18

At the worst times in our lives, most of us seek sustenance and comfort in music. But at such times, I’ve found, there is also music I can’t bear to hear, because I love it not wisely but too well—music that so plumbs the wells of pain and loss that it only deepens them. Here is one of each.

Forty years ago, I read a record review in which the writer said that he owed his life to Van Morrison, whose music had greatly eased his passage through a long, dark night of the soul. Veedon Fleece (1974) is a long, dark night of an album—perhaps the most inward-looking of Morrison’s career, and the most mysterious. The atmosphere is often slow, subfusc, diffuse, but sometimes (“Fair Play,” “Country Fair”) filled with the light of a pastoral peace. Most

mystifying are the lyrics— impenetrably personal stream-of-consciousness musings, sketches of (apparently) Irish scenesetting, free associations on the English Romantic poets. Veedon Fleece also contains some of Morrison’s most warm, gentle, loving songs: “Come Here My Love” is the most tender lyric crooning, and “Comfort You”—well, in my own soul’s dark night, I wept in relief each time this song came ’round: Things would turn out all right. Here words and music combine in a perfectly matched gesture of compassion, warmth, and full-hearted generosity.

Another of the album’s many centers is the long “You Don’t Pull No Punches But You Don’t Push the River,” the philosophical principle of the title (the song’s refrain) beautifully embodied in sound: Morrison’s voice sailing in falsetto above the dark, pulsing flow of the beat, then diving low and guttural to work against the current before at last succumbing to it in a whisper. “Bulbs” is so full of ebullience and muscularity that it makes me smile every time; and throughout “Cul de Sac,” Morrison can be heard working himself up and through one blind alley of expression after another until he at last lets loose and screams in release and frustration, rage and joy.

It’s the most potent, most dramatically and musically justified instance of sheer barbaric yawp on record that I know of—and it makes Morrison’s “roaring” in “Listen to the Lion,” from St. Dominic’s Preview of two years earlier, sound downright kittenish. This is his roar, as never heard elsewhere.

In addition to two

alternate takes, the 2008 remastering slightly brightens the top and deepens the bottom, but the mild dispelling of murk is a mixed blessing: Part of the appeal of the album’s sound was always the emergence from mystic gloom of the instruments and Morrison’s voice, glowing no brighter than a peat fire. Everyone should have such problems. This album is Morrison’s unknown, little-acknowledged masterpiece, secret sharer of the vision and deep lyricism of Astral Weeks. But for me, Veedon Fleece is the destination for which Astral Weeks provided only the map. (Vol.27 No.2) Tom Waits’s original soundtrack score for Francis Ford Coppola’s One from the Heart (1982) is that other sort of recording: so powerful an expression or evocation of deep feeling that I have to think twice before listening to it. It’s unique in Waits’s discography: his only duet album, it’s perfectly poised between the often self-indulgent, terminally sentimental barroom melodrama of his earlier records and the fiercely unsentimental, surreal, deeply Weill-influenced, hubcap-and-accordion experimentation of everything from Swordfishtrombones (released the following year) to the present.

Although One from the Heart was the pivot point on which the first of those aesthetics swung toward the second, it bears little resemblance to either.

In terms of sound quality and arrangements, for strings and/or small jazz combo, it’s by far Waits’s most polished production.

His choice of country star Crystal Gayle to sing three songs solo and duet with him on four others (Waits

63

R2D42017 sings six by himself) sounds odd on paper but wonderful in the ear: Waits’s rough gravel and Gayle’s smooth, pure, liquid clarity make the album a patchwork of sandpaper and velvet: one voice scratches an itch of sound and feeling that the other then caresses. Remarkable—and supported by Waits’s smoothest, most accomplished piano playing ever.

It’s the songs that are so striking.

I think they’re the strongest Waits ever wrote, and, unusually for film music, were composed long before Coppola’s cameras rolled.

In his liner note, the director says, “I originally told Tom [Waits] and Bones [Howe, the album’s producer] ‘What I really want you guys to do is make an album called “One from the Heart” and then I’ll make a movie that goes with it.’” Coppola envisioned the voices of Waits and Gayle as the Greek gods Zeus and Hera, looking down on, commenting on, and seeing in their own marriage the relationship of the film’s protagonists, low-wage workers in Las Vegas (played by Teri Garr and Frederic Forrest).

The songs voice the inner, unspoken monologues and dialogues spoken in, by, and from the hearts of those characters, from attraction to mutual projection to the humdrum details of living together through breakup, loneliness, despair, reconciliation.

They are unfailingly melodic, with lyrics rich in extended metaphor and wry understatement. “Broken Bicycles” and “Take Me Home” are examples of perfect songcraft, as are “Old Boyfriends” and “This One’s from the Heart”—any could be a standard from the 1930s. They give these two singers—masters of styles that would normally seem mutually exclusive—much to work with. Bob Alcivar’s string and orchestral arrangements are exquisitely tasteful—Nelson Riddle with most of the sugar leached out—and in the intimate jazz settings, Jack Sheldon’s trumpet evokes Chet Baker’s ghost.

So many of the personas through whom Waits has long sung have sounded beyond hope, or terminally defended from risking hope. But One from the Heart is

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

an accurate title: This record has an unfailing sincerity, and Waits’s singing a deeply felt authenticity, that I’ve heard from him on no other. Here there is hope and— most surprising of all in a Tom Waits album—a sweetness one can believe in. If, in the depths of my own least hopeful days, I didn’t dare hope enough to risk hearing this album again, that’s my failing, not his.

ROBERT LEVINE

THE BAND THE BAND

Capitol 25389-2 (CD). 1969/2000. The Band, John Simon, prods.; Joe Zagarino, Tony May, engs., mix. ADD. TT: 71:48

Although my first musical love affair was with folk music—Ed McCurdy, Pete Seeger, Odetta—I soon switched to classical, and my contact with Americana was limited to Aaron Copland. Still, I made plenty of room for every new release by the Beatles, Stones, Who, and Pink Floyd. But something happened to me when I first heard the Band’s Music from Big Pink: it was as—or more—authentic than the folk stuff or Copland. And then, in 1969, the “Brown Album”—The Band— came out, and I could barely stop listening to it for months. I still play it every few weeks. My love for it comes not just from its authenticity (yes, I know: four of the group’s five members were Canadian), but from its tight perfection, which appears to be spontaneous; its ever-changing lead singers, each with a specific flavor; and its amazing palette of colors. The fiddle at the start of “Rag Mama Rag,” a song that still makes this withered body want to get up and boogie; the stratospheric vocal harmony on night in the chorus of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”; the fake jaw’s harp and Levon Helm’s flawless diction in “Up on Cripple Creek”; Richard Manuel’s gorgeous singing in “Whispering Pines,” with Garth Hudson’s organ ostinato adding a hymn-like flavor . . . I can’t go on any more—my word count is way over. Let’s just say that, 30 years ago, I moved

65

R2D42017

"extraordinarily powerful... uncolored... natural"

to Woodstock. Coincidence? And oh, yes—this 2000 remastering is splendid, and includes alternate, previously unreleased versions of six of the songs, plus the outtake “Get Up Jake.” It all sounds like a certain part of America as it should be.

- John Atkinson, Stereophile .

(Vol.20 No.2, Vol.23 No.12, Vol.29 No.2)

THE BEATLES ABBEY ROAD Capitol CDP 7 46446 2 (CD). 1969/1987.

George Martin, prod.; Geoff Emerick, Phillip McDonald, engs. AAD. TT: 47:16

The JosephAudio Pulsar 15" High, 8 1/2" Wide.

Spectacularly Deep.

Get the full story at www.josephaudio.com "Devastatingly right" "The Pulsars are veritable light-sabers" - Steven Stone, The Abso!ute Sound . .

"For those of you who have dreamed of owning relatively compact stand mount monitors that really do convey the sense of reproducing (near) full-range bass,

JosephAudio EFFORTLESS MUSICALITY EXCLUSIVE TECHNOLOGY (800) 474- HIFI (4434)

66

THE GRATEFUL DEAD FILLMORE WEST 1969 Grateful Dead/Rhino R73193 (3 CDs).

1969/2005. David Lemieux, Jeffrey Norman, prods.; Bob Matthews, Betty Cantor, engs. AAD. TT: 3:23:01

Deadheads speak of different years from the band’s career as if they were different wine vintages. For me, 1969 is that peak bottling. The Dead settled in at the Fillmore West for a long weekend in February–March 1969, playing basically the same set for each show, to record the core of what became Live/Dead. In 2005, the complete recordings from that weekend were released on 10 CDs. This album is a three-CD “best of” sampler with spectacular sound quality. Original engineers Bob Matthews and Betty Cantor were using one of the first 16-track tape machines to record incredible, onfire performances, by Garcia and Lesh in particular, to make this some big powerful magic.

(Vol.11 No.2, Vol.33 No.2)

PAUL MESSENGER

your loudspeaker has arrived!"

- Chris Martens, The Abso!ute Sound

How can I have never chosen a Beatles album? The only two things I waited on line for in the 1960s were a new Beatles album and a new part of Decca’s Ring cycle. At first I thought the “White Album” would be my choice, but it’s not as flawlessly put together as Abbey Road— which was, catastrophically, the last album that all four Beatles worked on in the studio. And it’s very much a studio work—flawlessly engineered, with all the doodads possible that are impossible in a live performance. I love the Moog. I love the mood changes, from sexy to silly, with silly sometimes used as a palate cleanser: What could have followed the ravishing “Something” other than the foolish “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”? And find me a song, now overexposed of course, more stunning than George’s “Here Comes the Sun.” Or a collection of sounds more gorgeous than the lads’ harmonies in “Because.”

And what on earth is “You Never Give Me Your Money”? How was it conceived?? Okay—every track on this album seems new every time I hear it. Bravo, fellas.

In 1966, college sophomore George Klabin recorded the first performances by the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, at the Village Vanguard nightclub in New York City. The core of that band continues there to this day, performing on Monday nights as the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra.

Unbelievably, these recordings weren’t officially released until 2016—by that same George Klabin and his label, Resonance Records.

The sound is clear and cookin’, and the music is at the apex of creative big-band writing and performance. Great book, too. If you love jazz, get yourself to the Vanguard on a Monday night—see you there! (Vol.39 No.5)

SASHA MATSON

.

THAD JONES/MEL LEWIS ORCHESTRA ALL MY YESTERDAYS: THE DEBUT 1966 RECORDINGS AT THE VILLAGE VANGUARD Thad Jones, trumpet, arr., composer; Mel Lewis, drums; others Resonance HCD-2023 (CD). 1966/2016.

George Klabin, prod., eng.; Zev Feldman, prod.; Fran Gala, mastering. AAD. TT: 2:05:58

THE INCREDIBLE STRING BAND THE 5000 SPIRITS OR THE LAYERS OF THE ONION Elektra EKS 5287 (UK LP). 1967. Joe Boyd, prod.; John Wood, eng. AAA. TT: 50:10

All latter-day hippies ought to have a copy of this splendid album, which features psychedelic cover art by The Fool

February 2017

Q

stereophile.com

WE DARE YOU! Many feel that their cables are great, no need for a change. That is until we came along with our SSI Cable Technology, and jaws are dropping!

We challenge you to try our cables against yours, regardless of price, for 60 days. If you do not enjoy amazing improvements, return ours for a refund.

“WOW!!!! Within 60 seconds I knew that these were the best speaker cables I have ever owned. The SP-7’s just blew me away. Simply magical!” – Steve M “It was apparent and as soon as I started listening. Sort of like ‘wow’… I have been missing something!” – Anthony P “It is instantly obvious to me that your cables are all you claim. Clarity, accuracy, spacing and soundstage are simply remarkable. I am hearing detail and space in instruments that I never heard before.”- Mario C BEGIN YOUR EXPERIENCE NOW AT MORROWAUDIO.COM

Lifetime Warranty – Trade Up Programs – Easy Pay – 60 Day Returns

R2D42017 and brilliant recording quality, thanks to the excellent taste of producer Joe Boyd. Clive Palmer had left for India, and now on this, the ISB’s second album, the duo of Robin Williamson and Mike Heron took center stage in songwriting, singing, and the playing of sitars, gimbris, and the ubiquitous guitars. They formed a successful folk-oriented live act, with or without girlfriends, until 1974, and continued as solo artists thereafter—but I don’t believe they ever bettered this album.

(Vol.17 No.12, Vol.33 No.9)

PAUL SIMON THE RHYTHM OF THE SAINTS Warner Bros. WX 340 (UK LP). 1990. Paul Simon, prod.; Roy Halee, eng. ADA. TT: 44:34

Graceland may have been the first of Paul Simon’s collaborations with overseas musicians, and may have attracted all manner of (sometimes political) attention, but I’ve long felt that this follow-up of four years later, based largely on Latin American rhythms, was very much its equal, though it attracted less attention.

Although Simon’s exploration of complex Latin rhythms is particularly interesting, this longstanding key member of the songwriting elite also maintains his high compositional standards throughout this impressively varied recording.

It doesn’t set a particularly high standard of recording quality, but it’s remarkably homogeneous, considering the many recording locations and musicians used.

(Vol.14 No.2, Vol.19 No.2)

KEN MICALLEF

SONNY ROLLINS ALFIE: ORIGINAL MUSIC FROM THE SCORE Sonny Rollins, composer, tenor saxophone; Oliver Nelson, arr., conductor; Phil Woods, alto saxophone; Bob Ashton, tenor saxophone; Danny Bank, baritone saxophone; Jimmy Cleveland, J.J. Johnson, trombone; Kenny Burrell, guitar; Roger Kellaway, piano; Walter Booker, bass; Frankie Dunlop, drums Impulse! A-9111 (LP). 1966. Bob Thiele, prod.; Rudy Van Gelder, eng. AAA. TT: 32:50

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

Sure, you know the popular hit single composed by Burt Bacharach and sung by Dionne Warwick; this is the other side of the Alfie soundtrack. Sonny Rollins realized one of his most refined albums with Alfie, which, like the film, traces a day in the life of Alfie Elkins (Michael Caine). This emotional album is a feast for the audio senses and a wide-ranging work of diverse moods, with some of Rollins’s most incandescent soloing. From the swinging opener, “Alfie’s Theme,” to the atmospheric ballad “He’s Younger Than You Are” and the chaotic “Street Runner with Child,” Alfie is a tour de force, and one of the greatest and least appreciated albums in jazz. (Vol.18 No.2)

TOWER OF POWER BACK TO OAKLAND Warner Bros. BS 2749/Direct-Disk Labs SD 16601 (LP). 1974/1976. Tower of Power, prods.; Jim Gaines, eng.; Emilio Castillo, reissue supervisor. AAA. TT: 43:05

The fourth album by the blue-eyed “Soul Vaccination” crew, Tower of Power, Back to Oakland is a nearly perfect combination of extraordinary musicianship, fervent compositions, and emotional R&B crooning. ToP are renowned for their innovative use of funk rhythms based on the James Brown school, but Back to Oakland rose far above the funk and funk fusion styles then popular: The album’s sublime songwriting and lavish production made it a masterpiece of mid-1970s horn-band funk. From the agitated funk burner “Squib Cakes” and the wistful jazz waltz “Time Will Tell” to the time-twisting juggernaut “Can’t You See (You Doin’ Me Wrong),” Back to Oakland is timeless Bay Area soul.

FRED MILLS

PRIMAL SCREAM SCREAMADELICA Plain PLAIN 1061DLB (2 LPs). 1991/2016.

Andrew Weatherall, Hugo Nicholson, Jimmy Miller, Andrew Innes, Hypnotone, prods.; David Burnham, eng. ADA? TT: 62:03

In 1991, a middling Scottish combo primarily known

69

38 YEARS IN THE MAKING

KS6068

60 day money back guarantee*

HANDCRAFTED IN THE USA SINCE 1979

BUILD YOUR CABLE ONLINE TODAY www.kimber.com · 801-621-5530 *Try it in your system for 60 days from date of purchase. If you are not satisfied with our product simply return the undamaged product in original packaging for a full refund. USA only.

R2D42017 for its Byrds and Stones influences released an album that changed the face of British rock.

Screamadelica, produced for the most part by Andrew Weatherall, of visionary techno team The Orb, mixed Detroit-styled heavy garage with then-burgeoning acid house, stirring in dollops of dub and pinches of psych, to create a heady mélange as danceable as it was gritty. Freeing the ass first, so to speak, so the mind would definitely follow, “E” optional (but suggested). Originally released on LP by Creation (UK) and on CD by Sire (US), Screamadelica got the expanded, boxed-set treatment in 2011—but this latest iteration, on two gorgeous discs of red-andyellow-swirled vinyl, nicely returns it to its warm, analog, LP roots.

(Vol.23 No.2)

GAME THEORY THE BIG SHOT CHRONICLES Omnivore OVCD-174 (CD). 1986/2016.

Mitch Easter, prod., eng.; Cheryl Pawelski, Pat Thomas, reissue prods. AAD. TT: 79:54

Although common wisdom advises that Lolita Nation, Game Theory’s sprawling two-LP set of 1987, is the Cali power-pop kings’ masterpiece, real fans favor its ’86 predecessor. Omnivore’s expanded and remastered reissue of The Big Shot Chronicles mounts a compelling argument that with this album, songwriter-guitarist Scott Miller (R.I.P.) reached an early, dizzying creative peak.

The music, intuitively abetted by college-rock wunderkind producer Mitch Easter, is simultaneously serene and muscular, dropping sonic references to the likes of Big Star, Velvet Underground, and Todd Rundgren (among the bonus tracks: a cover of the Runt’s classic “Couldn’t I Just Tell You”) while staking out a unique and permanent position in the Amerindie underground. Unlike many records from the mid-’80s, this one has absolutely stood the test of time.

THOMAS J. NORTON

BEAR MCCREARY OUTLANDER, THE SERIES: ORIGINAL TELEVISION SOUNDTRACK, VOL.1

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

Madison Gate 043396 406490 (CD). 2015.

Bear McCreary, Joe Augustine, prods.; Laurence Schwarz, Ryan Sanchez, engs.; Pat Sullivan, mastering. DDD.? TT: 50:27

Film and TV composer Bear McCreary first made his mark in the early 2000s, with the reimagined Battlestar Galactica.

With his score for the Starz TV series Outlander he took on a very different challenge. This fantasy, based on the novels of Diana Gabaldon, tells the story of an English woman thrown back in time from 1945 to the Jacobite uprising in 1740s Scotland. Season One calls for Celtic themes (some classic, others new) heavy on Uilleann bagpipes, fiddles, accordion, pennywhistle, and bodhran, backed by orchestral strings, vocals, and percussion. The result is haunting and compelling. It’s also beautifully recorded, and, though mastered at a high level, sounds neither too bright nor compressed. The booklet, with notes by McCreary that provide extensive detail about the creation of the score, is a rare and welcome bonus.

JONAS KAUFMANN AN EVENING WITH PUCCINI Jonas Kaufmann, tenor; Jochen Rieder, Filarmonica Della Scala Sony Classical 8887 513025 9 (BD). 2016.

Brian Large, dir.; Barry Clark-Ewers, prod.; Carlo Assalini, Sr., eng.; Matteo Costa, audio recording eng. DDD. TT: 115:00

Jonas Kaufmann, the go-to tenor of the early 21st century, is apparently opera’s current matinee idol—if, at one of his performances, you wait for the fat man to sing, you’ll still be waiting next Tuesday. His real gift is his magnificent voice, which is fully on display in this special concert. Most of the Puccini favorites are here, including the most overperformed aria of recent decades, “Nessun dorma,” from Turandot. Be sure to check out the encore repeat of the latter, with an endearingly human development near the end of this long concert.

The excellent sound is offered in both lossless DTS HD-Master Audio surround and 2.0 stereo PCM. The first-rate video is a bonus, and important for the full experience. But you’ll need a BD or DVD player—this hasn’t been released on CD.

From the same Italian region that brought us the Stradivarius comes modern masterpieces from Diapason & Norma

www.fidelisav.com info@fidelisav.com 603-880-HIFI (4434)

71

In your ear; through your soul 7KH ZRUOG­V ´UVW SODQDU PDJQHWLF LQ HDUV -XVW DV $XGH]H UHYROXWLRQL]HG WKH VRXQG TXDOLW\ RI KHDGSKRQHV ZH QRZ KDYH WKH XOWLPDWH LQ HDUV 8VLQJ D QHZO\ GHVLJQHG PP 3ODQDU 0DJQHWLF GULYHU WKDW­V DW OHDVW [ ODUJHU WKDQ RWKHU LQ HDUV RXU VLQJOH GULYHU JLYHV \RX WKH FRKHUHQW VRXQG´HOG ODFNLQJ LQ PXOWL GULYHU GHVLJQV DGGLQJ LQFUHGLEOH G\QDPLF UHVSRQVH DQG WKH ZLGHVW VRXQGVWDJH RI DQ\ RWKHU LQ HDU ¨ DOO RI ZKLFK FRPELQH WR JLYH \RX WKDW PDJLFDO FRQQHFWLRQ GLUHFWO\ WR WKH DUWLVW $QG GXH WR RXU PXFK ODUJHU GULYHU ZH KDYH WKDW ZRUOG UHQRZQHG G\QDPLF UDQJH DQG EDVV UHVSRQVH RWKHU KHDGSKRQHV FDQ RQO\ GUHDP RI $XGH]H­V DGYDQWDJHV GRQ­W HQG WKHUH ¨ ZH DOVR LQFOXGH RXU &LSKHU /LJKWQLQJ FDEOH ¨ WKH FRPSOHWH KHDGSKRQH DPS '$& '63 IRU L26 GHYLFHV 6R LI \RX ZHUH WKLQNLQJ WKH %HOFK´UH LQ HDUV ZLWK EDODQFHG DUPDWXUH GULYHUV ZDV JUHDW ZHOO OHW­V MXVW VD\ LW QRZ EHORQJV LQ WKH -XUDVVLF HUD RI VRXQG TXDOLW\

)HHG \RXU VRXO IRU RQO\ DW VHOHFW GHDOHUV $YDLODEOH ZLWK VWDQGDUG DXGLR FDEOH DW

Call (714) 581-8010

ZZZ DXGH]H FRP

R2D42017

HERB REICHERT

PUENTE CELESTE NAMA M•A Recordings M084A (CD). 2010. Todd Garfinkle, prod., eng. DDD. TT: 60:58

When I find a tin of gold doubloons, I will buy every album ever released by M•A Recordings.

Each title is genuine art, not audiofool pap. The music ranges from Romani “Muzika Orijinal” to Ito Ema playing J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations on a 1906 Steinway grand. Puente Celeste means Celestial Bridge, and this five-man group, assembled by Argentine percussionist Santiago Vazquez (of Será Una Noche fame), will give you a preview of that bridge’s heavenly destination with their most quirky and sophisticated music, neither jazz nor pop. Each cut is a surprise package of musical invention. Nama, with sound to die for, was recorded at 5.6MHz with a Korg MR-2000 DSD one-bit master recorder.

MACY GRAY STRIPPED Chesky JD389 (LP/CD/MP3). 2016. David & Norman Chesky, prods.; Nicholas Prout, eng. DDD. TT 51:07

One of her recordings went triple platinum in 1999. She won a Grammy in 2001, for “I Try.” When I played an LP test pressing of Stripped for my girlfriend, bb, I told her, “I think you’ll like this singer. I met her at a Chesky recording session. She used to be a backup singer, and now David is giving her a whole album. She sings with deep, authentic soul.”

Then bb yelled at me: “Backup singer?! You fool! That’s Macy Gray! I own every record she ever made!” (Sorry. I never heard of her.) This recording completely defies Holt’s Law (the better the recording, the worse the musical performance): these are five-star performances in five-star binaural sound.

KALMAN RUBINSON

JAMES MATHESON VIOLIN CONCERTO, STRING QUARTET, TIMES ALONE

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

Baird Dodge, violin; Esa-Pekka Salonen, Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Color Field Quartet; Laura Strickling, soprano; Thomas Sauer, piano

Authenticity

Yarlung YAR25670 (CD). 2016. J. & Helen Schlichting, prods.; Bob Attiyeh, stereo eng.; Tom Caulfield, multichannel eng.

ADD/DDD. TT: 75:59

The two-channel version of this release, fine in its own right, is available on CD and on three individual LPs: Yarlung YAR65005-670V, YAR25668670V, and YAR25669-670V. However, my real motivation for this R2D4 listing is the DSD256 five-channel version, downloadable from www.nativedsd.com.

With no prior knowledge or expectations of James Matheson’s music, the slashing opening of Taut, energetic, the aptly titled first movement of his String Quartet, hooked me. Not only was the music gripping and appealing, the multichannel sound was completely involving. Matheson is a living composer for whom direct and emotional communication is not compromised by an unintelligible style or obscured by adherence to dated ones. His String Quartet is dramatic, his Violin Concerto virtuosic and witty, and oh, the lovely songs of Times Alone linger in my mind after the last notes fade.

The multichannel tracks of the String Quartet and the song cycle were recorded in November 2015 in DSD256 by Tom Caulfield, using his array of five carbon-fiber DPA 4006A microphones and a Merging Technologies Horus A/D converter.

These are among the most vividly realistic recordings I have heard, and striking in the similarity of what I hear to the photographs of the Los Angeles recording sessions.

The Violin Concerto was recorded in concert in December 2011 by Chris Willis, whose multitracks were downmixed to stereo using Yarlung’s SonoruS Holographic Imaging processor. The fivechannel surround mix was created from that. It’s still excellent, but not nearly as convincing as the sound quality of the other works.

WILLIE NELSON NIGHT AND DAY Willie Nelson, guitar, piano; Mickey Raphael, harmonica; Johnny Gimble, fiddle, mandolin; Jody Payne, acoustic guitar;

Before there was “surround sound,” “home theater,” “stereo,” and their many passing variants, the reproduction of high-quality sound in the home, and the gear that made that sound possible, was known as “hi-fi.”

The essence of the term is found in the pursuit of authenticity— striving to get as close as possible to the original performance or recording—thereby ensuring a stronger, more immersive, more meaningful listening experience.

