The Ear's Best

4 In 1959, Sonny Rollins famously stopped recording and took to the Williamsburg Bridge for some lengthy practice sessions. Fifty years later, the audio industry has done much the same thing—it has taken a sabbatical from the headlong rush into new technologies and simply focused on getting better. While the industry produced nothing revolutionary in 2009, it nonetheless delivered some brilliant executions of familiar themes. This collection of JazzTimes’ Gear of the Year features my picks of the most exciting products in each category. Of course, there are many other new products from 2009 that also merit your attention, but these 11 are the ones that left the biggest impression on me. iHome iP1 iPod Speaker System Most iPod speaker systems look and sound as frazzled as a tenor saxophone that’s been dropped down a flight of stairs. The $299 iHome iP1 is a revelation both sonically and visually. All of the parts attach to the smoked plastic front baffle in a way that makes them look like they’re floating. The iP1’s base conceals four digital amplifiers, one each for its two 4-inch fiberglass-cone woofers and two 1-inch silk-dome tweeters—the same bi-amplified configuration you’ll find in a set of powered studio monitors. Bongiovi Acoustics’ Digital Power Station technology pumps up the sound on dull recordings, and a remote controls the iP1 and a docked iPod. www.ihomeaudio.com Sennheiser HD800 Headphones Headphone purists struggled with the HD800 the same way beboppers struggled with Ornette Coleman—many figured there was something good going on there, but they just couldn’t get their heads around it. What makes the $1,399 HD800 so different from other headphones is that its speaker diaphragms are mounted slightly forward of and away from the ear. This positioning attempts to produce a more natural presentation than the “music in your head” effect you get with conventional headphones. It really works: The HD800 sounds more like a real pair of speakers than any other headphones I’ve heard. The fundamental sound quality is also superb, thanks to the 56mm diaphragms, which Sennheiser says are the largest used in any headphone today. The HD800 is not very sensitive, though, so plan on using it with a decent headphone amplifier. www.sennheiser.com Oppo Digital BDP-83 Blu-ray Disc Player Audiophiles usually look down on video disc players, but they’re all agog over the BDP-83. Like Eric Dolphy, the BDP-83 plays lots of things extremely well. It’s one of the few machines that play both SACD and DVD-Audio, and it also plays Blu-ray Discs, DVDs and CDs. Its video quality when playing Blu-ray Discs and DVDs is extraordinary, matching that of $2,000 players. Its sound quality has won over even hardcore audiophiles, making it the perfect platform for the growing number of jazz Blu-ray Discs. And unlike many Blu-ray players, the BDP-83 doesn’t make you wait 45 seconds for a disc to eject; every operation is fast and smooth. It can’t stream content from online sources such as Netflix and Pandora, but otherwise the BDP-83 has everything the jazz fan could want in a Blu-ray Disc player. www.oppodigital.com SVSound PB-12 Plus Subwoofer Ron Carter fans may get excited at the prospect of a powerful new subwoofer, but if you only listen to upright bass through the PB-12 Plus, you won’t be tapping half its incredible capability. The $1,139 PB-12 Plus does absolutely everything anyone would want a subwoofer to do. Its 12.4-inch woofer and 525-watt amplifier deliver extraordinary punch; it reproduces even the explosive slaps of Darryl Jones with ease. Yet the PB-12 Plus’ muscle doesn’t overpower; it can also convey the subtlest touch of Carter’s fingers to his strings. At 25 inches deep and 127 pounds, the PB-12 Plus is undeniably bulky, but it’s also undeniably great. And it comes in at about half the price of most subs that can compete with it. www.svsound.com Onkyo HT-RC160 A/V Receiver The HT-RC160 incorporates Dolby’s Pro Logic IIz technology, which lets home-theater fans add two extra speakers above their front left and right speakers to create a greater sense of space. Even though Pro Logic IIz didn’t exactly set the world on fire, the $549 HT-RC160 has it if you want it, and it’s got a great sound and a solid feature package, too. DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD let you enjoy lossless 7.1-channel surround sound from Blu-ray Discs. Audyssey’s 2EQ technology automatically equalizes the sound to suit your room. A special port on the back accommodates optional iPod and iPhone docks or an HD Radio receiver. www.onkyousa.com Dali Fazon 5.1 Speaker System Home-theater speaker packages often compromise sound quality for looks and price. The Dali Fazon system isn’t cheap at $2,500, but neither is it expensive—and neither is it compromised. Each member of the quintet of 10-inch-high satellite speakers is built from rigid cast aluminum finished in high-gloss black or white lacquer. A sturdy gimbaled bracket lets you point the speakers anywhere you like, and they can be wall-mounted or placed on the included table stands. The accompanying Lektor subwoofer packs a 10-inch woofer driven by a 180-watt amplifier. The system looks fantastic and sounds remarkably clear and powerful, especially with vocals: It’ll work great whether you’re digging Jane Monheit or G.I. Jane. www.dali.dk TEAC AG-H600NT Reference Series Receiver To those uninitiated in the ways of high-end audio, the massive bulk and exotic designs of many audiophile components can seem intimidating. TEAC’s tiny Reference Series components provoke the opposite reaction—they’re as instantly accessible as “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.” The most exciting of the line is the $1,499 AG-H600NT receiver, one of the first high-end components to include Internet radio capability. Besides the 12,000-plus stations available through the Internet, you can also get AM and FM, plus iPod music through an optional dock. The AG-H600NT might look underpowered, but its 75-watt-per-channel digital amplifiers and robust internal power supply assure you’ll enjoy a realistic thwak every time Philly Joe Jones strikes his snare. www.teac.com Electrocompaniet Nordic Tone Model 1 Speaker The new speaker of 2009 I remember most fondly is the Electrocompaniet Nordic Tone Model 1, a $29,500-per-pair tower that anchored what I thought was the best-sounding room at the recent Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. The Nordic Tone Model 1 resulted from a project involving several Norwegian engineers and industrial designers; the electronics manufacturer Electrocompaniet has introduced it as its first speaker. The Model 1 sounds comfortably neutral, with no readily discernible sonic colorations or distortions in the bass, midrange or treble. It combines a technical excellence that will extract every last detail from modern recordings with a sweet, forgiving nature that won’t highlight the flaws in your old Charlie Parker records—a perfect marriage of science and soul. www.electrocompaniet.com Sonos Bundle 250 Multiroom Music System The last couple of years have seen the emergence of lots of devices that let you stream music wirelessly from a computer to any room in your home. But in my opinion, they’re all trying to catch up with the guys who got it right five years ago: Sonos. Sonos bases its systems around ZonePlayers that incorporate a wireless receiver and a stereo amp. The ZonePlayers can access any music stored on your computers, as well as Internet radio services and streaming services such as Pandora and Last.FM. Sonos’ new Controller 200 touchscreen only makes the system better. A full list of all your music comes up on the touchscreen. Just tap the artist, album or genre you want to hear and the music emerges from your speakers. The controller even shows cover art, and you can also use any iPhone or iPod Touch as a controller. The $999 Bundle 250 includes one Controller 200 and two ZonePlayers. More controllers and ZonePlayers can be added to expand the system. There’s no more convenient way to get Lady Day into your kitchen. www.sonos.com Zvox Z-Base 550 Soundbar System Most of the jazz fans I know spend a lot of time listening to music and little time watching TV and movies. And most suffer with the crummy sound of their TV’s built-in speakers because for them, hooking up a full home theater sound system doesn’t pay. The $399 Z-Base 550 is the perfect solution. It installs in about two minutes: Just place it under your TV and connect two cables. If your TV has a variable-level audio output (i.e., one that’s controlled by the TV’s remote), the Z-Base will work like it’s part of the TV set. Not only could your grandmother work this, your grandmother’s grandmother could work this. And the performance is almost embarrassingly good. Vocal clarity is superb, the surround-sound effect is convincing, and the bass is satisfying thanks to a 5-1/2-inch woofer. One L.A.-area sax player of my acquaintance actually prefers the sound of his Z-Base to that of his two excellent stereo systems. www.zvoxaudio.com PS Audio PerfectWave CD Transport Now that I think of it, there was a revolution in audio in 2009, although it was a small and quiet one. More and more CD players are starting to feed the digital audio data from CDs into a memory buffer. They then re-emit the digital bits with perfect timing, free of the fidelity-destroying jitter caused by the mechanical imperfections of the CD drive. My favorite of these new players is PS Audio’s $3,000 PerfectWave CD transport. The PerfectWave transport seems to extract the tiniest details from every CD; I’ve heard it demonstrated with and without the buffering, and the difference was easy to hear. It also has an Internet connection, which it can use to identify your CDs and display on its front panel the names of the artist, the album and the track. It also displays cover art in full color, so even if you’ve lost the jewel case to Jimmy and Wes: The Dynamic Duo, you’ll still get a chuckle over that shot of them eating the same sandwich. The transport emits digital signals only, so it has to be used in conjunction with a digital-to-analog converter such as PS Audio’s $3,000 PerfectWave DAC. Just you watch—in 2010, we’ll see a whole bunch of high-end CD players that mimic the PerfectWave’s great technology and user-friendly features. www.psaudio.com true

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2010-01-01T00:00:00-05:00

Brent Butterworth culls the most outstanding audio gear of 2009

The Ear's Best

2009-12-16T11:14:56-05:00

4 Talk to a tech pundit and you’d think the CD was as defunct as the film camera. Talk to someone at a hi-fi show and you’d think the CD was invented yesterday. While there’s no denying the slow commercial decline of the digital disc, there’s also no denying that it remains the primary format on which most of us buy and collect music. So it only makes sense that audio companies would continue to make CD playback better and more convenient than ever. WHAT’S THAT SONG? The CD players of today sound better than the ones of past decades, but until recently they all worked pretty much the same way: drop a disc in the drawer, hit play, listen to music, hit eject, repeat. The relatively recent migration of music to the computer makes this operation seem rather unfriendly—or, to be more accurate, uninformative. Computers can go out to the Internet, find out all sorts of things about the music you’re playing, and display it for you. With a conventional CD player, the most you usually get is a track number—not much help when you’re struggling to remember the name of the great standard that kicks off Sonny’s Way Out West. The hottest new CD players of 2009 are stealing some of the computer’s capabilities, displaying the artist name, the album title, the song titles and sometimes even the album art on a front-panel display. The most extravagant and exciting example of this trend is Boulder’s new 1021 disc player, a truly state-of-the-art machine that combines many of the best elements of the audiophile CD player and the computer. Slip Way Out West into the 1021 and you’ll see the name of the artist, the album and all of the track titles (leading off, of course, with “I’m an Old Cowhand”). Although the 1021 has an Ethernet jack for an Internet connection, it also includes a large internal database of information about thousands upon thousands of CDs, so you can enjoy its info-intensive display even if you don’t have a network connection at your audio rack. The 1021 uses its computing capabilities to deliver better sound, too. It employs a DVD drive mechanism, which allows it to read high-resolution audio data from CDs and DVDs. It reads the data from a disc into a memory buffer then sends it out from the buffer in perfectly pristine form, free of the jitter (or timing errors) that CD-drive mechanisms produce. The result is sound that’s probably as good as anyone has ever wrung from the CD. At $24,000, the 1021 is intended for use in the world’s most elite audio systems. But similar technology can be found in PS Audio’s $2,999 PerfectWave transport. Like the Boulder 1021, the PerfectWave feeds CD audio data into a buffer then emits it with the jitter removed. The PerfectWave’s front LCD displays all the same artist/album/song data, and adds the album art, so you when you’re listening to Way Out West you can see Sonny all decked out in a Stetson hat and a pistol belt. The PerfectWave Transport’s front display is an especially great feature for those who keep all their CDs in folders (or worse, in stacks) and toss the jewel cases into a closet. The PerfectWave Transport is just a transport—it doesn’t have an internal digital-to-analog converter (or DAC), so you’ll have to connect your own. PS Audio would of course suggest the matching PerfectWave DAC, which also runs $2,999. SERIOUS SOUND STORAGE Music storage devices—those that rip your CD collection onto an internal hard drive and play them back from there—have been around for years. The appeal is undeniable: You get the benefits of computer-sourced music without the hassle of having to use a computer. For the serious jazz fan, though, most music servers have been designed for multi-room systems that distribute sound throughout a home. Multi-room systems are usually built for background music, not for serious listening. But recently a few companies have been designing servers to go into high-end audio systems, with sound quality that holds up even through a $10,000 pair of speakers. The company that more-or-less originated these “serious servers” is Olive. It recently came out with its sexiest server yet: the Opus No. 4, which costs $1,499 to $1,799 depending on the size of the internal hard drive. Olive says the No. 4 is designed for super-silent operation. There’s no cooling fan, and the hard-disc drive is damped to keep it quiet, so even the faintest echoes on purist recordings like Chesky Records’ The Coryells won’t be drowned out by a whirring hard drive. The No. 4 also incorporates a high-quality digital-to-analog converter, so it should sound as good as many high-end CD players. The most exciting feature of the No. 4, though, is its front color display, which lets you browse your music collection by artist, album name, genre and playlist, and also shows cover art. Most servers like the No. 4 provide this information only through a TV screen, so the No. 4’s color display alone may be enough to seduce video-phobic audiophiles. The No. 4 can spread its magic far beyond your listening room, too. Place a $599 Melody No. 2 hi-fi multi-room player in another room, connect an amp and some speakers, and you can stream music from the No. 4 in the same pristine fidelity. The Melody No. 2 has a color screen just like the one on the No. 4, so you can control the music just as easily from the other room. Olive says a single No. 4 can stream to as many as 10 Melody No. 2s simultaneously, so you can listen to Count Basie in one room, Duke Ellington in a second, Fletcher Henderson in a third, etc., all from the same server. And both the No. 4 and the No. 2 feature a whimsical graphic treatment that looks more like the work of legendary Blue Note artist Reid Miles than like the plain “black box” designs of most servers. A similar product recently emerged from respected British high-end manufacturer Naim Audio. Naim’s HDX shares many traits with the Opus No. 4, including a front LCD display for easy browsing. The difference between the two is a usual one with higher-end products: the HDX is more advanced in construction and sound quality. The $8,250 HDX incorporates two 400-gigabyte Seagate hard drives chosen for their quiet operation. One is used entirely as a backup, so if either drive crashes you don’t lose one note of music. Naim is also famed for the sound quality of its CD players, and early reviews say that HDX sounds as good as the company’s best disc-spinners. You can also add a separate, isolated power supply to improve sound quality even further. The PR materials for the HDX stress that it’s a music player, not a music server—but it can, in fact, stream music to as many as six other networked devices. SPINNING IT OLD-SCHOOL If you just want to play your CD of Dexter Calling… and don’t want to come anywhere near this computer stuff, I feel for you. Fortunately, plenty of manufacturers are still putting out traditional “close ’n’ play” CD players that do their job without fancy technological trickery. In fact, some of the most interesting of the newer players are so old-school they actually use vacuum tubes. Why use tubes in a CD player? To warm up that sometimes-too-cool digital sound, of course. PrimaLuna’s ProLogue Eight might be the most tube-centric CD player ever devised. It uses four tubes in the output amplification stage and two more in the power supply, and it even uses a tube in the clock circuit that provides the timing signal for the CD drive and the internal DAC. All but the clock-circuit tube are on bold display atop the player. But like Herbie Hancock, the ProLogue Eight is simultaneously traditional and modern—its DAC converts the 16-bit/44.1-kilohertz digital audio from CDs up to the 24-bit/96-kHz resolution of DVD-Audio discs. Placing the Raysonic CD168 alongside ordinary audio gear is like standing the early 1970s Miles Davis next to the late-1950s Miles Davis. Like the ’70s Miles, the CD168’s over-the-top look is intended to get your attention, but beneath all the flash it still sounds great. This unusual, $2,549 top-loading player sports four output tubes surrounding a top-loading CD mechanism, all illuminated by bold blue LEDs. Even people who couldn’t care less about audio gear (let’s call them audiophobes) will be drawn to the CD168. Don’t worry if a couple thousand dollars isn’t in your budget. You’ll be happy to know that if your 10-year-old CD player’s on its last legs, you can probably find a much better-sounding replacement for the same price you paid back in 1999. Most of the companies still in the CD-player biz have a great passion for sound, and all can pull from a much better selection of high-quality, low-cost digital audio chips than they had a decade ago. Good-sounding players can run as low as $299, which is the price of NAD’s C515 overachieving C515BEE. No matter what your budget, there’s a CD player out there waiting for you to fall in love with it. CD FREE If you’re from the generation that believes CDs exist solely to be ripped into iTunes, the Chordette Gem may do more than any other product to upgrade the sound of your memory-stored music and make it easier to access. The $799 Gem interfaces with all sorts of digital devices. Its built-in Bluetooth capability lets you stream music from a Bluetooth-enabled iPhone (or other smartphone), iPod Touch or laptop computer to your audio system. You can also connect the Gem to a computer through its USB jack. The Gem can access your favorite Ella tunes three ways: from your computer hard drive, from Internet radio stations, and from streaming services like Pandora. No matter what you play, the Gem’s high-quality digital-to-analog converter will make it sound a lot better than it would with a direct connection to the computer or phone. Another great computer-centric audio product is the Sonos Multi-Room Music System, introduced a few years ago but constantly updated with new features and components. The system’s core unit is the $499 ZonePlayer 120, which connects to your home network and automatically accesses all your computer-stored music as well as Internet radio. Its internal 55-watt-per-channel digital amp powers a couple of speakers. Sonos’ latest options include the $349 CR200 wireless remote, which lets you browse all the music stored on all your computers—complete with cover art—from any room. And control through an iPhone or iPod touch is now possible thanks to free downloadable software. true

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Nearly three decades after their birth, CD players are still evolving.