Although the term hi-fi has become old-fashioned, it is every bit as important today as it was when it originated, 60 years ago. Whether you crave sublime immersion in music, the unexpected thrill of percussive explosions, or the crystalline clarity of beautiful dialogue, higher fidelity—greater authenticit y—is the way to achieve it.

The High-End Super Speaker You've Always Wanted- for Every Budget meaningful technology & unbeatable performance from $1,249/pr. to $62,000/pr.

Performance-Driven Value In A World of Huge Prices. Is there such a thing as an $1,249/pr. super speaker? $13,900/pr.? What about $62,000/pr.? What Carbon-Fiber Tweeter Descended Directly makes a super speaker? When a speaker at any price point from Award-Winning Model Seven Mk IIâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s is loaded with so much more technology and sounds that Patented Perfect-Pistonâ&#x201E;˘ Carbon Drivers PXFK EHWWHU LW¡V D real super speaker.

´%HWWHU WKDQ VRPH VSHDNHUV ,¡YH KHDUG WKDW FRVW WLPHV DV PXFK Ο ²-HII 'RUJD\ 721($XGLR Vandersteen Audio today offers a remarkable line of high-end super speakers in which each PRGHO VKDWWHUV DOO H[SHFWDWLRQV RI ZKDW¡V SRVVLEOH anywhere near its price point. Because Richard Vandersteen has always spent money on his speakers where it counts- on the drivers and crossovers that carry the delicate music signal- our entry-level floorstander the $1,249/pr. 1Ci routinely EXOOLHV ELJJHU VSHDNHUV FRVWLQJ WZR RU WKUHH WLPHV DV PXFK.

Patented Aerodynamic â&#x20AC;&#x153;Reflection-Freeâ&#x20AC;?

Midrange Driver Prevents Back Wave Distortion from Reaching Listenerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Ears In Time w/ Music

´ RQH RI WKH ELJJHVW KLJK HQG VSHDNHU EDUJDLQV RXW WKHUHΟ ²5R\ *UHJRU\ 7KH $XGLR %HDW The Treo SU LV D PRGHUQ GD\ YHUVLRQ RI WKH 0RGHO WKDW¡V beautiful to look at, but over-engineered WR EH DV VLOHQW DV WKH HQFORVXUHV RI WRGD\¡V PRVW H[RWLF VXSHU VSHDNHUV regardless of cost.

´0\ QHZ UHIHUHQFH VSHDNHUV Îź ²$QWKRQ\ &RUGHVPDQ 7KH $EVROXWH 6RXQG The Model 5A Carbon at $29,900/pr. features an advanced carbon tweeter and the patented Perfect-Pistonâ&#x201E;˘ carbon midrange from the Model Seven Mk II, plus %,* SRZHUHG EDVV ZLWK D ZDWW SRZHUHG VXEZRRIHU ZLWK EDQG URRP (4

´8QEHDWDEOH SRZHUHG EDVV Îź ²0LFKDHO )UHPHU 6WHUHRSKLOH The Model Seven Mk II ($62,000/pr.) is the ultimate expression of Richard 9DQGHUVWHHQ¡V GHVLJQ SKLORVRSKLHV D radically advanced take on long held design tenets. While other expensive speakers are seemingly â&#x20AC;&#x153;redesignedâ&#x20AC;? every couple of years to turn new sales, the Seven has been in production continually since 2009 and updated just once. Model Seven owners can upgrade to Mk II status so RXU EHVW FXVWRPHUV DUHQ¡W OHIW EHKLQG. 7KH 6HYHQ¡V OHJDF\ RI %HVW RI 6KRZ awards over the years is legend, and the Mk II earned four such designations in its first year. Yes, a super speaker in every sense of the word, designed and built to last.

Advanced Cabinet-Within-A-Cabinet Construction Renders Enclosure As Inert & Sonically Invisible As Exotic Speakers Costing 10X More

Buy Vandersteen, Leave â&#x20AC;&#x153;Upgrade-Itisâ&#x20AC;? Behind. When all of the information from the amplifier is faithfully retrieved, especially in the crucial time domain, you hear that something is missing. That something is the distortion of the original signal that leads to the inevitable feeling audiophiles Dual 8,â&#x20AC;? 300-Watt Powered Subwoofers experience called â&#x20AC;&#x153;upgrade-itis.â&#x20AC;? Yes, moving up w/11-Band Room EQ In Each Speaker For Perfect Bass in Virtually Any Room the Vandersteen line always offers more performance and ever greater musical pleasure, as will any other true upgrade to your system. But owning Vandersteens and upgrading EHFDXVH \RX ORYH WKH ZD\ \RXU PXVLF VRXQGV is so much better than swapping out your gear because you FDQ¡W VWDQG the way your music sounds.

Vandersteen's Quatro Wood CT at $13,900/pr. is a real-world super speaker. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s loaded with Vandersteenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most meaningful technologies including powered bass with room EQ for â&#x20AC;&#x153;perfect bass in virtually any room,â&#x20AC;? Vandersteenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s patented aerodynamic midrange, a naturally airy Carbon Tweeter and much more. A ton of speaker!

vandersteen.com â&#x20AC;˘ 559-582-0324 Made in the U.S.A. Contact a Vandersteen Dealer Today facebook.com/vandersteen-audio

R2D42017 Bobbie Nelson, piano; B. Spears, bass guitar; Paul English, drums; Billy English, percussion SurroundedBy Entertainment SBE1001-9 (DVD-A). 1999/2000. Willie Nelson, Jim Mageras, prods.; Larry Greenhill, eng.; Bob Ludwig, surround mastering. ADD(?). TT: 35:20

This is one of my reference recordings; I’ve used it many times in my reviews of multichannel equipment. One reason is the absolutely beautiful depiction, in 24/96, 5.1-channel sound, of each and every instrument. In this very immersive mix, the players surround the listener—it’s nothing like what you’d hear in a concert, but nonetheless, the sense of an ensemble performing in a real space is maintained, and seems completely natural.

The other reason to cherish Night and Day is that the arrangements and performances of this eclectic collection of songs are equally natural, engaging—and danceable. Willie Nelson released this entirely instrumental recording on a small label at a point in his career when any income derived from his singing would have gone directly to the IRS. Rather than being a way to skirt such garnisheeing, Night and Day seems the result of Nelson’s need for expression—it is one of his most personal albums. Tragically, the hi-rez DVD-A is now out of print and commands high prices—but the CD is equally enjoyable for the music.

ROBERT SCHRYER

JOHN FOGERTY REVIVAL Fantasy FCD-30001 (CD). 2007. John Fogerty, prod.; Robert Ludwig, Kevin Dean, Dave Colvin, engs. DDD.? TT: 40:41

This album’s title works as both a nod to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s legacy and to truth in advertising. Revival was a return to form for John Fogerty— to the sort of catchy, barroomfriendly tunes he became famous for but could no longer write. Add to its musical themes equal parts nostalgia and political outrage, and you’ve got a country-rock album to revitalize the troops.

Revival reflects a comfortable

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

juncture in Fogerty’s personal life, and in his identities as both exCCR frontman and evolving solo artist. Every song here is a wellcrafted gem—contemporary, but imprinted with the past to remind us where we’ve all been.

SOUL COUGHING IRRESISTIBLE BLISS Slash CDW 46175 (CD). 1996. Soul Coughing, Steve Fisk, prods.; David Kahne, prod., eng.; Chris Shaw, Tchad Blake, engs.

ADD ? TT: 45:19

Released in the summer of 1996, this second full-length album from NYC-based Soul Coughing, whose members met as performers at Manhattan’s famed nightclub Knitting Factory, is a swank-and-swagger, beatthumpin’, white-funk slice of pop that stylistically sounds so of its time that, two decades later, it’s hard to believe it could still sound fresh and original. But it does, thanks to its mix of irrepressible bass grooves, inspired musical excursions, trippy studio effects, and singer Mike Doughty’s frenetic quasi-raps. It’s not perfect, but when it hits its mark—which is often—it’s king of the hill. Irresistible bliss indeed.

Silencing the Noise In the audio world, the word “noise” is often used to describe things like tape hiss or the unpleasant pops and ticks produced by a scratch on a record, but these things aren’t actual noise. They’re properly reproduced sounds that we simply wish weren’t there.

The noise that AudioQuest combats is the kind you can’t directly hear: misplaced vibrational energy that has no meaning, cannot be turned into discrete sounds, and inevitably compromises our relationship with the music.

JASON VICTOR SERINUS

LEONTYNE PRICE PRIMA DONNA ASSOLUTA Bizet: Carmen. Mozart: Così fan tutte.

Puccini: Madama Butterfly, Il Tabarro, Tosca.

Verdi: Aida, Ernani, Il Trovatore, La Forza del Destino, Un Ballo in Maschera.

Leontyne Price, soprano; many other singers; Herbert von Karajan, Erich Leinsdorf, Zubin Mehta, Thomas Schippers, conductors; various orchestras Sony Classical 531134 (22 CDs).

1962–1971/2016. Remastered in 24/96 (Madama Butterfly in DSD64). Robert Russ, prod.; Andreas K. Meyer, Rebekah Wineman, Martin Kistner, Hansjörg Seiler, Mark Donahue, mix, mastering. ADD. TT: 19:41:00

Although soprano Leontyne Price was not the first African-American to break the color barrier in opera—Todd Duncan sang Tonio at New York City Opera in 1945, Helen L. Phillips joined the Metropolitan Opera Chorus in 1947, and Mattiwilda Dobbs and Marian Anderson sang

Whether it’s high-speed circuitry noise, driver or baffle noise, computer-generated noise, radio-frequency noise, or intermodulation noise, all AudioQuest products— DragonFly DACs, NightHawk and NightOwl headphones, JitterBug USB filters, Niagara Noise-Dissipation Systems, and our comprehensive range of analog and digital cables—effectively control and minimize noise, making it easier to get lost in the music.

Fact or Fantasy?

Dear Audiophile/Music Lover, It’s a fact that every system I have heard—in every audiophile’s home that I have visited—is a pale shadow of what it could have been.

It doesn’t matter who did it, what “rules” they followed, or how great the components were supposed to be. The sad fact is that if the system doesn’t “play the room” properly, it is significantly underperforming its potential.

Fantasy The fantasy is the belief that a new amp, preamp, or cable is somehow going to make it all happen. It might help, but not nearly as much as it could if your system was voiced properly to your room. This voicing is called RoomPlay.

that my system has ever experienced. I am amazed at the differences I hear.

The music now flows with more rhythm and tempo. The harmony and blend between the treble and bass is improved and it sounds more like live music. Music is more emotionally engaging.

It is as if I can see into the recording. The resolution of detail is remarkable on every song. The soundstage is more three-dimensional and the height, depth and width seem more right. Hearing the location of the performers on the soundstage has added an extra dimension of excitement to the listening experience.

I find myself just listening to the music and toe-tapping like never before. I truly am enjoying the music.

There is no bigger improvement that you can make to your system than to have it voiced properly to your room.

Jim Smith has the vast experience and incredible ability to hear th changes and get the most out of o rooms and system components. Jim’ RoomPlay sessions are worth eve penny spent—you too can enjoy th music like never before.”

Room Play Reference

Room Play

The Real Deal Here is an edited excerpt from a review by a RoomPlay client,* posted by Richfield_hunter on Audiogon.com:

“As an audiophile, I was always searching for the next level of performance. I tried many equipment changes and tweaks over the years and most of the time achieved a higher level of performance. But I always wondered if the changes were how the sound was recorded and IF I was getting the most out of my sound room. I decided to schedule Jim Smith for one of his RoomPlay sessions.

[RoomPlay] has been the single largest improvement in sound quality

TM

and the presence of emotionally involving music in their home is finally a reality.

TM

Take Action The Get Better Sound website has links to the full comments and much more detail about RoomPlay, including the new, lower-priced, and highly acclaimed service I call RoomPlay Reference.

If you are ready for a real improvement in your system, visit www.get bettersound.com. For more info, contact me at jim@getbettersound.com or call 770-777-2095.

Best regards,

Jim Smith PS—If you have a significant investment in your system, doesn’t it make sense to hear what you purchased? *Get more RoomPlay info—including testimonials—at GetBetterSound.com.

Fact vs. Fantasy The fact is that I get comments like this after each and every Room Play session. These music lovers a astounded at how much their syste has improved. Fantasy time is ov

Get Better Sound: Reference Set-up Manual, DV StraightTalk, and RoomPlay™ Custom Voicing.

Internet: www.getbettersound.com • Phone: 770-777-2095 • E-mail: jim@getbettersound.com

R2D42017 leads at La Scala and the Met in 1953 and 1955—she was the first to appear on TV, in 1955, and then at a string of opera houses, beginning with San Francisco. Fueling her triumphs was one of the most sensual, soaring, luxurious sopranos on record, with a dramatic component ideal for Verdi and Puccini. At last, 10 of Price’s glorious complete opera recordings have been digitally remastered, including the essential Carmen (with Franco Corelli), the second and most wonderful of her three Il Trovatores, and her second Aida. An indispensable tribute to a great artist who this year turns 90.

ELISABETH SCHWARZKOPF THE COMPLETE RECITALS 1952–74 Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, soprano; various singers, orchestras, conductors Warner Classics 553028 (31 CDs). 1952–74/2015. Walter Legge, orig. prod.; Allan Ramsay, Christophe Hénault, Simon Gibson, Andrew Walter, remastering. ADD. TT: 24:77:00

Not only did Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (1915–2006) possess one of the finest lyric sopranos of her time, she also reigned as one of the supreme postwar champions of lieder and art song. She was unceasingly coached to perfection by her British husband, EMI record producer Walter Legge, and championed by conductors Furtwängler and Karajan; her EMI recitals began with an irreplaceable Schubert disc with pianist Edwin Fischer, and ended with two Schumann cycles. While Schwarzkopf’s arch mannerisms can infuriate, virtually every time you wish she’d get out of her head and sing from the heart, she wins you over with her vocal

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

and interpretive brilliance.

These are all of Schwarzkopf’s commercial recitals for EMI, including two live recordings, with Furtwängler and Gerald Moore, all superbly remastered in 24/96.

DAVID SOKOL

THE BEACH BOYS TODAY! & SUMMER DAYS (AND SUMMER NIGHTS!!)

Capitol CDP 7 93694 2 (CD).

1965/1990. Brian Wilson, prod.; Chuck Britz, eng.; Joe Gastwirt, digital remastering; Mark Linnett, digital remastering, reissue compilation & coordination. AAD? TT: 67:19

When the Beach Boys’ Today! entered the Billboard album chart in March 1965, the Beatles’ “Eight Days a Week” had just ended its run atop the Hot 100. It was a time of blossoming musical possibilities, and although Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys had been turning out hits since 1962, mostly about surfing and girls, Today! marked a giant creative step forward for them.

Essentially, it’s structured between side 1, mostly hits—“Dance, Dance, Dance,” “When I Grow Up,” and a quirky early version of “Help Me Ronda” (sic)— and the ballad-heavy side 2, which sounds like the template for the fabulous Pet Sounds, which followed a year later. Wilson’s meticulously crafted arrangements and gorgeous melodies and harmonies abound. Clocking in at 2:30, “Kiss Me, Baby” might be the finest song about teenage angst and redemption ever written.

In his liner notes to this 1990 CD, reissue compiler and coordinator Mark Linett explains how numerous tapes were auditioned “in order to find the original

album masters,” and that “no remixing was attempted.” This to-die-for twofer also includes Today!’s follow-up, Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!), released in late June 1965, with such hits as “California Girls” and its sublime B side, “Let Him Run Wild”— as well as the single “The Little Girl I Once Knew” and several alternate takes.

(Vol.39 No.3)

BRIAN WILSON LIVE AT THE ROXY THEATRE Brimel 1001 (2 CDs). 2000. Brian Wilson, prod.; Mark Linett, eng., mix. AAD? TT: 94:46

Brian Wilson released his self-titled first solo album in 1988, but it then took him nearly a dozen years before launching his first tour, and this musical souvenir of those performances, recorded during two shows at the Roxy, the venerable Sunset Strip club, is an underappreciated gem. Not only is Wilson in fine voice, backed by a crack 10-piece band that included members of the Wondermints, but his selection of 28 songs is a perfect mix of lighthearted banter, Beach Boys hits and album tracks, and later solo material. Beginning with a punched-up version of “The Little Girl I Once Knew,” the set continues with poignant versions of “Don’t Worry Baby,” “Good Vibrations,” “Love and Mercy,” and even a goodnatured snippet of the Barenaked Ladies’ “Brian Wilson,” which segues into the lovely “’Til I Die.” The sound is sparkling and intimate throughout. The cozy Roxy seats only about 500, but this remarkable and timeless recording will make you feel as if you were there that historic weekend. (Vol.23 No.10)

JOHN SWENSON

MARK BINGHAM I PASSED FOR HUMAN Sky Ranch SR 652305 (CD).

1989. Mark Bingham, Hal Willner, prods.; Don Christensen, Brenden Harkin, engs. TT: 46:57

Weird scenes inside the gold mine, ca 1989, from a musician and producer who would help shape improvised music and songwriting in New Orleans music for the next 25 years. “New Orleans was a place where I could play music and enjoy doing it and musicians had friends other than musicians and artists, people who actually worked for a living as plumbers and carpenters.

It was real.” One of the highlights is an extraordinary instrumental, “Blood Music,” featuring John Mooney on slide guitar, John Scofield on lead guitar, and Jon Cleary on organ. Cleary and Scofield wrap things up with a gorgeous turn.

THE NEVILLE BROTHERS YELLOW MOON A&M CD5240 (CD). 1989. Daniel Lanois, prod., mix; Malcolm Burn, eng., mix; Mark Howard, Charles Brady, engs.; George Horn, mastering. AAD. TT: 53:01

Arguably the Nevilles’ greatest record, Yellow Moon was the soundtrack for that year in New Orleans. Cyril’s contributions stand out: “My Blood,” a passionate plea to end apartheid in South Africa, was an instant anthem picked up by numerous other bands and frequently heard during Jazz Fest; “Sister Rosa,” a tribute to American Civil Rights heroine Rosa Parks, struck a similar chord. Art’s title track has gone on to become a New Orleans classic.

(Vol.12 No.7, Vol.29 No.2)

77

EQ U IPMENT R EPORT

JOHN ATKINSON

Magico S5 Mk.II LOUDSPEAKER Dammit!” No sooner had I praised small loudspeakers while dismissing large speakers as potentially having “large problems,” in my review of the Crystal Arabesque Minissimo Diamond in the October issue,1 than I had to eat my words. Only days after that issue had gone to press, Magico’s VP for Global Sales & Marketing, Peter Mackay, and CTO Yair Tammam, arrived at my place to set up a pair of the Bay Area company’s floorstanding—and very large— S5 Mk.II loudspeakers.

Diamond–Nano-Tec–Graphene It is its drive-units that distinguish the Mk.II S5 from its predecessor. As Yair Tammam lives and breathes driveunits, I asked him about the changes, particularly that new 26mm-diameter tweeter, which has a 40μm-thick beryllium dome coated with a 5μm-thick layer of pure diamond, and was developed from the 28mm dome first seen in Magico’s statement M-Project speaker.

The first Magico speaker reviewed in Stereophile, the V3, in May 2008,2 used a high-performance ring-radiator tweeter, but Tammam was bothered by the fact that such a The S5 Mk.II tweeter’s diaphragm operates in breakup mode in the upper Like the original S5, the S5 Mk.II is a three-way, floorstandregion of its passband—he wanted a diaphragm that operated as a perfect piston throughout its operating bandwidth. ing design, 4' tall. The twin, sealed-box–loaded, 10" A beryllium dome is both light enough and stiff enough to aluminum-cone woofers with substantial rubber roll surbehave pistonically, and was used in the Magico Q5, which rounds, 6" midrange unit with a graphene-coated Nano-Tec Michael Fremer reviewed in November 2012.3 Applying a cone, and 1.1" diamond-coated, beryllium-dome tweeter are mounted vertically in line on its black layer of diamond to the metal, Tammam front baffle. (Nano-Tec is Magico’s name for a explained, results in a dome with a more I was impressed sandwich of Rohacell, a foam composite matehomogeneous surface, which both reduces with the sheer intermodulation distortion and results rial extensively used in the aerospace industry, in a more benign harmonic-distortion and external layers of carbon fiber coated with believability of signature that is less like that of a metal layers of carbon nanotubes.) the Magico’s dome. I asked why they hadn’t gone all the The Magico’s internally braced enclosure is sound. way and used an all-diamond diaphragm. constructed from an aluminum extrusion 1⁄2" It turned out that, yes, diamond would thick and 16" in diameter, with the midrange produce a very stiff diaphragm, but the required suspension unit loaded by a subenclosure made of a proprietary polywould raise the tweeter’s low-frequency resonance from the mer. The top cap is machined into complex shapes, both desired 500Hz or so to about 1.3kHz. This, in turn, would over and under, to minimize external diffraction and intermean that the tweeter would have to be crossed over to the nal standing waves, while the bottom plate includes outrigmidrange drive-unit at too high a frequency. Beryllium’s gers at its four corners into which can be screwed heavyduty spikes. (As supplied, sturdy wheels are screwed into the lower mass ensures that the resonance frequency is close to 500Hz, but the diamond layer raises the dome’s stiffness to outriggers to make handling easier.) Electrical connection is extend the high frequencies. via a pair of binding posts at the bottom of the rear panel.

The S5 Mk.II is available in two different finishes.

1 See www.stereophile.com/content/crystal-cable-arabesque-minissimo-diamondWith the first, called by Magico M-Cast, the speaker costs loudspeaker. $38,000/pair. In the handsome high-gloss M-Coat finish of 2 See www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/508mag/index.html. the review samples, the price is $42,750/pair.

3 See www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/magico_q5_loudspeaker/index.html.

Description Three-way, floorstanding loudspeaker with sealed enclosure.

Drive-units: 1.1" (26mm) diamond-coated beryllium-dome tweeter, 6" (152.4mm) graphenecoated Nano-Tec–cone midrange unit, two 10"

82

(254mm) aluminum-cone woofers. Frequency range: 20Hz–50kHz. Sensitivity: 88dB/2.83V/m. Nominal impedance: 4 ohms. Recommended amplification: 50–1000W. Dimensions 48" (1220mm) H by 15" (380mm) W by

14" (360mm) D. Weight: 220 lbs (100kg).

Finishes Metallic gloss or high-gloss paint.

Serial numbers of units reviewed 00739, 00740.

Price $38,000/pair in M-Cast standard finish, $42,750/pair in M-Coat

high-gloss finish. Approximate number of dealers: 35.

Manufacturer Magico, LLC, 3170 Corporate Place, Hayward, CA 94545.

Tel: (510) 649-9700.

Web: www.magico.net.

February 2017

Q

stereophile.com

ERIC SWANSON

SPECIFICATIONS

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

83

MAGICO S5 MK.2

I asked about the Nano-Tec cone used in the midrange unit. Tammam explained that in the earlier versions of this sandwich cone, the inner layer was stiffer than the outer layers, to match the voice-coil former. There followed changes in the former material and the thicknesses of the layers, guided by finite element analysis (FEA), until, in 2014, a Japanese corporation developed a way of laying down the carbon fibers in the weave that resulted in a more even flow of the resin before the material was cured in an oven. This seventh-generation version of Magico’s driver has a cone that contains 30% less resin in the carbon-fiber layers, but one that is 300% stiffer.

In Magico’s prior midrange cone the front layer of carbon fibers was overlaid with carbon nanotubes, but the US company that produced the nanotubes came up with a way of coating the front of the carbon-fiber layer with a skin of graphene, a superstiff sheet of carbon just one atom thick.

It’s desirable that a speaker cone be of varying thickness: thickest at the center and the boundary with the voice-coil former, thinnest at the junction with the surround. However, Magico used to use a sandwich core of constant thickness, because the foam material would fracture if the thickness varied. For their new generation of midrange units they developed a process in which the foam is carefully injected between the front and back carbon-fiber, to permit the overall thickness to vary in the desired manner.

Tammam told me that they made much use of the Klippel analysis system in the development of the S5 Mk.II’s drive-units, particularly regarding the spider, to get a significantly greater linear cone excursion. Computer simulation of the driver as a complete system—cone, surround, spider, motor, and magnetic circuit—allowed them to produce a drive-unit that combined the best technologies currently available to give performance that doesn’t significantly change with the rise in temperature that typically occurs after a couple of hours of operation.

Yair Tammam summed up his goals in drive-unit design as achieving linearity not just with large excursions but

with very small movements, so that the speaker’s character remains the same at low sound-pressure levels as it does at high SPLs. Listening After Mackay and Tammam had used the excellent Dayton OmniMic v2 system to position the S5 Mk.IIs in my room and declared themselves content, they left for home. The speakers’ front baffles were about 80" from the wall behind them and 98" from my listening position; the left speaker was 38" from the closest sidewall, the right 48" from its sidewall. I settled down for some critical listening, beginning with the PS Audio DirectStream DAC (Yale operating

MEASUREMENTS

I

used DRA Labs’ MLSSA system and a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone to measure the Magico S5 Mk.II’s frequency response in the farfield, and an Earthworks QTC-40 for the nearfield and in-room responses. A complication was that the 220-lb loudspeaker was too bulky for me to move it outside for the testing, or to lift it onto my computer-controlled turntable. I therefore had to do the quasi-anechoic measurements in my listening room, where the proximity of room boundaries led to more than usually aggressive windowing of the timedomain data, which in turn reduced the graphs’ resolution in the midrange.

That said, my estimate of the Magico’s voltage sensitivity was approximately 87.5dB/2.83V/m, close to the specified 88dB. Fig.1 shows how the

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

S5 Mk.II’s impedance magnitude and electrical phase angle vary with frequency. The impedance does drop to minima of 3.15 ohms at 78Hz and 3.55 ohms at 900Hz, and there is a currenthungry combination of 4.3 ohms and –49° at 51Hz. Magico specifies the S5 Mk.II as a 4 ohm load, which appears to be correct. The impedance traces are free from the small discontinuities that would imply the existence of panel resonances. Nevertheless, I found two high-Q vibrational modes, at 436 and 744Hz, on the sidewalls level with the midrange unit. These modes were at a low level, though they were audible when I listened to the enclosure walls with a stethoscope.