New Spins on the Old CD

2009-10-08T17:18:26-04:00

4 Flip through a few magazines from the 1970s, and you might conclude that men were judged by the size of their stereos. Indeed, a towering rack (or two) of stereo gear once seemed as mission-critical as bushy sideburns and a Qiana shirt. While abundant facial hair and menswear woven from plastic could return someday, there’s no longer any need for complex stereo systems. The music lover of 2009 really requires only three things: an audiophile-grade CD player, a good integrated amplifier (or separate amp and preamp) and a high-quality pair of speakers. Now, some will contend that no real high-end stereo system is complete without a turntable. And you’ll almost certainly want a computer for downloading tunes and burning CDs. But for the majority of the home listening that most jazz fans do, a simple CD-based system does the trick. There’s a powerful upside to that simplicity, too: the fewer components you have, the better you can afford. To that end, we’ve assembled a trio of trios: three simple stereo systems at prices ranging from practical to profligate. You’ll find few familiar brand names here, but that’s by design. Just as hardcore scotch lovers often prefer a boutique brand like Bunnahabhain to a ubiquitous marque like Glenlivet, most audiophiles take great pride in owning gear that is unknown to the average Joe. THE BILL EVANS TRIO ($5K) While $5,000 might seem a generous sum for an audio system, such a budget demands compromise. A powerful amp in this range might not sound all that great. Ditto for a full-range tower speaker. But take heart, tight-budgeted jazz fans. Even if putting together a powerhouse system at this price might be tough, it’s not hard to spec a $5,000 stereo that has the elegance, delicacy and depth of Bill Evans’ classic trio with Paul Motian and Scott LaFaro. Many great budget systems center on a tube amplifier. Even inexpensive tube amps tend to have a sonorous, natural sound that lends itself well to classic jazz. However, most affordable tube amps put out a mere 20 or 30 watts. It seems to me that you ought to get more oomph for your $5K. It seems to have seemed that way to the engineers at Vincent Audio, too, because they’ve created an integrated amplifier that sounds great, oozes charisma, and costs just $1,299. The SV-226MKII integrated amp combines a tube preamp with a 100-watt-per-channel transistor power amp. You get the best of both worlds: the warm, involving sound of tubes and the power to drive practically any speakers you choose. It’s also the product of two worlds, or at least two countries, because it’s designed in Germany and manufactured in China. Cambridge Audio’s $1,095 Azur 740C CD player makes a perfect match for the SV-226MKII, both aesthetically and sonically. The 740C upsamples the 16-bit/44.1-kilohertz digital audio from CDs to 24-bit/384-kHz sound. It then converts the signal to analog using dual Wolfson digital-to-analog chips. The result is sound that’s smoother and more natural than what you’re probably used to hearing from CDs. You can also plug other digital audio sources into it, and it’ll upsample those, too. Keeping the price of the electronics low makes room for one of the biggest-sounding little speakers to hit the high-end audio market in years: the Usher Audio Be-718 Tiny Dancer. The 15-inch-tall, $2,795 Be-718 employs a tweeter dome made from beryllium, an exceptionally stiff yet light metal, and a 7-inch woofer that puts out surprisingly full bass. The “Dancer” in the name could refer to the way the Be-718’s tweeter makes percussion instruments dance between the speakers; you can actually hear Paul Motian’s brushes move as they slide across the cymbals. Sure, $2,795 might seem a lot to pay for such a small speaker. But given the Be-710’s expensive drivers, the high-end parts in its internal crossover circuit, its custom-designed internal wiring, and the rigidly built, wood-sided enclosure, many audiophiles consider the Tiny Dancer one of the greatest bargains in audio. We’re a hair over budget at $5,189, so if you want to expand beyond CDs, better do it on the cheap: Simply add an iPod dock such as Pro-Ject’s $199 Dock Box. Or do as many audio enthusiasts have done, and use Apple’s $229 Apple TV box to stream audio files wirelessly from the computer in your home office. THE WES MONTGOMERY TRIO ($10K) The smooth, hard-grooving guitar/organ/drums vibe that marks The Wes Montgomery Trio, the guitarist’s legendary album, is exactly the kind of sound I imagine when I think of MartinLogan speakers. Since its birth in 1982, this brand has become almost a generic term for electrostatic speakers, which replace the usual tweeter and midrange driver with a large, thin polyester diaphragm. The electrically charged diaphragm hangs between two metal grids, which connect to your amplifier through a transformer. Because the diaphragm’s suspended in the air rather than mounted in a box, the sound seems to float in space instead of emanating from speakers. MartinLogans have always ranked among my favorite speakers for live jazz recordings, because they erase the walls of my living room and transport me into a seat at one of the middle tables at the Village Vanguard. The $4,295/pair MartinLogan Vista specified for this trio combines an electrostatic panel with a potent 8-inch woofer to keep the bass groove pumping. At 57 inches high, this speaker commands attention visually and sonically. The company’s Custom Shop can even finish the Vista in practically any woodgrain or painted finish you choose. One downside to electrostatic speakers is that they can present a challenging load for an amplifier. A potent solid-state power source like Bryston’s $3,895 B100 SST integrated amp makes a safe match for any MartinLogan. Its high-current, 100-watt amplifiers won’t balk when connected to a 4-ohm speaker like the Vista. In fact, Bryston feels confident enough about the B100’s vigor to back it with a 20-year warranty. The amp’s modular design also makes it one of the world’s most versatile integrated amps: You can add an internal digital-to-analog converter and/or an internal phono preamp. Although Bryston makes a lovely CD player to go with the B100 SST, its $2,695 price busts our budget. Fortunately, there are lots of great CD players on the market with more modest tags. Some of them, like NAD’s Master Series M5, can also play the high-resolution SACD discs put out by many audiophile record labels. The $1,799 M5 has separate signal paths for CD and SACD, with each circuit optimized to get the best from each format. With balanced outputs, a full complement of digital outputs, and even surround-sound outputs, the M5 can hook into any audio configuration you could possibly assemble. And just in case you were wondering, The Wes Montgomery Trio is available on SACD, along with Bags Meets Wes and The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery. THE TONY WILLIAMS LIFETIME ($25K) When your audio system costs as much as a decent car, you expect it to be able to do anything. You want it to convey whispering soundscapes one minute and blistering improvisation the next, just as the power trio of Tony Williams, John McLaughlin and Larry Young does on the Tony Williams Lifetime classic Emergency!. When you’re talking stereo systems, the key member of a powerhouse trio is the speaker. It needs robust woofers to pump out powerful bass, yet it also needs a tweeter and midrange driver that can keep up. The best example I know of such a speaker is Monitor Audio’s Platinum PL300. Each of the $10,000/pair PL300s features dual 8-inch woofers that play deep and loud enough to handle even the most energetic outbursts of Williams’ bass drums. The PL300 counterbalances that muscle with a ribbon tweeter, which uses a wraithlike diaphragm possessing a mass less than one tenth that of typical printer paper. Ribbons are revered for both detailed treble and high output, and they help the PL300 deliver its exceptionally clear sound and spectacular stereo imaging. Audiophiles might be tempted to mellow the PL300’s somewhat forward presentation by mating it with a tube amp. Not just any tube amp can push the PL300’s big woofers, though. They demand something with serious oomph, like Rogue Audio’s $4,495/pair M-150 monoblock tube amplifiers. The four KT88 output tubes in each M-150 team up to deliver 150 watts of power. The M-150s need a preamp, and Rogue’s Perseus seems like the perfect choice for our simple system. The all-tube circuit in the $1,795 Perseus is packed with exotic parts, and the preamp’s simple yet striking industrial design may earn it almost as much love as its sound does. Audiophiles are notoriously conservative when faced with new technologies, but there is one recently introduced product category they’ve embraced with gusto: the music server. Music servers hold your entire music collection on a hard drive, then let you browse through it on a TV screen or on a dedicated touchscreen controller. Of course, you can do this with a computer, too, but no computer presents as graceful and friendly an interface as the Qsonix 110 offers. The 110’s colorful touchscreen lets you flip through your music collection as easily and comfortably as you did back in the days of vinyl records. It rips up to 18,000 CDs through its built-in CD drive, and also lets you buy high-resolution music files through the MusicGiants download service (which is like an audiophile version of iTunes). Qsonix packages start at $6,700. While the Qsonix server sounds quite good on its own, serious audio enthusiasts will want to bring the sound quality up to world-class by adding an external digital-to-analog converter like Bel Canto’s $2,495 e.One Dac3. That pushes us up to $25,485, but at this level, an extra five bills seems a reasonable sum to spend in the pursuit of perfection. Of course, you can take the trio concept even higher; I’ve heard CD/amp/speaker combos costing more than $200,000. But for the average jazz fan, any of the three trios we’ve put together can deliver stunning performances, night after night after night. true

11251

2009-10-08T16:15:24-04:00

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Flip through a few magazines from the 1970s, and you might conclude that men were judged by the size of their stereos. Indeed, a towering rack (or two) of stereo gear once seemed as mission-critical as bushy sideburns and a Qiana shirt. While abundant facial hair and menswear woven from plastic could return someday, there’s no longer any need for complex stereo systems. The music lover of 2009 really requires only three things: an audiophile-grade CD player, a good integrated amplifier (or separate amp and preamp) and a high-quality pair of speakers. Now, some will contend that no real high-end stereo system is complete without a turntable. And you’ll almost certainly want a computer for downloading tunes and burning CDs. But for the majority of the home listening that most jazz fans do, a simple CD-based system does the trick. There’s a powerful upside to that simplicity, too: the fewer components you have, the better you can afford. To that end, we’ve assembled a trio of trios: three simple stereo systems at prices ranging from practical to profligate. You’ll find few familiar brand names here, but that’s by design. Just as hardcore scotch lovers often prefer a boutique brand like Bunnahabhain to a ubiquitous marque like Glenlivet, most audiophiles take great pride in owning gear that is unknown to the average Joe. THE BILL EVANS TRIO ($5K) While $5,000 might seem a generous sum for an audio system, such a budget demands compromise. A powerful amp in this range might not sound all that great. Ditto...

Power Trios: Sweet Speakers, A Solid Amp and a Smooth CD Player Are All You Need For Great Stereo Sound

2009-10-08T16:17:06-04:00

4 Quick—name three jazz artists. Who’d you pick? Bird? Miles? Hub? It’s a pretty safe bet you didn’t pick Jimmy Cobb or Paul Chambers. Great as they are, they’re best known as sidemen. They seldom get the recognition that the hotshot saxophonists and trumpeters tend to receive. Amplifiers and preamplifiers are like the sidemen of the stereo world. The sexier components—the speakers, the turntable and the CD player—often attract most of the attention and innovation. Meanwhile, amps and preamps often sit unnoticed in an equipment rack, humbly doing their jobs. However, amps and preamps are no less important than any other component in a system. In fact, they might even be more important than jazz sidemen. After all, you can play a gig without a drummer, but you can’t play a CD without an amp. Nor can you put together a truly great stereo system without knowing something about amplifiers and preamplifiers. The subject might seem simple; after all, amps and preamps pretty much just boost audio signals. But there are a surprising number of differences among these products—and there’s a lot more controversy about them than you might expect. The Basics The first thing to know about amps is that there are two basic types: amplifiers (or power amplifiers) and preamplifiers. Amplifiers are simple in function; all they do is boost an audio signal so it can drive speakers. In fact, many amps have no controls other than a power switch. Preamplifiers are more complicated. Although they can raise an audio signal’s level a little bit, their main jobs are to control volume and to select which audio source you’re listening to. There’s also a device called an integrated amp, which combines an amplifier and a preamp in a single box for the sake of simplicity and lower cost. Finally, there’s the receiver, which is an integrated amp with a radio tuner built in. Most of today’s receivers have surround sound built in, but for this article, we’re going to focus on stereo systems. There’s one thing we have to clear up right now before we go any further. You will find a few crusty old coots out there who swear all amplifiers and preamplifiers sound the same. To them, they probably do. But you can also find people who say all vodkas taste the same. I once heard someone say George Benson and Wes Montgomery sound the same. There will always be those who just don’t get it, but the general consensus among audio experts is that amplifiers do sound different—and preamps do, too. Sometimes the differences can be subtle, and sometimes they are overstated, but many audiophiles consider them as important as the differences among speakers. Stop by a good high-end audio shop and listen for yourself. They’ll be happy to give you a demo. Amplifier ABCs As simple as the power amplifier may seem, it comes in a dizzying variety of types. You can buy amps that handle just the left or right channel, and amps that handle as many as 16 different channels. We’ll limit this discussion to one- and two-channel amps. Some audiophiles prefer two single-channel (or monoblock) amps to a stereo amp, to minimize any interference between the left and right channels. The basic specification of any amplifier is its power output, which is given in watts per channel. A lot of people think you need at least 100 watts per channel for a serious stereo system, and that more is always better. But that’s like saying Hawk was better than Prez because he played louder; many of the amps most loved by audiophiles put out less than 20 watts per channel. Truth be told, you only need a watt or two of power to drive a typical speaker to a normal listening level. The big amps are usually necessary only for large listening rooms and home theaters, and for driving tower speakers with multiple large woofers. For audiophiles, the biggest decision when choosing an amplifier is whether to go with a transistor (solid-state) model or a vacuum-tube design. Tubes are praised for a warm, natural sound, while transistors are known for a crisp, powerful sound. Through the years, the two have moved closer together—the transistor amps sound smoother, and many tube amps have become more robust. There have even been some amps that use tubes in the input stage and transistors in the output stage. Transistor amps come in all sorts of “classes.” The differences between them are rather arcane, but here’s what you need to know. Class A amps have a reputation for the best sound, but they generally run hot and cost dearly. (A great example is Esoteric Audio’s $12,000 A-03.) Most of the amps on the market now are Class B (or AB), which is a reliable and powerful technology. Class D amps run cool but put out crazy amounts of power—1,000 watts into 4 ohms, in the case of Bel Canto’s e.One REF1000 MkII. Class G and H amps combine the sound of analog circuitry with the cool-running efficiency of Class D amps. Tube amps come in two basic varieties: single-ended and push-pull. Single-ended means the same thing as Class A, but the term single-ended is more commonly used in the tube realm. Few of these amps produce much power; a classic example is Cary Audio’s 15-watt CAD 300SE signature monoblock, which is modeled on amps that were common in the heyday of Fletcher Henderson. In fact, some can muster only 3 to 5 watts. In most cases, you’ll need to use super-sensitive horn speakers to get usable volume from these amps. Many audiophiles consider single-ended tube amps the only true path to natural sound. However, the majority of tube amps available today are of push-pull design, using one or more tubes for the positive half of the audio signal, and a matching complement of tubes for the negative half of the signal. Push-pull tube amps usually put out at least 30 watts per channel, and many deliver 100 watts or more. One thing to keep in mind with tube amps is that tubes don’t last forever. They eventually burn out—in a year if you run them hard, or maybe five if you pamper them. Then you’ll need to replace them, which is a task you can handle. Manufacturers such as VTL even include circuitry that tells you which tube is faulty. Many audiophiles engage in a practice called “tube rolling,” in which they experiment with different tubes in pursuit of better sound. The only feature you normally need to be concerned about in a power amp is its inputs. All amps designed for home use have RCA (unbalanced) input jacks. Some also have XLR (balanced) input jacks, like the microphone inputs you see on a mixer. If your preamp offers XLR outputs, you’ll probably want an amp with XLR inputs. Amps are available at all sorts of prices, from a couple hundred dollars to tens of thousands. Because there aren’t usually any features associated with amps, what you’re paying for when you pay more is generally more power and better sound quality. Preamp Ps and Qs Choosing a preamp can be less critical than choosing an amplifier. There are no power ratings to worry about. You can choose from tube and transistor amps, but that’s just a sonic preference. Single-ended or Class A preamps are common, and they don’t present the downsides that single-ended or Class A power amps do. And the tubes in preamps don’t carry much power, so they tend to last a long time; I got 10 years of life out of a set of tubes in a lovely old Conrad-Johnson preamp I once owned. Once you’ve made the tubes vs. transistors decision, your next concern is the preamp’s features. What features you need depends on what sources are in your system. You’ll need at least one input per source device (i.e., CD player, AM/FM tuner, computer, etc.), plus one or two spare inputs in case you add more sources. If you have a record player, you may want to get a preamp with a built-in phono stage. (If you fall in love with a preamp that doesn’t offer that option, don’t worry—outboard phono stages are available.) If your CD player or phono stage has XLR balanced outputs, you’ll probably want a preamp with XLR inputs to match, such as Parasound’s Halo P3. Watch this year for a new crop of preamps that can even dock directly with an iPod, an iPhone or a computer. All preamps come with a volume control, but surprisingly, there’s a big difference among volume controls. Traditional preamps use a potentiometer, or variable resistor, as the volume control. Some high-end preamps use a multiposition switch that accesses individual resistors; many audiophiles feel this delivers better sound. Still, others control volume with a digital volume control, which switches resistors through a digital multiprocessor. As we stated above, many preamps have a balance control and some have tone controls. Most include a remote control. Some have outputs for headphones or a subwoofer. For most people, none of these features is really a must-have, but they might prove convenient for you. Chasing Convenience Audiophiles generally prefer to keep all of their components separate, but not all of us have the space or budget for separates. Fortunately, the audio industry offers simpler, less-costly options: the integrated amp and the receiver. Although both products have some compromises—for example, the amp and the preamp use the same power supply—many of them deliver superb sound. And why not? If Rahsaan Roland Kirk could play three instruments at once, why can’t a single-chassis audio product provide both power and control? Shopping for an integrated amp or receiver is like shopping for an amp and a preamp at the same time. You’ll be concerned about whether it uses tubes or transistors; how powerful the amplifier section is; how many and what type of inputs the preamp section has; and whether or not the preamp has a phono stage. The radio sections of most receivers are pretty much the same—most use generic radio tuning chips and offer enough station-memory presets for anyone. Many people started their journey into audiophilia with NAD’s small, inexpensive 3020 integrated amp, which debuted the same year Wynton Marsalis did (1978, if you don’t remember). The 3020’s 28-watt-per-channel amp section didn’t shake any floors, but its clean sound won it a lot of fans. NAD’s new $349 C315BEE looks much like later versions of the 3020, but ups the power to 40 watts a side. It makes the perfect pint-sized power source for an entry-level audio system. Although the 3020 and similar products gave the integrated amp a rep for anemic power, many of today’s integrateds deliver enough juice to drive practically any speaker. A great example is Krell’s S-300i, which puts out 150 watts per channel—and includes an iPod interface to boot. I’ve found the S-300i adequate to drive my 200-pound tower speakers to deafening volumes. Stereo receivers used to dominate the hi-fi market, but the growth of surround sound nearly eliminated them as a product category. But surprisingly, stereo receivers have seen a renaissance recently, with many new models such as the art deco-styled Outlaw Audio RR2150. Marantz is one of the few manufacturers that never gave up on the category; its latest stereo receiver is the SR4023, an 80-watt-per-channel receiver that at $499 is surprisingly affordable. You can get decent sound out of any good amplifier, but audiophiles and dealers agree that the best systems are those that match the sound qualities of the speakers with the sound qualities of the amp, preamp, CD player, etc. Whether you base your system around a favorite speaker or around a classic tube amp you just can’t resist, talk to your dealer or chat on some of the audiophile forums to find the most synergistic systems. You’ll find that choosing the right amp and preamp can be just as important as choosing the right bass player and drummer. true

11251

2009-04-20T11:08:33-04:00

false

24602

174

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2009-05-01T00:00:00-04:00

Amplifiers and preamplifiers don’t get much attention—but they’re essential to your system’s sound

Quick—name three jazz artists. Who’d you pick? Bird? Miles? Hub? It’s a pretty safe bet you didn’t pick Jimmy Cobb or Paul Chambers. Great as they are, they’re best known as sidemen. They seldom get the recognition that the hotshot saxophonists and trumpeters tend to receive. Amplifiers and preamplifiers are like the sidemen of the stereo world. The sexier components—the speakers, the turntable and the CD player—often attract most of the attention and innovation. Meanwhile, amps and preamps often sit unnoticed in an equipment rack, humbly doing their jobs. However, amps and preamps are no less important than any other component in a system. In fact, they might even be more important than jazz sidemen. After all, you can play a gig without a drummer, but you can’t play a CD without an amp. Nor can you put together a truly great stereo system without knowing something about amplifiers and preamplifiers. The subject might seem simple; after all, amps and preamps pretty much just boost audio signals. But there are a surprising number of differences among these products—and there’s a lot more controversy about them than you might expect. The Basics The first thing to know about amps is that there are two basic types: amplifiers (or power amplifiers) and preamplifiers. Amplifiers are simple in function; all they do is boost an audio signal so it can drive speakers. In fact, many amps have no controls other than a power switch. Preamplifiers are more complicated. Although they can raise an audio signal’s level a little bit,...

The Sidemen of the System

2009-04-23T12:24:20-04:00

4 Some music fans just hate movies. And after perusing a few of Hollywood’s recent tours de force, who among us would blame them? Still, it seems unfair to pamper your ears with Charles Lloyd’s latest while giving your eyes nothing to savor except a few liner notes. If you’re not into home theater, you’re missing out on some fantastic entertainment. Most of us never got a chance to see Monk or Wes or Trane, but we can watch them on DVD any night we want. Almost every major jazz artist has at least one or two DVDs out; some have a dozen or more. It’s a darned shame to hear the soundtracks of these DVDs through the crummy speakers built into your TV—and the newer and slimmer your TV is, the crummier its speakers probably sound. Technophobes might object that home-theater systems are absurdly complex and ridiculously bad-sounding. Such protests aren’t without merit, but thanks to recent technological advances, those problems are fading. Modern home-theater systems can be as easy to set up and operate as any stereo. Some experts say that home-theater systems now match the sound quality of top high-end music systems. And a few beleaguered iconoclasts (your author included) insist they can be even better. After all, home-theater technology improves on a yearly basis; stereo audio technology doesn’t. Join me on a brief tour of the latest goings-on in the world of home theater and see if you don’t agree. Removing the Room Like saxophones and flutes, rooms are resonators: They emphasize certain frequencies of sound and diminish others. No matter how good your audio system might be, the room will degrade its performance substantially. A really bad room could make even an avant-gardist like Anthony Braxton sound lifeless. For decades, engineers have fought this problem with graphic equalizers, but most audiophiles feel EQs create more problems than they solve. Fortunately, digital audio technology has finally come to the rescue. The power of the digital signal processor (DSP) chips inside today’s surround-sound receivers has increased substantially in the last five years, and some audio companies are harnessing this extra processing horsepower to compensate for the effects of room acoustics. The process is simple: Plug an included microphone into the receiver, place the mic in your listening position, activate the receiver’s automatic room EQ mode, and leave the room for a few minutes. When you come back, the receiver will have automatically optimized the sound for your room. Because the processing is done in the digital domain, auto-EQ avoids many of the sonic problems that old-style analog equalizers introduced. It can even compensate for the flaws in your speakers. (Even the very best speakers aren’t perfect. Nope, not even yours. No matter what you paid for them.) The leader in this field is Audyssey Laboratories, which has licensed its MultEQ technology to several big-name audio manufacturers, including Denon, Marantz, NAD and Onkyo. Some other companies, such as Anthem Electronics, Lexicon and Pioneer, have cooked up their own auto-EQ schemes. Audio experts are still debating the merits of auto-EQ; some feel that a good acoustician or system designer can deliver better results. However, if you’re installing your system yourself (or if your professional installer isn’t an acoustics expert), auto-EQ will probably make your home-theater system sound so much better. Groovin’ High Most of today’s surround-sound receivers offer 7.1 channels of sound: front left, center and right, a subwoofer, and pairs of surround speakers in the sides and rear. But almost no one hooks up all four surround speakers. One audio industry executive recently told me that only 10 percent of his customers who own 7.1 receivers use all 7.1 channels. Rather than let those two extra channels go unused, Dolby Laboratories, the company most responsible for the change from 5.1 to 7.1, figured it was time to find a better use for them. After exhaustive experimentation with practically every conceivable speaker configuration, Dolby’s engineers came up with Pro Logic IIz, a scheme that adds two front height channels instead of (or in addition to) the two extra surround channels. Dolby’s announcement of Pro Logic IIz at January’s Consumer Electronics Show met with both enthusiasm and derision. For me, the demo was way too brief to draw any conclusions, so I recently traveled to Dolby’s headquarters in San Francisco to get a better listen. I’ll confess that I wasn’t expecting to be impressed, and maybe they slipped something into my Diet Coke during lunch, but I came away thinking that Pro Logic IIz is the biggest advance in surround sound since 5.1. Although it’s intended mainly for gaming, Pro Logic IIz delivers stunning results with both movies and music. When I switched on the height speakers, the sound really opened up. With concert recordings, PLIIz delivered the feel of a live venue, even though I was sitting in a listening lab no larger than a typical bedroom. When I went back to ordinary 5.1 or 7.1, the sound seemed to collapse. Even stereo CDs can benefit from the PLIIz treatment. With simple recordings such as solo piano, PLIIz usually does little or nothing. With more reverberant recordings or larger ensembles, though, its effect is both dramatic and natural. Only ambient sounds emerge from the height speakers, so you don’t have to worry that you’ll hear Freddie Hubbard blaring at you from the ceiling. Dolby says the height speakers should be installed at least three feet above your front left and right speakers. The same speaker you use for your surround channels should work just fine as a height speaker. In most living rooms, installing the two height speakers is easier than installing two more surround speakers all the way at the back of the room. Ridicule the prospect of a 9.1-channel surround-sound system if you will, but take it from someone who’s heard it: Pro Logic IIz will be a huge hit with home-theater fans. Expect PLIIz-equipped receivers to debut this spring, starting with six models in the Onkyo line. Belly Up to the Bar Some audio-industry insiders have criticized Pro Logic IIz for adding unnecessary complexity to today’s already byzantine home-theater systems. But the speaker industry has a solution to the complication: the soundbar. Soundbars combine all the speakers in a surround system into a single cabinet. Just place a soundbar under your TV and your setup is done. No more cumbersome wire runs. No more complicated calibration. Demanding home-theater enthusiasts might add “no more good sound” to that list, and two years ago, they’d have been right. But the entry of several respected audio brands into the soundbar market has changed things. Today’s best soundbars deliver such high fidelity and such a convincing surround-sound effect that installing a conventional 5.1 speaker system in a smaller space like a bedroom or a cozy den now seems silly. Two of the best soundbars come from sister companies Polk Audio and Definitive Technology. Polk’s SurroundBar series and Definitive’s Mythos SSA line both use a technology called Stereo Dimensional Array, or SDA, which tricks your ears into thinking you’re hearing surround sound. The two brands employ separate engineering teams, so the products have their own distinct design and tonality, but both have won acclaim for their sound quality and simplicity. Neither will wow you with its stereo sound, but they provide surprisingly satisfying reproduction of soundtracks from concert DVDs and action movies. Many other speaker companies are following suit, most notably the storied B&W brand, which will launch its $2,200 Panorama soundbar this spring. The Panorama’s aluminum chassis houses nine drivers and six digital amplifiers. Best of all, B&W says it doesn’t require a separate subwoofer, as most soundbars do. You don’t necessarily have to spend thousands on a soundbar, though. Zvox Audio makes several nice-sounding models that sell for as little as $400. The company’s new $499 Z-Base 550 twists the soundbar concept a bit by placing all the speaker drivers in a 3-inch-high base that fits under your TV. It sounds gratifyingly full, thanks to its integral 5.25-inch woofer. Power Projectors Real home-theater aficionados will tell you that real home-theater begins with a front projector. Modern projectors deliver bright pictures even on screens measuring 10 feet across—and some look good even on a 15-foot screen. The image they deliver is more cinematic than any flat-panel TV can muster. However, until recently, a high-performance projector commanded a price of $20,000 or more, and required a lengthy and expensive professional calibration. Last year saw the emergence of several affordably priced projectors that can easily fill a 10-foot screen with crisp, dazzlingly bright images. And while any front projector is considerably more complicated to install than a flat-panel TV, these demand only a cursory tweaking to produce a nearly perfect picture. Two such standouts are Sony’s VPL-VW70 and JVC’s DLA-HD750. Both come in at a reasonable $7,999, and both use the same core display device: LCoS, or Liquid Crystal on Silicon, chips. (Each company has its own proprietary take on the technology.) Point either of these projectors at a high-quality screen, and after a half-hour or so of basic adjustments, you’ll be rewarded with a picture that’s so good you’ll wonder if it’s worth going to the movies anymore. Hell, cue up Robert Mugge’s awesome DVD documentary Sonny Rollins: Saxophone Colossus, and staying out late for concerts might even start to lose its appeal. Those who’d rather devote most of their budget to audio gear also have great options. On a smaller screen—say, seven or eight feet—the lower-priced projectors from such companies as Epson, Mitsubishi and Optoma can look pretty fantastic. Epson’s PowerLite Home Cinema lists for just $2,999, yet it throws a dazzlingly detailed 1080p picture. Its lens-shift feature makes it easy to set up even if you’ve never laid hands on a projector in your life. Get the BluS The high-definition Blu-ray Disc format got a rough start. First, it had to fight off the competing HD-DVD format, which finally went to its grave in early 2008. Then it suffered from seemingly constant changes in its technical standards; one reviewer I know joked that you have to update your Blu-ray player’s firmware for every new disc you buy. But after a rocky debut, Blu-ray’s finally coming into its own. At long last, the technical standards seem to have settled into a firm set of rules that won’t be changing every year. The players have dropped below $200, and prices are expected to fall below $150 as more off-brand Chinese manufacturers enter the market. Even most non-techies now know that Blu-ray delivers the sharpest picture available today. Most discs offer 1080p resolution, which is even better than you can get from digital TV broadcasts. What most people don’t know, though, is that Blu-ray is also the most high-resolution audio format you can buy. Producers can use the lossless audio technologies Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio to encode as many as eight tracks of 24-bit/96-kilohertz audio. (Compare that to 16-bit/44.1-kilohertz audio on CDs.) What you hear with both the Dolby and DTS technologies is a bit-for-bit recreation of what the engineers heard in the studio—there’s none of the fidelity loss you get with MP3 compression. Only a few jazz Blu-ray titles are currently available, including discs from Pat Metheny, Chris Botti and Tony Bennett. The one that’s worth buying a Blu-ray player for is Legends of Jazz: Showcase, a collection of highlights from Ramsey Lewis’ PBS TV series. Some of the performances—most notably Jane Monheit and John Pizzarelli performing “Obsession”—have already become staple surround-sound demos. Expect the list of jazz titles to grow as Blu-ray’s falling prices attract more buyers. And even if you exhaust the entire catalog of Blu-ray music titles, I promise that watching Iron Man on Blu-ray will blow away even the most Hollywood-hating music fan. true

11251

2009-03-25T14:59:04-04:00

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true

2009-04-01T00:00:00-04:00

Recent advances may turn music diehards on to home theater

Some music fans just hate movies. And after perusing a few of Hollywood’s recent tours de force, who among us would blame them? Still, it seems unfair to pamper your ears with Charles Lloyd’s latest while giving your eyes nothing to savor except a few liner notes. If you’re not into home theater, you’re missing out on some fantastic entertainment. Most of us never got a chance to see Monk or Wes or Trane, but we can watch them on DVD any night we want. Almost every major jazz artist has at least one or two DVDs out; some have a dozen or more. It’s a darned shame to hear the soundtracks of these DVDs through the crummy speakers built into your TV—and the newer and slimmer your TV is, the crummier its speakers probably sound. Technophobes might object that home-theater systems are absurdly complex and ridiculously bad-sounding. Such protests aren’t without merit, but thanks to recent technological advances, those problems are fading. Modern home-theater systems can be as easy to set up and operate as any stereo. Some experts say that home-theater systems now match the sound quality of top high-end music systems. And a few beleaguered iconoclasts (your author included) insist they can be even better. After all, home-theater technology improves on a yearly basis; stereo audio technology doesn’t. Join me on a brief tour of the latest goings-on in the world of home theater and see if you don’t agree. Removing the Room Like saxophones and flutes, rooms are resonators: They emphasize certain...

Visual Aids

2009-04-03T10:40:42-04:00

4 Practically everybody knows about the Consumer Electronics Show, which occurs every January in Las Vegas. Network news is packed morning and night with segments about the latest gadgets at CES. Celebrities appear by the dozens to check out the latest technologies. Thousands of journalists swarm around new TVs, cell phones, digital cameras and computers. Beyond the brouhaha at the Las Vegas Convention Center, though, there’s an entirely different side of CES that you’ll never see on The Today Show. The High-Performance Audio and Home Theater portion of CES takes over much of five floors in the main tower of the Venetian Hotel and many of the hotel’s meeting rooms. In 2009, the Venetian attracted more than 300 exhibitors. Combine that with another 90 or so exhibitors at the Home Entertainment Show, a competing exposition at the Alexis Park hotel, and you have what is surely the world’s largest display of high-end audio products. Since TV’s talking heads neglected to show you the wonders of CES’s audio exhibits, we’ll give you a personal tour. We’ve picked a few favorites from the hundreds of specialty audio manufacturers quietly plying their trade a mile and a half from the meshugas at the Convention Center. (Actually, they didn’t ply their trade all that quietly.) Starting at the Source Technological innovation doesn’t come easily to audio these days, but CES did reveal one major, and most welcome, trend in the high-end. More and more manufacturers are now making it possible to interface their elite gear with decidedly non-elite computers and network-attached storage (NAS) drives. Our favorite example of this trend was PS Audio’s $2,999 PerfectWave DAC digital-to-analog converter. Like other digital-to-analog converters, the PerfectWave DAC connects to CD players and other conventional audio sources. However, it also has an Ethernet connection that lets it play music from any computer or hard drive on your network, as long as the device is compatible with the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) standard. Suddenly, your high-end audio system becomes as versatile as your computer—but a lot better sounding, of course. To complement the DAC, PS Audio offers the $2,999 PerfectWave Transport. The Transport stores audio from a CD in memory temporarily, then feeds the digital signals from the memory to the DAC. This extra step practically eliminates the timing errors (or “jitter”) that mar the sound of many CD players. The transport’s front display shows cover art and song/artist/album information, so when you play Mack the Knife: The Complete Ella in Berlin, she’ll be beaming out at you from the front panel. Esoteric Audio brings computer compatibility to a much more … well, esoteric level in its new D-01VU monoblock digital-to-analog converter. The D-01VU includes a USB connector that can source digital music from a computer. In order to maximize sonic purity, each D-01VU outputs only a single channel of sound, so you need two for stereo. A pair costs $26,000—quite a contrast with the $350 Acer Aspire netbook computer Esoteric was using as a program source. New Record (Players) Vinyl records never lost their popularity among audiophiles, so it was no surprise to see several interesting new turntables at CES. One of the most interesting new models was the Xtension, a new high-end model from Pro-Ject. Pro-Ject is best known for turntables in the $350 price range, so the Xtension’s $6,000 tag surely came as a shock to CES attendees. With its wooden deck, the Xtension looks like an updated version of Linn’s decades-old Sondek LP12, widely considered the first “good” turntable and still regarded by many as the best. The deck floats on four sets of opposing magnets, isolating the works from ground-borne vibration. Opposing magnets also help ease the load on the bearing under the 25-pound platter. A carbon-fiber tonearm is included. German manufacturer Montegiro takes a totally different tack with its $31,527 Lusso turntable, which looks more like the spawn of Philippe Starck than the creation of an audio engineer. Alternating layers of black aluminum and acrylic create a stable, non-resonant platform. The turntable’s motor is suspended inside one of the support cones. Each of the other two cones holds a tonearm; a 10-inch carbon arm and a 9-inch SME tonearm come standard. Koetsu’s new Coralstone Platinum phono cartridge embodies a more organic aesthetic: Its body is hand-carved from petrified coral. A platinum magnet and silver-plated wiring elevate the Coralstone’s sound. At $15,000, it is one of the most expensive phono cartridges ever created, and it is surely the most beautiful. What better treatment could you give that vinyl copy of A Love Supreme that you only dare to play once a year? Esoteric’s E-03 phono preamp employs a less modern technology than its D-01VU digital-to-analog converter, but it’s no less refined. The E-03 amplifies and equalizes signals from a moving-magnet or moving-coil phono cartridge. The meticulously built component uses no integrated circuits, only discrete transistors. The projected price is $5,500, so don’t get any ideas about hooking this one up to your old Technics turntable. Sonic Webslingers You don’t have to spend an automotive price to pick up a cool new source device. In fact, the most versatile new audio source you can buy starts at a mere $199. It’s Internet radio, which has been available for years in computers but is just now making its way into traditional audio products. The advantage of Internet radio is selection: Manufacturers routinely tout their radios’ ability to tune in more than 15,000 stations. (Yep, there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of jazz stations on that list. In fact, we bet you could find at least one playing a Bird tune right this minute.) At least 10 manufacturers showed new Internet radios at CES. Products ranged from the $199 iLuv iNT170 clock radio to AudioControl’s $5,500 AVR-1 receiver. For now, the most common platform for Internet radio seems to be high-end table radios, such as the $599 Tivoli NetWorks and the $399 Tangent Audio Quattro. Both units deliver sound quality far better than you’d expect from a small table radio. They Want to Take You Higher Dolby and DTS demonstrated technologies designed to produce a more enveloping sonic sensation than you’ve ever heard before. The key is extra surround-sound speakers up around the ceiling. Dolby’s Pro Logic IIz and DTS’s Neo:X both use two extra speakers in the front; Neo:X adds two more in the rear. No special encoding is required, as both technologies synthesize the extra channels from any 5.1- or 7.1-channel soundtrack. Although the technologies seem primarily intended for use with video games, they also work with movies and music; we bet they’d add an especially realistic ambience to large-venue concert videos like Weather Report’s Live at Montreux Jazz Festival 1976 DVD. Dolby said Pro Logic IIz will be available in audio/video receivers starting this fall, but DTS announced no specific timetable for Neo:X. The other technology generating a lot of buzz at CES was wireless. Technically speaking, though, the wireless equipment we heard generated no buzz—i.e., none of the crackles and interference that have plagued many past wireless audio systems. Chipmaker Focus Enhancements talked up its Summit wireless technology, which can be built into speakers and receivers. It automatically figures out which speaker is in which position (left, right, center, right surround, etc.) and calibrates itself for the best sound. What will you pay for the convenience of not having to run wires? According to a Focus Enhancements rep we spoke to, that’s up to the manufacturer, but it might add around $600 to the cost of a typical surround-sound system. THX joined forces with wireless specialists Radiient to offer Roomcaster, a technology they hope will be built into a variety of gear in the coming years. However, Radiient sells a six-channel Roomcaster kit right now for $1,999, which can be used with any 5.1-channel surround-sound system. Amp-al supply Every CES features many new amplifiers and preamps. Many are exotic and pricey, but one of the amps that most excited us costs only $299. Tangent Audio’s Amp-30 is a tiny integrated amplifier intended primarily for use with iPods. The Amp-30 has a volume control on the front, and two audio inputs on the back. A USB jack provides power for your portable music player. All you add is an iPod and speakers. At 20 watts per channel, this isn’t the amp for cranking up Miles’ A Tribute to Jack Johnson, but it should sound just fine on My Funny Valentine. If you need more volume, consider the Nova from Peachtree Audio. The $1,199 Nova combines a solid-state, 80-watts-per-channel amplifier with a vacuum-tube preamp and a digital-to-analog converter that a Peachtree rep told us was the equivalent of the world’s best. (Seems like a tall tale until you consider that the Nova uses the same ESS Sabre digital-to-analog chip found in some recent super-high-end CD players.) You can use the Nova’s standard digital audio inputs, its analog inputs or its USB input for computer audio. Still not sated? Step up to Simaudio’s new Moon i3.3, a fully modern integrated amp with 100 watts of solid-state power. The i3.3 accepts just about any audio source you can think of. The $3,300 base unit comes with five analog inputs, including a front-mounted 3.5mm minijack that makes connecting an iPod or a laptop easy. From there, you can add an internal digital-to-analog converter for $400, an internal phono preamp for $300, and a balanced XLR input for $200. Those seeking an even more elevated experience may find themselves drawn to the glowing tubes inside Vacuum Tube Logic’s $6,000 TL-5.5 Series II preamplifier. Like VTL’s other recent products, the TL-5.5 is designed to deliver the warmth of tube sound without the hassles. If a tube fails, the TL-5.5 will tell you which one it is, and it’ll automatically adjust itself for the new tube you put in. Speakers by the Dozen To our knowledge, no one counted the number of new speakers introduced at CES, but we estimate it was at least a zillion. We don’t have the space to show even a hundredth of them, so we just picked a few faves. Zu Audio is the hippest new speaker brand in the business. The company’s young proprietors employ a single driver to handle everything from deep bass to the mid-treble, with a ribbon tweeter added to carry the highest harmonics. Many audiophiles insist that the simplicity of such designs conveys a musical veracity no conventional two-way or three-way speaker can match. The company’s latest creation is the $5,000-per-pair Essence. You can get the Essence in essentially any color you want, including the lemon yellow, avocado and cobalt blue finishes displayed at the show. Totem Acoustic, a Quebec company known for its hand-built speakers and gorgeous wood finishes, went a similar route at CES with its Wind Design Series, an improved version of its top-of-the-line Wind speaker. It’s available in blue, red, black and silver-gray automotive finishes. At about $12,500, the Wind Design Series costs dearly, but it’s more affordable than many of the speakers at CES, and it delivered some of the best sound we heard at the show. RBH, a Utah company best known for bulky superspeakers, dazzled us with the 8300-SE/R, a considerably less bulky and more practical superspeaker. With three 8-inch aluminum-cone woofers per side, the 8300-SE/R put out incredibly tight, powerful bass, just the ticket for Jimmy Garrison fanatics. The “R” version costs $450 more than the $7,999 standard SE, but features a superior tweeter and midrange driver. The very last room we entered held perhaps the most anticipated new speaker at CES: the Magico V2, which at $18,000 per pair is the least expensive the company has created. The elegant industrial design and impeccable sound quality of Magico’s speakers have won the marque quite a few fans among well-heeled audiophiles. The V2’s woofers and tweeter mount in a cast aluminum baffle that is clamped in place from behind by heavy torsion rods. The rigid assembly delivered an astoundingly huge stereo soundstage and surprisingly intense bass given the modest woofer complement. What better way to conclude four days of audio ecstasy? true