Tapping the cabinet walls revealed a slight formant structure correlating with these modes, but the enclosure

was otherwise inert.

The impedance traces suggest that the sealed enclosure is tuned to 34Hz. The two woofers behave identically, and their summed output is shown as the green trace in fig.2. The crossover to the midrange unit (red trace) Stereophile Magico S5 Mk.II Impedance (ohms) & Phase (deg) vs Frequency (Hz)

Fig.1 Magico S5 Mk.II, electrical impedance (solid) and phase (dashed) (5 ohms/vertical div.).

85

MAGICO S5 MK.2

system, which I prefer to the earlier Pikes Peak) directly feeding my Pass Labs XA60.5 monoblocks, and the Magicos hooked up to the Passes with Kubala-Sosna Elation! cables.

The low-frequency, 1⁄3 -octave warble tones on my Editor’s Choice (ALAC file ripped from CD, Stereophile STPH016-2) played cleanly down to 25Hz, with the 32Hz tone not exciting the lowest-frequency mode in my room as is usually the case. Although the 20Hz tone seemed quieter than those immediately above it, the Studio Six SPL meter app on my iPhone, used with Studio Six’s iTestMic, registered it as being equally loud. That it seemed quieter was due not only to my reduced hearing sensitivity in the very low bass, but also to the fact that distortion, which would produce harmonics that would be more audible, must be low in level.

The bass guitar on Editor’s Choice had nice weight, but without the blurring of attacks that can happen with high-Q reflex speakers.

However, over time I felt that the Magicos’ bass was a little too fat with the Pass Labs

amps. Substituting MBL Corona C15 monoblocks gave better control of the low frequencies. With “Another Brick in the Wall Parts 1 & 2,” from Pink Floyd’s The Wall (24-bit/96kHz FLAC files, Columbia), the MBL amps kept superb control of the Magicos’ woofers without sacrificing low-frequency power. The speakers’ clarity in this region made it possible for me to maximally differentiate between the sounds of the bass guitar and the kick drum—they didn’t seem to be competing with one another. The deep-pitched, low-F purr from Dave Holland’s double bass that leads into the entrance of Norah Jones’s unmistakable voice in “Court and Spark,” from Herbie Hancock’s River: The Joni Letters (24/96 Apple Lossless, Verve/ HDtracks) was viscerally satisfying in a way that some say you can’t get from Inside the S5 Mk.II. Note midrange sealed-box speakers. subenclosure The sub-40Hz notes in (in French blue). my 2014 recording of

measurements, continued

Amplitude in dB

appears to be set at 300Hz, and the broad peak in the midbass will be almost entirely due to the nearfield measurement technique, which assumes a 2pi (half-spherical) acoustic environment for the drivers. This peak aside, the –6dB frequency is just below 30Hz, which means that with the slow, 12dB/octave rolloff below the tuning frequency that is typical of a sealed enclosure, and the typical amount of boundary reinforcement or “room gain,” the S5 Mk.II’s output will extend to 20Hz. The Magico’s upper-frequency farfield output, averaged across a 30° horizontal window centered on the tweeter axis (fig.3, blue trace above

300Hz), is impressively even overall, though with slight depressions in the presence region and in the top octave before the ultrasonic peak, due to the tweeter’s primary dome resonance.

Note, however, that this resonance lies above the 30kHz limit of this graph.

Because of the practical limitations of my listening room, I was able to plot the S5 Mk.II’s horizontal dispersion out to only 30° to the sides. The result, with the off-axis traces normalized to the tweeter-axis response, is shown in fig.3: the speaker’s off-axis behavior is smooth and even, with the beginnings of a top-octave rolloff evident more than 20° to the side. In the vertical plane, with again the off-axis traces normalized to the response on the tweeter axis (which is 42" from the floor), the Magico’s balance doesn’t change significantly over a ±10°

window (fig.4). Only when you get to 15° above the tweeter does a suckout at the upper crossover frequency begin to be seen, suggesting a sensible crossover configuration.

The red trace in fig.5 shows the spatially averaged response of the pair of S5 Mk.IIs in my listening room. To create such graphs, I average 20 1⁄6 octave–smoothed spectra, individually taken for the left and right speakers using SMUGSoftware’s FuzzMeasure 3.0 program and a 96kHz sample rate, in a rectangular grid 36" wide by 18" high and centered on the positions of my ears. This mostly eliminates the room acoustic’s effects.

To provide a visual reference, the blue trace is that of the Crystal Arabesque Minissimo Diamonds in my room; I found the Crystal speaker’s balance slightly midrange-forward,

Fig.3 Magico S5 Mk.II, lateral response family at 50”, normalized to response on tweeter axis, from back to front: differences in response 30–5° off axis, reference response, differences in response 5–30° off axis.

Fig.4 Magico S5 Mk.II, vertical response family at 50”, normalized to response on tweeter axis, from back to front: differences in response 15–5° above axis, reference response, differences in response 5–10° below axis.

Frequency in Hz

Fig.2 Magico S5 Mk.II, anechoic response on tweeter axis at 50”, averaged across 30° horizontal window and corrected for microphone response, with nearfield responses of midrange unit (red) and woofers (green), plotted in the ratios of the square roots of the radiating areas, and the complex sum of the nearfield midrange and woofer responses plotted below 300Hz.

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

87

SIMPLY AMAZING Now with Carbon Fiber Drivers â&#x20AC;¢ Can be single amped or multi-amped â&#x20AC;¢ Removes most of the room acoustics â&#x20AC;¢ Can be run with DSP or not 8S WR 'E HI¿FLHQW

The best of solid state with tube-like midrange in a beautiful designer chassis.

200 wpc

See us at the Axpona & Newport shows.

EP200.2 SE High Power Amp/Integrated Amplifer

ZZZ XQGHUZRRGKLÃ&#x20AC; FRP Sales Contact: Walter Liederman Phone: 770-667-5633 Email: underwoodwally@aol.com

MAGICO S5 MK.2

Jonas Nordwall performing the Toccata of Widor’s Organ Symphony 5 at Portland’s First United Methodist Church (24/88.2 AIFF file) literally shook the walls of my listening room without sounding bloated or boomy.

The dual-mono pink-noise track on Editor’s Choice was reproduced by the S5 Mk.IIs with a very narrow, stable central image, and none of the splashing toward the speaker positions at some frequencies that would imply the existence of resonances. However, while the Magicos sounded hollow and nasal when I stood up, as expected from the speaker’s measured vertical dispersion (see “Measurements” sidebar), I found I needed to sit on the tweeter axis (42" above the floor) to get sufficient mid-treble—an experience that conflicts with the measurements. The top octave also sounded shelved down if I sat in my chair in my customary slouch.

But when I sat at attention, I was impressed not only with the solidity of the Magicos’ stereo images but with the sheer believability of the sound. The delicate fragility of the late Radka Toneff’s voice in her reading of Jimmy Webb’s “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress,” from her Fairytales (24/192 AIFF needle drop from LP, Odin LP03), was fully preserved. I’d made a number of needle drops of this track using Linn Linto, Channel D Seta L, and Liberty Audio B2B-1 phono preamplifiers, with Ayre Acoustics QA-9 and Benchmark ADC-1 A/D converters. As I listened to the files through the Magicos with peak levels equalized, the differences between the various phono preamps and converters was more apparent than I remembered hearing when I made them.

Returning to Editor’s Choice: The half-step spaced tonebursts

A S S O C I AT E D E Q U I P M E N T Analog Source Linn Sondek LP12 turntable with Lingo power supply, Linn Ekos tonearm, Linn Arkiv B cartridge.

Digital Sources Aurender N10 music server; Ayre Acoustics C-5xeMP universal player; dCS Rossini CD player & Rossini Clock; PS Audio PerfectWave DirectStream D/A converter; AudioQuest JitterBug, UpTone Audio ReGen USB cleaner-uppers; Mac mini running Vinyl Studio, Pure Music 3; Ayre Acoustics QA-9 USB and Benchmark ADC-1 A/D converters.

Phono Preamplifiers Linn Linto, Liberty Audio B2B-1, Channel D Seta L. Power Amplifiers MBL Corona C15, Pass Labs XA60.5 (both monoblocks).

Loudspeakers Crystal Cable Arabesque Minissimo Diamond.

Cables Digital: AudioQuest Coffee. USB: Canare AES/EBU. Interconnect (balanced): AudioQuest Wild Blue, Cardas Clear. Speaker: Kubala-Sosna Elation!. AC: Kubala-Sosna Elation!, manufacturers’ own.

Accessories Target TT-5 equipment racks; Ayre Acoustics Myrtle Blocks; ASC Tube Traps, RPG Abffusor panels; Shunyata Research Dark Field cable elevators; Audio Power Industries 116 Mk.II & PE-1 AC line conditioners (hard drive, computers). AC power comes from two dedicated 20A circuits, each just 6’ from breaker box.—John Atkinson

measurements, continued

Frequency in Hz

Fig.5 Magico S5 Mk.II, spatially averaged, 1⁄6 octave response in JA’s listening room (red); and of Crystal Arabesque Minissimo Diamond (blue).

stereophile.com

reflex-loaded full-range speakers do.1 Turning to the time domain, the step response in fig.6, taken on the tweeter axis, reveals that all four of the S5 Mk.II’s drive-units are connected in positive acoustic polarity, with the tweeter’s output leading that of the midrange unit, which in turn leads that of the woofers. More important, the decay of the tweeter’s step blends smoothly with the start of the midrange unit’s step, and the decay of that step blends smoothly with the start of the woofers’ step. You can see, just past the 7ms marker, that the decay of the woofers’ step is disturbed by a

reflection from the nearest boundary, in this case the floor. The presence of this reflection meant that I had to aggressively window the time-domain data when I calculated the cumulative spectral-decay or waterfall plot (fig.7), as indicated by the dotted area in this graph. But other than a low-level ridge of delayed energy at the cursor position of 5.7kHz, the S5 Mk.II’s initial decay is very clean.

There can be no question: My measurements of Magico’s S5 Mk.II reveal it to be a superbly well-engineered loudspeaker.—John Atkinson 1 See, for example, fig.7 at www.stereophile.com/ content/psb-imagine-t3-loudspeaker-measurements.

Data in Volts

Amplitude in dB

which you can see here as the small peak in the upper midrange compared with the Magico. Both speakers have a dip in the midrange, due to interference from the closest boundaries, but the S5 Mk.II’s in-room balance is impressively even up to the low treble, above which its output gently and smoothly slopes down, primarily due to the increased absorptivity of the room’s furnishings in this region. The Minissimo Diamond being a minimonitor, its response rolls off below 90Hz, while the sealed-box Magico both extends down to 20Hz and doesn’t excite the lowest-frequency modes in my room to the extent that

Q

February 2017

Time in ms

Fig.6 Magico S5 Mk.II, step response on tweeter axis at 50" (5ms time window, 30kHz bandwidth).

Fig.7 Magico S5 Mk.II, cumulative spectral-decay plot on tweeter axis at 50" (0.15ms risetime).

89

MAGICO S5 MK.2

on this CD sounded very even at the listening position. However, listening to the speaker enclosures with a stethoscope, I could hear, on the sidewalls level with midrange unit, some liveliness between 450 and 500Hz and between 600 and 800Hz. This behavior was at a low level and didn’t color the sound of Wayne Shorter’s soprano saxophone in “Court and Spark,” which has a lot of energy in these regions. Joni Mitchell’s husky contralto in “The Tea Leaf Prophecy,” also from River, was presented by the Magicos with maximal pitch differentiation—what Linnies back in the 1980s used to call “playing tunes.”

And the haunting high-register piano intro that leads into the late Leonard Cohen’s resigned spoken basso in River’s “The Jungle Line” sounded perfectly natural, as did the parallel-fifths figure between the verses.

As well as offering full-range envelopment, uncolored vocal and instrumental sounds, and a spacious, stable soundstage, the Magicos could play loud without low-level details becoming obscured. In Benjamin Zander’s recording of Mahler’s Symphony 2 with the Philharmonia Orchestra (24/192 Apple Lossless file, Linn CKD 452), captured by the old Telarc team of engineer Michael Bishop and producer Elaine Martone, the climaxes seemed more climactic without the quiet passages sounding in any way exaggerated or given short shrift. And again, the Magicos loved the sound of the solo women’s voices in this recording: mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly and soprano Miah Persson.

The 1958 recording of RimskyKorsakov’s Scheherazade by Ernest Ansermet and the Suisse Romande Orchestra (16/44.1 rip from CD, Decca) has a rather close-sounding balance, but the Magico S5 Mk.IIs handled with aplomb this work’s big dynamic sweeps, such as the one three minutes into The Story of the Kalendar Prince, and the drumstrokes and cymbal crashes in Festival at Baghdad lit up the recording acoustic. Nevertheless, such small details as the sound of the snare wires in the drum pattern in The Young Prince and the Young Princess were readily apparent without being thrust forward at me. On the 1963 recording of Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro, with Sir John Barbirolli conducting the Sinfonia of London and the Allegri Quartet (16/44.1, Apple Lossless rip from CD, EMI Classics CDM 5 67240 2), the fragile images of the string quartet stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

were set forward in the soundstage, with the rich, warm string orchestra behind them. The wonderful reprise of the big tune with the full orchestra after the fugue, and then the joyous coda three minutes before the work’s conclusion, were presented by the MBL-driven Magicos with maximum dynamic fervor.

Those last two recordings are 59 and 54 years old, respectively, but the Magico S5 Mk.II’s full-range transparency and resolution maximized the ability of my audio system to act as a time machine, allowing me to disregard the obsolete technology with which these recordings were made to focus on the music.

Time machine? Years ago, I’d transferred to digital a cassette recording of a 1981 chamber-music concert in which I performed my own transcription for bass recorder of Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise, with Hi-Fi News & Record Review’s then editorial assistant, Felicity Mulgan, accompanying me on piano. The Magicos plunged me 35 years back into the dry acoustic of that London hall—there I was, onstage, playing this most Romantic of music on a decidedly non-Romantic instrument: a large-bore renaissance recorder from which I’d removed the top cap so that I could blow straight onto the fipple to better control the intonation.

Yes, the higher the quality of the system, the better it can transport the listener back in time—even when, in the case of my Rachmaninoff recording, the curtains on the machine’s windows might have been better left closed.

Summing Up My congratulations to Magico’s Alon Wolf and Yair Tammam for producing a speaker that offers full-range, uncolored, low-distortion sound coupled with superbly stable and accurate stereo imaging. At $38,000–$42,750/ pair, the S5 Mk.II is not too dissimilar in price to the Wilson Audio Alexia ($48,500/pair) and Vivid G4 Giya ($39,990/pair), which I reviewed in December 2013 and March 2014, respectively.4 The Magico S5 Mk.II joins those speakers as one I could live with when I’m done with this reviewing business. It may indeed be large, but, as I found out, it had no problems, large or otherwise. Q 4 Prices quoted were those current when these speakers were reviewed. See www.stereophile.com/ content/wilson-audio-specialties-alexia-loudspeaker and www.stereophile.com/content/vivid-audiogiya-g3-loudspeaker.

Great sound never looked better.

Linear SE Headphone Amplifier Musical enjoyment at the pink of perfection, made in Germany.

Distributed by: ORTOFON INC 500 Executive Blvd Suite 102 Ossining, NY 10562 Phone: (914) 762-8646 Fax: (914) 762-8649 info@ortofon.us www.ortofon.us

Music to your ears. www.lehmannaudio.com/linear-se

91

YPSILON ELECTRONICS www.ypsilonelectronics.com

EQ U IPMENT R EPORT

KEN MICALLEF

NEAT Acoustics Iota Alpha LOUDSPEAKER

R

eviewers of high-fidelity gear are a trend-sniffing, topology-bandying bunch. When four of our kin gathered last November over lunch, during the 2016 New York Audio Show, the high-end chatter flew fast and furious. “Did you hear those mother-rocking big horns on the seventh floor?” “Nah, man, the Bruno Putzey speakers on nine were best in show.” “What about those li’l Lowthers on eight? Great sweet spot, but small as peanuts.”

The design is unique: a foot-and-a-half-tall floorstander!

And so it goes. Hi-fi reviewers couldn’t live without one another. Heck, we may need each other more than consumers do! For my Stereophile byline, I have the best audio word-

SPECIFICATIONS Description Three-way, ported, floorstanding loudspeaker. Drive-units: 2"-high planar-magnetic tweeter, 4" plastic-cone mid/bass driver, 5.5" downfiring paper-cone woofer.

Crossover frequencies: 80Hz, 5kHz. Frequency

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

range: 33Hz–22kHz. Sensitivity: 86dB/W/m. Nominal impedance: 4 ohms.

Dimensions 17.6" (450mm) H by 7.8" (200mm) W by 6.25" (160mm) D. Weight: 15 lbs (6.8kg).

Finishes American Walnut, Natural Oak, Black Oak, Satin

White; others on request.

Serial numbers of units reviewed IA160015A & B. Price $1995/pair. Approximate number of dealers: 25.

Manufacturer NEAT Acoustics Ltd., 29B Harmire Enterprise Park, Barnard Castle, Durham DL12 8XT, England,

UK. Tel: (44) 01833-631021.

Fax: (44) 01833-630022.

Web: www.neat.co.uk. US distributor: High Fidelity Services, 2 Keith Way, Suite 4, Hingham, MA 02043.

Tel: (781) 987-3434.

Fax: (781) 949-2998.

Web: www.hifiservices.com.

93

W W W . N E E D L E D O C T O R . C O M

“…tonal neutrality and harmonic precision.”

Introducing Audio Technica’s Limited Edition AT-ART 1000 Direct Power Stereo MC Cartridge Call for details “The sound of Audio-Technica’s AT-ART1000 was as advertised: rim-drive-like punch and authority, lightning-fast, superclean transients; and transparency that made many “normal” cartridges seem milky or foggy…”

- Michael Fremer, Stereophile Vol.39 No.10 Oct 2016

AUDIO-TECHNICA AT33SA MC PHONO CARTRIDGE

AUDIO-TECHNICA AT33EV MC PHONO CARTRIDGE

AUDIO-TECHNICA AT-OC9ML/II PHONO CARTRIDGE

AUDIO-TECHNICA AT-F7 MC PHONO CARTRIDGE

$949.00

$549.00

$499.00

$379.00

AUDIO-TECHNICA AT150SA PHONO CARTRIDGE

AUDIO-TECHNICA AT440MLB PHONO CARTRIDGE

AUDIO-TECHNICA AT120EB PHONO CARTRIDGE

AUDIO-TECHNICA AT100E VM PHONO CARTRIDGE

$549.00

$199.00

$129.00

$109.00

Toll Free 800.229.0644 | Phone 612.378.0543 | Fax 612.378.9024 Email info@NeedleDoctor.com | 6006 Excelsior Blvd., St. Louis Park, MN 55416 WORLD'S LARGEST SELECTION OF TURNTABLES, CARTRIDGES, AND NEEDLES!

NEAT ACOUSTICS IOTA ALPHA

smiths in the biz to thank: I need their insights, recommendations, groans, and flabbergasted guffaws. And because, unlike some of my Stereophile brethren, I’m not a globe-trotting correspondent, I depend on their show reports to fuel my curiosity.

Such was the case with NEAT Acoustics’ Iota Alpha loudspeaker ($1995/pair). Over Chinese food with Steve Guttenberg, Sound & Vision contributor Mike Trei, and me, Herb Reichert asked: “You heard the NEAT Acoustics speakers?”—a question he repeated a number of times during NYAS, at different lunch counters over different cuisines. I thought for sure he wanted them for himself.

Later, I saw that the Iota Alpha was name-checked by yet another reporter: Digital Audio Review’s John Darko had interviewed NEAT’s founder and designer, Bob Surgeoner, in Munich the previous May. Darko seemed excited about these sleek and mighty mites. He got me excited, too.

I have a thing for bookshelf speakers, though I haven’t yet found a perfect pair that I can afford.

The Iota Alpha ain’t it—it’s a mini-floorstander, man!—but it sure reminds me of a bookshelf model sitting on the floor.

Four spikes provide clearance for the downward-firing woofer.

The Iota Alpha measures 17.6" high by 7.8" wide by 6.25" deep. Sturdy spikes lift the speaker 11⁄2" off the ground. A sloped upper section holds a 2"-high planarmagnetic tweeter and a 4" midrange drive-unit. There’s a 11⁄2" port midway on the rear panel, and two heavy-duty binding posts are tucked in near its bottom lip. The petite NEAT also has a 5.5" down-firing woofer, completing a design that essentially couples NEAT’s best-selling Iota two-way bookshelf speaker with a low(er)-frequency driver. Several finishes are available; my review pair came in lovely maple-like pale wood veneer.

Here’s a diminutive floorstander with a planarmagnetic tweeter for its claimed wide-open treble frequencies and increased resolution, a tiny midrange driver, and its true pièce de résistance (in my book): that floorfiring woofer. The design is unique: a foot-and-a-half-tall floorstander! When it first appeared on my computer screen, I chuckled. When the review samples arrived, I cracked the top of the box in my bohemian listening space, then laughed as not one but two beautifully finished speakers emerged. The Iota Alphas’

MEASUREMENTS

I

used DRA Labs’ MLSSA system and a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone to measure the NEAT Acoustics Iota Alpha’s frequency response in the farfield, and an Earthworks QTC-40 for the nearfield responses. The first challenge I faced was deciding on which axis I should place my microphone for the farfield measurements. Sitting on its spikes, the Iota Alpha is 19” high, and its tweeter is just 17” from the floor.

However, the section of the front baffle on which the tweeter and midrange unit are mounted is canted back at 30°, which aims those units directly at the ears of a listener seated a reasonable distance away. I therefore chose to make my primary response measurements on an axis perpendicular to the baffle, with the microphone pointed at the tweeter.

As might be expected from its small size, the Iota Alpha offers a low voltage sensitivity, my estimate being 83dB(B)/2.83V, which is 3dB lower

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

than the manufacturer’s claim. Looking at the NEAT’s plot of impedance magnitude and electrical phase angle against frequency (fig.1), while the Iota Alpha is specified as a 4 ohm load, the impedance remains above 6 ohms for almost the entire audioband, dropping to 4 ohms only below 50Hz, and reaching 3.6 ohms at 10Hz. As the electrical phase angle is generally benign, I would venture to say that an 8 ohm–rated amplifier would have no difficulty driving the Iota.

Fig.1 reveals a small discontinuity just below 500Hz in each of the traces, implying the existence of some kind of resonant mode. Investigating the enclosure’s vibrational behavior with a simple plastic-tape accelerometer, I found a fairly strong mode at 465Hz on the rear panel and front baffle (fig.2), and another, stronger mode at 684Hz. You can also see that the baffle “pumps” a little at one of the port’s tuning frequencies.

One of the port’s tuning frequencies?

As you can see from the red trace in fig.3, the rear-facing port behaves in a more complex way than the norm.

While the downward-firing woofer has a sharply defined minimum-motion notch at 51Hz in its output (blue trace), instead of peaking at that frequency, the port has peaks both below and above it. Though there is a third peak at 400Hz in the port’s output, this is well down in level and should have no effect on sound quality. As I had for the Stereophile NEAT Iota Alpha Impedance (ohms) & Phase (deg) vs Frequency (Hz)

Fig.1 NEAT Iota Alpha, electrical impedance (solid) and phase (dashed) (5 ohms/vertical div.).

95

What’s the most expensive component in your system?

For most serious listeners, it’s your collection of discs. Those CDs and SACDs sure weren’t free.

The new DirectStream Memory Player makes your CDs sound like hi-res, and outputs raw DSD to the DirectStream DAC. You’ve never really heard your SACDs, until now.

Really hear your music for the first time.

The DirectStream Memory Player and DirectStream DAC, from PS Audio.

Tremendous selection of new and used high-end audio and video.

3800 S. Ocean Dr., Hollywood, Florida. Only 15 minutes from the airport.

Contact us today for a showroom appointment. Liberal trade-ins accepted, please inquire.

We also purchase and repair high-end audio.

888.850.4366 | HighPerformanceStereo.com

NEAT ACOUSTICS IOTA ALPHA

single box weighed so little that I’d gotten all huffy with the FedEx guy: I was sure that a pair of speakers would arrive in a pair of boxes.

Then full-time musician Bob Surgeoner founded NEAT Acoustics Ltd. (NEAT stands for North East Audio Traders) in 1989, and the company has become quite popular in the land of Brexit. Manufactured in Barnard Castle, in County Durham, in the northeast of England, NEAT’s best-selling models are the basic Iota ($995) and three floorstanders: the two-way Motive SX2 ($2395), the threeway Motive SX1 ($2995), and the 21⁄2 -way Momentum SX5i ($6295) (all prices per pair). The Iota Alpha nips at their heels. NEAT’s biggest markets are the UK, Germany, Austria, and Russia, with the US, Canada, and Australia playing catch-up. I’d say that’s an extremely wide swath of hi-fi tastes and temperaments.

Design The elfin Iota Alpha stands 19" tall on its four silver spikes.

All of its cabinet walls are made of 15mm-thick MDF, including a slab that seals off the tweeter and midrange drivers from the cabinet’s nether region, to give the downfiring woofer more power and better definition. On the slanted top baffle NEAT has paired, side by side, a 2" Monacor planar-magnetic tweeter and a 4" Tymphany Peerless midrange driver, both firing up at an angle rather than directly at the listener. The crossover, hardwired point to point, includes British Volt, Mundorf, and Audaphon German inductors, as well as British ICW Clarity capacitors. The woofer is rolled off beginning at 80Hz; the midrange hands off to the tweeter at 5kHz. The speaker’s specified sensitivity is 86dB/W/m, the nominal impedance 4 ohms.

When I asked Surgeoner how the Iota Alpha managed to be more than just his best-selling bookshelf model coupled to a woofer section, he replied: “The upper section of the Iota Alpha uses the same drive-units and crossover as the original Iota, but instead of being ported, the Alpha’s top section is sealed, thus changing the character, especially in the bass. So we have a sealed two-way speaker with restricted low-frequency output augmented by a low-bass section.

It differs from an Iota with a conventional subwoofer in having been voiced and tuned as a complete entity.”