11251

2009-02-26T12:35:55-05:00

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2009-03-01T00:00:00-05:00

Beyond the glitz, gadgets and glamour of the Consumer Electronics Show lies something far better: the world’s largest high-end audio exhibition.

Practically everybody knows about the Consumer Electronics Show, which occurs every January in Las Vegas. Network news is packed morning and night with segments about the latest gadgets at CES. Celebrities appear by the dozens to check out the latest technologies. Thousands of journalists swarm around new TVs, cell phones, digital cameras and computers. Beyond the brouhaha at the Las Vegas Convention Center, though, there’s an entirely different side of CES that you’ll never see on The Today Show. The High-Performance Audio and Home Theater portion of CES takes over much of five floors in the main tower of the Venetian Hotel and many of the hotel’s meeting rooms. In 2009, the Venetian attracted more than 300 exhibitors. Combine that with another 90 or so exhibitors at the Home Entertainment Show, a competing exposition at the Alexis Park hotel, and you have what is surely the world’s largest display of high-end audio products. Since TV’s talking heads neglected to show you the wonders of CES’s audio exhibits, we’ll give you a personal tour. We’ve picked a few favorites from the hundreds of specialty audio manufacturers quietly plying their trade a mile and a half from the meshugas at the Convention Center. (Actually, they didn’t ply their trade all that quietly.) Starting at the Source Technological innovation doesn’t come easily to audio these days, but CES did reveal one major, and most welcome, trend in the high-end. More and more manufacturers are now making it possible to interface their elite gear with decidedly non-elite computers and network-attached...

CES Unseen

2009-03-02T00:28:22-05:00

4 The audio business works on a different model than other electronics industries. That’s because unlike, say, the cell phone industry or printer trade, it’s not just a business, it’s a passion. The big North American audio shows—Festival Son & Image in Montreal and the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest in Denver—drew great crowds in 2008 despite a brutal economic climate. Audiophiles travel hundreds, even thousands of miles to hear a new speaker or amplifier. Can you imagine someone taking such a voyage to see a new LCD TV? The solid support of diehard enthusiasts inspires audio entrepreneurs to create technical innovations as well as new takes on old classics. Even items you may have thought couldn’t be improved—turntables, amplifiers, tower speakers—still get better every year. Just in case you didn’t attend one of the big hi-fi shows, we’ll recap some of 2008’s most interesting trends and products. You’re sure to find something in this collection that will improve the sound of your system—or perhaps inspire you to build a new audio setup from scratch. Asian Invasion The explosive growth of low-cost, high-quality Chinese manufacturing has given new life to an old technology: vacuum tubes. Audiophiles never abandoned the humble tube; many consider it sonically superior to the ubiquitous transistor. But the entry of Chinese manufacturers into the market has brought an abundance of new tube-based audio products to U.S. shores, at shockingly affordable prices. Perhaps the best example of this trend is the new JoLida Glass FX series, a line targeted at younger, less affluent audio enthusiasts. First in the line is the JD10, a tiny, tube-powered integrated amp that costs just $399. The glass-enclosed amp puts out a mere 10 watts, but careful choice of speakers allows it to deliver room-filling sound. JoLida plans a line of matching components, including a CD player and a phono preamp. We doubt the JD10 will win over Gene Simmons fans, but Gene Ammons fans will probably dig it. Shanling introduced a new, tubed take on the age-old concept of an all-in-one system. Its MC-3000 Music Center combines a tube preamp, a 60-watt-per-channel solid-state power amp, an iPod dock, a CD player and an FM tuner. The MC-3000 isn’t cheap at $2,500, but if you throw in a good pair of speakers you can have a full, very cool audio system for less than $3,500 total. One of the leaders among Chinese tube audio manufacturers is Cayin, whose $1,295 A-50T integrated amp generated perhaps the most buzz of any high-end audio product this year. The A-50T is but the bottom of the company’s line, though—it also offers more powerful integrated amps, as well as headphone amps, CD players and standalone amps and preamps. Computerized Records Record players with USB outputs emerged a few years ago to help those with large record collections transfer their beloved platters onto their computers—and from there onto iPods and cell phones. But most USB turntables are designed to sell at mass merchants for bargain prices. They’re built for a customer who keeps records around only because they never came out on CD, or simply because they just never got around to throwing them away. Audiophiles, though, keep records around because they prefer them to CDs. Clearly, audio enthusiasts weren’t going to transfer their treasured old Dexter Gordon sides to digital using some cheap plastic record player. Fortunately, a few boutique audio manufacturers noticed the success—and the low quality—of these USB ’tables and realized they could do better. One is Pro-Ject, a company known for making the least expensive turntables that audiophiles still consider acceptable. The $499 Pro-Ject Debut III USB is a new digital-output version of a great, affordable turntable that dates back more than a decade. Run a cable from its USB output to your computer, fire up the audio recording software of your choice, and you’re ready to turn vinyl into 1s and 0s. If you already have a turntable you’re in love with, you’d probably prefer to use it for your digital transfers. NAD makes it easy with the new $179 PP-3 Digital Phono Preamplifier. Just plug your turntable directly into the PP-3, run a USB cable from the PP-3 to your computer, and load the included VinylStudio Lite PC record-transferring software. The software eliminates scratches and pops, and also locates artist, album and track info automatically over the Internet, thus saving you the hassle of entering all that data manually. At Your Service The iPod hipped everyone to the concept that you could store all your music on one device and browse it through a menu. A lot of companies have tried to capture this convenience in a living-room product, and some are starting to get it right. Their graphical interfaces display the cover art from all your CDs on large touchscreens, making it easy to pick, choose and organize. The elite members of this niche industry include Kaleidescape, Qsonix and ReQuest, but the one that stole all the attention in 2008 is Sooloos. Sooloos has been kicking around in various versions for two years, but the company really got serious this year. The system centers around a beautifully built touchscreen with a gorgeous color display. It shows your CDs in alphabetical order by artist, or you can group them by genre, or you can assemble groups of your favorites. You can even access reviews from All Music Guide. To store a CD on Sooloos’ internal drives, just insert it in the slot below the screen. Even the smallest storage unit Sooloos offers stores about 7,200 albums, in both a lossless format that copies your CDs bit-for-bit, and in an MP3 format you can transfer to you iPod. The company recently interfaced its products with the Rhapsody music service, through which you can download music directly to Sooloos. If you choose, the service can automatically fill the holes in your collection. For example, if you have every John Scofield album except Hand Jive and That’s What I Say, Sooloos can fix that in a matter of minutes. The latest version handles photos and movies, too. Prices for Sooloos vary depending on options; the base price runs about $10,000. Docks Deluxe The iPod docks you get at Best Buy work just fine. But since when is “just fine” adequate for an audio enthusiast? Inexpensive docks feed the signal straight from the iPod’s feeble little amplifier circuit into your stereo—and that little amplifier circuit was designed to feed headphones, not stereo systems. In 2008, several companies came out with iPod docks designed for use with high-quality sound systems. In most of these docks, internal amplifiers fortify the signal coming from the iPod so it can properly drive the inputs on home audio gear. One of the simplest and most affordable of these comes from Pro-Ject, the same people who make the USB turntable we discussed earlier in this column. The $199 Pro-Ject Dock Box has an internal buffer circuit to amplify the audio of a docked iPod. It also comes with a remote control that lets you start and stop the iPod, skip tracks and access the menus without touching the iPod’s click wheel. From there, prices climb rapidly. Last fall, Wadia launched the $379 170iTransport, which actually extracts digital audio from an iPod, thus bypassing the iPod’s audio circuitry entirely. Krell shipped the $1,500 KID, or Krell Interface Dock, which it says is the only product that accesses the iPod’s studio-style balanced output capability. The KID slides into the $2,000 Papa Dock 150-watt-per-channel amplifier. David Wiener Ventures introduced the Art.Suono, an outrageously overbuilt $1,499 dock with a half-pound aluminum volume knob and wireless connection to a stereo system. In Your Ear One of the most popular business strategies for audio companies is to wait until Bose popularizes a product, then come out with their own version that’s better or cheaper. After Bose did so well with its $99 in-ear headphones, many other companies piled on. Many launched new in-ear headphones in 2008, and several of these entries warrant mention. But the real standout is probably the $149 Etymotic hf5. Etymotic made its name with custom-molded earphones for audiophiles and professional musicians. The hf5 is more accessible, but no less impressive. It comes with three sets of earpieces; just choose the one that feels most comfortable to you. One of the earpiece options uses compressible foam, like the earplugs gardeners use when they’re running the leaf blower. The earpieces completely fill the ear canal and effectively shut out almost all outside sound. And the ’phones themselves sound incredible, delivering detail and clarity that puts most studio monitors to shame. The one downside is that the hf5 produces precise, accurate bass, not the powerful, heavy bass that many earphones exhibit. So while 50 Cent might not approve, Ron Carter surely would. Small, Sweet Sounds As with the company’s in-ear headphones, high-end audio companies finally noticed that Bose has sold millions of table radios, so they’ve come out with their own pricier but far more refined products. Seeing a desktop audio system emerge from venerable McIntosh Labs is like watching a 1,500cc hatchback roll off the Rolls-Royce line. At the 2008 CEDIA Expo (a trade show for the custom electronics installation industry) McIntosh showed the prototype of its 60th Anniversary Mac Executive System, a compact audio system that incorporates a stereo vacuum-tube amplifier, a CD player, an AM/FM tuner and speakers. The Executive System exudes all the old-world charm of other McIntosh gear; it would have looked right at home on Alfred Lion’s desk in the early days of Blue Note. Pricing had not been set at press time, but expect something close to $10,000. The digital audio masters at Meridian had a hit in late 2007 with the Meridian-Ferrari F80, a $3,000 tabletop audio system that set a new standard in sound quality for the category. In 2008, Meridian followed up with the $3,995 Alfred Dunhill AD88 Entertainment System, designed in conjunction with Dunhill, the British men’s accessories retailer. Meridian’s state-of-the-art digital audio processing technology lets the AD88’s internal stereo speakers and subwoofer deliver astonishingly loud, clear sound. A DVD/CD player, an AM/FM tuner and an optional iPod dock provide plenty of entertainment options. Surround-Sound Simplified Of course, jazz is primarily an aural medium, but you can’t deny that visuals from a DVD or TV show can add interest to the presentation. However, to enjoy the 5.1-channel Dolby Digital soundtrack of Jamie Cullum’s Live at Blenheim Palace DVD, you need a home theater system. And upgrading from a stereo system to a home theater system is like going from an upright piano to a Korg OASYS Synthesis Station—both can be devilish, daunting, discouraging transitions. Epson saw this problem and decided to create a home theater system that can be affordably installed by professionals in a matter of hours. All you do is make the call and lay down the credit card. The Ensemble HD system includes an Epson high-definition projector; a motorized screen with front left, center, and right speakers built in; a surround-sound processor/DVD player, a subwoofer/amplifier, and a projector mount that incorporates the surround speakers. The screen and front speakers attach to a wall, while the projector and surround speakers hang from the ceiling. The only thing that sits on the floor is a small rack holding the other components. A single remote controls the whole system. Touch the power button and the screen descends, the audio system fires up, and the projector throws out a crisp high-definition image. The respected audio firm Atlantic Technology designed the internal speakers, and they sound astoundingly good considering that they’re mounted up near your ceiling and concealed inside a screen housing. The best part is the price: $6,999 for a system with a 1080p projector or $4,999 with a 720p projector, plus another $500 to $1,000 for professional installation. The Ensemble HD is probably the world’s least painful way to get into home theater. And when you consider that at least one of 2008’s new desktop audio systems costs considerably more, it has to rank as the home electronics bargain of the year. true

11251

2009-02-13T14:12:05-05:00

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2009-01-01T00:00:00-05:00

The audio business works on a different model than other electronics industries. That’s because unlike, say, the cell phone industry or printer trade, it’s not just a business, it’s a passion. The big North American audio shows—Festival Son & Image in Montreal and the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest in Denver—drew great crowds in 2008 despite a brutal economic climate. Audiophiles travel hundreds, even thousands of miles to hear a new speaker or amplifier. Can you imagine someone taking such a voyage to see a new LCD TV? The solid support of diehard enthusiasts inspires audio entrepreneurs to create technical innovations as well as new takes on old classics. Even items you may have thought couldn’t be improved—turntables, amplifiers, tower speakers—still get better every year. Just in case you didn’t attend one of the big hi-fi shows, we’ll recap some of 2008’s most interesting trends and products. You’re sure to find something in this collection that will improve the sound of your system—or perhaps inspire you to build a new audio setup from scratch. Asian Invasion The explosive growth of low-cost, high-quality Chinese manufacturing has given new life to an old technology: vacuum tubes. Audiophiles never abandoned the humble tube; many consider it sonically superior to the ubiquitous transistor. But the entry of Chinese manufacturers into the market has brought an abundance of new tube-based audio products to U.S. shores, at shockingly affordable prices. Perhaps the best example of this trend is the new JoLida Glass FX series, a line targeted at younger, less affluent audio enthusiasts....