Setup The Iota Alphas were the most difficult speakers to position for optimal sound quality that I’ve ever had in my Manhattan boogaloo bomb shelter. You might assume they’d find their voice most quickly when placed near the front wall, but finding precisely how far from that wall was very difficult: too close and the low end boomed; too far out and the tweeter honked and hacked like a four-day NyQuil bender.

But once the Iotas were fully broken in, they ended up 14" from the front wall and 95" from the listening chair in my larger room—and were being driven by my system of Kuzma, Shindo Laboratory, and PS Audio separates. I was instantly taken by those seamless and extraordinarily clean planar-magnetic tweeters.

Hearing planar-magnetic tweeters for the first time can make your ears go all loopy. Mine did. A conventional silkdome tweeter can’t match a planar-magnetic’s wide-open high-frequency extension and upper-range resolution. The difference is startling, and it took me some time to adjust to it. While heroically resolving information throughout the audioband, the Iota Alphas also exposed every hair-thin

measurements, continued

NEAT’s low frequencies being boomy, he several times referred to its bass being “soft.” With the Iota Alpha’s lack of bass extension, it needs to be used relatively close to the wall behind it to get enough low-frequency weight, as KM found.

Higher in frequency in fig.3, the Iota Alpha’s response is even overall, with many small peaks balanced by small

Amplitude in dB

impedance measurement, I measured the woofer’s nearfield output with the speaker raised, on its spikes, the necessary 1.5" from the floor; it covers a narrow bandpass of 80–140Hz, while the midrange unit (green trace) rolls off with the 12dB/octave slope typical of a sealed enclosure below 200Hz, which is higher than the specified 80Hz. The black trace below 200Hz in fig.3 is the complex sum of the three nearfield responses; it peaks dramatically between 70 and 120Hz, with a sharp rolloff below 40Hz. I note that while Ken Micallef didn’t remark on the

suckouts and the tweeter rolling off sharply above 15kHz or so. However, the narrow peak just above 3kHz raised my eyebrows, and may well correlate with KM’s having noticed an occasional nasality.

Fig.4 shows the NEAT’s lateral dispersion, referenced to the tweeteraxis response: the off-axis differences on the midrange unit’s side of the baffle are shown to the rear, those on the tweeter side’s to the front. As is to be expected with two drive-units mounted side by side, a suckout

Frequency in Hz

Fig.2 NEAT Iota Alpha, cumulative spectral-decay plot calculated from output of accelerometer fastened to center of front baffle (MLS driving voltage to speaker, 7.55V; measurement bandwidth, 2kHz).

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

Fig.3 NEAT Iota Alpha, anechoic response on tweeter axis perpendicular to baffle at 50”, averaged across 30° horizontal window and corrected for microphone response, with nearfield responses of midrange unit (green), woofer (blue), port (red), plotted in the ratios of the square roots of their radiating areas, and complex sum of the nearfield responses plotted below 300Hz.

Fig.4 NEAT Iota Alpha, lateral response family at 50”, normalized to response on tweeter axis, from back to front: differences in response 90–5° off axis on midrange side, reference response, differences in response 5–90° off axis on tweeter side.

97

FURUTECH Pure Transmission

Nano Crystal² Formula eliminates static, â&#x20AC;&#x153;interconvertsâ&#x20AC;? thermal, mechanical and electrical energy and damps vibrations â&#x20AC;&#x201D; all for the finest Furutech Pure Transmission signal imaginable.

N C FÂŽ

Se

ri

es

105 NCF Damping Receptacle Cover

FI-50M NCF

FI-50 NCF

FI-52 NCF

GTX-D NCF

NCF Series Nano Crystal² Formula ---NCF is comprised of a special crystalline material that has two â&#x20AC;&#x153;activeâ&#x20AC;? properties. First, it generates negative ions that eliminate static and secondly, it converts thermal energy into far-infrared. Furutech then combines this remarkable crystalline material with nano-sized ceramic particles and carbon powder for their additional â&#x20AC;&#x153;Piezo Effectâ&#x20AC;? damping properties. The resulting Nano Crystal² Formula is the ultimate electrical and mechanical damping material â&#x20AC;&#x201C;only found in Furutech products!

Cable Company , Colossal Cables , Hi-Fi One , LE Designs

FURUTECH

Furutech Nano-Ag-Au Power cable

Pure Transmission

FP-TCS21

)XUXWHFKœV ZRUOG UHQRZQHG 1DQR $J $X FRQGXFWRUV ZLWK )XUXWHFKœV H[WUHPHO\ HIIHFWLYH VLJQDO WUDQVPLVVLRQ HQKDQFHU 1DQR /LTXLG 1DQR /LTXLGœV PROHFXOHV DUH VR WLQ\ QDQR PHWHUV LQ GLDPHWHU PP WKH\ FRYHU WKH $OSKD 2)& VXUIDFH DQG ³ILOO XS´ DQ\ FRQFDYH FRQYH[ VHFWLRQV OHIW RQ WKH FRQGXFWRU VXUIDFH GXULQJ WKH SURGXFWLRQ SURFHVV LQFUHDVLQJ WKH HOHFWULF FRQGXFWLRQ DUHD DQG GHEDVLQJ LPSHGDQFH FP-S022N

FP-TCS31

Furutech Alpha-PC Triple C Power cable )XUXWHFKÂśV ÄŽ $OSKD 3& 7ULSOH & HPSOR\V D VSHFLDO IRUJLQJ SURFHVV ZKHUH SUHVVXUH LV DSSOLHG WR KLJK SXULW\ R[\JHQ IUHH FRSSHU WHQV RI WKRXVDQGV WLPHV PDNLQJ FU\VWDO JUDLQ ERXQGDULHV WKDW ZHUH SUHVHQW LQ D YHUWLFDO GLUHFWLRQ EHFRPH ORQJLWXGLQDO DQG WKH FU\VWDOV EHFRPH FRQQHFWHG DQG XQLIRUP LQ WKHLU GLUHFWLRQ FUHDWLQJ D PRUH FRQGXFWLYH DQG DFRXVWLF FRQGXFWRU

Cable Company , Colossal Cables , Hi-Fi One , LE Designs

FP-S032N

NEAT ACOUSTICS IOTA ALPHA

crack, dust mote, and nasal dewdrop on the surface of every LP I played. Treble information and lower-midrange notes were sweetly open; the bass extension of such small speakers was also a revelation— and I’m not talking boomy, wimpy low end, but deep, tight, decently toneful bass frequencies.

The NEATs’ wide-range resolution of touch and timing created something unique in my experience. With the right record, such as Tower of Power’s Back to Oakland (LP, Direct-Disk Labs SD 16601), the Iota Alphas came viscerally alive, as keen as cunning cats, with deeply commanding rhythmic movement heard from nearly every instrument. The music seemed to lift off, at times providing emotional involvement that knocked me clean, cold, dead out! The Iota Alphas also played it nimble and extremely quick, with élan, guts, and gusto.

output spec of 25Wpc, I half expected the 86dBsensitive Iota Alphas to poop out, as had Trenner & Friedl’s 82dB-sensitive Suns.1 Man, was I ever wrong.

People sometimes ask me what music I listen to when evaluating audio equipment. That goes back to my earlier statement about my audio running buddies: Steve Cohen, of Manhattan audio dealer In Living Stereo, recently turned me on to Kraftwerk’s Tour de France (2 LPs, Astralwerks/Warner Bros. 791203). This set, recorded in 1983 but not released until 2003, sounds as contemporary as anything by the likes of Brandt Brauer Frick, FKA twigs, or artists of the EDM, footwork, and techno genres. The growling, nearly monosyllabic vocals and layered synthesizer squalls were both riveting and calming via the Iota Alphas, creating a locomotive of globe-circling beats and warm, even luxurious sound. Tour de France provided as good an argument as any for the Iota Alpha’s brilliant design. Not only did the NEATs retrieve these discs’ oceanic bass in unexpected fashion, they greedily resolved the subtle microdynamics of individual synths and percussion, to form a thick weave of tones, textures, and nearly subsonic aural elements. And they imbued this hi-rez The Iota Alpha’s smallish reflex port.

NEAT meets the Kuzma-Shindo team My appraisals of audio components usually involve first listening to the review sample in my budget rig (Music Hall, Heed, Elac, Snell), then in my big rig (Kuzma, Shindo, DeVore). What works well in the smaller, nearfield rig generally sounds even better in the big rig, depending on ancillaries, etc. I followed this procedure for the petite NEATs, but for some reason they ended up in the big rig sooner than usual. Given the Shindo Haut-Brion’s power-

1 See my review in the January 2017 issue.

measurements, continued

develops in their crossover region to the speaker’s sides—this appears to be set at 2.75kHz rather than the specified 5kHz—more on the midrange unit’s side than on the tweeter’s. This suggests that the mirror-imaged Alphas be set up with the tweeters on their inside edges. Though the reflections from the room’s sidewalls will thus have insufficient energy between 2 and 4kHz, this might work against the audibility of that on-axis peak in the presence region. The tweeter has very limited

dispersion in the vertical plane (fig.5); to get a full measure of top-octave energy, you should sit within a ±5° window centered on the tweeter axis.

Looking at the NEAT’s performance in the time domain, its step response on the tweeter axis (fig.6) reveals that all three drive-units are connected in positive acoustic polarity, with the tweeter’s output leading that of the midrange unit and woofer. There are some ripples in the decay of the midrange unit’s step that the Iota Alpha’s

cumulative spectral-decay plot (fig.7) reveals to be associated with that onaxis peak just above 3kHz. However, while the initial decay of the speaker’s sound is relatively clean (other than at 3.24kHz), several other lower-level ridges of delayed energy are visible in the treble.

KM loved how this attractive little speaker sounded, and its shape and small size make it domestically very friendly; however, I was disappointed by its measured performance.

Data in Volts

—John Atkinson

Fig.5 NEAT Iota Alpha, vertical response family at 50", normalized to response on tweeter axis, from back to front: differences in response 45–5° above axis, reference response, differences in response 5–45° below axis.

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

Time in ms

Fig.6 NEAT Iota Alpha, step response on tweeter axis at 50" (5ms time window, 30kHz bandwidth).

Fig.7 NEAT Iota Alpha, cumulative spectral-decay plot on tweeter axis at 50" (0.15ms risetime).

99

APRIL 21-23, 2017

DISCOVER YOUR SOUND.

THE North American High-End Audio Show.

The world’s best hi-fi systems will be playing in over 125 listening rooms. Experience thousands of products including loudspeakers, audio components, vinyl and headphones, all in one place. If you have a passion for sound, AXPONA is the place to be!

THE WESTIN O’HARE ROSEMONT ROSEMONT/CHICAGO, IL

For show and ticket Info, visit www.axpona.com The Chicago area is known for its vibrant music scene, great food, museums, and shopping. There is so much to do … downtown, and all around the city and suburbs. AXPONA takes place at the Westin O’Hare, minutes away from the airport with easy access to downtown attractions. When you’re at AXPONA you won’t have to go far to enjoy all that Chicago LEW XS SǺ IV

NEAT ACOUSTICS IOTA ALPHA

tableau with remarkable oomph. The tiny-tot Iota Alphas rescued Kraftwerk’s music from the grooves and arranged it in, at times, hyperreal fashion—as if the music were a painting and I was viewing its rich colors, bold strokes, and energetic contrasts.

“Diane,” from Miles Davis’s Steamin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet (mono LP, Prestige 7200), is a frequent presence on my turntable platters, and the Iota Alphas opened a new window on this classic, recorded in 1956. By now, I’d identified one of the Iota’s constants: superb movement and flow, regardless of the music. It had that sweet rhythm in spades, which I could hear in bassist Paul Chambers’s chugging walking lines, Davis’s ethereal trumpet purr, and, most identifiably, in the big cymbal beat of “Philly” Joe Jones. A master of both rhythmic propulsion and snare-drum fireworks, Jones could “swing you into bad health,” as the saying goes. The NEATs brought his grand pulse and rudimental pyrotechnics to the fore. Hearing Jones switch between two different ride cymbals to accompany different soloists was a thrill via the NEATs. I’d never heard these changes rendered so acutely or so agreeably. As I focused on one ride, its long circumference was apparent, the cymbal sounding both huge and well-focused in the mono mix, changing color and definition as Jones changed the position of his stick for each solo. This was a major revelation, and something I’ve heard with no other speaker.

Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, with Herbert von Karajan conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra (LP, Angel EMI 35430), was equally revelatory. The NEATs projected both the music’s somber flow and its playful curiosity, outlining each instrument with stupefying clarity. This was no etched, tipped-up, nonsensically airy sound, but music reproduction that was fully present, tactile, and meaty.

Instrumental tones were rich and saturated for such small speakers. The NEAT’s sound was very coherent from top to bottom, its planar-magnetic tweeter’s treble smoothly integrated with the midrange and bass notes. Pictures was rendered as a large, living and breathing, very dynamic and very rich orchestral feast. The NEATs resolved the beautiful textures of individual instruments in an extremely intimate way, and from pp to ff. And far from sounding small or lopped off, the NEATs’ soundstage sometimes rose as high as the top of my chest-high equipment rack.

With the closing of Manhattan record store Other Music, fans of avant-garde electronic music are feeling the pain. I suppose online vendor Boomkat fills the void, while lacking Other’s personal touch. One artist I happily discovered at Other Music is FKA Twigs and her sole full-length album, LP1 (LP, Young Turks YTLP 118). Her vocals are ribald blends of moans, groans, and abbreviated grunts, her music an electronic cosmos all its own, its tugging beats and fractured bass patterns recalling the sexual dread and violence of Scarlett Johansson’s femme fatale in Under the Skin, a sci-fi horror flick all heat, pulse, and sonic delirium. The NEATs framed Twigs’s sonic sorcery in wavelike synthesizer contortions, death-spiraling dub bass, and precise rhythms carved in space. I was again surprised that such a small box could deliver such sounds.

Music Hall Heeds the NEATs Moving the Iota Alphas into my nearfield rig, I placed the speakers 12" from the front wall and 85" from my listening chair, toed in until I couldn’t see their side panels. In this setup, bass notes, acoustic or electronic, had a decidedly softer stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

presentation than with the Shindo amplification—unusual, in that the solid-state Heed Elixir integrated offers practically twice the Shindos’ power. But once again the NEATs pulled off their trick of super-high resolution joined to excellent top-to-bottom coherence, good tonality, and as deft a touch with timbre and speed as I’ve heard from any small speaker.

Upper-treble notes were smooth, pungent, fast, and airy.

Though low-bass notes had soft rather than crisp attacks, midrange and upper-bass notes were rendered with good speed and depth, and with the same organic, visceral touch that had stood out with the Shindos.

Returning to Kraftwerk’s Tour de France: Upper-frequency synth notes sounded rather papery, and bass notes were softer than with the Shindos, but the Iota Alpha’s resplendent characteristics of high resolution, strong timbre, and naturalness remained. The NEATs projected a 3D image that practically detached itself from the plane described by the speakers’ front baffles, rendering a dense yet spacious soundstage. “La Forme”’s head-tripping beats and ear-candy suppleness were allied to deep, punchy electronic bass notes, completing an exceptionally coherent sonic picture.

The Heed-NEAT’s depiction of Pictures at an Exhibition was nowhere near as dense and tonally pure as through my Shindo separates, but retained similar poise, rhythm, and tonal coherence. I can go and on about the many brilliant qualities the NEATs brought to this orchestral favorite. During what I like to call the “death-march section,” in which snare drums create dramatic buzz-rolls as the instruments playing the main theme rise in volume and intensity, the scale and pacing and dynamics were as accurate and thrilling through the NEATs as I’ve heard. They created a clear view into the orchestra, in which each instrument was given its own space and distinct clarity within the whole.

In Miles Davis’s recording of “Diane,” the instruments of his first great quintet gave up all their secrets via the NEATs. Philly Joe Jones’s snare-drum punctuations were presented with exacting depth, and Davis’s trumpet was the Prince of Darkness incarnate—pungent, rich, sleek. Jones’s ride cymbal was reproduced with great depth and space while sounding somewhat removed from the rest of the band.

When the soloist changed, from Davis to John Coltrane, so did the sound of Philly Joe’s ride cymbal: from tight and dry to shimmering. I heard the occasional arid or papery-sounding note, but overall, the music was presented with plenty of body, richness, and depth.

Finally, the NEATs brought FKA Twigs’s electronic presence to me via my smaller system. The top end exhibited the same arid quality—even a slight nasality. This was more surface sheen than any upper-frequency deficiency, and may simply have been the sound of the recording itself. Electronic music can provide a good balance of power, low-end grunt, and surreal sounds, but I’ve yet to hear one dubstep, EDM, or intelligent dance music (IDM) record that presents a true soundstage, as compared to a good orchestral or acoustic jazz recording. On most electronic records, the production values are consistently in your face, and that’s true of FKA twigs’s LP1. Its dub bass was woozy and soft, but with refined upper-air resolution of vocals and synthesizers. The NEATs did a fantastic job of re-creating all of twigs’s drama and pounding, depth-charge power, and left me wanting for nothing.

Conclusions What qualifies a breakthrough loudspeaker design? I’m 101

NEAT ACOUSTICS IOTA ALPHA

aware of speakers from Meadowlark and Spica—two companies that are no longer with us—that had sharply sloped baffles, but none as small or as floor-hugging as the NEAT Iota Alpha. And various omnidirectional speakers have used downfiring woofers, but without garnering huge popular success. The Iota Alpha is a freak—a heroic-sounding speaker that looks like it shouldn’t, an overachieving mighty mite. It combines open, extended, grain-free upper frequencies with lucid midrange performance while delivering bass notes of all shapes and sizes that were consistently extended, and surprising in their drama.

Take a quick look at Stereophile’s latest edition of “Recommended Components,” in the October 2016 issue—speakers costing about $2000/pair aren’t exactly MIA. This hotly competitive zone includes (all prices per pair): Technics’ Premium Class SB-C700 ($1699), Bowers & Wilkins’ 683 S2 ($1650), Monitor Audio’s Silver 8 ($2000), Revel’s Performa3 M106 ($2000), and ATC’s SCM7 v.3 ($1749).

I’m sure that all those fine products would give the NEAT Acoustics Iota Alpha a serious run for its hi-fi dollar. What the Iota Alpha has going for it is exceptional resolution and high-frequency extension, solid midrange performance, and exceptional reproduction of the low end for a box of its size. But the little Iota Alpha’s biggest achievement is the pure physicality and refined force of its sound. Record after record, I felt I was hearing not only new information but, to a lesser degree, a new performance. NEAT’s planar-magnetic tweeter is revealing to a T, but Bob Surgeoner’s triumph lies in negotiating an alliance of frequency-range coherence, natural tonalities, and convincing dynamics. That’s not only neat—it’s highly recommended. Q

A S S O C I AT E D E Q U I P M E N T Analog Sources Kuzma Stabi S turntable & Stogi tonearm, Music Hall MMF-7.3 turntable; Denon DL-103, Goldring Elite MC, Ortofon 2M Bronze cartridges.

Digital Sources Apple MacBook computer running Audirvana Plus; Halide DAC HD, PS Audio NuWave DACs; Western Digital T2 Mirror Drives (2).

Preamplification Auditorium 23 A23 moving-coil step-up transformer, Heed Audio Quasar phono stage, Shindo Laboratory Allegro preamplifier.

Power Amplifier Shindo Laboratory Haut-Brion.

Integrated Amplifier Heed Audio Elixir.

Loudspeakers DeVore Fidelity Orangutan O/93, Elac B6, Snell Type J/II. Headphones Master & Dynamic MH40.

Cables Interconnect: AudioQuest Water, Shindo Laboratory. Speaker: AudioQuest Castle Rock, Auditorium 23, Tellurium Q Black.

Accessories Mapleshade Clearview Double Helix Mk.II power strip; Music Hall Aztec Blue & Mooo record mats; Spec AD-UP1 Analog Disc Sheet; Salamander five-tier rack; IKEA Aptitlig bamboo chopping boards (under turntable, preamplifier, power amplifier); Mapleshade 15" by 12" by 2" maple platform; 2" by 2" by 0.5" mahogany blocks; 3"-thick studio-treatment foam damping (ceiling, walls).

Listening Room 12' L by 10' W by 12' H, system set up along long wall; suspended wood floor, 6"-thick walls (plaster over 2x4s), wood-beamed ceiling.—Ken Micallef

The multi award-winning Super HL5plus opens a window into your music.

L O U D S P E A K E R S

Many are called.... [very] few are chosen for Product of the Year

“

... so easy, beautiful, and effortlessly natural is the reproduction.

”

Paul Seydor – The Absoute Sound

This new-generation Harbeth is my tribute to the BBC engineers who dreamed of audio perfection.

They lacked the technology to make it happen; we’ve just achieved it.

Alan A Shaw, designer

Contact: fidelisav.com 603-880-4434 stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

Made in England

103

CHROMA: OFC

S TA R L I G H T: S I LV E R - C L A D O F C

P L A T I N U M S TA R L I G H T: O C C - 7 N S O L I D S I LV E R

Patent-pending triple-shielded design Thin, flexible, easy to assemble and install Solid 23 gauge parallel conductors 2GHz bandwidth, 40 Gbit/sec @ 30 meters Surprisingly lifelike sound and imaging

Other cables ďŹ lter your music.

Wireworld cables let the most music through.

Technology that channels musical expression. Š 2017 Wireworld, Inc.

www.wireworldcable.com

EQ U IPMENT R EPORT

ART DUDLEY

EAR Acute Classic CD PLAYER–D/A PROCESSOR

I

n Stereophile’s January 2016 issue, I began a series of reviews of $10,000 CD players and transport-DAC combinations: an informal and serial survey, the goal of which was to gather, over time, the likeliest candidates for one’s Last CD Player Ever. My choice of $10,000 as the target price was more or less arbitrary, although, in retrospect, that’s about what I’ve invested in my go-to combination of turntable, tonearm, and pickup head— so, who knows? Maybe my subconscious was acting out.

Although the review that The EAR Acute follows won’t be the last of Classic. Note volume control the survey, this seemed a on far right good time for a recap, which I’ll get around to a couple of thousand words from now: something to look forward to.

(But no peeking: As John Atkinson once wrote to a former subscriber who vowed to never again read Stereophile on account of a political opinion stated by one of our contributors,1 We will know if you do. Astoundingly, said correspondent, a self-described executive for a music-publishing firm, wrote back to say that he couldn’t tell if JA was kidding or not.)

That bit of housekeeping out of the way, it’s on to the EAR Acute Classic ($6795), a CD player that was offered for review by its distributor, EAR USA/Sound Advice, as opposed to being selected on the basis of price: a distinction from the other models I’ve covered, but one with the potential to reveal the Acute Classic as a cat among the pigeons, value-wise.

Description The Acute Classic’s predecessor was a CD player introduced in 2008 and called, simply, the EAR Acute. Based on an Arcam player of the day—although the chassis, power supply, analog filters, and output stage were all original to EAR—the Acute sold for $5495, and had at its heart a Wolfson DAC that delivered 24-bit/96kHz performance. Notably, it did not include a USB input.

In 2012, changes to the Arcam base unit precipitated a new EAR model, the Acute 3—a curious name of which EAR USA’s Dan Meinwald says, “Don’t ask us, we’re British.” It sold for $6095 and did have a USB input.

1 Oh, all right—it was mine.

SPECIFICATIONS Description Tubed CD player with digital inputs. Tube complement: two PCC88 (6DJ8) or ECC88 (7DJ8).

Digital inputs: 2 S/PDIF (RCA, TosLink), 1 USB. Analog outputs: 1 single-ended (RCA), 1 balanced (XLR), 1 headphone. Maximum out-

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

put: 5V. Signal/noise: 95dB. Total harmonic distortion: 0.5%.

Dimensions 17.1" (435mm) W by 2.6" (65mm) H by 11.2" (285mm) D. Weight: 17.6 lbs (8kg).

Finish Black with polished chrome faceplate.

Serial number of unit reviewed 615-002-A550.

Price $6795. Approximate number of dealers: Not disclosed. Warranty: 1 year.

Manufacturer EAR Yoshino, 1 Chester Road, Colmworth Business Park, St. Neots, Cambridgeshire PE19 8YT,

England, UK. Tel: (44) 1480-210004.

Web: www.earyoshino.com.

US distributor: EAR USA/Sound Advice, 1087 E. Ridgewood Street, Long Beach, CA 90807.

Tel: (562) 422-4747.

Web: www.ear-usa.com.

105

EAR ACUTE CLASSIC

Measuring 11.2" wide by 12" deep (including knobs and connectors) and 2.6" high, the Acute Classic—designed by EAR founder Tim de Paravicini—is built on a nicely painted steel chassis covered with a removable aluminum wrap well finished in semigloss black. Inside, a toroidal transformer is concealed by a polished-metal enclosure, presumably for shielding, next to which a power-supply board is home to voltage regulators—heatsinked to the rear of the chassis— and some especially robust-looking resistors and other bits.

On a separate digital-input board are the player’s Wolfson WM8741 DAC chip, which can process signals of up 24/192 resolution, and USB and S/PDIF receiver chips, among various supporting ICs and passive parts.

The largest of the Acute Classic’s various subassemblies is its analog output board, which contains a stereo pair of custom-wound output transformers, as well as an upright subboard containing two ceramic tube sockets—and the ECC88 (6DJ8) dual-triode tubes used to amplify the output signal. EAR’s manual describes these tubes as not being replaceable by the user, notwithstanding the relative ease of removing the case: “Replacing valves yourself will void your warranty.”

In keeping with EAR tradition, the Acute Classic’s front panel is chromed and polished to a mirror finish. On the panel’s right-hand side are an LED screen—it displays track information and, for the digital inputs, playback resolution— and a sizable volume knob, also chromed: EAR suggests that their new player can be used to directly drive a power amplifier. One assumes that those output transformers play a major role in buffering the player’s analog output signal for

such installations.

On the left side of the front panel are a 1⁄4" stereo headphone jack, the disc tray, and the five buttons found on most CD players: Open/Close, Stop, Play/Pause, Previous Track, Next Track. A sixth button toggles between CD playback and the digital inputs: USB (24/192), S/PDIF coaxial (24/192), and S/PDIF optical (24/88.2), respectively addressable by the rear panel’s USB Type-B, RCA, and TosLink jacks. Also on the rear panel are one pair each of single-ended (RCA) and balanced (XLR) output jacks. (I used only the former.) An aluminum-and-plastic remotecontrol handset duplicates the front-panel controls.

Installation and setup Notwithstanding EAR’s suggestion that the Acute Classic can drive the user’s power amplifier(s), I began by using the player in place of my well-worn and slightly crotchety Sony SCD-777ES SACD/CD player, in my usual system of Shindo Laboratory Masseto preamp and Haut-Brion power amp, driving Auditorium 23’s Hommage Cinema as well as my vintage Altec Flamenco loudspeakers. Speaker cables were Auditorium 23, interconnects were Shindo and Audio Note, and power cords were Luna Cables and the manufacturers’ own stock cords.

To test the Acute Classic’s USB-addressable DAC, I used an AudioQuest Carbon USB link to connect the EAR to my Apple iMac (running OS 10.7.5). I then used the sound-output utility of my Apple iMac to select the EAR as a streaming destination; my iMac recognized the Acute Classic as “xCORE USB Audio 2.0 Output.”

MEASUREMENTS

I

measured the EAR Acute Classic with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 “As We See It,” http://tinyurl. com/4ffpve4). As well as the Audio Precision’s optical and coaxial S/ PDIF outputs, I used WAV and AIFF test-tone files sourced via USB from my MacBook Pro running on battery power with Pure Music 3.0. Apple’s USB Prober utility identified the EAR DAC as “xCORE USB Audio 2.0” from “XMOS” and confirmed that its USB port operated in the optimal isochro-

nous asynchronous mode. Apple’s AudioMIDI utility revealed that, via USB, the Acute Classic accepted 16and 24-bit integer data sampled at all rates from 44.1 to 384kHz. The optical and coaxial S/PDIF inputs locked to datastreams with sample rates of up to 192kHz. I tested the Acute Classic’s error correction with the Pierre Verany Digital Test CD, which has graduated gaps in the data spiral. The EAR played without glitches until the dropouts in

d B r A

V

Hz sec

Fig.1 EAR Acute Classic, impulse response (one sample at 0dBFS, 44.1kHz sampling, 4ms time window).

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

Fig.2 EAR Acute Classic, wideband spectrum of white noise at –4dBFS (left channel red, right magenta) and 19.1kHz tone at 0dBFS (left blue, right cyan), with data sampled at 44.1kHz (20dB/ vertical div.).

the pit spiral reached 2mm in length.

This is excellent performance. (The CD standard specifies only that a player cope with gaps up to 0.2mm long.)

The EAR’s output with 0dBFS data at 1kHz and its volume control set to its maximum was 6.59V from the balanced output, 6.52V from the unbalanced output, and 3.26V from the headphone output. All three outputs preserved absolute polarity— ie, were non-inverting. The output impedance was a low 29 ohms at low and middle frequencies from the balanced output, but rose to 61 ohms at the top of the audioband. From the unbalanced jacks the output impedance was a little higher—37 ohms at 20Hz, and 1kHz and 79 ohms at 20kHz—while from the headphone output the impedance was 67 ohms across the audioband, which is too high for many popular headphones. (Art Dudley’s AudioQuest NightHawks measure 23 ohms, for example.)

The Acute Classic’s impulse response with 44.1kHz-sampled data (fig.1) reveals its digital reconstruction filter to be a standard finite impulse

107

Why Clean My Records?

Smart Reasons to Vacuum-Clean Your Vinyl

Why Buy the Record Doctor V?

Clean records sound better than dirty records.

Vacuum-cleaning your LP reduces annoying clicks, pops, surface noise and distortion. Plus a clean, well-cared-for record is worth more than a dirty, poor-sounding LP. Protect your vinyl investment now with the affordable Record Doctor V vacuum-powered cleaning machine.

Stereophile magazine called the Record Doctor “the least expensive way to effectively clean records.”

Stereophile’s Analog Expert, Michael Fremer, reported “I highly recommend the Record Doctor V to any serious vinyl fan.”

The new, improved Record Doctor V has the same powerful vacuum motor as machines costing hundreds more, but doesn’t have the expensive motor that spins the records for you. So turn your vinyl records by hand, get the same results, and save a heap of cash!

Try the Record Doctor V Risk Free Order a Record Doctor now and clean LPs for 30 days. If not thrilled by the improvement, return it for a full refund.

Record Doctor V with 4 oz. fluid applicator bottle, applicator brush, and illustrated cleaning instructions.

[RDV] Was $299, for a limited time only $199.00 – Plus Free Shipping in the US*

To Order Call (800) 942-0220 or visit audioadvisor.com Audio Advisor, Inc. Grand Rapids, MI 49512 • Established 1981 • ® Record Doctor is a registered trademark of Audio Advisor © 2016 Audio Advisor, Inc., *Free Shipping in Continental US, PR & APO/FPO Boxes

EAR ACUTE CLASSIC

When I used the Acute Classic with appropriate playback software (in this case, Audirvana v.1.5.12), its display accurately reported the resolutions of every file I tried: eg, selections from the high-resolution download of the Rolling Stones’ Out of our Heads showed up as 176.4kHz (ABKCO); the (slightly less) hi-rez download of Valentina Lisitsa Plays Philip Glass showed up as 96kHz (Decca 002277502); bog-standard “Red Book” files showed up as 44.1kHz. My only gripe regarding ergonomics is that, with the EAR’s disc drawer open, its Open/Close button is difficult to see and to access. Thankfully, as with every other CD player of my experience, applying pressure to the drawer’s front edge had the same result as pressing Close. So I did that.

Listening, CD player One of the first discs I played through the EAR was a recording of Mahler’s Symphony 1 that I’ve raved about more than once in these pages: the one by Dimitri Mitropoulos and the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, recorded in 1940 (Sony Classical Masterworks Heritage MHK 62342). The first time I played it through, I heard a lot of things I liked, mostly of a musical rather than a purely sonic sort: Through the EAR, the drama in the symphony’s opening pages seemed more pronounced than ever, each long-held note

charged with unmissable tension. Momentum and timing in the brisker passages were faultless. And the EAR did a good job of communicating the sense of touch in plucked strings, and of allowing various instrumental voices to pop out from the mix—in those regards almost matching the performance of the Luxman D-06u (see “Conclusions”). On the downside, however, and apparent from the first notes, was an excess of high-frequency texture in the sound of virtually every instrument or instrument group: The Acute Classic made this disc sound slightly grainy, in a way that I am sure is not characteristic of the recording itself.

There followed several days in which I continued to run in the EAR with disc after disc. Yet the graininess persisted, as I noted in comparisons with my Sony player. This excess grain was especially easy to hear in the vocal sibilants in “Class” and “Funny Honey,” from the original-cast recording of the musical Chicago (RCA Victor/BMG Classics 68727-2)—in fact, to some extent, all of the vocal numbers on this disc spotlighted the flaw. The same shortcoming

measurements, continued

response (FIR) type, with symmetrical ringing surrounding the single sample at 0dBFS. The red and magenta traces in fig.2 show that this filter rapidly rolls off the ultrasonic response, though the rolloff actually begins below 20kHz. As a result, a full-scale tone at 19.1kHz was suppressed by 6dB or so (fig.2, blue and cyan traces), and while the second and third harmonics, respectively at 38.2 and 57.3kHz, are visible in this graph, there is much strong spectral component visible just below 70kHz.

d B r

Hz

Fig.3 EAR Acute Classic, frequency response at –12dBFS into 100k ohms with data sampled at: 44.1kHz (left channel cyan, right magenta), 96kHz (left green, right gray), 192kHz (left blue, right red) (0.5dB/vertical div.).

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

There is also a strange rise in the noise floor with the white-noise signal at the same frequency. Perhaps more significant, symmetrical sidebands are visible around the 19.1kHz tone; although this graph was created with USB data, which should be immune to serial-data jitter, this behavior is most likely due to jitter.

Fig.3 shows the EAR player’s frequency response, taken with S/ PDIF data at 44.1, 96, and 192kHz. The response follows the same basic

shape at all three rates, with a sharp rolloff above 19kHz with 44.1kHz data, and above 42kHz with 96kHz data. A suspicious rise above 10kHz reaches +1.4dB at 38kHz, perhaps due to the output transformers. This graph was taken from the balanced outputs into 100k ohms; the unbalanced outputs behaved no differently.

The Acute Classic offered disappointing channel separation: just 26dB in both directions at 20kHz, 54dB at 1kHz, and just above 70dB in the bass

d B r

d B r

A

A

Hz

Fig.4 EAR Acute Classic, spectrum with noise and spuriae of dithered 24-bit, 1kHz tone at 0dBFS (left channel blue, right red; 20dB/vertical div.).

Hz

Fig.5 EAR Acute Classic, spectrum with noise and spuriae of dithered 1kHz tone at –90dBFS with: 16bit data (left channel cyan, right magenta), 24-bit data (left blue, right red) (20dB/vertical div.).

109

EAR ACUTE CLASSIC

was even more evident in “Nothing But the Truth” and “Beyond the Pale,” from Procol Harum’s Exotic Birds and Fruit (Castle ESM CD 291)—a pity, given the good musical momentum and distinctly wider-than-average spatial reproduction the EAR wrought from this stereo disc.

Throughout the above listening trials, I’d set the Acute Classic’s volume control at about 12 o’clock, and the volume knob on my Shindo Masseto preamp more or less where I normally set it: at around 9 o’clock.

(My Shindo electronics are high in gain, and the Auditorium 23 Hommage Cinema speakers I’m presently using are far more sensitive and efficient than the norm.) I then tried different combinations of volume settings, and—without getting bogged down in a tedious, multi-paragraph discussion of the sound of each combination (apologies to those readers to whom that sounds like a reduction in it by following EAR’s suggestion and Inside the Acute Classic. holiday in paradise)—I found that the grainidirecting the Acute Classic’s output straight to the Note the two output transformers, center. inputs of my Shindo Haut-Brion stereo amp, thus ness was slightly less objectionable with the bypassing my preamp. Used in that manner, the EAR’s volume knob turned all the way up and the preamp’s knob turned down to about 8 o’clock.

EAR sounded its best in every way: the least amount of But under those conditions, of course, channel-to-channel treble grain, the most saturated tonal colors, the best tonal tracking was poor, owing no doubt to shortcomings in my balance, and the best and the largest and most convincing preamplifier’s volume potentiometer at the extreme low end soundstages. That’s how I left the installation for the rest of of its range. my listening.

Thereafter, I found that while I was never able to entirely Still, in the days that followed, I heard that artificialeliminate the grain, I could effect a further, extremely slight sounding texture and consequently fatiguing trebles in:

measurements, continued

(not shown). Fig.4 indicates that its low-frequency noise floor has supplyrelated spuriae at the AC supply frequency of 60Hz and its odd harmonics.

These are most likely due to magnetic interference from the power transformer being picked up by ferrous components, perhaps the tubes’ steel pins.

Those spuriae are also visible in the spectrum of the EAR’s output while it reproduced dithered 16- and 24-bit 1kHz tones at –90dBFS (fig.5). Although it’s fair to note that the spuriae above

V

sec

Fig.6 EAR Acute Classic, waveform of undithered 1kHz sinewave at –90.31dBFS, 16-bit data (left channel blue, right red).

110

1kHz all lie at or below –120dBFS, particularly in the right channel, this is still at the LSB level with 16-bit data. Also note that with 24-bit data (blue and red traces), the 1kHz tone is accompanied by distortion harmonics at 2, 3, and 5kHz. With 24-bit USB data, the third, fifth, seventh, and ninth harmonics are visible, which suggests that there is something suboptimal in the EAR DAC’s handling of hi-rez data. With undithered data at exactly –90.31dBFS (fig.6), the waveform is correct, with

the three DC voltage levels described by the data clearly evident. With 24-bit undithered data, the result was a noisy sinewave (not shown).

With the volume control set to its maximum, which was how AD felt it sounded at its best, the EAR player produced relatively high levels of distortion from all its outputs, even into a high 100k ohms (fig.7). (AD’s Shindo Haut-Brion amplifier has an input impedance of 100k ohms.) Setting the control to its midpoint, 12:00

d B r

d B r

A

A

Hz

Fig.7 EAR Acute Classic, volume control set to maximum, spectrum of 50Hz sinewave, DC–1kHz, at 0dBFS into 100k ohms (left channel blue, right red; linear frequency scale).

Hz

Fig.8 EAR Acute Classic, volume control set to maximum, spectrum of 1kHz sinewave, DC–10kHz, at 0dBFS into 100k ohms (left channel blue, right red; linear frequency scale).

February 2017

Q

stereophile.com

EAR ACUTE CLASSIC

tenor Jon Villars’s highest, loudest notes in Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, with mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung and the Minnesota Orchestra, conducted by Eiji Oue (Reference RR-88CD); Del McCoury’s lead vocal and Jason Carter’s fiddle in the Del McCoury Band’s recording of Richard Thompson’s “1952 Vincent Black Lightning,” from Del and the Boys (Ceili Music CEIL 2006); and Gene Ammons’s tenor sax and drummer Art Taylor’s ride cymbal in “Hittin’ the Jug,” from Ammons’s Boss Tenor (Prestige/ JVC JVCXR-0033-2). All three of those are normally goodsounding CDs made from good-sounding recordings—but the EAR’s treble grain rendered the Ammons disc especially difficult to enjoy.

Listening, USB DAC After a few weeks of using the EAR Acute Classic as a CD player, I tried it as a USB DAC—and was disappointed to find that its sound continued to be plagued by an excess of high-frequency artifacts. In an AIFF file of “Crazy Man Michael,” from Fairport Convention’s Liege & Lief (ripped from CD, A&M 4257), Sandy Denny’s voice was uncharacteristically abrasive, as were Dave Mattacks’s percussion and the overtones of Dave Swarbrick’s viola solo.

I moved on to “Up to Me,” from Jethro Tull’s Aqualung (burned from the audiophile-reissue CD, Chrysalis/DCC GZS-1105), and heard more or less the same: gritty, exag-

gerated trebles that ill served Ian Anderson’s sibilants, and lent an unpleasant edge to his acoustic guitar and Martin Barre’s electric guitar.

Finally, I listened to the CD layer of the SACD/CD of Hillary Hahn’s recording of Elgar’s Violin Concerto, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Colin Davis (AIFF ripped from Deutsche Grammophon 00289 474 8732). It wasn’t long before that familiar treble edge became apparent in the sounds of massed strings and brass instruments—and, sorry to say, Hahn’s brilliantly played violin.

In a final effort, I disconnected the Acute Classic from my system and used my review pair of AudioQuest NightHawk headphones, via the EAR’s headphone jack, to listen again to all of the above files. Despite what I hear as the NightHawks’ decidedly dark overall sound, the grainy and, ultimately, edgy trebles endured. At that point in my time with the Acute Classic, I bailed.

Conclusions As promised above, here are the rankings so far: Of the three players and one transport/DAC combination I’ve so far reviewed for this series, the one that most pleased me was Luxman’s D-06u ($9990):2 Its sound was unfailingly and realistically vivid, it was capable of putting across fine momentum and flow with recordings that possess

measurements, continued

o’clock position reduced the levels of all harmonics by 17dB or so, and the EAR offered lower levels of distortion at higher frequencies, even with the volume control set to its maximum position (fig.8). This distortion rose only slightly with the punishing 600 ohm load. I then tested the Acute with an equal mix of 19 and 20kHz tones at –6dBFS (fig.9; the combined waveform peaks at 0dBFS). Although the intermodulation distortion was low— the difference product at 1kHz lies at –86dB (0.006%)—a large number of jitter-related sidebands can be seen.

When I tested for jitter using a CD

unknown origin is present at ±2.95kHz. And, as with the other spectral analyses, this behavior was no different with USB data.

Although predicting the influence on sound quality of the EAR Acute Classic’s poor rejection of jitter is difficult, I do suspect that AD’s reporting of there being “an excess of high-frequency texture,” and sound quality that was “slightly grain[y],” is related to this behavior. As much as I admire Tim de Paravicini’s expertise as an analog engineer, the EAR’s digital circuitry is not up to the standard I expect from him. —John Atkinson

d B r

d B r

d B r

A

A

A

Hz

Fig.9 EAR Acute Classic, volume control set to maximum, HF intermodulation spectrum, DC–30kHz, 19+20kHz at 0dBFS into 100k ohms, 44.1kHz data (left channel blue, right red; linear frequency scale).

112

on which I’ve burned 16-bit J-Test data—a high-level tone at 11.025kHz and an LSB-level squarewave, both recorded without dither—the resultant spectrum was very poor (fig.10): All of the odd-order harmonics of the squarewave were about 20dB higher than they should be, and those closest to the spectral spike that represents the high-level tone were even higher.

(The correct levels are indicated by the sloping green line.) Repeating the test with 16-bit optical S/PDIF data gave an even worse result (fig.11). Not only are most of the harmonics missing, but a symmetrical pair of sidebands of

Hz

Fig.10 EAR Acute Classic, high-resolution jitter spectrum of analog output signal, 11.025kHz at –6dBFS, sampled at 44.1kHz with LSB toggled at 229Hz: 16-bit CD data (left channel blue, right red).

Center frequency of trace, 11.025kHz; frequency range, ±3.5kHz.

Hz

Fig.11 EAR Acute Classic, high-resolution jitter spectrum of analog output signal, 11.025kHz at –6dBFS, sampled at 44.1kHz with LSB toggled at 229Hz: 16-bit TosLink data (left channel blue, right red). Center frequency of trace, 11.025kHz; frequency range, ±3.5kHz.

February 2017

Q

stereophile.com

EAR ACUTE CLASSIC

those qualities, and it offers a USB input and a greater-thanaverage variety of useful controls, including selectable filters and a switch for inverting signal polarity, just like that.

In second place are Audio Note’s CDT One/II CD transport and DAC 2.1x Signature D/A processor ($9600).3 This combo wasn’t quite as sonically vivid as the Luxman, but its musical momentum and flow were second to none. But it lacks a USB input.

In third place is Metronome’s CD8 S ($10,000),4 whose ergonomics and styling are my favorites so far—but its sound was just a bit less accomplished than that of the Luxman and Audio Note, and I never quite got over the strangeness of a product that has a DSD-ready DAC but can’t play SACDs. There is playback gear that endears itself by making it easier to understand and enjoy music that I otherwise don’t care for. (I’m reminded of the first time I used the EMT OFD15 pickup head, which made beautiful, compelling sense of one of Chopin’s orchestrated works: music to which I had been, before then, indifferent.) Then there are those products that go so far in the other direction that they put me at arm’s length from music I already love.

Sadly, the EAR Acute Classic ($6795), in fourth place, is one of the latter. As I listened through it to Fairport Convention’s “Crazy Man Michael,” I was twice disappointed, given my fondness for previous EAR products: For years, I owned and enjoyed an EAR 890 power amplifier, and to this day the EAR 834P is the phono preamp I most often recommend to friends and readers. Perhaps John Atkinson’s measurements will reveal a reason for the uncompelling sound I heard from the Acute Classic, but as it stands, it is not a product I can recommend. Q

A S S O C I AT E D E Q U I P M E N T Analog Sources Garrard 301, Linn LP12, Thorens TD 124 turntables; Audio Origami UniArm, EMT 997, Rega Research RB 300, Thomas Schick tonearms; EMT OFD 15 & TSD 15, Shindo Laboratory SPU pickup heads; Denon DL-103 cartridge.

Digital Sources AudioQuest DragonFly Black & DragonFly Red, Halide Design DAC HD USB DACs; Apple iMac G5 computer running Audirvana Plus v.1.5.12; Sony SCD-777ES SACD/CD player.

Preamplification Auditorium 23 Hommage T1 & T2 stepup transformers, Shindo Laboratory Masseto preamplifier.

Power Amplifiers Shindo Laboratory Corton-Charlemagne (monoblocks) & Haut-Brion (stereo).

Loudspeakers Altec Flamenco, Auditorium 23 Hommage Cinema.

Headphones AudioQuest NightHawk.

Cables USB: AudioQuest Carbon. Interconnect: Audio Note AN-Vx, Shindo Laboratory. Speaker: Auditorium 23.

AC: Luna Orange, manufacturers’ stock cords.

Accessories Box Furniture Company D3S rack (source & amplification components), Audiodesksysteme Gläss Vinyl Cleaner.—Art Dudley 2 See my review in the January 2017 issue.

3 See my review in the January 2016 issue: www.stereophile.com/content/ audio-note-cdt-oneii-cd-transport-dac-21x-signature-da-processor.

4 See my review in the March 2016 issue: www.stereophile.com/content/ metronome-cd8-s-integrated-cd-player.

One movement can define your future.

Bricasti special edition digital to analog converter Analog Shop Victor, NY

stereophile.com

Q

DaVinci Media Reference Audio Milwaukee, WI Plymouth, MN

February 2017

Sound Consultant Lacrosse, WI

Sounds Real Audio The Voice That Is Bellingham, WA Philadeliphia, PA

Xtreme Fidelity Kinnelon, NJ

113

The Newest Digital Technology

THE VERY BEST SOUND 800-449-8333 | MUSICDIRECT.COM

MYTEK Brooklyn MQA DSD DAC/ Headphone Amplifier $1,995

AURENDER N10 Music Server $7,999

NAIM DAC-V1 Asynchronus USB DAC/Digital Preamplifier $2,595

McINTOSH D150 DAC/ Headphone Amplifier $3,000

iFi Pro iDSD DAC $1,999

PS AUDIO PerfectWave Memory Player CD/SACD Transport $5,999

MERIDIAN Explorer2 MQA DAC $299

2017 MUSIC DIRECT CATALOG Call us or visit our website to get a FREE copy of our new 276-page catalog.

EQ U IPMENT R EPORT

HERB REICHERT

Schiit Audio Yggdrasil D/A PROCESSOR

R

ight now, I swear, Schiit Audio’s Mike Moffat and Jason Stoddard are sitting there in California, smugly smirking at me and John Atkinson. While JA was struggling to properly measure Schiit’s Ragnarok (Fate of the Gods) integrated amplifier for my review in the May 2016 issue,1 I sent Moffat an e-mail: “Are you smiling?”

“Yup,” he replied. He’d known in advance that the Ragnarok wouldn’t look good on standard tests. But he hadn’t warned us: The Ragnarok’s output-stage bias program responds to music sources, not signal generators.

Not to mention: What sort of people name their company Schiit? Smirking, smart-alecky iconoclasts, that’s who.

I asked Moffat how he could make a $139 phono stage— the Schiit Mani—in the US. “Why not?” he said. “It’s just a little board in a box. First I get a bunch of little boxes . . . it costs the same to stuff a board in California as it does in China.” Not only is Schiit stuff made in the US—so are most of their parts.

These guys aren’t just snickering—they’re not doing a lot 1 See www.stereophile.com/content/schiit-audio-ragnarok-integrated-amplifier.

SPECIFICATIONS Description Digital-toanalog converter. Inputs: AES/EBU (XLR), S/PDIF (RCA, optical, BNC), USB. Input capability, all inputs: up to 24-bit/192kHz. Input receiver: S/PDIF, AKM AK4113; USB, C-Media CM6632. Digital filter: proprietary, implemented on Analog Devices SHARC DSP processor. D/A conversion IC: Analog Devices AD-

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

5791BRUZ (2 per channel, hardware balanced configuration). Analog stages: fully discrete JFET buffers for balanced output; discrete JFET summing stages for single-ended output, direct-coupled throughout.

Outputs: 1 pair balanced (XLR), 2 pairs single-ended (RCA). Output impedance: 75 ohms. Maximum output (RMS): 4.0V balanced, 2.0V

single-ended. Frequency response, analog stage: 20Hz–20kHz, ±0.1dB; 0.5Hz–200kHz, –1dB. THD: <0.006%, 20Hz–20kHz, at full output. IMD: <0.007%, CCIF, at full output. Signal/ noise: >117dB, ref. 2V RMS. Power consumption: 35W. Dimensions 16" (410mm) W by 3.875" (100mm) H by 12" (310mm) D. Weight: 25 lbs (11.4kg).

Finish Silver.

Serial number of unit reviewed A001071.

Price $2299. Approximate number of dealers: Sold Direct. Warranty: 5 years, 15-day trial period.

Manufacturer Schiit Audio, 24900 Anza Drive, Unit A, Valencia, CA 91355.

Tel: (323) 230-0079.

Web: http://schitt.com.

115

SCHIIT AUDIO YGGDRASIL

of things other high-end companies feel they must. No MQA, DSD, or class-D. No menus or OLED displays. No remotes. No legible lettering. Their primary advertising campaign is Stoddard’s Schiit Happened: The Story of the World’s Most Improbable Start-Up—nearly 800 pages’ worth of humorous stories that explain why and how each Schiit model came into being.2 Moffat and Stoddard don’t care about the high-end audio scene. They appear at audio shows, put a few of their silver boxes on the table, then jabber all day to tattooed young’uns on skateboards and fixies,3 none of whom read Stereophile or visit audio dealers. (Schiit sells only direct, online.) Moffat and Stoddard have become smirking smart-alecks because they’ve been around so many blocks of high-end audio that the only things they can still take seriously—the only things they actually still enjoy doing—are making modest, inexpensive hi-fi components that outperform glitzy, expensive hi-fi . . . and stealing reviewers’ Scooby Snacks.

Can you imagine any company but Schiit making an all-out “statement” DAC that costs only $2299? I can’t. Nevertheless, I’m here to tell you about just such a thing: Schiit’s heavyweight, big-box, flagship DAC, the Yggdrasil.

Can you think of a DAC with a better name? Yggdrasil (pronounced IG-druh-sill) is an ash tree that, in Norse cosmology, grows out of the Well of Urd at the center of the spiritual cosmos. Some describe Yggdrasil as the World Tree—the source of all things.

thrown out delta-sigma D/As and traditional digital filters to preserve the original samples all the way through from input to output.”