Following the Heard: The Best New Audio Products Of 2008

2009-03-02T00:28:17-05:00

4 Picture it: You’re spending a chilly December evening at home, savoring Nat “King” Cole’s The Christmas Song, a cup of eggnog, and the warmth of a wood fire and a favorite blanket. What denizen of the Western world wouldn’t enjoy that? Fortunately, most of it’s hard to mess up. Eggnog and easy-start fireplace logs you can find at any grocery story and a blanket’s pretty much a blanket. Getting a recording of Nat “King” Cole to sound like the real Nat “King” Cole, though, is a tougher trick. It’ll be easier if there’s some new audio gear among your holiday gifts. But if your loved ones select your presents from the crowded shelves of a big-box electronics retailer, you’re not going to get the gear you really want. The good stuff resides mostly in stores and Web sites devoted to top-notch audio, places your loved ones will never find if left to their own devices. It’s up to you to steer them straight. We’ve made that part easy for you. These eight products, in price ranges from budget to bacchanalian, will make your music as warm and inviting as a hot toddy at twilight. And the company Web sites we’ve listed will tell gift-givers where to get them. The iPod, Elevated The 1,000-plus different iPod docks on the market all suffer the same problem: They’re just amplifying the sound of the iPod. There’s no way to get truly high-end sound from a tiny, battery-powered, $300 device. Unless, that is, you have Wadia’s $379 170iTransport. The 170iTransport is the only iPod dock to date that extracts digital audio from an iPod, so it can then be routed to a high-quality digital-to-analog converter, digital preamp or surround-sound processor without going through the iPod’s audio circuitry. Even if you store your music using low-bitrate technologies such as MP3 or AAC, you’ll hear an improvement with the 170iTransport. But if you store your music in the Apple Lossless format—which takes up more space on your iPod but delivers a bit-for-bit perfect copy of your CDs—you’ll get fidelity that’s identical to what you’d get from the disc itself. Wadia included analog audio outputs on the 170iTransport so it’ll connect to just about any sound system, but to get the full benefit from it you’ll need a system that accepts digital sources. Fortunately, even most of today’s inexpensive home-theater-in-a-box systems have digital inputs that will work with the Wadia. www.wadia.com Sound Science Paul Barton, the founder and chief designer of PSB Speakers, helped pioneer the scientific approach to speaker engineering. Of late, he’s begun blending his science with the art of talented industrial designers. PSB’s latest line, the Imagine series, may be the most impressive in the company’s 36-year history. At $2,000 per pair, the top-of-the-line Imagine T tower speaker isn’t PSB’s most expensive speaker, but it may be the most practical way to enjoy Barton’s vision of sonic perfection in the average living room. The 37-inch-high Imagine T is diminutive enough to sit almost unnoticed among your other furnishings. Thanks to its almost perfectly even balance of bass, midrange and treble, it doesn’t demand fussy setup—it sounds good in almost any kind of room. You wouldn’t expect the Imagine T’s two 5.25-inch woofers to reproduce the deep, dark bass tones that David Piltch delivered on the Holly Cole Trio CDs from the 1990s, but they do. In fact, unless you want the Imagine T to do double-duty as the left and right front speakers in a home-theater system, there’s no need whatsoever for a subwoofer. The Imagine’s even response treats every instrument with respect, including the human voice. Even the reedy tenor of Donald Fagen, which sometimes strains the ears when played through lesser speakers, sounds natural through the Imagine T. No matter which artists you enjoy listening to, the Imagine T will present them at their best. www.psbspeakers.com Antique Audio Technically, vacuum tubes became obsolete in audio in the 1960s. However, audiophiles still love tubes for their warm, natural sound. Most tube amps are made by small companies that possess few economies of scale, so the amps are often expensive. Cayin, a Chinese company with a long history in audio, has brought the efficiencies of Far Eastern manufacturing to bear on its line of tube amplifiers. The company’s A-50T integrated amplifier costs only $1,295, yet it’s wired entirely by hand without the use of circuit boards, the same way tube amps were built in Charlie Parker’s day. Four power tubes deliver 35 watts per channel when the amp is set to “ultralinear” mode, and 16 watts per channel in “triode” mode. (Audiophiles generally agree that triode wiring sounds better in the mids and highs, but it delivers less punch in the bass.) The A-50T’s startlingly realistic yet sweet sound lends itself to all but the most raucous recordings. It’s particularly appropriate for acoustic jazz, where it portrays the nuances of saxophones, trumpets and pianos with a spacious ambience and intricate sonic detail. The A-50T’s front panel is about as simple as they get, with just an on/off knob, a volume knob and a source selector. You can connect as many as four source devices to the A-50T, and one of those can be a record player if you opt for the $250 internal phono preamp. Cayin even supplies a remote control, a rarity with tube amps. www.cayinusa.com Music for Marriotts Traveling can be traumatic for the dedicated jazz fan. Most hotels offer nothing more for the music listener than a cheap clock radio. And most of those will tune nothing but the four or five most powerful stations in town. It’s a safe bet none of those are jazz stations. With the $199 Foxl portable sound system, Soundmatters eases the angst of the traveling music lover. The Foxl measures only 5.6 inches long and weighs just 9.5 ounces, so it slips easily into almost any backpack, briefcase or purse. Yet it sounds as clear and true as many top $1,000-per-pair speakers. (That’s not just a subjective statement—its technical measurements are in fact better than those of many $1,000-per-pair speakers.) The Foxl’s tiny metal chassis conceals digital amplifiers, two tweeter/midrange drivers, a flat-panel woofer and a rechargeable battery. An included cable connects the Foxl to any portable music player, any laptop and many cell phones. The $249 Bluetooth version lets you connect to your laptop or cell without wires, and even works as a speakerphone thanks to an internal mic. The Foxl is simply the best thing to happen to business travel since Wi-Fi. Trust us, a few cuts from Pat Martino’s Live at Yoshi’s, played at room-filling volume through the Foxl, can put a smile on your face even on the fourth morning of a grueling tradeshow. www.soundmatters.com A Ban on Plastic Some dedicated audiophiles love having their speakers on display, but most people would prefer them concealed. In-wall speakers make that easy to do, but most in-walls are stamped from flimsy plastic that vibrates like a 1950s Harley-Davidson. In order to bring true high-end quality into in-wall speakers, the custom speaker company California Audio Technology (CAT) recently created a spin-off company called Newport Audio. CAT uses its extensive computer numeric control (CNC) machinery to carve the 5mm-thick aluminum faceplates of the Newport Gold Series in-wall speakers. The stiff, heavy faceplates provide a firm mounting surface for the woofers and tweeters, and also help damp any vibration coming from the wall itself. And most of the electronic parts used in the speaker are of the same quality found in CAT’s $100,000-per-pair superspeakers. The result of this overbuilding is truly outstanding performance. The broad, deep soundstage simply dazzles. Play a spacious recording like Chesky Records’ The Coryells, and not only will you forget you’re listening to in-walls, you might forget you’re in your living room. Pricing for the Newport Audio speakers is surprisingly gentle; the G85REC, which incorporates a beefy 8.5-inch woofer, lists for only $1,080 per pair. www.newportaudio.com Instant Classic Every audio product bearing the McIntosh logo feels like a classic, even when it is first introduced. That may be in large part because the company has stuck with the same visual aesthetic for decades. All McIntosh electronics have a black glass faceplate with a green logo shining through. And for decades, all have been acclaimed as world-class performers. The company’s latest masterpiece is its MCD500 SACD/CD player, a $6,500 tour de force that combines advanced digital audio technology with the conveniences of yesteryear. The advanced digital audio technology starts with SACD, the high-resolution format that’s better than CD and, according to many audiophiles, a match for vinyl records. In order to lower noise and extend treble response, the audio circuitry is fully balanced, a luxury found only in the costliest audio gear. The conveniences include a headphone jack, once a common feature of CD players but now absent from most. A front volume control lets you adjust the headphone level, and also allows you to connect the MCD500 directly to an amplifier—no preamp is needed. It is hard to imagine a more fitting way to enjoy the latest SACD releases from Concord Jazz. www.mcintoshlabs.com In the Tradition Many high-end speaker companies have moved their production to the Far East, but Totem Acoustic still produces every speaker by hand in a Quebec workshop that houses not a single automated tool. No speaker is more meticulously designed or crafted. In its top models, Totem even forgoes solder, using instead time-consuming mechanical screw terminals to join the internal components. The company’s latest, and perhaps greatest, creation is the new The One, a limited-edition of the Model One speaker that has been in Totem’s line for all of the company’s 21 years. While $3,595 per pair may seem a lot to pay for a speaker that stands only 12.5 inches high, company founder Vince Bruzzese says The One “uses the most expensive and effective jewelry [speaker connectors and internal wiring] and crossover parts that can be manufactured today.” Only 2,000 pairs will be manufactured, and chances are they will not last long in stores. A brief listen to the speakers revealed an astoundingly ambient and enveloping sound field, lifelike detail and vocal reproduction that almost shocks with its intimacy. Like Totem’s other speakers, they exhibit much less of a “sweet spot” than most of their competitors do. Practically any audiophile who hears The One will want one (or actually, a pair). www.totemacoustic.com Extreme Digital Audiophiles love old-fashioned analog sound, but let’s face it, digital offers huge advantages. Especially if you take it to the extreme that Wisdom Audio has. Wisdom’s Sage Series combines speakers, amplifiers and a system controller all designed to work together. The system controller processes as many as seven channels of full-range audio and three subwoofer channels, so it can work its magic on anything from an old mono recording of Coleman Hawkins to the 7.1-channel soundtrack from the Blu-ray Disc of The Nightmare Before Christmas. Wisdom has eliminated the power-sapping, sound-distorting crossover circuitry that resides in conventional speakers; the system controller handles those tasks, and woofers, tweeters and midranges are all amplified separately for maximum fidelity. In fact, each speaker is tested in a lab and its characteristics are fed into the processor, which compensates for flaws to make the speaker, in effect, acoustically perfect. The controller also incorporates Audyssey’s MultEQ technology, which uses microphones and test tones to evaluate the acoustics of your room automatically. It then adjusts the sound so it’s ideal for your room. The end result is spectacular, possibly the closest a consumer can come to flawless sound. Seven different speaker models are available, in on-wall, in-wall and freestanding versions. Prices vary tremendously with the complexity of the system and the cost of professional installation (which is a must); think tens of thousands of dollars. One could have a simple stereo Sage Series system installed, but going with anything less than a full seven-channel system with two or three subwoofers seems like a waste of incredible technology. www.wisdomaudio.com true

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true

2008-12-01T00:00:00-05:00

Picture it: You’re spending a chilly December evening at home, savoring Nat “King” Cole’s The Christmas Song, a cup of eggnog, and the warmth of a wood fire and a favorite blanket. What denizen of the Western world wouldn’t enjoy that? Fortunately, most of it’s hard to mess up. Eggnog and easy-start fireplace logs you can find at any grocery story and a blanket’s pretty much a blanket. Getting a recording of Nat “King” Cole to sound like the real Nat “King” Cole, though, is a tougher trick. It’ll be easier if there’s some new audio gear among your holiday gifts. But if your loved ones select your presents from the crowded shelves of a big-box electronics retailer, you’re not going to get the gear you really want. The good stuff resides mostly in stores and Web sites devoted to top-notch audio, places your loved ones will never find if left to their own devices. It’s up to you to steer them straight. We’ve made that part easy for you. These eight products, in price ranges from budget to bacchanalian, will make your music as warm and inviting as a hot toddy at twilight. And the company Web sites we’ve listed will tell gift-givers where to get them. The iPod, Elevated The 1,000-plus different iPod docks on the market all suffer the same problem: They’re just amplifying the sound of the iPod. There’s no way to get truly high-end sound from a tiny, battery-powered, $300 device. Unless, that is, you have Wadia’s $379 170iTransport. The 170iTransport...

Alms for the Audiophile

2009-03-02T00:28:06-05:00

4 Imagine a fantastic, outsized home-entertainment toy store, although nothing is for sale—that’s the CEDIA Expo, the Custom Electronics Design & Installation Association tradeshow, where manufacturers exhibit their newest, most cutting-edge audio, video, home theater and custom electronics products. In 2008 the show floor covered over 500,000 square feet of exhibits, including demonstrations of the aforementioned products plus demos of entire home audio/video distribution systems—even central vacuum and home security systems. CEDIA is somewhat like the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), held in Las Vegas every January, but considerably smaller and more focused on custom home electronics. CEDIA Expo attendance was approximately 25,000, down slightly from 29,000 last year, and much less than the typical 125,000 attendees at CES. Still, it seemed as if all 25,000 people were on the show floor at the same time; it was a zoo, difficult to walk in a straight line without stumbling into someone. But if you want to be dazzled with the latest and greatest home electronics, CEDIA is the place to be. The event started in the late 1980s as a small show dedicated to custom electronics and has since grown to include almost any home entertainment product or electronic accessory that plugs into the wall. This year’s edition was held Sept. 4-7 at the Colorado Convention Center in downtown Denver. Your author also visited the Total Home Entertainment Show (T.H.E. Show—cute, huh?) at the Denver Athletic Club, next door to the Convention Center, where a few high-end audio companies were displaying and demonstrating separate from the CEDIA Expo. This proved to be the best place for serious music listening, as volumes at CEDIA were through the roof with competing home-theater demonstrations, subwoofer tryouts and screaming crowd chatter. (One of the reasons that T.H.E. Show started in the first place was to provide an alternative quiet environment for audio demonstrations.) An elegant old building with turn-of-the-century wood-paneled rooms and chandeliers, the Denver Athletic Club was a nice place to enjoy some music without distractions. Best of Show The MartinLogan CLX speakers were unquestionably the most exciting audio demonstration of the weekend. Celebrating the formidable MartinLogan company’s 25th anniversary, the CLX system was demonstrated in a medium-sized carpeted room at T.H.E. Show, a listening area with walls covered in wood paneling that didn’t sound particularly live; the room was, however, treated with 10 Acoustic Sciences Corp. (ASC) TubeTraps of various sizes, designed to tame any exaggerated bass. The CLX stands over 70-inches high and 25-inches wide, and features high- and low-frequency sections for a full-range speaker system, no subwoofer needed. The CLX system was powered by Ayre electronics of Boulder, Colo. The source and amplification system included the Ayre KX-R preamp, two monoblock MX-R amps with 300 watts each and the C-5xe universal disc player, all connected to the Ayre L-5xe AC power filter. The most dramatic demonstration was a CD recording of “Aqua Marine” by Japanese fusion bassist/cellist Isao Suzuki and his quartet. Suzuki’s cello sounded full and resonant and provided the best example of the accurate low-frequency capabilities of the CLX speakers. The sound of the bow across the cello strings was rich and full with a palpable in-room presence. The bass membrane moves a significant amount of air and could be seen moving with each bass note. At one point I noticed two subwoofers placed behind the speakers, which turned out not to be connected to the system, so I was listening only to the mighty bass response of the CLX speakers. A recording of the Count Basie Orchestra revealed startling midrange transparency and swift transient response, especially in the horns—a classic band brought to life. I have always enjoyed the open, unveiled sound quality of electrostatic drivers and this was one of the best demonstrations I’ve heard of this technology. The CLX system is available in several finishes and colors, starting with the Linear Frame at $21,832 per pair. Out of Sight Sound In the world of high-end audio and home theater, there is inevitably a tug-of-war between the audiophile and the interior decorator—you know who I’m talking about. The audiophile wants the best sound quality, but the decorator doesn’t want to see the speakers or equipment, period! Magnepan may have found the key to domestic bliss with its introduction of the MM-C2 Planar Ribbon speakers. The MM-C2 is a wall-mounted speaker system (10 1/2-inches wide x 46-inches tall with a thin profile) designed to flank a plasma or LCD television, even a projection screen. The MM-C2 can be used as left and right speakers, center-channel speakers or for surround-sound. When not in use the MM-C2 sits against the wall, but when activated it pivots on a concealed motorized hinge and aims itself toward the listening area. It’s capable of good mid-bass, but for deep bass it should be used with a subwoofer. The real secret is the custom grilles that can be ordered with the model. To help the MM-C2s blend seamlessly with the décor, the customer can send a digital file of a photograph or artwork to Magnepan and they’ll create a silkscreen of the art for the grilles. The grilles on the surround speakers at T.H.E. show were screened with images of Marilyn Monroe, and looked more like a cool retro wall-hanging than a speaker. The MM-C2s were demonstrated as center-channel speakers with a pair of full-range Magneplanar 3.6 speakers for the left and right and bass. The Blu-ray DVD used for demonstration is a must-have disc: Tony Bennett’s An American Classic, featuring the timeless crooner in duet with k.d. lang, Stevie Wonder, Diana Krall and others. Although the audio wasn’t produced in high-definition, the sound quality in Dolby Digital 2.0 was outstanding. In fact, while listening to these high-resolution beauties, it was possible to hear the difference between the onscreen vocalists using studio mics and those with lapel mics. The Maggies, as their fans call them, will be a hit. The final price of the MM-C2 is expected to be about $1,500 per pair and they’ll be available by the end of the year. Protean Preamp Parasound’s HALO P7 preamp will appeal to both music enthusiasts and home-theater fans who enjoy pure two-channel sound and multichannel music and movies: The unit is both a two-channel and a 7.1-channel analog preamp. For two-channel listening, the P7 functions as a stereo preamp and even has an analog bass management feature to determine whether bass is output from a subwoofer or from the stereo speakers, a very useful function for satellite speakers with a subwoofer. For multichannel music and movies the preamp outputs of a surround sound receiver are connected to the multichannel inputs of the P7, allowing digital sources to be decoded in the receiver while the P7 (connected to a five- or seven-channel amplifier) controls the system. The real benefit of the P7 is it isolates analog circuits from noisier digital circuits to preserve analog purity—always a good idea, as any audiophile worth his or her weight in 180-gram vinyl knows. For vinyl lovers, the P7 includes moving-magnet and moving-coil inputs and has both XLR and RCA outputs for connection to external amplifiers. (XLR cables provide better resistance to interference from external sources, especially for long cable runs.) The P7 features a serial port for connection to a home-theater touch-panel controller, infrared connections for remote control to your CD/DVD player, and more. In short, Parasound’s new unit offers the best of both worlds: two-channel audio purity and multichannel home-theater capability. It is available now with a suggested retail price of $1,999. Affordable Elegance Bower & Wilkins is a familiar speaker brand to audiophiles and music enthusiasts; it’s also a premium brand that is more of an investment than a purchase. However, two speaker models in the company’s more affordable CM Series offer B&W quality at prices that won’t require putting another mortgage on the house. The new CM9 is a three-way vented tower speaker with twin 6 1/2-inch Kevlar/paper bass drivers, one 6-inch woven Kevlar midrange and a single 1-inch aluminum dome tweeter. The CM5 is a two-way bookshelf vented speaker with one 6 1/2-inch Kevlar mid-bass driver and a 1-inch aluminum dome tweeter. You’ll need a subwoofer with the CM5 speakers and black or brushed aluminum stands are available for $200 each. Both models are offered in wenge, rosenut and gloss-black finishes. The CM9s have a suggested retail price of $1,500 each and the CM5s are offered at $750 apiece. Around the House The Russound Collage is not a high-end audio system, but it’s one heck of an innovation, surely worth mentioning. The Collage is an easier way to add a whole house music system to your home without tearing up the walls and running wires from room to room. Whole house music distribution systems are very popular for homes large and small, but unless your home is pre-wired, installation can be expensive and difficult for most homeowners. Russound, a maker of custom home electronics, has introduced the Collage system that uses Powerline Carrier (PLC) Technology to distribute music, intercom, video surveillance and system control anywhere in a home using the existing electrical wiring. The basic component of Collage is an in-wall keypad with a built-in stereo amp for connection to in-wall speakers. The amplified keypad needs to be connected to AC power from a light switch or electrical outlet (in the same stud bay) and to an Internet connection. Additional keypads can be installed in rooms where you want music, and the audio and video signals are carried over the electrical wires (additional keypads need only be connected to 110 volts). The keypad has a small LCD video display and a click-wheel (like an iPod) for controlling the system and is compatible with SHOUTcast and Rhapsody Internet radio sites. An external Media Bridge can connect a CD player or other audio source to the system and an iPod dock is available. A price was not announced, but Russound representatives promised that Collage will significantly reduce the cost and labor of adding a multiroom system to an existing home. The Collage will be available in the second quarter of 2009. true

11237

2008-12-03T15:51:54-05:00

false

20791

128

200811

true

2008-11-01T00:00:00-04:00

Imagine a fantastic, outsized home-entertainment toy store, although nothing is for sale—that’s the CEDIA Expo, the Custom Electronics Design & Installation Association tradeshow, where manufacturers exhibit their newest, most cutting-edge audio, video, home theater and custom electronics products. In 2008 the show floor covered over 500,000 square feet of exhibits, including demonstrations of the aforementioned products plus demos of entire home audio/video distribution systems—even central vacuum and home security systems. CEDIA is somewhat like the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), held in Las Vegas every January, but considerably smaller and more focused on custom home electronics. CEDIA Expo attendance was approximately 25,000, down slightly from 29,000 last year, and much less than the typical 125,000 attendees at CES. Still, it seemed as if all 25,000 people were on the show floor at the same time; it was a zoo, difficult to walk in a straight line without stumbling into someone. But if you want to be dazzled with the latest and greatest home electronics, CEDIA is the place to be. The event started in the late 1980s as a small show dedicated to custom electronics and has since grown to include almost any home entertainment product or electronic accessory that plugs into the wall. This year’s edition was held Sept. 4-7 at the Colorado Convention Center in downtown Denver. Your author also visited the Total Home Entertainment Show (T.H.E. Show—cute, huh?) at the Denver Athletic Club, next door to the Convention Center, where a few high-end audio companies were displaying and demonstrating separate from the CEDIA Expo....