According to Jason Stoddard, “Schiit DACs are the only multibit DACs built on a modern platform, using medical/ military-grade D/A converters and our own closed-form digital filter running on an Analog Devices DSP chip. Most digital filters destroy the original samples in the process of upsampling. They’re just like sample-rate converters or delta-sigma DACs. We’re all about the original samples, so we created a digital filter with a true closed-form solution, which means it retains all the original samples. This is a major difference between Schiit multibit DACs like Yggdrasil and every other DAC in the world.”

In audio, power supplies are the source of nearly everything, good or bad. According to its owner’s manual, the Yggdrasil’s supply has “two transformers (one for digital supplies, one for analog supplies) plus one input choke for discrete, dual-mono, shunt-regulated analog ±24V, plus 12 separate local regulated supplies for DACs and digital sections, including high-precision, low-noise LM723 regulation in critical areas.”

The Yggdrasil’s front panel is understated Scandinavian elegance—the exact opposite of Mytek’a Brooklyn DAC ($1995), which looks sculpted and businesslike, with its busy display.4 The Yggdrasil is heavy (25 lbs), and big enough to fit four Brooklyns inside it. The front panel has two buttons:

Description From Schiit’s website: “Yggdrasil is the world’s only closedform multibit DAC, delivering 21 bits of resolution with no guessing anywhere in the digital or analog path. We’ve

2 See www.head-fi.org/t/701900/schiit-happened-the-story-of-the-worlds-mostimprobable-start-up.

3 A fixie is a single-speed bicycle with fixed (not coasting) rear axles.

4 See www.stereophile.com/content/mytek-hifi-brooklyn-daprocessor%C2%96headphone-amplifier.

MEASUREMENTS

I

measured the Schiit Audio Yggdrasil with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 “As We See It,” http://tinyurl.com/4ffpve4). As well as the Audio Precision’s digital outputs, I used WAV and AIFF test-tone files sourced via USB from my MacBook Pro running on battery power with Pure Music 3.0. Apple’s USB Prober utility identified the Schiit DAC as “Schiit Audio Gen 3 USB” from “Schiit,” and identified the USB interface device as being from “c-media electronics inc.”

The USB port operated in the optimal isochronous asynchronous mode. Apple’s AudioMIDI utility revealed that, via USB, the Yggdrasil accepted 16-, 24-, and 32-bit integer data sampled at all rates from 44.1 to 192kHz. The Schiit’s maximum output was very slightly higher than the specification, at 4.24V balanced and 2.06V unbalanced; and both sets of outputs preserved absolute polarity, meaning that the XLR jacks are wired with pin 2 hot. The output impedance was a low

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

196 ohms across the audioband from the balanced outputs, and 180 ohms from the unbalanced outputs, though the latter rose slightly, to 202 ohms, at the bottom of the audioband.

The Yggdrasil’s impulse response with data sampled at 44.1kHz is shown in fig.1. Taken from the left channel’s output, it reveals the Yggdrasil’s reconstruction filter to be a time-symmetrical, finite-impulse-response type, but with more coefficients than is usually

seen with this type of filter. This filter produces a very sharp rolloff above the audioband, as evidenced by the red and magenta traces in fig.2.1 The blue and cyan traces in fig.2 show the spectrum of the Schiit’s output while being fed 24-bit data representing a full-scale 19.1kHz tone. While the image of the tone at 25kHz is suppressed by almost 90dB and harmonic distortion is very 1 My thanks to Jürgen Reis of MBL for suggesting this test to me.

d B r

V

A

sec

Fig.1 Schiit Yggdrasil, impulse response (one sample at 0dBFS, 44.1kHz sampling, 4ms time window).

Hz

Fig.2 Schiit Yggdrasil, wideband spectrum of white noise at –4dBFS (left channel red, right magenta) and 19.1kHz tone at 0dBFS (left blue, right cyan), with data sampled at 44.1kHz (20dB/vertical div.).

117

SCHIIT AUDIO YGGDRASIL

Left: the Yggdrasil’s relatively austere rear panel. Above: It’s no-less austere front.

one, just left of center, is for inverting the phase, with an indicator light to its right. This button is proof that Stoddard and Moffat are indeed smirking: “An absolute phase switch is of little to no value in a non-time-domain-optimized, stochastic-time-replay system. It makes a huge difference with an Yggy (which is not stochastic).”

Farther to the right is a row of six tiny lights: the samplerate indicators. Currently, the Yggdrasil accepts input signals of resolutions up to 24-bit/192kHz, but one sample-rate indicator is left unused, for a future upgrade. Then comes a bigger button, for selecting one of five inputs, the selection confirmed by one of the row of five lights to its right. Above each of these lights is a funny little symbol that I’d need a USB microscope to read.

On the Schiit’s rear panel are one pair of balanced (XLR)

and two pairs of single-ended (RCA) analog outputs; AES/ EBU (XLR), S/PDIF (RCA), S/PDIF (BNC and optical), and USB digital inputs; a simple, old-school, on/off toggle switch; an IEC socket; and some little white letters spelling out “MADE IN USA.” Schiit recommends leaving the Yggdrasil on continuously “for best performance.”

The Yggy is easily upgradable—its entirely modular architecture comprises separate circuit boards for the digital input, the USB input, the DSP engine, and the DAC and analog output.

Listening Live music may be viewed as a continuously pulsating wavefront. If you hold your hand up, you can almost feel it. Recorded music is a coded narrative simulacrum of that

measurements, continued

low, the noise floor looks much more ragged than I usually see.2 Fig.3 shows the frequency response at a lower level, –12dBFS, with sample rates of 44.1, 96, and 192kHz. Other than the expected sharp cutoff at half of the two lower sample rates, the responses follow the same basic shape, with a smooth rolloff above the audioband. Note the excellent channel matching in this graph. The Yggdrasil also offered superb channel separation, especially from its balanced output

d B r

Hz

Fig.3 Schiit Yggdrasil, frequency response at –12dBFS into 100k ohms with data sampled at: 44.1kHz (left channel cyan, right magenta), 96kHz (left green, right gray), 192kHz (left blue, right red) (0.5dB/vertical div.).

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

jacks, where the crosstalk in both directions was below –125dB below 2kHz, and still below –110dB at 20kHz. Channel separation from the unbalanced outputs was 6dB or so lower at high frequencies, but the crosstalk was 20dB worse at low frequencies.

The Yggdrasil also offered superbly low levels of analog self-noise. Fig.4 shows spectral analysis of the DAC’s low-frequency noise floor while it reproduced a full-scale 1kHz tone. The random noise components lie at the

level of my analyzer, and the only supply components that can be seen are at 120Hz, at –135dB in the left channel and –130dB in the right. This indicates excellent analog circuit design and circuit-board layout.

Because of the Schiit’s low level of analog noise, I extended to 160dB the vertical scale for the spectral analysis of its output with a dithered 1kHz tone at –90dBFS (fig.5). The noise floor with 2 See, for example, figs. 4 and 5 at http://tinyurl. com/hta8l7v.

d B r

d B r

A

A

Hz

Fig.4 Schiit Yggdrasil, spectrum with noise and spuriae of dithered 24-bit, 1kHz tone at 0dBFS (left channel blue, right red; 20dB/vertical div.).

Hz

Fig.5 Schiit Yggdrasil, spectrum with noise and spuriae of dithered 1kHz tone at –90dBFS with: 16bit data (left channel cyan, right magenta), 24-bit data (left blue, right red) (20dB/vertical div.).

119

PURE

TRIPLE X

ADRENALIN

Delivers a wide soundstage and information. No loss of fine details. Perfect!

Stereoplay, Germany “excellent speed stability and temporal performance, notable clarity, and superb reproduction of space…”

Stereophile 9/2015

WOW XL “my current in-house references for quality phono playback: Acoustic Signature‘s WOW XL ” Stereophile 2015

WOW XXL

“took everything to a much higher level of wonderfulness.

The bass became John Henry– like. Images grew hypercrystalline. Midrange textures were enhanced. Forward momentum was unstoppable.”

Stereophile 2015

High resolution, extreme colorful sounding turntable, perfect fit and finish. Fulfils even high demands to sound quality.

LP –Magazine Germany 2015 …much more dynamic, with more detail. Trumpets had more vitality, and more of the brassy timbre the instrument has in person. The soundstage was wide and deep, with good differentiation of instruments.

Audiotechnique-Hongkong

Contact: fidelisav.com 603-880-4434

www.acoustic-signature.de

SCHIIT AUDIO YGGDRASIL

pulsing wavefront. If anything in the recording or playback chain interrupts, bends, truncates, or haphazardly disrupts the original (live) continuity—all the world’s smart guys can never restore its hyperfragile relationships of time, frequency, and amplitude. Love, music, and poetry live only in the undamaged continuity of those relationships. (Unlike the stock market or election polling, music is not a stochastic process.)

In home stereo, accurate tonal characters and lifelike rhythms are the surest indicators of an unmolested musical narrative. If we look at audio historically, it’s pretty obvious that digital has been (mostly) hammer-and-tongs rough on this sacred continuity. Whether in the recording studio or at home, digital’s punch-press aggressiveness can be recognized by the (usually) hard, mechanical nature of its playback.

In contrast to the digital norm, the Yggdrasil’s sound felt distinctly nonaggressive, nonartificial. Even before it was broken in, I could sense the Yggy’s gentle touch and hear the music’s relatively unmolested continuity.

When my analog-fanatic, LP-clinger friends carry on about how much better than digital their LPs sound, I always ask them what cartridge they’re using. Most say Miyajima, Miyabi, or Koetsu. I then smugly ask which DAC they’re using. Most say, “Bits is bits,” or “All DACs sound the same—bad!” LP clingers rarely buy high-quality, musicalsounding DACs. When I ask my wiser, more audio-worldly friends which DACs they use, they usually reply with one of these names: Ayre Acoustics, Bricasti, dCS, MSB, TotalDAC, etc.

Audio sages know that DACs can sound as different from each other as do phono cartridges. They also know that the

average DACs owned by most people sound broken, brittle, or defective, compared to even the lowest-priced phono cartridges.

Living mostly on handouts, the recycling of plastic bottles, and Scooby Snacks, I couldn’t afford a dCS or MSB DAC. So for years I enjoyed my digital via a hand-me-down Halide DAC HD ($500, now discontinued). When I borrowed a Schiit Bifrost DAC ($399) with Multibit upgrade ($250), my musical life took a major step upward. I no longer felt less privileged than friends who did have a dCS or MSB. The Bifrost made my music sound richer, stronger, more whole and authentically toned—less sliced’n’diced. Moffat and Stoddard’s Bifrost Multibit showed me a new version of what digital is capable of. Now I have the Yggdrasil . . .

And the Yggdrasil plays the living, human-formed rhythmic hell out of an AIFF file ripped from Jolie Blonde, by Luderin Darbone’s Hackberry Ramblers (CD, Arhoolie 399).

This music plucks and picks and fiddles and strums more sincerely than any other music I know. It saws and hollers its way right into your heart, but only from ancient 78rpm discs—or when the DAC is good. And as I’ve said before, I’ve never heard a band with an accordion that I didn’t love.

Well, no digital device I know has honored Darbone’s fiddle sawing and Edwin Duhon’s accordion squeezing better than the Yggdrasil. Both instruments were tangibly physical in a way that digital rarely permits.

Ever since the Yggy arrived, I’ve been bathing in the shimmering tonal colors of harmonicas—especially when their blossoming sound is set against a backdrop of guitar strumming, as it is in “J’ai Passe,” recorded very simply in Darbone’s home in Lake Charles, Louisiana, in 1963. Cajun

measurements, continued

16-bit data (cyan and magenta traces) is actually the dither noise used to encode the data. However, with 24-bit data (blue, red), while the noise floor lies at or below –160dBFS, a regular series of distortion components can be seen, in which the third, fifth, seventh, or ninth harmonics are highest in level.

This will be due to the Yggdrasil’s use of 20-bit D/A converters; the bottom four bits with 24-bit data will be truncated.

With undithered data and a signal at exactly –90.31dBFS, the Yggdrasil output a superbly symmetrical wave-

V

form, with the three DC voltage levels described by the data very well defined and the ringing due to the reconstruction filter clearly visible (fig.6). With undithered 24-bit data at the same level (fig.7), although the overall shape of the reconstructed sinewave is good, you can see significant errors at the signal’s zero-crossing points. Again, this will be due to the design choice to use 20-bit converters.

Distortion levels with high-impedance loads were low, as can be seen in fig.8, where the second and third har-

monics lie between –90 and –100dBFS (0.001 and 0.003%) in both channels.

However, the Schiit clipped with signals higher than –10dBFS into the punishing 600-ohm load. I then tested the Yggdrasil for intermodulation distortion with an equal mix of 19 and 20kHz tones (fig.9), and while the actual intermodulation products were between 90 and 100dB below the signal’s peak level, the noise floor again looked ragged, as in fig.2. I suspect that the digital filter begins to overload with full-scale high-frequency tones. As music only very rarely con-

d B r

V

A

sec

Fig.6 Schiit Yggdrasil, waveform of undithered 1kHz sinewave at –90.31dBFS, 16-bit data (left channel blue, right red).

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

sec

Fig.7 Schiit Yggdrasil, waveform of undithered 1kHz sinewave at –90.31dBFS, 24-bit data (left channel blue, right red).

Hz

Fig.8 Schiit Yggdrasil, spectrum of 50Hz sinewave, DC–1kHz, at 0dBFS into 100k ohms (left channel blue, right red; linear frequency scale).

121

SCHIIT AUDIO YGGDRASIL

fiddle sawing is the ultimate test of an audio system’s ability to dance and swing. The Yggdrasil let me not only feel or sense the machines Arhoolie used to digitally remaster these Hackberry Ramblers tunes, it let every tune move with a storm-like urgency that I found so completely engaging that, when a song ended, I felt sad, rejected, let down in an almost physical way. Only an exceptional level of musical continuity factor can generate that kind of engagement.

Yggdrasil vs Brooklyn vs Velvets The worst art of postwar America trafficked in irony, dissociation, and tongue-in-cheekiness. So did the best. My favorite art always parlayed the unexpected and the introspective into the marvelous. No period of 20th-century art combined those qualities more or better than the 1960s, and few artists mixed these qualities better than German composer, actor, model, and singer-songwriter Christa Päffgen, aka Nico. Every time I’ve heard her plaintive voice—from my first exposure to it, on the Velvet Underground’s first album, The Velvet Underground & Nico, until today, when I played her The Classic Years (CD, Chronicles 314 565 185-2)—I’ve been reminded why I became an artist. Today, I realized just how much her songs have contributed to my aesthetic viewpoint.

As I listened to this 19-track compilation, I wondered if the Schiit Yggdrasil was reproducing Nico’s voice more probingly or melodically than does the Mytek Brooklyn. Which DAC would show me the most of Nico?

The Yggdrasil and the Brooklyn have been the most significant digital upgrades I’ve made to my Bed Stuy Bunker audio system. The sound of the versatile Mytek is the

The Yggdrasil’s interior has a festive look.

definition of probing—it digs deep and opens wide, showing me new things I’ve never heard in every recording I play. It reveals the hidden and the unexpected better than any DAC costing under $5000 that I’ve experienced. Meanwhile, the Yggdrasil exposed melodic lines, instrumental textures, and human voices—also better than any DAC I’ve heard costing less than five grand.

When my system is good, it forces me to appreciate artists and songs I’d never noticed before. This happened today, with Nico’s recordings of two early Jackson Browne songs, “The Fairest of the Seasons” and “These Days,” both from her solo debut, Chelsea Girl (1967). I’ve always worshipped

measurements, continued

tains such spectral content, perhaps the filter and DSP circuits have been optimized for low-level signals.

Tested for its rejection of word-clock jitter with a 16-bit J-Test signal, the Schiit Yggdrasil had some problems (fig.10). Although most of the oddorder harmonics of the LSB-level, low-frequency squarewave in the right channel (red trace) are close to the correct level (green line), many components are suppressed, particularly in

the processor’s analog circuitry is superbly well designed, its digital circuitry appears to have problems with high-level, high-frequency tones, and with the LSBs of 24-bit data. It’s possible, of course, that the former will be rare with music, and that the latter will be obscured by the noise floors of recordings. But it does look as if the digital circuitry is not fully optimized.

Hopefully, this could be addressed with a firmware upgrade.—John Atkinson

d B r

d B r

d B r

A

A

A

Hz

Fig.9 Schiit Yggdrasil, HF intermodulation spectrum, DC–30kHz, 19+20kHz at 0dBFS into 100k ohms, 44.1kHz data (left channel blue, right red; linear frequency scale).

122

the left channel (blue), and the two sidebands closest to the spectral spike that represents the 11.025kHz tone are boosted. This behavior was identical with coaxial and optical S/PDIF data and with USB data. With 24-bit data, there were still some very low-level sidebands visible in the left channel with a USB datastream (fig.11, blue trace), but not with S/PDIF data.

It’s difficult to sum up the Schiit Yggdrasil’s measured behavior. While

Hz

Fig.10 Schiit Yggdrasil, high-resolution jitter spectrum of analog output signal, 11.025kHz at –6dBFS, sampled at 44.1kHz with LSB toggled at 229Hz: 16-bit coaxial S/PDIF data (left channel blue, right red). Center frequency of trace, 11.025kHz; frequency range, ±3.5kHz.

Hz

Fig.11 Schiit Yggdrasil, high-resolution jitter spectrum of analog output signal, 11.025kHz at –6dBFS, sampled at 44.1kHz with LSB toggled at 229Hz: 24-bit USB data (left channel blue, right red).

Center frequency of trace, 11.025kHz; frequency range, ±3.5kHz.

February 2017

Q

stereophile.com

SCHIIT AUDIO YGGDRASIL

Nico, but neither song had ever fully entered my consciousness—until now, via the Mytek Brooklyn. I was seduced by her pure vocal tones and visions of her faraway, fake-lashed eyes. I was hypnotized by tremendous space and depth of field. Piano tone was weighty and distinct. The Brooklyn’s clarity put me very close to my favorite modern chanteuse.

The unexpected was emphasized. The hidden was uncovered. My love was increased.

Through the Yggdrasil DAC, these same tracks sounded softer; the leading and trailing edges of tones seemed slightly attenuated. But Nico herself felt more comely and feminine. With the Yggy, my attention was drawn to the music’s movement and momentum—and Browne, the composer, was more present.

Compared to the Mytek’s master-tape–like grainlessness, the Schiit’s sound was slightly textured, and dynamic contrasts were less evident. Nevertheless, with the Schiit, I noticed more Nico and fewer recording artifacts. Nico’s signature detachment and introspection were emphasized.

One thing was weird, and a bit perplexing: Through the Yggdrasil, the lowest and highest frequencies seemed less pure and well defined than through the Brooklyn—but with the Schiit, those same octaves seemed more realistic and tangible, less hi-fi sounding. The contrast reminded me of studio monitors and home audio loudspeakers.

I’ve played The Classic Years a lot—the songs are high-level poetry—but was always annoyed with its sound. Until now.

Together and separately, the Yggdrasil and Brooklyn showed me more of Nico’s beauty than I’d previously heard via any form of digital.

Nico as Kriemhild In Nico’s song “Nibelungen,” the ash tree at the center of Norse mythology collides with Nico and Fritz Lang5 to generate a haunted forest and a pure Nordic sky show of fantastic sound and poignant vocal expression. Imagine her lonely voice emerging from a dark abyss of reverberating air: Since the first of you and me asleep In a Nibelungen land Titanic curses trap me in A banishment of stay Symbols vanish from my senses Stem and stave the view appears With Nico’s “Nibelungen,” the Yggdrasil showed me everything it had to offer. It showed me, in a most attractive manner, the exact measure of artificial reverb added to Nico’s unaccompanied voice. It showed me the poetically formed, vibrating core of her vocalization. It showed me Nico as a solitary artist, alone near her studio microphone.

All with surprising verity and focused expression. Most of all, the Yggdrasil let me experience the brooding intimacy of Nico’s art.

The Fate of Yggdrasil in the Era of Ragnarok For me, understanding what makes one DAC sound different from another is fraught with anxiety and intellectual difficulties. I like the convenience of digital, but I don’t appreciate high-resolution files and computer audio as much as do my friends Michael Lavorgna and David Chesky.

I’ve seen systems with five digital boxes all strung together with wires and antennas, connecting a laptop or iPad to the line-level input of a preamp. I don’t fully understand why this is necessary. I’m concerned about what appears to be the growing complexity of “high-quality” digital playback. I still stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

A S S O C I AT E D E Q U I P M E N T Analog Sources Palmer 2.5 turntable, Audio Origami PU7 tonearm, AMG Teatro cartridge; Roksan Radius 7 turntable & tonearm & Corus Silver cartridge; Dynavector 20X2L, Hana EL, LP Gear The Vessel A3SS cartridges.

Digital Sources Mytek Brooklyn, Line Magnetics 502CA, Halide DAC HD DACs; Hegel Mohican CD player; Integra DPS-7.2 DVD-A/CD player.

Preamplification Dynavector SUP-200, Bob’s Devices CineMag 1131, Lounge Audio Copla MC step-up devices; Dynavector P75, Lounge Audio LCR Mk.III+, Parasound Halo JC 3+, Tavish Design Adagio phono preamps.

Power Amplifier First Watt J2, PrimaLuna Prologue Premium.

Integrated Amplifier Line Magnetic LM-518IA. Headphone Amplifiers Audeze The King, Linear Tube Audio microZOTL2.0, Moon 430HA, Pass Labs HPA-1, Schiit Audio Asgard.

Loudspeakers DeVore Fidelity Orangutan O/93, Falcon Acoustics LS3/5a, KEF LS-50, Zu Audio Soul Supreme.

Headphones AKG K812, Audeze LCD-4 & LCD-X, AudioQuest NightHawk, Focal Elear & Utopia, Sony MDR 7520.

Cables Digital: Kimber Kable D60 Data Flex Studio (coaxial). Interconnect: AudioQuest Cinnamon, Auditorium 23, Kimber Kable Silver Streak. Speaker: AudioQuest GO4, Auditorium 23, Zu Audio Mission Mk.II. AC: AudioQuest NRG-2.

Accessories AudioQuest Niagara 1000 Low-Z, PS Audio PerfectWave PowerBase power conditioners; Dr. Feickert Analogue Protractor NG & Adjust+ software; AcousticalSystems SmarTractor cartridge-alignment protractor; Fozgometer azimuth-range meter; Moongel stylus cleaner.—Herb Reichert

remember the dizziness I experienced when I first looked at the block diagram of a digital converter. Error correction?

Upsampling? MQA? DSD? SACD? Why must digital be so tedious, pedantic, and boring? Why must digital—even at its very expensive best—sound less real, direct, and tangible than a 7" 45rpm or a 10" 78rpm?

You tell me. Which sounds best: CDs? SACDs? Hi-rez downloads? I am a lifelong gearhead audiophile, and by 1992 I had embraced CDs and collected them with childlike enthusiasm. Now, all I desire is a simple audio system that plays real music, via headphones or loudspeakers, with conspicuous palpability, precise temporality, and poetic insight.

The Schiit Yggdrasil DAC does all that. I think it would do a magnificent job of anchoring a giant-killing budget system.

I believe this so strongly that I recommend a simple, highvalue, music system that I know I could live with forever: the Schiit Yggdrasil DAC ($2299), feeding a Schiit Ragnarok integrated amplifier ($1699) driving a pair of KEF LS50 speakers ($1499). For a total cost of $5497, this system will play headphones and speakers with equal perspicacity. Cross my heart, it will deliver sky-high musicality as well as oceans of myth and Norse magic. I’ve listened to this exact setup for almost a year, and if I weren’t an audio reporter, I’d keep it and use it until the Fate of the Gods is nigh. Q 5 In 1924, the Vienna-born Fritz Lang directed The Nibelungs: Siegfried and The Nibelungs: Kriemhild’s Revenge, two silent films based on the Nibelungenlied, or Song of the Nibelungs, an epic Norse poem.

123

EQ U IPMENT R EPORT

MICHAEL FREMER

Boulder Amplifiers 2150 MONOBLOCK POWER AMPLIFIER I’m a recording engineer, so I value accuracy,” said a panelist in a discussion—titled “How to Read Between the Lines of Audio Advertising”—at last October’s Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. I, too, was on the panel, which was moderated by Brent Butterworth, a writer for the SoundStage! Network of online audio magazines.

“Accuracy is overrated,” I interjected from the other end of the dais. “Accurate to what?

To your sonic tastes? To what you hear on your preferred loudspeakers? Other than one’s Yes, it was a tiny visitation. Yes, dynamics The 2150 is class-A personal preferences, I’m not and visceral bass were MIA. But what was biased to its full power sure the term accuracy has much there—able to be enjoyed by only the person output—1000W into 8, meaning.” seated in that sweetest of sweet spots and by I then qualified those stateno one else in the room—was, again, thrilling.

4, or 2 ohms.

It became even more so when the system’s ments somewhat, saying that owner swapped out his “everyday” tubes for gross tonal colorations—like the a pair of ultra-rare vintage tubes saved for special occasions. ones that afflicted many of the demo systems at RMAF— Did that system produce “accuracy”? Had you heard what were unacceptable.

I heard, you’d have to say “yes”—but accurate to a specific In audio, this debate has always and will always amount to aspect of sound reproduction, to the exclusion of other such a sonic free-for-all. That’s part of both the fun and the frustrafactors. I have a few friends who prefer that kind of sound, tion of the hobby. I’ve heard absolutely thrilling sound from and who look at me with poorly disguised derision, or the a tiny vintage tube amplifier putting out just a few watts to kind of concern usually reserved for someone with a lifedrive EJ Jordan Designs “full-range” speaker arrays, supplethreatening illness, when I remind them what my version of mented with carefully dialed-in subwoofers. The action, so to accuracy requires: big speakers capable of producing realistic speak, appeared between the speakers, a few feet in front of SPLs, wide dynamic swings, big soundstages, and gut-sockthe single seat, on a miniature soundstage on which appeared the most living, breathing Ella Fitzgerald I’d ever heard. She ing bass—all to the exclusion, to one degree or another, of was, within the constraints of the system, brought to life. the aspects of sonic realism that they prefer.