Look, Listen, Learn: Must-Have Gadgets Abound at 2008 CEDIA Expo

2009-03-02T00:28:03-05:00

4 Like all audiophiles, Jon Faddis can remember the exact moment he became one. It was 1971, he was 18, and he had just come east from Oakland, Calif., to New York to be the featured trumpet soloist in Lionel Hampton’s band. He moved in with Lew Soloff. (Lots of trumpet chops in that apartment.) Soloff owned a stereo system that was close to state-of-theart for its era. As Faddis remembers Soloff’s set-up, and rattles off the brands and model numbers, you can hear the fond nostalgia in his voice: “Lew had Bozak Concert Grand speakers with 14 drivers a side. The system was tri-amplified. There was a Crown DC300 solid-state amp on the bass, and two tube McIntosh 2105s on the midrange drivers and tweeters. The preamp was a Mac C-28, and the turntable was a Thorens.” Faddis is slightly disappointed in himself that, from 1971, he doesn’t remember the phono cartridge. He says softly, “Lew and I used to sit up and listen to records until the wee hours. That system was something beautiful. It was just a revelation to me, the way it sounded.” Both Faddis’ career in music and his own hi-fi systems have evolved upward since 1971. From trumpet prodigy beginnings, he became first-call studio musician, leader of in demand small ensembles, conductor of several important jazz orchestras and noted educator. He is currently the musical director of two big bands, the Chicago Jazz Ensemble and the Jon Faddis Jazz Orchestra (formerly the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band). The latest recording in his large discography is 2006’s Teranga, on Koch. He bought a stereo system right after he moved into his own place in Manhattan. (The real estate agent told him the apartment was soundproof. His new neighbors told him it was not.) “My first stuff was nothing special. I got a Marantz integrated amp. Later, I remember, I had an Analog Engineering Associates preamp and two Luxman 3045 tube monoblocks.” As Faddis reminisces, he seems to organize his personal history (as audiophiles tend to do) according to the gear he owned along the way. “In the late ’70s I had a Nakamichi 1000 cassette deck—one of my favorite components ever.” (Even now, many years after cassette technology has become irrelevant, Faddis’ voice reflects pride of ownership. In the ’70s, the “Nak” 1000 was the finest and, at around $1,000, most expensive cassette deck on the planet.) The breakthrough into real high-end audio came with his purchase of a pair of B&W 801 Series III speakers in the late 1990s. He still owns them. “Of course, getting the 801s meant that I had to upgrade all my other components,” says Faddis. “I have a pair of Hafler Trans-Nova amps, a Cello Palette preamp, a Roksan turntable and a Meridian 506 CD player. I’ve tried a lot of different cables. Right now my speaker cables are TARA Labs.” The fact that virtually every component in Faddis’ system is considered a classic says something about his taste. He explains why he has stayed with this combination: “I love the resolution. If it’s a bad record or one of those early digital CDs, that’s what you hear. If it’s a good record, that’s what you hear. A high priority for me is octave-to-octave balance. I want to hear the truth. If I listen to the Count Basie band on a really good system, like mine, it can almost approach what the band sounded like live. Most of the people I like to listen to unfortunately have passed on. Getting all I can from their records is really important to me.” Considering that they are people who make a living crafting highly sophisticated sound, there are fewer jazz-musician audiophiles than you might expect. Two reasons are obvious: economics and space. High-end audio systems are expensive, and they often require more square footage than a Manhattan or Brooklyn flat can afford. But there are other, subtler, more elusive reasons. When you talk to jazz musicians about sound in general and audiophile sound in particular, you often encounter a paradoxical complex of attitudes including distrust, intimidation and resigned passivity. Roberta Piket, an excellent pianist (her latest album is Love and Beauty, on Thirteenth Note), is not an audiophile, but she is interested in the complicated relationships between working musicians and sound. “I think a lot of players get frustrated about the whole sound thing,” she says. “Most live music takes place in clubs with mediocre sound systems. Jazz musicians rehearse acoustically a lot of the time. So musicians know what instruments are supposed to sound like, but they don’t hear it in clubs, and they often don’t hear it on CDs. If you don’t have a really good system, CDs can sound harsh. Then, on the flip side, some musicians are alienated because they think audiophiles won’t listen to a recording that is not audiophile quality, even if the music is great.” Faddis agrees that many musicians get frustrated: “They have the attitude, ‘Why are we doing a sound check? When we do the gig it’s going to sound totally different.’” But Faddis believes musicians do themselves a major disservice by opting out of the sound issue. “I think musicians should take a more active role in their sound and what’s going to be presented to an audience, whether live or recorded,” he says. “When I do concerts with one of my big bands, at Carnegie Hall or in Chicago, I will go out into the audience to hear how the band sounds and talk with the sound engineer, to make sure that he gets a balance I’m happy with. A lot of times you go to a club or a session and the engineer will put up a generic mic for the trumpet. So I went and bought a Neumann U 89. Now I don’t leave home without it. It gives me the best chance to sound good.” Faddis knows that owning a good home system gives a musician an advantage: “In a recording studio, you’re listening to this thing called studio monitors, and I’m not a big fan. They are lacking in ‘PRAT’—pace, rhythm and timing. When I did my last recording, Teranga, when I listened in the studio it would sound one way, but when I took it home and played it on my B&Ws, it would sound totally different. It was only by playing early mixes on my home system that I could tell things weren’t focused the way that I wanted.” Faddis says that Teranga “is pretty much the first time that a record company has left me alone.” He was involved in every step of recording and mixing the session at Bennett Studios in Englewood, N.J., and mastering it at Gateway Mastering in Portland, Maine. (The mastering studio, by the way, contained a pair of Eggleston Works Ivy Reference loudspeakers that profoundly impressed him.) “I am very happy with the final result,” says Faddis. When you play Teranga you hear why. It is a special album, both musically and sonically. It has that sense of truthful objectivity that Faddis calls “balance.” Instruments are clearly arrayed in a three-dimensional acoustic space. Faddis’ brilliant sonic signature on trumpet, his distinctive pronunciation, is vividly rendered. Faddis’ passion for and involvement in sound have led him to a crucially important insight, one that too many musicians fail to understand. “The sound engineer is your cocomposer,” he says. The principle applies to both live performance and recording. The artistic achievement of Teranga is inseparable from its sonic immediacy. Faddis’ “co composer” at Bennett Studios was engineer Brian Dozoretz. Michael Arnopol is another jazz musician/audiophile who has found that his knowledge of sound and his onstage and studio work are beneficially interdependent. He has been, for all practical purposes, Patricia Barber’s only bass player. Their association goes back to 1980, and he has been on every one of her albums, from Split, in 1989, to the new The Cole Porter Mix, on Blue Note. Arnopol’s bass contributes the nasty snap within Barber’s quartet. It anchors the floating smoky whisper of Barber’s vocal instrument. It is not entirely coincidental that Arnopol has participated in some of the most renowned audiophile recordings ever made. Barber’s early albums on the Premonition label, like Cafe Blue and Nightclub, especially as reissued in SACD by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab, are widely regarded as sonic masterpieces. They have been used as first-call demo material in hi-fi stores all over America. In the critical spectrum of bass, where Arnopol functions, they are stunningly deep and fast. They were engineered by Jim Anderson, with whom Arnopol enjoys a relationship he describes as “symbiotic.” “The way Jim perceives bass, and the sound I want to get, work well together,” says Arnopol. “I want a dark, dark sound, with enough attack to put it through, but without any overhang.” Arnopol’s own system contains Inner-Sound Eros hybrid electrostatic loudspeakers with their own crossover/bass amplifier, a Parasound amplifier (“designed by one of the greats, John Curl”) for the electrostatic panels, and a preamp by Antique Sound Lab (“a Chinese company that makes incredible sounding tube gear”). His CD player is a modified Philips SACD1000, and his turntable is a Rega Planar 3. “A big priority for me has to be bass pitch definition,” he says. “But really, imaging is the ball game. I like to hear the whole width and depth of the soundstage. On my InnerSounds, if you listen to Steely Dan’s Aja, the background vocals are way to the left and right of the speakers. I just love that shit. I just feel that’s what stereo is all about. “I love electrostatics. The original Quad ESL-63 is probably the best speaker ever made—at least from 100 to 10,000 hertz,” says Arnopol. “I’m much more insane about my live sound than about stereos. I always talk to the sound guys. Even onstage I can tell if there’s too much bass or there’s overhang. One of the great things that Jim Anderson did for me is that, previous to Jim, if I got a recorded sound as good as my live sound, I was a happy camper. But Jim got a recorded sound that I could never get as a live sound. When I heard it on my home system, I realized it was exactly what I want to be hearing. Jim helped me bring that out, so that’s kind of my Holy Grail. If I inch towards that, I’m happy.” For all their obsessiveness, Faddis and Arnopol are relatively pragmatic, as audiophiles go. Both love vinyl, but not to the point of disowning digital. Faddis travels with an iPod. (“I love the portability. You can take it anywhere.”) In the studio, Arnopol always insists on hearing a track or two played back on a boombox—presumably in deference to Patricia Barber fans with limited disposable incomes. But for the most part, audiophile passion is a quest for The Absolute. (Faddis finds the iPod sonically acceptable only because he replaces the standard iPod earbuds with his beloved, trusted reference headphones, Sennheiser HD650s, and he bypasses the iPod output stage with a $600 iQube headphone amp.) Inevitably, quests for The Absolute for what Arnopol calls “the Holy Grail”—have a way of running smack into practical considerations. Faddis fantasizes, if not about those Eggleston Works Ivy Reference speakers at Gateway Mastering (which cost as much as two really nice cars), then perhaps about an entry-level pair of Egglestons (which only cost as much as one fairly nice car). But he also reports that currently his wife is very focused on new windows for their home. Arnopol sounds almost forlorn when he muses, “You know what I’d really like to get? Those new Quads, ESL-2905s. But … they’re about 12 grand, I think.” And what of Lew Soloff’s classic vintage system from the Golden Age of hi-fi? He still owns it. He still loves it. It’s in storage. It went into storage when Soloff moved into a studio apartment in Manhattan. What does Soloff listen to now, you ask? The question was put to him, and his answer will bring tears to the eyes of audiophiles everywhere. Reluctantly, with deep chagrin, he admitted, “Well, nothing at the moment. I have a Brookstone $200 system still in a shopping bag waiting to be set up.” true

209

2008-09-25T18:15:42-04:00

false

20447

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200810

true

2008-10-01T00:00:00-04:00

Faddis' audio equipment has evolved alongside his music

Jon Faddis: Searching for Sonic Truth

2009-03-24T09:52:24-04:00

4 Fall is the time for regrouping, for preparing to hunker down during the more sedate winter season. It’s a good time to see what’s on the market that may be new to us, maybe something worth stashing in our nests for the winter. So, with fall on the way soon, let’s look at a few recent arrivals on the scene: a pair of innovative speakers, a bit of A/V dynamite in a small package, and some astonishing “software” which is anything but soft. Arcam (audiophilesystems.com) is one of the U.K.’s most respected designers and manufacturers of audio and video kits. They come up with brilliant, often outside-the-box engineering solutions to producing exceptional musical equipment, and, like Rega and a precious few others, actually maintain all their production facilities in the British Isles. And though their technology is near the top, their pricing isn’t, so investing in a piece of Arcam gear is just that, an affordable investment—it’s designed to last for decades, not years, in addition to producing that top-of-the-pack performance. A few years back Arcam introduced the Solo series of integrated player/amp combos created to offer a one-box solution for those with limited space, but unlimited desire for quality. The recent addition to the Solo line, the Solo Movie 2.1 ($2,499), offers the perfect combination of audio and video features for the spatially challenged music lover. Though it consumes less than a few inches of shelf space, the Solo delivers the goods for a glorious 2.1 channel home theater setup in an extremely major way. On the video side, the Solo plays only standard def discs, but it does possess an internal video processor to upscale your DVDs to 780p or 1080i video resolution, and sports HDMI outputs to convey that instantly upgraded HD program material to your HD set. On the audio side, it plays both standard CDs and SACDs, as well as many MP3 discs and other formats, with aplomb. Did I mention it also includes a 50-watt per channel stereo amplifier and an AM/FM tuner, and offers a subwoofer output if you decide to add a bit more bottom to your speaker system? All this in a box the size of a traditional CD player, and all imbued with that legendary Arcam level of quality. Speaking of which, even the owner’s manual for this baby is over-the-top good. Unlike some such materials, which, these days, are often no more than computer printouts of one or two unhelpful pages, the Arcam manual thoughtfully explains every minute detail of setup and fine tuning for the Solo in a deluxe “perfect bound” book, and I applaud them heartily for this level of classy customer service. The sheer simplicity of this box, and the helpfulness of the manual, made optimizing the Solo’s setup a breeze, taking only a few minutes from the time I removed it from its box until I was watching a flick, and that time includes running through the on-screen setup routine in which the screen format, speaker sizes and so on are selected. How did the Solo perform? On a standard def set, the video quality of this machine seems impeccable. With Arcam’s zeal for pushing the tech envelope, I have to believe the HD performance is stellar. I enjoyed many films, and lots of music video stuff, including a mind-blowing samba set by Paulinho da Viola from Brazil produced there for MTV. He’s Brazil’s greatest living samba composer and, in my opinion, greatest samba performer as well. The Arcam brought forth all the visual detail my humble screen could handle, while the audio section reproduced every tambourine jingle and every plucked cavaquinho note or strummed chord with verve, as well as all the wonderful nuances of Da Viola’s vocal stylings. Having seen him live more than a dozen times, I can attest to the Arcam getting everything spot-on. Running the Solo through its audio paces with my usual audition discs ranging from Keith Jarrett to Jerry Gonzalez, I was never disappointed in the Solo’s ability to consistently deliver tonally accurate music, evenly balanced from top to bottom, without committing any noticeable errors in performance. I slapped in the SACD version of Anthony Wilson’s Our Gang disc and was treated not only to great playing but to great playing reproduced even better. The ability to play SACDs makes the Solo that much more appealing. Is it the last word in resolution? No, but it isn’t marketed as such. As the stalwart foundation for a high-performance compact home theater or music system that can deliver exceptional sound and video for a relatively low price, the Solo Movie 2.1 really can’t be beat. Like all Arcam products, I can’t recommend it highly enough. For sheer transparency, speed, accuracy and clarity, it’s hard to beat the sound of planar speakers. No, they are not necessarily the ultimate answer for full-range response, but for reproducing mids and highs, they certainly rank among the top transducers. I used to be a planar guy and loved the sound of my very large Maggies; problem is, they want lots of power and current, and my predilection for low-powered tube amps these days unfortunately cuts me out of the planar herd. One way planars have been employed to make a speaker more amp-friendly is by using the planar speaker to cover the only area they do best anyway, the mids and highs, and let a more traditional cone driver handle the lows. MartinLogan is perhaps the most well known and most successful company to employ this solution. But ML is not the only manufacturer dedicated to using some sort of planar technology in its hybrid speaker designs. Out in the Nevada desert, some crafty engineers have been tinkering for nearly two decades with planars. BG Radia (bgcorp.com) offers a wide variety of planar models, including some very large full-range models. But for those needing a more practical solution, they’ve introduced several hybrids using a woofer of some sort to handle the bass chores, while their patented Radia Planar Ribbon technology handles the rest. This design comprises a small ribbon tweeter mounted coaxially in front of the planar midrange driver. The Z-92 ($2,499/pair) represents the top of their hybrid Z-Series of speakers, which utilizes this technology. The 92 is a slim floorstander finished in handsome wood veneer, a fine-grained natural maple in the case of the review sample, which includes two six-inch woofers for the bass and the above-mentioned Radia Planar Ribbon for the remainder of the audible spectrum. I employed the Z-92s with my reference 15-watt Shindo amp and the terrific Arcam Solo mentioned above—the speakers seemed to be happy regardless of which amp was in use. Listening to the excellent RVG/Prestige reissue of Where?, Ron Carter’s first solo outing on which he played bass and cello, accompanied by the likes of Eric Dolphy and Mal Waldron, the Z-92s did a fine job conveying all the rosiny qualities of Carter’s frequent bowing, tonal qualities that live principally in the midrange. His cello was full, round and deep, always revealing its true character as a cello, low and profound, without going overboard. Carter’s bass, meanwhile, was portrayed as a deep, necessary foundation with its low, musical tones, while gobs of attack on the string came through to ensure the instrument its place as a nearly percussive locomotive force driving the music along. Yes, the rich woody tone of Dolphy’s bass clarinet (my god, what an instrument when in the hands of this master) was reproduced properly and seductively. On Jerry Gonzalez’s Rumba Para Monk, the all-important clap of the congas was there, but so was the resounding, low resonance of Gonzalez’s lower-pitched drums. Cowbells clavéd authoritatively and Larry Willis’ piano vamped with vigor, never missing a beat, nor an ounce of timbre. This disc is full of thick percussion and high, piercing trumpet, and not a hair was out of place, not for a second. My only complaint was that, at times, it seemed like the tonal balance of the speaker was tilted a bit much toward the high end, but that could be an effect of insufficient break-in, which can sometimes take more than 300 hours on a planar speaker; my samples had, maybe, 200 hours of play time. If this speaker is under consideration for purchase, make sure your dealer has logged at least 300-400 hours on his or her demo pair in order to hear these at their best. Last winter we raved about a new reissue series of Blue Note LPs debuting by Music Matters (musicmattersjazz.com) which returned to the original Blue Note master tapes, cleaned them up only as much as necessary and cut the LPs at 45 rpm instead of the tradition 33. Cutting at the faster speed gave each second of music more real estate in the groove and allowed for easier tracking, less chance for errors—that additional vinyl simply makes better music. The results were stunning and each successive release in the series only gets better. Well, now the pot has been sweetened yet again. Chad Kassem and his gang at Acoustic Sounds (acousticsounds.com), legendary for their Fantasy reissues on LP, have just launched a parallel series of Blue Note 45 rpm LPs featuring a totally different selection of titles, so, luckily, there is no duplication. We music lovers come out the winners; now there will be more than 100 of these absolute gems in total from these two sources. First releases in the Acoustic Sounds series include Dexter Calling by Dexter Gordon and Capuchin Swing by Jackie McLean. Titles by John Coltrane, Horace Silver, Joe Henderson, Lee Morgan, Art Blakey, Cannonball Adderley, Lou Donaldson, Paul Chambers and others will ship over the next year or two, and each one promises to deliver the same “ultimate” level of reproduction as the first two. No need to dwell on the level of performance of the music itself. Each title is a certifiable treasure of American jazz, hand-picked from the Blue Note vaults. And they did that literally. Remastering geniuses Kevin Gray and Steve Hoffman were handed the actual two-track original masters to this amazing material, complete with Rudy Van Gelder’s hand-written notes on each tape box. This is the real deal. Gray and Hoffman did minimal manipulation of the tape and have managed to capture a sound that they insist is practically indistinguishable from the original tape masters. And upon listening to these LPs, I’d say those masters are pretty friggin’ fantastic, sonically speaking; the music, well, sings for itself. No compression, little if any EQ and a clean transfer have allowed the music to burst forth as never before. Certainly no CD issue of this material even comes close, though Kassem tells me he will also be issuing SACDs of these titles sometime in the future—they may be available as you read this—so we’ll have to wait and see. (By the way, Music Matters will likewise offer a parallel CD series to its LP titles, but the format will be XRCD, and thus playable on any player, with sonic quality nearly equal to SACD. But I’d still put my money on these LPs; as good as SACDs can be, they still don’t equal the sensation of excellent vinyl—and it doesn’t get any better than this. My one complaint with the Acoustic Sound series is the packaging: at 45rpm it requires two discs to contain all the material of a standard 33 1/3 LP and it seems that a gatefold package would be in order for these discs instead of the single-pocket jacket offered here. This is the one area where the Music Matters issues really excel; their packages are gatefolds with some beautiful Francis Wolff photos adorning the interiors. How do they sound? As already mentioned, they are unquestionably the finest-sounding issues of this material yet. They possess unequaled liquidity and smoothness, and are full, rich and effortless. The music becomes palpable, and I don’t see how they can ever be improved after this version. The sound is simply galvanizing. It is open, totally uncongested as some LPs of this era were, or at least later LP and CD issues were. They are dynamic, with tons of drive, such that you can feel the energy and musical tension of the studio. These and the Music Matters Blue Notes make buying a turntable something to consider with some seriousness—after all is said and done, more than 100 Blue Note titles will be available in this format and that is just the beginning of today’s new vinyl riches. I guarantee you’ve never heard this level of musical realism: detail and definition are second to none, and the soundstaging and imaging are jaw-droppingly holographic. Listening to these becomes a certifiable “beam me up” moment and, best of all, the sonics are so “grabbing” they make you pay attention to the music again—they are totally compelling. Fire up the browser and order these and the Music Matters LPs right now before they disappear forever. true