SPECIFICATIONS Description Solid-state monoblock power amplifier. Input impedance: 200k ohms balanced, 100k ohms unbalanced. Common-mode rejection (balanced only): 60Hz, 90dB; 10kHz, 70dB. Continuous power output: 1000W into 8, 4, or 2 ohms.

Peak power: 1000W into 8

124

ohms, 2000W into 4 ohms, 4000W into 2 ohms (all equivalent to 30dBW). THD, 8 ohms: 0.0006%, 20Hz– 2kHz; 0.0025% at 20kHz. THD, 4 ohms: 0.0008%, 20Hz–2kHz; 0.0030% at 20kHz. THD, 2 ohms: 0.0012%, 20Hz–2kHz; 0.0045% at 20kHz. Fre-

quency response: 0.015Hz– 200kHz, –3dB. Voltage gain: 26dB. Equivalent input noise (EIN), 20kHz BW: 1.5μV. Dimensions 18" (457.2mm) W by 10.735" (272.7mm) H by 28.925" (734.7mm) D. Weight: 220 lbs (99.8kg) net, 319 lbs (144.7kg) shipping.

Serial number of unit

reviewed 11295 & 6.

Price $99,000/pair.

Approximate number of dealers: 28.

Manufacturer Boulder Amplifiers, 255 S. Taylor Avenue, Boulder, CO 80027.

Tel: (303) 449-8220.

Fax: (303) 449-2987.

Web: www.boulderamp.com.

February 2017

Q

stereophile.com

Some audiophiles prefer looking into the sound; others want it projected outward toward them. There’s room for all at the audio table, but I don’t expect to convert a Quad ESL 57 enthusiast into a Wilson or Magico or YG Acoustics fanatic. Nor should the EJ Jordan guy expect me to head his way any time soon. However, understanding each other’s preferences in sound can go a long way toward creating a more tolerant world—in audio, at least.

Description The Boulder Amplifiers 2150 is a large, extremely heavy amplifier that weighs 220 lbs each and costs $99,000/pair.

It’s an update of the 2050 mono amplifier, introduced by Boulder more than 17 years ago—a long run for any audio product. Boulder’s promotional statements almost make it seem as if the update was done grudgingly, more to “meet the demands of the market” than because the original’s sound quality could be improved.

The changes, more evolutionary than revolutionary, include the use of Boulder’s proprietary 99H2 gain stage—a fully discrete, surface-mount, modular op-amp that, in 2013, replaced their 993 module. The H stands for High voltage.

The differentially balanced 2150 is said to be class-A biased to its full claimed continuous power output—1000W into 8, 4, or 2 ohms—by means of a circuit that continually adjusts the bias current based on voltage output, current draw, and load. Boulder claims that this operation is performed more quickly than the speed of the audio signal itself, which means that the circuit can maintain class-A

operation when confronted with a taxing musical transient, after which it gently lowers the bias until it senses another peak.1 The 2150 can thus provide the positives of full class-A operation that’s free of crossover distortion, without the negatives of massive power consumption, excessive generation of heat, or, Boulder claims, the audible “steps” produced by other kinds of active bias-management systems.

Each 2150 has two power supplies. The massive primary supply, for its input and output circuits, includes two toroidal transformers, one for each phase of the output, that are custom-wound in the US to Boulder’s specs. A smaller, independent, regulated supply powers the microprocessor control sections. Mains connection is via an enormous 32amp IEC jack—the kind used in shipyards and factories. On the other end of this cord is a standard AC plug: no need to call the electrician. The 32A IEC jack isn’t just for show: the 2150 can draw nearly 30 amps of peak current, for high power outputs into low impedances. In my room, with my sensitive speakers, however, the Boulder was never asked to deliver anything close to that.

The 2150’s input stage is a fully balanced, differential, high-impedance, servo-controlled, direct-coupled circuit using bipolar devices. Its 26dB voltage gain stage uses the encapsulated 99H2 op-amps in two stages, each 99H2 providing input buffering and voltage gain with a high slew rate, wide bandwidth, high current output, low distortion, and low output impedance.

1 Unlike an amplifier with a traditional class-A output stage, the Boulder 2150 runs relatively cool.—John Atkinson

MEASUREMENTS

B

ecause of the Boulder 2150’s bulk and weight—319 lbs in its shipping crate—I wouldn’t have been able to get it down the stairs to my test lab, much less back up those stairs. So I packed up my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 “As We See It,” www. stereophile.com/content/measurements-maps-precision) and the PC I use to control it, along with analog and digital oscilloscopes, test loads, and all the cables I would need, and drove to Michael Fremer’s lair, in deepest, darkest New Jersey.

There, I had a couple of problems.

Usually, before doing any testing of a power amplifier, I precondition it by running it at one-third power into 8 ohms for an hour. (With an amplifier having a class-B or -AB output stage, this power level results in the highest thermal stress on the output devices.)

However, one-third of the Boulder’s specified maximum power of 1000W is 333W, and I don’t have a test load that could handle that power level for an hour without overheating. Therefore, I wasn’t able to precondition the 2150 before testing it.

My second problem, too, was related to the 2150’s power. The only practical place to perform the measurements was in Mikey’s garage, which adjoins his house. However, the only electrical outlets within reach of the long extension cords I’d brought with me were on a 15A circuit. (I have two 20A circuits in my test lab.) While this allowed me to test the amplifier’s distortion and clipping power into 8 and 4 ohms, the circuit breaker tripped at powers above 800W into 2 ohms, which is well below the specified maximum power of 4000W into this load.

d B r

d B r

A

A

Hz

Fig.1 Boulder 2150, frequency response at 2.83V into: simulated loudspeaker load (gray), 8 ohms (blue), 4 ohms (magenta), 2 ohms (red) (0.5dB/ vertical div.).

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

Hz

Fig.2 Boulder 2150, small-signal, 10kHz squarewave into 8 ohms.

Fig.3 Boulder 2150, spectrum of 1kHz sinewave, DC–1kHz, at 1W into 8 ohms (linear frequency scale).

125

BOULDER AMPLIFIERS 2150

Boulder proudly uses feedback where others dare not, claiming that appropriate levels of carefully implemented feedback can achieve ideal operating parameters and constant group delay across the entire audioband, for maximizing linear phase response. In fact, Boulder has a take-noprisoners approach to feedback, claiming that those who don’t understand its proper implementation—and so don’t use it—have a philosophy that “still exists in a number of hobbyist workshops today.” Ouch!

The 2150’s output section has a specified nonreactive output impedance of 0 ohm (!), meaning it can drive any speaker to realistic playback levels, regardless of the speaker’s sensitivity or impedance. The output section features 80 (count ’em—80!) bipolar devices, 40 each for the waveform’s positive and negative halves. Rather than being screwed in, these output devices are clamped, by a CNC-machined bar, to a nonresonant heatsink cut from an 80-lb billet of solid aluminum. Boulder claims that this increases reliability and reduces mechanical resonances—two things that the company takes very seriously.

Boulder says it avoids standalone heatsink fins, which can resonate and ring. (Speaking of which, if your amp has separate fins, try listening to it, then wrapping the fins in adhesive tape and listening to it again.) Of course, the 2150’s protection circuit is as heroically designed and built as everything else about it.

A 32A IEC socket for the AC cord dominates the 2150’s rear panel.

Boulder proudly uses feedback where others dare not.

Boulder boldly states that “at no point is the 2150 ‘voiced’ or tuned for a specific sound or type of loudspeaker.” At this point, the low-watt, single-ended-triode guys (those few who’ve read this far) have their hair on fire—all of their belief systems have been challenged, crushed, or at least dented, despite the stiff resistance they’ve put up getting this far into the review.

Inside and out, the 2150’s build quality meets and in most

measurements, continued

The Boulder 2150’s voltage gain into 8 ohms was 25.9dB: a little below the norm, but conforming to the specified 26dB. The amplifier preserved absolute polarity (ie, was non-inverting), with pin 2 of the XLR jack wired as hot. (The review samples were not fitted with unbalanced inputs.) The input impedance at 20Hz and 1kHz was 194k ohms, which is close to the specified 200k ohms, and at 20kHz dropped inconsequentially to 130k ohms. The output impedance, including 6' of speaker cable, was extremely low, at 0.02 ohm at low and middle frequencies; this

%

%

W

Fig.4 Boulder 2150, distortion (%) vs 1kHz continuous output power into 8 ohms.

126

rose only slightly, to 0.026 ohm, at the top of the audioband. As a result, the variation in frequency response with our standard simulated loudspeaker1 (fig.1, gray trace) was virtually nonexistent. The frequency response into resistive loads was flat in the audioband, and down by just over 3dB at 200kHz (fig.1, blue, magenta, and red traces).

The Boulder’s reproduction of a 10kHz squarewave featured short risetimes, and was free from any overshoot or ringing (fig.2).

The 2150 was extremely quiet—its unweighted, wideband signal/noise

ratio with the input shorted to ground measured 78.5dB ref. 2.83V into 8 ohms. This improved to 94.3dB when the measurement bandwidth was restricted to the audioband, and to 97dB when A-weighted. Spectral analysis of the Boulder’s noise floor while it reproduced a 1kHz tone into 8 ohms (fig.3) indicated that the only powersupply–related spuriae were all very low in level, and primarily comprised the 60Hz AC frequency and its third and fifth harmonics, all of which were close to or below –110dB (0.0003%).

This spectrum was not affected when

%

W

Fig.5 Boulder 2150, distortion (%) vs 1kHz continuous output power into 4 ohms.

Hz

Fig.6 Boulder 2150, THD+N (%) vs frequency at 40V into: 8 ohms (blue), 4 ohms (magenta).

February 2017

Q

stereophile.com

BOULDER AMPLIFIERS 2150

ways surpasses that of every other amplifier I’ve reviewed.

Boulder is one of the few electronics manufacturers that does its own CNC machining in-house. I visited their previous facility, and it was mighty impressive. The new one is said to be even more so. Other than the toroidal transformers and individual components on the boards, Boulder designs, manufactures, and assembles everything in-house, including the circuit boards. All metal parts are fabricated in-house from solid stock—no sheet metal is used anywhere.

Hernia-Inducing Setup, Ball-Breaking Sound Although Boulder recommends that four people move and install each 2150, it was just two diminutive guys—me and Rich Maez, Boulder’s director of sales and marketing. We managed.

I ran the amps balanced. Boulder’s wingnut-type speaker terminals are the best I’ve used, especially since the two pairs per amp are located on an “open field” rear panel—only spade lugs need apply. I began with Boulder’s stock power cords. Then, to hear if power cords could affect the sound of an amplifier overbuilt to such demanding specs, I asked

I experimented with the grounding between the Boulder and the test system.

Not only was the Boulder 2150 quiet, it offered very low distortion and very high power. Fig.4 plots the percentage of THD+noise against output power into 8 ohms. The downward slope of the trace below 200W or so indicates that whatever distortion is present lies below the noise. The 2150 clips sharply, reaching 1% THD+N at 960W (29.8dBW). This is 0.2dB lower than the specified 1000W (30dBW), but this is most likely due to the fact that I didn’t hold the wall voltage constant

Fig.7 Boulder 2150, 1kHz waveform at 400W into 4 ohms, 0.00036% THD+N (top); distortion and noise waveform with fundamental notched out (bottom, not to scale).

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

AudioQuest if they’d send over two of their 6' Hurricane cords ($1495 each), with Boulder supplying the amplifierend plugs to match the 2150’s 32A IEC jacks.

How does a measurement-derived amplifier sound?

Essentially, especially in terms of tonality, it doesn’t. That may sound like a reviewer cop-out, but the Boulder 2150 didn’t really “sound,” tonally. It was about as tonally neutral a piece of electronics as I’ve heard here, neither warm nor cool—unlike, say, the SAE HP2, which I thought was on the cool side.

Overall, my first listen immediately produced a reaction similar to when I first heard Boulder’s 2110 preamplifier, Heatsinks are machined into the 2150’s robust casework.

during this test. Fig.5 is a similar graph for 4 ohms: The 2150 clips at 1450W into this load (28.6dBW), but again, note that I didn’t hold the wall voltage constant.

Not only was the Boulder’s distortion very low; into 8 ohms, it hardly changed with frequency, even at 40V (fig.6, blue trace). There was a rise at higher frequencies at this same level into 4 ohms (fig.6, magenta), but to no higher than 0.004%. And at 1kHz at 40V into 4 ohms, the distortion waveform was mainly noise, with the faintest hint of third harmonic (fig.7). Spectral analysis

(fig.8) indicates that the third harmonic at this level lies at –119dB (0.0001%), which is about the same level as the third harmonic of the AC supply frequency. Intermodulation distortion is also extraordinarily low (fig.9).

Boulder’s 2150 is an extraordinary amplifier. It measured so well that it taxed the capabilities of my Audio Precision SYS2722.2 —John Atkinson 1 See www.stereophile.com/content/ real-life-measurements-page-2.

2 The SYS2722 has been superseded by the higher-performance APx555, but it’s going to be a while before I can afford to buy one.

d B r

d B r

A

A

Hz

Fig.8 Boulder 2150, spectrum of 1kHz sinewave, DC–20kHz, at 400W into 4 ohms (linear frequency scale).

Hz

Fig.9 Boulder 2150, HF intermodulation spectrum, DC–24kHz, 19+20kHz at 200W peak into 8 ohms (linear frequency scale).

127

BOULDER AMPLIFIERS 2150

which I reviewed two years ago2 —but to an even greater degree. The 2150s gripped the woofers of my Wilson Audio Specialties Alexandria XLFs (and, later, the Wilson Alexxes; review in the works) with greater clamping force than did my reference darTZeel NHB-458 monoblocks.

I can’t say the bass extension went further down or that bass definition increased (the NHB-458s perform really well there). But the punch and speed, the starting and stopping power, were definitely accelerated.

As with that 2110 preamp, Left to right: Surface-mount everything, from top to bottom, devices share real estate with microprocessors; the massive tightened up through the machined heatsinks; Boulder’s 2150s—another good thing, proprietary 99H2 op-amps. because now the system spoke from one sonic perspective: with greater speed, transparency, and, to a lesser degree, resolution of detail than with my reference darTZeels.

Like the 2110, the 2150s produced stable images and clearly defined soundstages with familiar recordings. Inevitably, this meant I heard surprises from some of those recordings—some sounded better, more intense than I’m used to; others sounded more shrill, and/or less enticing in other ways. For instance, Markus Schwartz and Lakou Brooklyn’s Equinox, a remarkable, 24-bit/96kHz digital recording (WAV files, Soundkeeper SR1002) that I wrote about in my review of the Boulder 2110, was intensified by greater transparency, and better edge definition and background “blackness”; other recordings—ones that could use a bit of sonic “slack”— became more difficult to listen to.

For example, a recent reissue of Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook (3 LPs, Verve/Analog Sparks 00007), remastered, all in analog, from the original tapes, sounded wonderfully transparent for a 1956 mono recording, but a bit forward through my reference amps—and that was through either my reference Ypsilon VPS-100 phono preamp or the Dan D’Agostino Momentum Phonostage (see this issue’s “Analog Corner”), neither of which is bright or ruthlessly revealing. Through the 2150, this album sounded a bit too forward at what I thought was the appropriate volume. Not that Lyra’s Etna SL is at all bright, but a cartridge with a more burnished top end would solve that problem.

On the other hand, the Electric Recording Company’s vinyl reissue of Leonid Kogan’s recording of the Brahms Violin Concerto with Kiril Kondrashin conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra—a 1960 recording—sounded tonally and spatially just right, taking into account the stereo recording techniques of the day.

Another great recording that was reproduced remarkably well by the 2150s is a reissue of Mahler’s Symphony 3, with Zubin Mehta conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Master Chorale, California Boys’ Choir, and contralto Maureen Forrester, recorded in 1978 in UCLA’s Royce Hall (2 LPs, London/Decca/Analogue Productions APC 117). The beginning of the first movement features rumbling timpani that are supposed to represent organic 128

matter bubbling up from primordial ooze. The 2150 didn’t clarify the rumbling, which was good, though it did somewhat better define the timpani compared to my reference amps. The big brass climax at the end of the movement didn’t harden or lose its pleasingly warm, burnished sound through the 2150s, but compared to my reference amps, it sounded somewhat drier.

However, when I switched to a somewhat more analytical phono preamp that’s currently under review, the sound of it and the 2150s leaned too far in the direction of starkness.

Were that my reference combination, I’d have to be more in the Koetsu cartridge camp: that’s just the way these component recipes work.

The 2150s didn’t add grain or grit to the sound, but neither did they hide what’s in the recordings, which other electronics might not so clearly reveal. Still, I felt the Boulders’ overall sound, while tonally neutral and utterly transparent, was somewhat dry. Can you measure “dry”?

Probably not—but you can hear it.

Swapping Boulder’s stock power cords for AudioQuest’s Hurricanes The above listening impressions were heard with Boulder’s stock power cords. Think power cords can’t possibly alter the sound—especially of an amplifier such as the 2150, with its overkill power supply? Sorry, but when I replaced the stock cords with AudioQuest Hurricanes, there was an immediate improvement: The Boulder amp could now better accommodate a wider range of recordings.

While not radically changed, the sound was now less ruthless—like replacing a fluorescent bulb with one of a lower color temperature. Was the AQ cable acting as a filter that actually decreased the 2150’s transparency, and thus its performance? I don’t know. What I do know is that sonically compromised recordings now sounded more ear-friendly. When I replayed Equinox, it was somewhat less pleasingly immediate, but it didn’t exactly recede into the background or become soft. The same held true with the phono preamps mentioned above. The unidentified one, which sounded more analytical, remained so, but even it was now more listenable. I swapped the power cords back and forth more than a few times; the differences remained consistent.

I also swapped out DACs, alternating between the recently reviewed Simaudio Moon Evolution 780D ($15,000)3 and my reference Lynx HiLo A/D converter ($2500), February 2017

Q

stereophile.com

BOULDER AMPLIFIERS 2150

which also does D/A. (I’d never before used it as a DAC.) While the Simaudio was definitely more highly resolving and closer in sound to the Boulder, the Lynx’s easier-going, somewhat more relaxed sound was more inviting when I randomly “swam” in the Meridian Sooloos server, repeating the playlist through both DACs. Separating the sound of the 2150 from the rest of the system Listening to any audio product means that you’re hearing not only that component but an entire system’s worth of audio components. In this case, it was a lot of them, including three different phono preamps, two DACs, and two power cords. Nonetheless, it’s possible, through all of that, to hear the sound of the product being reviewed—a good thing, since that’s how we do it around here.

The Boulder 2150 is a state-of-the-art powerhouse of an amplifier designed to impart little or none of its own character on the sound of the incoming signal. Boulder has accomplished this by engineering noise to an absolute measurable minimum. The 2150 did likewise with distortion and every other sonic parameter. Its 0 ohm, nonreactive output impedance ensures that its behavior won’t vary, regardless of the electrical characteristics of the loudspeaker in use.

In other words, Boulder Amplifiers has done everything it can to achieve the goal of a blank slate: a product that makes the output signal much larger than the input signal, without in any way altering that signal’s electrical and, therefore, audible characteristics. I’m confident that John Atkinson’s measurements will confirm Boulder’s published specs.

Assuming that Boulder has succeeded in all this means that a system’s analog and digital source components (as well as the cables that link them) and the speakers that ultimately transduce signals into soundwaves will have the greatest effects on your system’s final sound—because these amps will contribute the least. The remaining variable is probably the biggest: the sound quality of the recordings played. With the right associated gear, the best recordings will be allowed to express themselves as well as or better than you’ve ever heard them. The worst ones won’t be able to hide in the shadows, because these amps cast none.

Mobile Fidelity’s recent reissue of Santana’s Abraxas is made using MoFi’s Ultradisc One-Step” process: instead of using plated lacquers to make two more generations of parts, metal negatives made from the lacquers are themselves used as stampers to press discs—in this case, two 45rpm LPs (Columbia/Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab MFSL45UD-1S-001).

Played through the Boulder 2150, these discs produced some of the most dazzling recorded sound I’ve ever experienced. They also sounded really great through my reference amps—but not in the same league.

Conclusions Based on having the pair of them in my system for an extended period of time, I conclude that Boulder Amplifiers’ 2150 is a muscular, tonally neutral, all-controlling monoblock power amplifier capable of unrestricted macrodynamic excursions and, because of its vanishingly low noise floor, the most delicate and highly resolved explorations of microdynamics. The 2150’s high level of transparency let me see into the sound as far as is possible, to pick out the smallest details of music and space.

The 2150’s electrical stability produced well-controlled, ultra-solid, well-defined low-frequency response that was neither over- nor underdamped, and remarkably clean, precise, stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

A S S O C I AT E D E Q U I P M E N T Analog Sources Continuum Audio Labs Caliburn turntable & Castellon stand; Döhmann Helix 1 turntable, Schröder CB tonearm; Lyra Atlas & Atlas SL & Etna & Etna SL, Ortofon Anna & A95, Miyajima Laboratory Zero (mono) & Madake, Gold Note Tuscany cartridges.

Digital Sources Audio Alchemy DDS Pro CD transport; Simaudio Moon Evolution 780D streaming DAC; Lynx Hilo A/D–D/A converter; Meridian Sooloos Digital Media System; Pure Vinyl, Vinyl Studio softwares.

Preamplification Ypsilon MC-10L & MC-16L step-up transformers; Ypsilon VPS-100, Dan D’Agostino Master Audio Systems Momentum Phonostage phono preamplifiers.

Power Amplifiers darTZeel NHB-458 (monoblocks).

Loudspeakers Wilson Audio Specialties Alexandria XLF & Alexx.

Cables Interconnect: Snake River Audio Boomslang (S/ PDIF), Stealth Sakra & Indra, TARA Labs Zero Evolution & Zero & Air Evolution, Teresonic Clarison Gold, Wireworld Platinum Eclipse. Speaker: TARA Labs Omega Evolution SP, Wireworld Platinum Eclipse 7. AC: AudioQuest Hurricane (high-current), Shunyata Research Zi-Tron Sigma Analog & Sigma Analog HC & Sigma Digital.

Accessories AudioQuest Niagara 7000, Shunyata Research Denali power conditioners; Oyaide AC wall box & receptacles; ASC Tube Traps; RPG BAD, Skyline & Abffusor panels; Stillpoints Aperture room panels; Synergistic Research UEF products (various); Symposium Ultra platform; HRS Signature SXR, Stillpoints ESS, Finite Elemente Pagode amplifier stands; Audiodharma Cable Cooker; Furutech record demagnetizer; Furutech deStat; Loricraft PRC4 Deluxe, Audiodesksysteme Gläss Pro record-cleaning machines.—Michael Fremer

etch-free transient response from top to bottom. In fact, the 2150s’ overall grip and control produced aural images and a solidity of soundstage that were, in my experience, second to none. The 2150 was “analytical” only in the sense that it added no sound of its own to the signals it was fed—but this means that the associated gear must be chosen with great care. Owners of 2150s must also be willing to accept the fact that some, or even many, of their favorite recordings don’t sound so great.

But nothing made by mere mortals is perfect, and every audio product, despite its designers’ best intentions, “sounds.” I think that the 2150’s sound does have an overall character, and that that character is somewhat dry, and lacking the ultimate in musical flow. It reproduced precise attacks and ear-popping decays, but the sustains of notes between those attacks and decays were less than fully expressed.

By comparison, my reference monoblocks, darTZeel’s NHB-458s,4 don’t grip quite as tightly as the Boulders, nor do they achieve the 2150s’ levels of transparency and solidity.

What they deliver so well, especially for solid-state amps, is music’s liquidity and natural flow—due to their more generous sustain. You can’t have everything. Q 2 See my review in the March 2015 issue: www.stereophile.com/content/ boulder-amplifiers-2110-line-preamplifier.

3 See my review in the August 2016 issue: www.stereophile.com/content/ moon-simaudio-evolution-780d-da-processor.

4 See my review in the August 2012 issue: www.stereophile.com/content/ dartzeel-nhb-458-monoblock-amplifier.

129

Find all your hot music & gear at

elusivedisc.com A Trusted Name Since 1989!

What you can expect from us: • Excellent Customer Service.

• Speedy & Safe Delivery.

• Expert Help & Advice.

• The Best in Audio Equipment!

• Great Selection of Music from ABBA to ZZ Top!

Hendrix | Machine Gun Analogue Prod. SACD

Rebecca Pidgeon | Raven Chesky 180g LP

Norah | Day Breaks Blue Note LP

Led Zeppelin | BBC Atlantic 180g 5LP

Miles | Kind Of Blue Sony Jpn Import UHQCD

Cowboy Junkies | Trinity Analogue Prod. 200g 2LP

Beatles | Live Capitol 180g LP

Jack White | Acoustic Third Man 180g 2LP

Mayumi | Wish You Love Impex Jpn Import SACD

Stealers Wheel Intervention SACD

Queen Jpn Import SHM-SACD

Sting | Studio Collection A&M 180g 11LP

Stevie Ray Vaughan Analogue Prod. 200g LP

Traveling Beach Boys Wilburys | Pet Sounds Stereo 200g AP Mono &Records Concord LP LPs

Prince | Raspberry Beret Warner Brothers LP

Metallica | Hardwired Blackened 180g 3LP

Hall & Oates | Very Best Legacy 2LP

Pearl Jam | No Code Legacy LP

Pink Floyd | Meddle Legacy 180g LP

Frank Zappa | Hot Rats Zappa 180g LP

Tchaikovsky | Ballet Hi-Q Records 180g LP

Tom Petty | Greatest Hits Geffen 2LP

Clare Teal | Sings Ella Chasing The Dragon LP

Blue Oyster Cult Audio Fidelity SACD

Eddie & The Cruisers Audio Fidelity 180g LP

Ella Fitzgerald | Sings Analog Spark 180g 3LP

A plethora of products to make your precious music collection sound better than the day you bought it!

elusivedisc.com

Call Today!

800-782-3472

fax: 765-608-5341 Info: 765-608-5340 • 4020 frontage rd anderson, in 46013 • sales@elusivedisc.com • m-f 9-6 sat 11-3 est

CLASSICAL ROCK / POP JAZZ

RECORD REVIEWS

T

o clear the air, if not the sinuses, let’s dispose right now of the traveling-boogermatte controversy. If Robbie Robertson and the late Levon Helm are to be believed, in The Last Waltz, Neil Young performed “Helpless” with a very suspicious chunk of something hanging out of one nostril.

When Young and his management became aware of the problem, the offending object had to be excised from the film stock using a matte laboriously inserted into every frame. At least, that’s how the juiciest legend from one of rock’s most legendary performances is usually told.

It’s no secret that on Thanksgiving 1976, the final performance of the Band, titled The Last Waltz and held at Winterland, in San Francisco, and filmed by Martin Scorsese for what may be the finest rock documentary of all, was a party for crowd and performers alike.

For those new to its many charms, The Last Waltz is a fabulous experience in terms of both images and sound.

One gander at the guest list tells the story: Besides Young and Morrison, it includes Muddy Waters, Dr. John, Eric Clapton, Ronnie Wood, Neil Diamond, Bobby Charles, Ringo Starr, Paul Butterfield, Ronnie Hawkins, Joni Mitchell, Emmylou Harris, the Staples—and, of course, Bob Dylan, whom the eponymous foursome backed on and off from 1965 practically until they broke up following The Last Waltz. Recordings made by the Band and Dylan in 1967, and released as The Basement Tapes in 1975 (and in a Complete edition in 2014), still stand as one of Dylan’s finest albums, and one of the seminal documents of Americana music.

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the releases of film and album, Rhino Records has, rereleased both in a number of different configurations. Happily, this lowly two-CD set ($16.99) is the only one that contains the new remastering of the sound, which accentuates the midrange frequencies and perhaps lessens the bass response just a touch. It also seems a tad louder stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

EDITOR’S PICK

RECORDING OF THE MONTH

THE BAND

The Last Waltz 40th Rhino RR 273925 (2 CDs). 1978/2016.

Robbie Robertson, prod.; Ron Fraboni, John Simon, co-prods.; Terry Becker, Tim Kramer, Elliot Mazer, Wayne Neuendorf, Ed Anderson, Neil Brody, engs. ADD? TT: 2:09:11 PERFORMANCE SONICS

than previous editions. The Last Waltz was originally released on three LPs, and the original master tapes—or whatever were used for the album as we now know it—have since then been remastered twice, by Warner Bros.

(2003) and Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (2014). Rhino’s other 40th-anniversary editions are boxed sets of four CDs and one Blu-ray ($64.95), six LPs ($119.98)—and the inevitable four-CD, two-BR Collector’s Edition ($259.98), limited to 2500 copies and containing a replica of Scorsese’s 300-page shooting script “bound in red faux-leather.”

As of this writing, the plans for MP3 and high-resolution downloads had yet to be announced.

As wonderful as the 117-minute film is (a cogent argument can be made that it’s actually too long), the film and the music are not without controversy.

There’s the Robertson factor. Over the years, through the autobiographies

of the Band members and statements made by all, one gets the feeling if not fact that The Last Waltz was primarily driven by a bromance between Robertson and Scorsese. Robertson, who produced the album, went on to help score a number of Scorsese films, including Raging Bull and The King of Comedy. There have been claims,

by Helm and other members of the Band that no one but Robertson ever saw any money from the film, which was a success. The overload of shots of Robertson in the film—he’s got a hundred close-ups—added to pervasive accusations by other Band members, particularly Helm, that Robertson unfairly took credit for too many of the group’s original compositions, give weight to the widespread belief that it was Robertson whose actions forced the Band to disband following The Last Waltz.

Other weirdnesses to be savored by longtime fans include the incongruous appearance, in light-blue polyester suit and Aviator shades, by Neil Diamond—who, to say the least, had never been part of the Band’s zeitgeist.

It was later revealed that, at the time, Robertson happened to be producing Diamond’s album Beautiful Noise. The appearance in the film of performances with Emmylou Harris (“Evangeline”) and the Staples (“The Weight”), previously filmed on a soundstage, are jarring additions, particularly considering that the Band’s Winterland performance of “The Weight,” the tune they’re best known for, doesn’t appear in the film. (It can now be heard on the four-CD set, the six-LP set, and the Collector’s Edition.)

The eternal model for all rock docs, The Last Waltz, with its combination of Scorsese—a brash, exuberant, hugely talented director of feature films, with a rare talent for using and, in this instance, capturing music in film—and a celebratory, high-energy concert in which everyone gave exceptional, eulogic performances, has only gained power in the 40 years since its release.

These new sets add welcome new dimensions to its incredible legacy.

—Robert Baird Q

131

FOLLOW-UP

A SECOND IMPRESSION

BY JOHN ATKINSON

ACOUSTIC RESEARCH AR-M2 PORTABLE PLAYER In April 2016, I reviewed the AR-M2 portable player1 from Acoustic Research,2 concluding that “It’s good to see the Acoustic Research brand applied to such a well-engineered product after all these years.” When I compared the AR-M2 with the Astell&Kern AK240, I found the differences between the two players small, commenting that “on balance, if I didn’t have to count pennies, I’d go for the $2500 Astell&Kern—but for $1300 less, the Acoustic Research comes very close.” A special offer price reduction from $1199 to $899 last December makes the AR-M2 even more of a good buy.

At the time of my review, the Ultimate Ears 18 Pro IEMs, in that the Android-based player was running volume control could be used over a the AR-M2 Music Player app v1.06, greater portion of its range. However, which I updated to v.1.2.0 before I felt the sound quality lost some of its returning the AR to its manufacturer. spaciousness in the highs and drive in Since then, the player’s firmware has the lows with the IEMs, which have an been updated to v.2.5.6, which allows impedance ranging between 11 and 21 full hi-rez gapless playback from one ohms, driven au naturel. file to the next—AR says that many With its v.2.5.6 firmware installed, I players downsample their look-ahead continue to be impressed both by the for gapless—as well as some tweaks to sound of Acoustic Research’s AR-M2 the user interface. I therefore asked and the fact that, when in the vicinAcoustic Research’s Rob Follis to ship ity of a friendly WiFi network, it can a second sample to me. This arrived stream lossless files from Tidal. with the older v2.5.2.0 firmware, so I PS AUDIO DIRECTSTREAM D/A downloaded and installed v2.5.6 from PROCESSOR (TORREYS UPGRADE) the Acoustic Research website.

I loaded some gapless albums onto In his report, in the November 2016 isa microSD card and started listening. sue,3 on the Torreys firmware upgrade The first thing that struck me was for PS Audio’s DirectStream D/A that I was correct to have recomprocessor,4 Robert Deutsch wrote that he had noticed “an increase in resolumended this player as highly as I did last April. (That was a relief!) Its tion”—and at that, my ears pricked up. sound was smooth yet detailed, with I had purchased our original review palpable imaging and powerful low sample of this processor following Art frequencies. With a true gapless album Dudley’s favorable review in Septemsuch as Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were ber 2014,5 and I had upgraded it, in the Here (24/88.2k FLAC files, Harvest), summer of 2015, to the Yale operating all the transitions worked fine. The system, which I prefer to the earlier fadeout of the saxophone solo at the Pikes Peak and v.1.2.1 versions. As end “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” much as I enjoy the sound of the Dismoothly led into the industrial sounds at the start of “Welcome to the Machine,” and the crowd noises that end that track blended seamlessly into the flanged guitar riffs that start “Have d a Cigar.” I thought sometimes that B r I got a small “pop” when one track A was followed by the next, but it didn’t seem repeatable.

Acoustic Research had sent the AR-AC71A impedance adapter for ultra-sensitive IEMs ($69.99). This is Hz a nicely made 3.5mm stereo coupler with a series resistance of 100 ohms.

Fig.1 PS Audio DirectStream, spectrum with noise and spuriae of dithered 1kHz tone at –90dBFS DC– Though the plug didn’t give a consis10kHz, with 24-bit data with Yale OS (left channel tent connection with the player in its blue, right red) and Torreys OS (left green, right gray) (20dB/vertical div.; linear frequency scale). leather case, it proved useful with my 132

THIS ISSUE : Firmware updates for two digital audio components.

rectStream, I had always been bothered by the fact that its ultimate resolution was limited by its analog noise floor.

According to PS Audio, not only does the Torreys upgrade enable DirectStream DACs with the optional Bridge II network card to act as an endpoint for the Roon music management system,6 Torreys “further reduces DirectStream’s sensitivity to jitter, and adds proprietary resource-management within the [Field-Programmable Gate Array]. Other advancements include better low level linearity at low volume levels; improved gapless DSD support; improved sigma-delta modulators; and improved high-frequency noise performance.”

I am not a Roon user but these other benefits sounded tempting, and I installed Torreys on my DAC. The necessary files are packed into a Zip container that can be downloaded from PS Audio’s website. After the files are unpacked, they are copied onto an SD card which is inserted into the appropriate slot on the DAC’s rear panel, with the power off. When the power is then turned on, the DirectStream loads the new firmware from the SD card.

After the installation, you can check that it has been correctly installed by pressing the gearwheel icon at the top left of the front-panel display.

Before I did any listening, I performed a full set of measurements with my recalibrated Audio Precision SYS2722, but to my surprise, I didn’t find any differences. Fig.1 shows the spectrum of the DirectStream’s output

d B r A

Hz

Fig.2 PS Audio DirectStream, spectrum of 1kHz sinewave, DC–10kHz, at 0dBFS into 100k ohms with Yale OS (left channel blue, right red) and Torreys OS (left green, right gray) (20dB/vertical div.; linear frequency scale).

February 2017

Q

stereophile.com

MANUFACTURERS’ COMMENTS Magico S5 Mk.II Editor All of us at Magico send our thanks and appreciation for John Atkinson’s time and thorough review of the S5 Mk.II loudspeaker. We take great pride in carefully designing our own transducers, enclosures and dividing networks with the goal of providing the closest experience to that of live music.

A visit to our factory in Hayward CA is an exciting experience and unveils the entire production process, which includes CNC machining, full assembly, final testing and an incredible listening experience in our sound room. John has an open invitation to visit Magico as an honored guest.

We appreciate his recognition of our work dedicated to the development of the S5 Mk.II and we look forward to welcoming him at Magico when his Magico LLC schedule permits.

brought to the table by Bob Surgeoner.

In our opinion, Ken has very effectively captured the essence of the performance and design objectives behind the Iota Alpha as a serious and technically sophisticated loudspeaker, despite its size and cost. We are also particularly pleased that Ken took the opportunity to reflect on the Iota’s level of performance being compatible with a wide range of modestto high-performance electronics. Finally and perhaps most important, Ken’s assessment that the Iota brings with it musicality and a high fun factor at a modest price sums things up nicely. This has always been Bob’s objective and perspective as a musician-designer. After all, fun should be at the top of the reward list we strive to realize in high-performance audio. We look forward to bringing further awareness of NEAT Acoustics’ comprehensive range of rewarding loudspeakers in the future.

Paul Manos High Fidelity Services

NEAT Acoustics Iota Alpha Editor: High Fidelity Services would like to thank Ken Micallef and Stereophile for the very enthusiastic and positive review of NEAT Acoustics’ Iota Alpha loudspeaker.

We have embraced the rewarding privilege of distributing NEAT Acoustics products in the US for the last five years, and are genuinely enamored of the qualities of these internationally recognized loudspeakers. Further, we applaud and appreciate the pure passion, expertise, and musician’s perspective behind them

EAR Acute Classic

with the volume control set to its maximum with a dithered 24-bit 1kHz tone at –90dBFS with the Yale OS (blue and red traces) and Torreys OS (green, gray). The two sets of traces overlay exactly. Similarly, the spectrum with a full-scale, 24-bit 1kHz tone with Torreys (fig.2, green and gray traces) was identical to what I had found with Yale (blue, red), even down to the very low-level 100Hzspaced sidebands around each harmonic.

But when I listened to the PS Audio with the Torreys firmware, while the DirectStream DAC didn’t have the low-frequency authority that makes

the dCS Rossini Player I reviewed last December stand out from the crowd, I had to agree with Bob Deutsch. Even without greater measured resolution, it did indeed sound as if there was more resolution. I switched back between Torreys and Yale and back to Torreys and the impression of greater resolution with Torreys persisted. A paradox.

I wrote in a follow-up in the March 2015 issue,7 where I had found that the v.1.2.1 firmware had given measurable improvements in performance over the original v.1.1.4 firmware, “The new firmware is a gift to end users that will keep on giving.” Torreys is another such gift. Q

stereophile.com

Q

February 2017

Editor: I was completely baffled by Art [Dudley]’s assessment of the Acute Classic CD player. “[G]rainy” in no way describes what I have heard from any of EAR’s digital products—quite the opposite. I don’t mean to say that Art didn’t hear what he heard. Again, quite the opposite—I have the utmost respect for his hearing and his writing.

The fact that John Atkinson’s measurements corroborated what Art was hearing

ANY CLOD CAN HAVE THE FACTS; HAVING OPINIONS IS AN ART

THIS ISSUE :

Magico, NEAT Acoustics/ High Fidelity Services, and EAR USA respond to our reviews of their products.

was the first clue that something was wrong with this particular player. When I ran the measurements past Tim de Paravicini, he responded that the problem may very well lie in the output of the unit. JA measured a bit over 6.5V at the balanced outputs, a bit under 6.5V at the unbalanced outputs. Tim reports that the output should not be more than 5V, and that the distortion he measured could be due to this.

To be fair, please allow us to submit another sample of the player, so that you can publish a Follow-Up. I am certain that both your measurements and Art’s assessment of the Acute Classic will turn out differently.

Regarding the headphone output, its impedance was a deliberate choice on the part of Tim de Paravicini to accommodate professional headphones, which tend to be higher in impedance than domestic headphones. Conceding that most users of the Acute Classic are likely to own low-impedance headphones, he is taking your comments to heart. The impedance at the headphone output of all future units will be 5 ohms, and existing units can be easily converted should the customer desire.

Thank you.

Dan Meinwald, Proprietor EAR USA We have agreed to audition and measure a second sample of the EAR Acute Classic CD player, for a Follow-Up to be published in our March or April 2017 issue. —John Atkinson

1 See www.stereophile.com/content/acousticresearch-ar-m2-hi-rez-portable-player.

2 The AR-M2 originally cost $1199; as of November 2016, the price was reduced to $899; the AR-AC71A impedance adapter and the AR-LCM2 Brown Leather Sleeve each cost $69.99. Acoustic Research (a division of Voxx International), 3502 Woodview Trace, Indianapolis, IN 46268. Tel: (844) 353-1307.

Web: www.acousticresearch-hifi.com.

3 See www.stereophile.com/content/ps-audioperfectwave-directstream-da-processor-torreysupgrade.

4 The DirectStream DAC costs $5999. PS Audio, 4826 Sterling Drive, Boulder, CO 80301.

Tel: (720) 406-8946. Web: www.psaudio.com.

5 See www.stereophile.com/content/ps-audioperfectwave-directstream-da-processor.

6 See www.stereophile.com/content/roon-labsroon-v10-music-playback-app.

7 See www.stereophile.com/content/new-firmwaremeasurements.

133

NO O

C

Instantly achieve better sound from any USB DAC by utilizing iFi iUSB3.0 technology to separate your music signal from the noisy power signal.

iFi nano iUSB3.0 $199

iFi micro iUSB3.0 $399

800-449-8333 | MUSICDIRECT.COM

STEREOPHILE

ADVERTISER INDEX Acoustic Sounds Audeze Audio Advisor Audio Plus Services Audioarts AudioQuest

12-13, 36

Dynaudio

10

Kimber Kable

70

Ultra Systems

135

Elite Audio Video Distribution

98

MartinLogan

38

Upscale Audio

28

Morrow Audio

67

usedcable.com

135

Elusive Disc

22-23, 130

72

Emerald Physics

88

108

Emotiva Audio

118

Nagra

European Audio Team

120

Needle Doctor

C4 25 43, 73, 75

Fidelis Audio

Music Direct

30-31, 114, 134 4 19, 78-79, 80-81, 94, 106, 111, 116

71, 103, 120

Vandersteen Audio

74

Vas Industries

64

Vienna Acoustics

32

Vitus Audio

C2

Furutech

98

Oppo Digital

102

VooDoo Cable

135

Get Better Sound

76

Ortofon

69, 91

VPI Industries

84

65

Pass Laboratories

44

Wireworld

AXPONA

100

Bel Canto

54

Gifted Listener Audio

Better Records

67

Golden Ear Technology

49, 51

PrimaLuna

20

YG Acoustics

Bricasti Design

113

GTT AV

52-53

Pro-Ject Audio Systems

47

Ypsilon Electronics

Cable Company

16-17, 135

High Performance Stereo

CH Precision

35

JL Audio

Chord Electronics

42

Joseph Audio

Crystal Cable

C3

dCS

90

134

96 8, 9

Radial Engineering

104 6 92

40-41

Rogue Audio

64

66

Siltech

C3

JS Audio

86

Sonus Faber

14

KEF

68

Spendor Audio

26

THE AD INDEX IS PROVIDED AS A COURTESY. THE PUBLISHER IS NOT LIABLE FOR INCORRECT INFORMATION OR EXCLUDED LISTINGS. ADVERTISERS SHOULD CONTACT THEIR SALES REPRESENTATIVE TO CORRECT OR UPDATE A LISTING.

February 2017

Q

stereophile.com

DEALERS’ SHOWCASE ADVERTISING

MANUFACTURERS’ SHOWCASE ADVERTISING

Looking for a personalized gift for almost any occasion?

My Own Cover magazine covers are perfect for birthday gifts, holiday gifts, corporate recognitions, or celebrating a milestone.

Each magazine cover is as unique as the person on the cover.

JeadVY ndjg dlc e]didh 9Zh^\c \gZVi eZghdcVa^oZY XdkZgh DgYZg eg^cih id h]VgZ dg \^kZ Vh \^[ih

Create your own magazine cover and be a star.

www.myowncover.com

stereophile audio mart

AUDIO ART, est. 1976 – Edge-of-theart audio components dedicated to serving music. Aesthetix, AMG, Audience, Avalon, Ayre, Benz, Cardas, Clearaudio, Hegel, Jeff Rowland, Martin Logan, Music Hall, Pro-Ject Series, Rega, Shunyata, SME, Sonus Faber, Spendor, Vandersteen. (804) 358-5300, AudioArtUSA@aol.com, Richmond, VA. LONG ISLAND, NEW YORK – Audience, Audio Desk, Audio Physic, Audioquest, Avalon Acoustics, Berkeley Audio Design, Bryston, Cardas, Conrad-Johnson, Dali, Esoteric, Hegel, Jeff Rowland, Lyra, Martin-Logan, Oppo, Oracle Audio, Ortofon, Parasound, Plinius, Purist Audio Design, Siltech, SME, Stax, Symposium Acoustics, Tannoy Prestige, Thorens, Totem, VPI, Wireworld and many more. Large selection of fine preowned gear, quality trades welcome, analog guru on board. New York Sound & Vision (631) 321-8969 or visit www.newyorksoundandvision.com

Audiophile Essentials EDITOR CD PACKAGE shop.stereophile.com

136

YOUR AUDIO AUTHORITY

SUBSCRIBE AT STEREOPHILE.COM

February 2017

Q

stereophile.com

To advertise, contact Mark Aling â&#x20AC;˘ 289.828.6894 â&#x20AC;˘ emailing.mark@gmail.com

February 2017

Q

stereophile.com

137

AURAL ROBERT

THERE’S ONLY TWO KINDS OF MUSIC: THE BLUES AND ZIPPETY DOO-DAH. —TOWNES VAN ZANDT

BY ROBERT BAIRD “Judas, the most hated name in human history!

If you think you’ve been called a bad name, try to work your way out from under that. Yeah, and for what? For playing an electric guitar?”

—BOB DYLAN 2012.

Strangers in the Night

T

his year, as I began the hunt for my picks for the 2017 edition of “Records To Die For,” my eyes fell on a copy of an original stereo LP pressing of Blonde On Blonde in gorgeous shape, just scored from the internet. Of all the Bob eras, 1965–66 is easily my favorite. In casual conversation with Stereophile music editors, who regularly fall into stupors and think everything is a five-star record, I’ve been known to derisively say, “So . . . it’s ‘The White Album’? It’s Blonde On Blonde?”

Though I went with different but nearly as compelling choices for my 2017 R2D4s—sometimes, it’s about the listening adventure you’ve most recently been on—that stellar period of Dylan is revisited, perhaps too much so, on the new The 1966 Live Recordings box.

His 1966 tour of Europe is famous for being the first Dylan made after “going electric” at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Each concert of the tour began with Dylan performing a solo acoustic set. Then the Hawks, the embryonic version of the Band (sans Levon Helm), came out, plugged in, and backed Dylan for an electric set. The dates covered by this 36-CD boxed set have their own mythology, thanks to a heckler who screamed “Judas!” at the May 17 show in Manchester, which erroneously went down in history as “The Royal Albert Hall Concert, to which Dylan responded by turning to his band and very audibly telling them to play “fucking loud.” That moment became the highlight of Martin Scorsese’s Dylan documentary, No Direction Home (2005).

What’s really addictive here are the ways he combats the adversity of the semi-hostile crowds he faced throughout the tour. While tuning his acoustic guitar in one of the two May 20 shows in Edinburgh, Dylan snarls, with no small amount of bitterness, “My electric guitar never goes out of tune.”

As I listened to several shows in succession, the weariness and smoldering anger in Dylan’s voice and performances— the way he mockingly twists well-known lines of lyrics in resentful, despairing tones—was fascinating. It’s Dylan the performer at the peak of his powers, before crowds of once-adoring fans now semi-soured by his plugging in. And the sound, all but five dates sourced from soundboard tapes, is absolutely amazing: clear, undistorted, with incredible presence and richness, considering that the tapes are half a century old.

Some of these shows have been available for years via bootlegs. I remember a time, not too long ago, when buying a costly Italian or Spanish bootleg was akin to running a drug deal. Possessing bootlegs was illegal, and the fact that bands like Metallica periodically went on crusades against them made finding and buying boots a shady adventure.

But now it’s 2016, and the record labels and artists who 138

once fought such things—even if most bootleg buyers already owned everything officially released—have become their greatest purveyors. Warner Music has been releasing live shows from throughout Neil Young’s career. There have even been new Beatles live releases! And Sony Music deserves special mention for assiduously working with the estate of Miles Davis to release many previously unreleased live shows (some not previously bootlegged), as they have with our new Nobel laureate, the very-much-alive Robert Allen Zimmerman.

Oddly enough, the other incredible new boxed set is of live shows by Frank Sinatra.

As perhaps the two towering artists of their respective generations, Blind Boy Grunt and Old Blue Eyes are strangely linked by Dylan’s 2015 “Sinatra” record, Shadows in the Night, and by any measure, this new mass of live Sinatra is, like The 1966 Live Recordings, an unexpected landmark—a genuinely important, standout addition to an already monumental and preeminent catalog of popular music recordings.

World on a String, a set of four CDs and one DVD that is neither elaborately packaged nor prohibitively expensive ($52.59), begins with an unreleased show from Monte Carlo (1958) and unreleased Italian Radio performances (1953).

Both show Sinatra in fabulous voice, though the sound of the Monte Carlo show is occasionally thin and distorted.

Disc 2 features a 1961 concert in Sidney, Australia, previously available only as a bonus disc included in the Australian edition of the CD and LP versions of Ultimate Sinatra (2015).

In all of these performances, Sinatra’s voice is still the rich, expressive instrument he possessed throughout the 1950s.

By disc 3, however, the years of singing and smoking have caught up with him, and in a previously unreleased 1979 show from Egypt, recorded at the actual Pyramids of Giza, he struggles, eliciting more than a few winces. The sound of the Egypt show is also the worst of the set; clearly, it came from a lesser source than a soundboard tape. Happily, by disc 4, which documents the “Concert for the Americas,” held in 1982 in the Dominican Republic and previously available only on video, Sinatra’s confidence seems to have returned; clearly, he’d learned how to work within his vocal limitations. The DVD contains another wonderful show, from 1962 in Hibiya Park, Japan, and some, really fun to watch 90-second commercials for Perugina chocolate.

Bootlegs gone legal? In the wild world of selling music, what’s next (besides VR)—privately streamed concerts? Q Music Editor Robert Baird (RBaird@enthusiastnetwork.com) finds all this talk of having too many records patently absurd.

February 2017

Q

stereophile.com

World’s leading monocrystal cables

ABSOLUTE DREAM

triple crown

Siltech’s Triple Crown monocrystal cables revolutionized the musical accuracy of audio cables.

Now, Triple Crown has extended its family:

Taking the next step in absolute purity: from ABSOLUTE DREAM, the world’s first 100% monocrystal cable, to a whole new level:

triple crown

THE ULTIMATE DREAM

POWER

The ultimate POWER cable.

USA distribution by Audio Plus Services 800.663.9352 www.audioplusservices.com Canada distribution by Plurison 866.271.5689 www.plurison.com

Compact High-End All-in-One

Industry-Reference Hard-Disk Server

Uniti Atom is a beautiful, compact multi-source music player that will seduce you with its amazing sound quality and outstanding feature-set. Its 40-watt integrated amplifier and high-resolution music streaming capabilities with stunning highfidelity sound. New Uniti also gives you the option to sync up to six Uniti systems or other Naim streamers and play music from any source in multiple rooms simultaneously. Just add speakers.

Our Naim App for iOS and Android combines all of your music sources in one place, making Uniti Atom even more appealing.

Uniti Core represents the essence of digital music. It is a seriously powerful machine that will allow you to rip your entire CD collection, store up to 100,000 tracks, serve files to Uniti all-inone players or other Naim streamers and create a back-up for all of your music. You can also use Uniti Core as a standalone digital source. Simply connect it to a digital-to-analogue converter or an amplifier with digital inputs and control playback via the Naim app. Uniti Core is a no-compromise solution to ripping, storing, cataloguing and playing your entire music collection.

$2,995

$2,595

Google Cast

AirPlay

TIDAL

Spotify Connect

Multiroom

Bluetooth (aptX HD)

Internet Radio

UPnP

Digital Input

naimaudio.com USA • Distribution by Audio Plus Ser vices — CANADA • Distribution by Plurison

Analogue Output