195

2008-08-12T19:36:46-04:00

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2008-09-01T00:00:00-04:00

Fall is the time for regrouping, for preparing to hunker down during the more sedate winter season. It’s a good time to see what’s on the market that may be new to us, maybe something worth stashing in our nests for the winter. So, with fall on the way soon, let’s look at a few recent arrivals on the scene: a pair of innovative speakers, a bit of A/V dynamite in a small package, and some astonishing “software” which is anything but soft. Arcam (audiophilesystems.com) is one of the U.K.’s most respected designers and manufacturers of audio and video kits. They come up with brilliant, often outside-the-box engineering solutions to producing exceptional musical equipment, and, like Rega and a precious few others, actually maintain all their production facilities in the British Isles. And though their technology is near the top, their pricing isn’t, so investing in a piece of Arcam gear is just that, an affordable investment—it’s designed to last for decades, not years, in addition to producing that top-of-the-pack performance. A few years back Arcam introduced the Solo series of integrated player/amp combos created to offer a one-box solution for those with limited space, but unlimited desire for quality. The recent addition to the Solo line, the Solo Movie 2.1 ($2,499), offers the perfect combination of audio and video features for the spatially challenged music lover. Though it consumes less than a few inches of shelf space, the Solo delivers the goods for a glorious 2.1 channel home theater setup in an extremely major way....

Gearing Up, Getting Down: New Toys for the Changing Seasons

2009-03-02T00:27:25-05:00

4 Speakers are boxes or panels, among other things, designed to transmit music to our ears. They are never amusing or funny, always serious and straight to the point, or should be—effectively neutral, like a good news story. Via whatever technology they employ, they somehow convert an electrical signal—which contains the information previously converted from physical music in the studio to an electronic analog; even digitally recorded music has to be converted back to analog for the speakers—into (hopefully) pleasing music. Getting sound out of some sort of transducer is simple—anyone can get their hands on a speaker driver of some sort, hook it up to an amplifier and some kind of music or noise will result. The trick is drawing out sound that is faithful to the original information encoded in that electrical signal and then delivering it to our ears. In the case of the JT faithful, that means asking, does it sound like real jazz? Is Monk in the room? Does Hawk’s horn sound full and meaty like it should? Does Diana sound like Diana sings onstage? Are the nuances of cymbals, reeds, concert halls, piano hammers, the Vanguard’s ever-tinkling glasses, all conveyed in such a way that we might be fooled into thinking we are there, with those sounds as they are being produced? Ahhh, that’s the magic of speaker design, and every speaker magician has his or her own tricks, some more successful than others, for achieving that illusion of aliveness, of reality, of XXX. There are thousands of speakers to choose from today, each different from the next: some just a bit different, others dramatically so. Here are examples of each category. More than just a jazz drummer, a master of Japanese martial arts and the man behind what many consider to be one of the best turntables on the market, Allen Perkins also owns two of the best ears in high-performance audio. For years I’ve been bowled away by the sound Perkins has achieved setting up stereo demos, both in his now-defunct retail store as well as in numerous hotel rooms at audio shows around the country. But now I know Perkins has a secret: import and distribute speakers that simply sound great and are relatively easy to set up. Originally responsible for U.S. sales of the German Audio Physic lineup, Perkins now imports speakers from the former designer of Audio Physic, Joachim Gerhard, which bear the complicated moniker of Sonics by Joachim Gerhard (immediasound.com). No guessing who’s behind these babies. Having heard entrancing sound from this relatively new family of speakers over the last two or three years, I finally convinced Perkins to let me review a pair in my own home. He obliged by sending in a beautiful pair of Allegrettos ($4,500) in a stunning bird’s-eye maple finish. Turns out Gerhard is a furniture designer in addition to his creds in electronics, and his speakers have always displayed both talents equally. Gerhard adheres to the theory that simpler is better and, were it not for the absolute beauty of the construction, his speakers, at least outwardly, might seem a bit “monastic.” But in audio, simplicity is usually the correct path and every Sonics speaker I’ve heard proves the point. They are seamlessly integrated from top to bottom, are tonally accurate to a T (or an A flat), and produce music like few other speakers can. Oh, and they produce a soundstage that is magical. When properly (and this is easier than I used to think) set up, the speakers disappear from the scene and leave only a blanket of sensuous music at the front of the room, enveloping the listener in a musical experience that is shockingly realistic. Not bad for simple. The Allegretto uses only two drivers, a seven-inch to cover mids and bass, and a specially constructed tweeter to reproduce the highs. Gerhard’s art is to make these two elements combine into one, to make music in a believable manner. To say he succeeds is an understatement. And the proof is in the listening. On the terrific Acoustic Sounds 45 rpm LP reissue of Jackie McLean’s Capuchin Swing, all the elements come together perfectly: tonal balance is spot-on from top to bottom: plenty of detail and plenty of punchy, tight, tuneful bass. First thing I noticed was the timbre and solidity of Walter Bishop’s piano image, always hard to get right; sometimes an acoustic piano can sound like a bad electric. But in this case, the instrument was absolutely “pianistically” woody with no obfuscation of its intrinsic qualities. Percussive and musical, its tonality was perfect—pitch perfect—and even the feel of the hammer striking the strings was there. McLean’s horn was full, but with plenty of clean top end where much of the magic of the alto really happens but is unfortunately lost via many audio systems. Blue Mitchell’s trumpet? Yep, it’s broad and soulful, piercing without screeching, and the Allegrettos even reveal the strength of the wind coming through the bell, shaping each note in a perfectly sculpted 3D manner. Thanks to this great new pressing and these astounding speakers, this 50-year-old LP sounds like it was made last week; it’s that alive, that fresh. Mood Ingenuo captures an astonishing live performance in a Genoa, Italy jazz club by Brazilian reed genius Paulo Moura and New York keyboardist Cliff Korman. Through the Allegretto, I was transported directly to the club. The feel, the air, the audience of the club were all painted in vivid colors across the front of the listening room. There was nothing bloated or flabby in the bottom, nothing bleating or scratchy in the top; the image was totally natural, with nothing added, nothing subtracted. At times I felt like I could reach out and touch Moura’s alto or clarinet, help Korman with the pedals of his piano or share a drink with an audience member at the table next to me. This mix of Ellington tunes with those of Brazil’s Ellington analog, Pixinguinha, was totally satisfying musically, and all the more so through these speakers. The highlight for me was the Pixinguinha classic “1x0,” which describes the fast action of a soccer game through the soaring, flying reed instrument part, in this case clarinet, an instrument rich and meaty in the midrange. The Allegrettos portray Moura’s tone and nuance in a totally believable manner, from every probing dark, sensual, deep tone to the highest trill. Korman’s piano was likewise present, his fingers running across the keyboard at lightning speed like a full-on assault by Rio’s legendary Flamengo soccer team. This disc is highly recommended—as are the Allegrettos! A world cup winner to be sure, in their own right. Swedish meatballs are small. Swedish Saabs are small. And the Swedish Guru QM10 ($2,695; sjofnhifi.com) loudspeakers are small. But like the intense flavor of those scrumptious little treats, and the surprising power of those rocket-scientist-designed Saabs, the Guru speakers pack a wallop capable of knocking an unsuspecting listener on his or her ass. One of those “where’s the subwoofer” speakers, the Gurus deliver bass that must derive from a pact with the devil—it’s just too good to be true. And after an extended dinner with Guru guru Ingvar Öhman in a fiery Thai joint in Vegas earlier this year, I’m not so sure that Goethe’s best friend didn’t have a hand in developing these TNT-loaded mini-boxes (and don’t forget that TNT was invented by another Swede, Mr. Nobel of the famous peace prize). Öhman explained his concepts by sketching them madly on what must have been an entire box of paper napkins, illustrating how a speaker must take both the listening environment and the nature of human hearing into account to be truly accurate sounding and, ultimately, musical. “I design my speakers beginning with the ear of the listener and work backward to the speaker itself,” he explained. “Most speakers are designed by engineers who start with a driver and try to figure out what to do with it.” This is truly revolutionary thinking. Öhman spent more than 10 years studying the nature of human hearing and then applied that knowledge to improving speaker design, which he found extremely lacking back in the mid-’70s when he began his work with audio. “I’ve mapped the way reflections from the shoulders and the outer ear affect the sound we hear, how these affect our ability to detect nuances of the sound, the music. So though the sound that actually leaves the speaker may not measure well, may not be balanced, the sound which actually arrives at the eardrum is balanced and correct. Other designers ignore these effects completely,” Öhman preached. He can go on for hours about the nature of human hearing and the effects it has on our music listening. His design technique, then, is to compensate for the effects of our hearing at the very speaker/room interface; that is, within the speaker itself, as well as compensate for the effects of the listening room on the sound. In this way, what we hear is far closer to the original sound than music played through a speaker that may very well measure perfectly in an isolated test chamber, but really sound “wrong” when the music reaches the actual ear membrane. And he doesn’t just buy drivers off the shelf, as do many manufacturers. “I always design the drivers myself so I don’t have to compromise,” he attests. “But remember, the design process starts with the listener’s ear. Then I model what I want from the speaker and end up with odd driver designs which I have to build myself. I design the driver so that it can produce acoustic energy which is correct to the ear itself, not to a microphone in a testing facility.” He also uses the listening room to augment the performance of the speakers. By placing them against the rear wall, bass is increased. He also harnesses the room’s wall reflections to produce a soundstage of immense proportions, meaning the size of the musical image is magnified in a controlled manner via the size and shape of the enclosure itself, as long as the listener adheres to the suggested setup procedure, which means speakers right up against the rear wall and at least three feet away from side walls, with some sort of sound-absorbing material placed directly behind the boxes. Öhman didn’t start out to sell speakers. His early boxes were intended only as tools in the institute for hearing research he founded to help his understanding of this complex function. But everyone who heard them wanted a pair for music, and he was coaxed into producing pairs for those members of the growing cult surrounding Öhman’s magic boxes—they truly were objects of a devoted underground in Sweden. But now they are available in this country and, as before, everyone who hears them is astonished at their level of performance, particularly when the size of the box is taken into consideration: It’s only 12 inches wide and nine in the other two dimensions. These speakers have a rare quality that I am not sure I can quantify exactly. They have an immediacy that is hard to equal in multi-driver speakers, but that is often found in planar or single-driver systems. The highs are transparent and seem to extend nearly to the moon, with never a trace of harshness or distortion, possessing a clarity that causes a sense of jarring reality. Often while listening I felt a sonic jolt of unnerving suddenness that occurred because the mids and upper frequencies of this speaker are so clean and so fast that everything you listen to seems to come alive and certain kinds of transients—say, a cymbal crash or particular electric-guitar riff—excite the system to the point of frightening reality. Speaking of cymbals, and at the risk of sounding redundant, the clarity of cymbal strokes is nearly unparalleled in my listening experience. The tweeter Öhman has designed seems to work miracles. Oh, and the bass? It seems impossible that such a small box can create bass this low, this solid, but the Gurus do it, and part of that is due to Öhman’s employment of the floor-wall interface to augment what the speakers themselves do properly on their own. He says you really get four speakers working for you in this way. To make sure they could rock and roll, I played some Tom Waits who, if truth be told, is really a jazz-beat performer in the guise of a rocker. In any case, selections from his recent Orphans collection came to life in my living room with plenty of bam, slam and detail—truly exciting stuff. Bass drums thundered with powerful, tight punch—likewise the omnipresent acoustic bass fiddle. His vocals appeared gritty and forceful, just like they are supposed to. Stabbing electric guitar punctuations ripped the aural texture with a visceral excitement. In sum, the Gurus filled my living room with a Waits concert experience, without waiting in line at box offices or urinals. On something more, say, reserved, Hank Jones, originally at the behest of the late Tony Williams, recorded a long series of Great Jazz Trio discs, many available only in Japan. Most of these, including The Great Tokyo Meeting, also feature bassist Ron Carter. This particular meeting is a live performance which captures the magic of three of the best in the business interacting on a handful of great jazz trio tunes. Japan’s East Wind Records did an exemplary job of recording all of these discs and this one is no exception. In an extended listening session, the Gurus did the recording justice on all counts. The power and finesse of Williams’ drumming drives the Trio, and his every stroke emerged perfectly clear and defined; his Gretsch tubs and his legendary K Zildjians were reproduced with tonal accuracy and verve. Carter’s bass never missed a beat either. Every plucked note was offered first in its percussive attack perfectly crisp, then followed with the deep, full, tuneful profundity of Carter’s very large instrument. Needless to say, Jones’ piano maintained its voice as melodic leader through the Gurus as each and every note, every chord, was reproduced as though it was struck a few feet away. But most important, never for an instant did the Gurus allow the music to lose its drive; they never let things drag, but always presented the impression of three amazing players intertwined as one, creating great art through great jazz. And that, in the end, is what great speaker design is all about. true

195

2008-07-09T18:46:11-04:00

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2008-08-01T00:00:00-04:00

Speakers are boxes or panels, among other things, designed to transmit music to our ears. They are never amusing or funny, always serious and straight to the point, or should be—effectively neutral, like a good news story. Via whatever technology they employ, they somehow convert an electrical signal—which contains the information previously converted from physical music in the studio to an electronic analog; even digitally recorded music has to be converted back to analog for the speakers—into (hopefully) pleasing music. Getting sound out of some sort of transducer is simple—anyone can get their hands on a speaker driver of some sort, hook it up to an amplifier and some kind of music or noise will result. The trick is drawing out sound that is faithful to the original information encoded in that electrical signal and then delivering it to our ears. In the case of the JT faithful, that means asking, does it sound like real jazz? Is Monk in the room? Does Hawk’s horn sound full and meaty like it should? Does Diana sound like Diana sings onstage? Are the nuances of cymbals, reeds, concert halls, piano hammers, the Vanguard’s ever-tinkling glasses, all conveyed in such a way that we might be fooled into thinking we are there, with those sounds as they are being produced? Ahhh, that’s the magic of speaker design, and every speaker magician has his or her own tricks, some more successful than others, for achieving that illusion of aliveness, of reality, of XXX. There are thousands of speakers to choose...

How Great Speakers Work: Why We Hear What We Hear

2009-03-02T00:27:05-05:00

4 Sony and Philips painted themselves into a digital corner when, back in the early ’80s, upon the introduction of the compact disc, they declared that their shiny silver invention was capable of “perfect sound forever.” Shame on them: the dismal sound produced by the so-called Red Book digital standard might have been avoided. In a rush to get a product to the market, they made several key decisions based on incorrect assumptions, including underestimating the true nature of human hearing. Back in the November 2007 edition of this column, we touched on this very issue as it compares to the way we hear analog playback, and I think the segment dealing with digital bears repeating here. Peter Lederman, chief engineer of the Soundsmith Corporation (sound-smith.com), manufacturer of fine phono cartridges, analyzes the digital dilemma this way: “It is the events lost between each sample, and the multiple errors that are introduced by attempting to digitally capture, decode and filter your way back to the original analog sound that makes CDs inferior in critical respects when compared with analog. It has been said that once you take filet mignon and grind it up into hamburger, you can never find a chef that will make it taste like filet again.” Putting those digital samples back together in a truly musical way has been the challenge since the format’s inception. But although we now know that truly perfect sound is impossible, vastly improved CD sound is finally becoming a reality, thanks to developments in several areas ranging from revising the format itself—such as the massively large sampling rate of DSD/SACD—to advancements in the electronics used to convert analog musical waveforms into the digital realm, or just improving the cabling utilized in the mastering studio. With 30 years to study the problems, engineers have actually been able to produce CDs that possess many of the qualities of good analog; perhaps not all, but certainly closer than the irritating screechiness of early digital discs. This was brought to my attention in a dramatic way in the midst of my research for the analog column mentioned earlier. I’d just received a copy of the recent reissue of The Complete 1957 Riverside Recordings of Monk and Coltrane. I was startled by the totally lifelike sound of the music, very unlike, and far superior to, even the old ’70s-era Milestone LP reissues I had of these sessions. I found it to be far more analog-sounding than most any other CD I owned and found myself paying more attention to Monk and Trane than to my research—a sure sign that the music was communicating the way it should, but so rarely does, via the average compact disc. There was far more resolution, far more definition of the “shape” of individual instruments—nicely rounded as opposed to edgy and grating. Timbres were spot-on accurate and each instrument occupied a well-sculpted space in the imaginary soundstage instead of making up part of a smeared image. The whole thing was 1,000 percent better than any other version I’d heard of this music: engaging, lush and—without any artificial coloration—totally musical. I really had a hard time believing I was listening to a CD; the difference was that shocking. I had to have more, so I contacted the Concord Music Group, current owner of the vast Fantasy jazz catalog, and requested other samples of this new batch of remastered masterpieces. Turns out most of these new discs, including the The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions from Miles, Coltrane’s Fearless Leader and Interplay boxes, Sonny Stitt’s Stitt’s Bits: Bebop Recordings 1949-1952 and the entire Orrin Keepnews Collection reissues, were remastered by Joe Tarantino, a 23-year vet of the Fantasy studio crew, now working as a freelancer, but still the primary wizard behind Fantasy’s jazz reissues. Even if you already own the material in the reissues just mentioned, you owe it to yourself to try these new reissues. The music comes through as never before. Oh, and this music is classic, legendary stuff that all jazz fans should own regardless. So why were early CDs so bad to begin with? What were the basic problems? Well, Shawn Britton, a remastering wiz at Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs, puts it this way: “Some of the weaknesses were basically due to the size of the disc they chose, coupled with the pit density capacity of the era when digital began. Red Book CDs have a mathematical limitation in their sample rate. Simply put, they lack resolution. Some of the complaints about the sound of early CD releases can also be attributed to the quality of the analog-to-digital converters in use at the time. Another major factor was that many record companies at the time, unfortunately, made no effort to find original master tapes from which to make transfers.” Tarantino himself also lays much of the blame on the inferior quality of the A-D converters of those early years, “Those A to D converters were not a tenth as good as what we have today. There was a lot of error correction, and some nasty distortion occurred during low-level passages.” Todd Garfinkle, of M.A. Recordings, based in Tokyo, agrees with all of the above. “The early releases were recorded using analog-to-digital conversion that was less than satisfactory for music lovers who could tell the difference between the analog sound they were used to and what was happening at the time. The basic problem was, and still is to some degree, the sampling rate, the digital filtration and dithering.” And today? What is that Tarantino did to make Monk and Trane come alive? “We went back to the original master tapes, in many cases, for the first time for a CD issue,” he says. “But there were no test tones on the tapes of those days, so I had to pay special attention to getting tape head alignment just perfect—ear-balling it, if you will—doing it correctly in order to make sure the playback of those original tapes was as close to perfect as possible. As far as any processing, I didn’t want to alter the sound of the original, so I EQ’d as little as I could, enough to make the music sound good, but not much so as to maintain the original integrity of the recording. I am very pleased with the way everything has turned out, sonically speaking. Today’s A to D converters are so much better. Also, we’re doing 24-bit masters with converters that have none of the brittleness of those older units. “Another important part of the improved process is the way we send the finished product to the pressing plant, the masters we send. In the old days we used to send U-matic tapes, and there used to be error correction going on all the time during the mastering, actually two levels of error correction which degraded the sound. Now we send data files which are rock solid, and include no error correction, which makes a big difference.” Joe, whatever you are doing, keep it up, and keep it up all the way through that massive Fantasy catalog, but start with the Dolphys, the Mingus sides, the rest of the Monks, Miles and Trane sessions. Then the choices are yours! Amazing stuff. Nick Phillips, vice president of jazz and catalog A&R with the Concord Group, echoes Tarantino’s thoughts. “Regarding remastering, one of the main premises in our Rudy Van Gelder Remasters series and our Keepnews Collection series is that these reissues start with the original analog master tapes. For both of these series, the masters are transferred to digital at 24-bit resolution and remastered. Rudy Van Gelder, of course, does the remastering for our Rudy Van Gelder series of reissues, while Joe Tarantino does the remastering for our Keepnews Collection series and other titles.” Phillips elaborates: “The sound of standard Red Book CDs has improved in recent years due to better A-to-D converters, the ability to transfer, or record, at higher-resolution digital, whether it’s 24-bit PCM or DSD [Direct Stream Digital], plus there are better D-to-A converters available to the consumer today when it comes to playback. All of these things add up for nicely improved sound in the standard Red Book CD format today, so much better compared to when digital was a fledgling technology.” Mobile Fidelity takes a similar approach, according to Britton. “The bulk of our current business is remastering. Of course, as the bar across the top of our products states, we obtain the original master tapes to create our products. We archive our digital projects in the Direct Stream Digital format, which uses 1-bit Delta-Sigma modulation and a sample rate of 2.8 Megahertz in contrast to the CD Red Book specification of 44.1 KHz sample rate. For CD audio, we then decimate down to the CD sample rate and word length. Technology has significantly improved in both A-D and D-A converters over the last 20 years, but I believe that we have nearly reached the maximum capability of CD sound in terms of sample rate and word-length.” So what do these engineers aim for in the final product? Britton describes MFSL’s approach: “We strive to maintain a natural tone when remastering so as not to force a certain sound of our own onto a popular recording. For example, on Miles Davis’ Steamin’, I worked to keep his horn sounding as though he was standing in front of the listener. Being a professional musician, familiar with the actual sound of instruments, helps considerably. Also, having engineers with on-location live recording and with live sound reinforcement is a plus as when we are doing this work. It helps as a reference for what real, live instruments sound like.” A good example of MoFi’s recent work is the delightful sound on a new Art Pepper hybrid SACD reissue. Engineer Rob LoVerde describes the project: “Art Pepper’s The Way It Was was a 1972 compilation of several sessions dating from 1956, ’57 and 1960. Roy DuNann, a highly talented and well-respected recording engineer, was the man who captured these amazing performances on tape. We started with the original stereo master tapes, as we always do, and, interestingly, the recordings from the 1956 session must surely be some of the earliest stereo recordings ever made. Anyway, other releases of this great album have used certain sonic manipulations like summing the lowest bass frequencies to the center to aid in lacquer cutting, or adding echo to the original CD version for reasons unknown, all of which we decided not to repeat. Our version is an exact replication of the sound of the master tapes. We expect that fans of this album will enjoy the high level of authenticity we’ve treated this album to. We think it sounds fantastic.” On the technical side, many of today’s best mastering and remastering labs trick out their gear to get the nth degree of sound quality out of those treasured old tapes, or today’s new hits: everything from the cables used to modifying the tape machines and various converters. Joe Harley, VP at AudioQuest, a leader in supplying cable for pro and consumer use, and a consultant to JVC’s XRCD series, as well as one of the movers behind the lauded Music Matters Blue Note LP reissue series, says this about wire and CD quality in general: “Pro audio and studio guys all think wire is wire. Kevin Gray at the AcousTech mastering lab was of that same mindset. But I recently rewired his studio. We did a small bit of it, and once he realized what a difference it made, he couldn’t get enough throughout his system and kept hounding me to get the entire place redone! Better cabling really does make a big difference. We heard tremendous jumps in quality when remastering the second batch of Blue Note LPs, after the rewire. Kevin really dug it and the sound was noticeably better.” He then goes on to comment on CD production: “Many factors go together to affect the final quality of the CD. With XRCDs, we master in real time, but what can take a great master down is the replication. The formulation of the disc you use can make a huge difference. Unfortunately, the bean counters want to know how cheap and how fast you can replicate the final product, and this has driven quality down.” What does the future hold? Sony’s Direct Stream Digital seemed to be a contender for a while in the form of the SACD, but Sony itself seems to have lost interest in that format, though others continue to hold a torch, including Concord’s Telarc label. The increased sampling rate certainly makes the sound much more natural, much less digital. Shawn Britton elaborates: “Direct Stream Digital is very close to the sound of analog, but high sample-rate and long word length PCM [more traditional digital] comes in a close second. The technology is there; we just need consumer demand. People are just now realizing that their iPods with inexpensive earbuds do not sound good and are beginning to question the wisdom of carrying around thousands of songs that just sound like crap.” Garfinkle of M.A. reiterates some common themes. “Newer CDs sound better in part because filtration has improved,” he says. “Sampling rates, at least for the recording of master material, has improved up to 192Khz for PCM and 5.6 MHz for DSD. DSD at 5.6 MHz is something unbelievable and should find its way into the rooms of serious audiophiles, hopefully with BlueRay or some similar HD disc format. Of course the hardware companies have to agree on a single format for this to be successful.” Garfinkle is referencing a sampling rate, 5.6 MHz, as yet largely unused by music purveyors. Since 2.4 MHz DSD (SACDs) was a revelation, one can only imagine how much better a sampling rate more than double that might make Metheny, Scofield or Frisell’s guitars sound. Not to mention Rollins’ tenor, Bill Evans’ piano or Elvin’s traps. Of course, a higher sampling rate would most markedly affect new recordings, not reissues, as would proper attention to mic placement, improved studio cabling and so on. Garfinkle’s minimalist, two-mic approach has produced some of the most sonically satisfying discs of the last couple of decades, and he does the whole dog-and-pony show himself, choosing the musicians, the recording space and the equipment. He says, “The process gels when the following are present: a good-sounding space, great musicians and recording equipment that does not color the sound. This includes my two microphones that are DC [battery]-powered microphones equipped with the same diaphragms used on the famous Bruel & Kjaer 4006 microphone from Denmark. The high-output, line-level audio signals of these mikes are presently fed thru Crystal Cable’s Ultra Cable directly into an A-D converter or, even more recently, the Korg MR-1000 5.6 MHz recorder, which also works on pure DC power. So I am totally battery-powered now when I record!” Regarding balancing his final sound, something he can only control by careful placement of each player in the recording venue, Garfinkle says, “Yes, this balance is important and it all depends on myself and how I hear things and how the musicians are willing to work with me in order to take home a recording we can all be proud of.” CDs may or may not ever surpass the easy musicality of the supposedly obsolete LP. But the future is much brighter than it seemed even a few short years ago. Even as the media continue to shout about the death of the CD, the format’s sonics skyrocket in quality and consumer CD players make unbelievable strides in their ability to make amazing music, all repeating the “plight” of the lowly LP, which not only refuses to die, but seems to be thriving. Just about any and all record companies can now make wonderful-sounding CD product to enhance our enjoyment and appreciation of the music we all love, even those of us without a 12-inch turntable. Now, if they only would. true

195

2008-06-12T21:47:52-04:00

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2008-06-01T00:00:00-04:00

Sony and Philips painted themselves into a digital corner when, back in the early ’80s, upon the introduction of the compact disc, they declared that their shiny silver invention was capable of “perfect sound forever.” Shame on them: the dismal sound produced by the so-called Red Book digital standard might have been avoided. In a rush to get a product to the market, they made several key decisions based on incorrect assumptions, including underestimating the true nature of human hearing. Back in the November 2007 edition of this column, we touched on this very issue as it compares to the way we hear analog playback, and I think the segment dealing with digital bears repeating here. Peter Lederman, chief engineer of the Soundsmith Corporation (sound-smith.com), manufacturer of fine phono cartridges, analyzes the digital dilemma this way: “It is the events lost between each sample, and the multiple errors that are introduced by attempting to digitally capture, decode and filter your way back to the original analog sound that makes CDs inferior in critical respects when compared with analog. It has been said that once you take filet mignon and grind it up into hamburger, you can never find a chef that will make it taste like filet again.” Putting those digital samples back together in a truly musical way has been the challenge since the format’s inception. But although we now know that truly perfect sound is impossible, vastly improved CD sound is finally becoming a reality, thanks to developments in several areas ranging from revising...

Perfect Sound for the Time Being: Behind the Compact Disc’s Sonic Ascent

2009-03-02T00:26:10-05:00

4 Big-screen television sets were once almost exclusively the property of the very affluent or the bad guys in apocalyptic sci-fi thrillers; now everyone has to have one of these bigger-is-better screens. But not all flat panels are created equal, at least not in this brave new world. Since the world of broadcast television is about to make a radical change, now just might be the time to consider purchasing a new television, not because you don’t want to be the last on your block to have one, but because these sets can really can make everything from serious movie-watching to casual boob-tubing more engaging. Now, about this radical change just mentioned: In case you’ve been living under a rock the past few months and have missed the barrage of advertisements touting the impending changeover, be advised that, as of Feb. 17, 2009, all over-the-air analog broadcasting shall cease, rendering your old, non-digital sets useless. Well, not totally useless. You can drop 40 or 50 bucks on a converter box that will allow the digital signal over the air to perform on your old set. Uncle Sam is even playing Santa right now, offering a limited supply of $40 coupons good toward the purchase of said box. Check their website, www.dtv2009.gov, to apply for a coupon and to learn more about the switchover. Now, if you don’t rely on an antenna for your television signal to enter your set, i.e., you subscribe to cable or satellite, don’t worry, the set-top box your service provider provides will do the conversion. By the way, the switch to all-digital television was not mandated so that we will all get a better picture for football and reality programming. Nope, but you have one guess, and if it does not include the words “money” and “greed,” then you are incorrect. Yes, it’s the communications giants who want to free up the airwaves, and digital TV uses less bandwidth than analog, so they can buy up more frequencies from the FCC (meaning from us taxpayers) and then turn around and resell it back to us with even more wonderful services we’ve never even dreamed of, or needed, thus far on our evolutionary path. Just wait a couple of years when this Pandora’s Box explodes. Anyway, there is no absolute need to replace your set, even after next February when digital television will be crowned sole monarch. But since prices are falling and the technology is improving week by week, this just might be the year to chuck the 500-pound CRT set and check out the new stuff. However, the market is crowded with hundreds of sets, and showrooms overflow with wall-to-wall images of high-definition mountain climbing, NASCAR racing and mindless music videos. Don’t assume that the $400 set advertised as a loss leader in Sunday’s paper is going to give you a satisfactory picture, or last more than a few months. In this case, you get what you pay for, and though today’s prices will seem high a year from now, do you really want to wait? Be prepared to spend some reasonable jack, but the return on the investment can be worth it in hours of enhanced viewing of the hundreds of new jazz videos on the market, not to mention the joy you’ll experience becoming reacquainted with your favorite old flicks. There is more confusion than clarity in this burgeoning category of the electronics industry. HD, HD-ready, 720, 1080, plasma, LCD, DLP, rear projection, direct view—these are just some of the terms you’ll be faced with. And while plasma and DLP have made great strides recently, LCD technology is the field showing the most improvement in the past two years. In fact, when we did a similar survey in 2006, we would have been hard-pressed to recommend an LCD set. That has all changed. In fact, looking at all the sets on the market—and don’t get me wrong, there are many worthy ones out there—it seems the best bang for the buck in terms of overall picture quality, overall readiness for any near-future compatibility issues, overall reliability and just plain good design sense is the Sony Bravia XBR4 series—specifically in the present discussion, the 46-inch model, the XBR KDL-46XBR4 (sonystyle.com; suggested list, $3,000; street price, $2,499). I was able to live with this television for a glorious month and was extremely sad to see it get back on the truck to go home. Not long ago a common complaint with HD sets was that, while high-def programming was spectacular on these TVs, standard def material often looked worse than on a “normal” television. Well, that is a thing of the past with many of today’s advanced digital video processors, which “upsample” all inputs to a high-definition image. The processor Sony incorporates in its current XBR lineup is one of the most sophisticated in the industry: the Bravia Engine PRO, which transformed even my old DVDs into something very nearly high-def. The absolute pinnacle of HD material is still a relative rarity, i.e., Blu-Ray discs of 1080p resolution, but since the competing HD-DVD format has given up the ghost, Sony and Blu-Ray are now poised to saturate the market with jaw-dropping-quality video. In addition, the XBR sets offer 10-bit color instead of the more typical 8-bit, which opens up a color palette 64 times larger than 8-bit. So gradations of color we are not used to in our present TVs become visible, making the whole experience much more true to life; the expanded “x.v.Color” standard adds to the set’s ability to recreate colors more gracefully and naturally. I saw a demo of this a few years ago at the Consumer Electronics Show and could not believe my eyes. Having it available in such an affordable television is another reason choosing this set is really a no-brainer. Another very important aspect of these sets is their solution to the sometimes jerky depiction of movement in some digital televisions. Sony has developed something they call Motionflow, which helps smooth out these sometimes bothersome artifacts—this is very cool. Since I only had this set for a short time, I kept it rolling nearly ’round the clock. There was never a hiccup and the easy setup made getting it up and running a breeze. The set allows for three HDMI connections for Blu-Ray, HD-DVD and other technologies requiring this form of interconnect, including most HD cable and satellite boxes. But it also offers two component video inputs, three composite video inputs, an S-Video input and a PC audio and video input, plus five analog audio inputs. So connecting just about any and all of your gear to this set should be painless. In case you need more HDMI inputs, consider the OPPO HDMI switcher outlined below. Of course, all of this will be far quicker if you actually read the owner’s manual before you get going. Since today’s sets are far more complex than our old CRTs, this is really not an optional step: Read the stinking book. And then get ready for an amazing ride. I was able to enjoy Miles, Metheny, Sonny Boy Williamson, Keith Jarrett, Mingus, Hendrix and many more legendary artists in stunning video performances with a clarity and vivacity I’ve only experienced on the “big screen” in a theater prior to this. Of course, the work of directors Kubrick, Jarmusch, the Coens and Coppola all took on a more revealing appearance as well, thanks to this amazing XBR set. I looked at many other televisions in prepping for this column and some did certain things better than this one: some plasmas had better blacks, some LCDs were more affordable and so on. But, dollar for dollar—both for enjoyment today and for tomorrow—I saw no other choice that surpassed this Sony XBR4 in overall performance, compatibility and price. It is a television for the lover of film and music as art, but still allows for the evil deliciousness of Desperate Housewives to appear in its most devilish Sunday best. Yep, this is the set I want all for my very own. For program sources I used a couple of fantastic disc players that span a wide spectrum of price points. The Oppo DV-981HD (oppodigital.com; $229, online sales only) is hands down the best digital player bargain available today. For this modest amount of money you get world-class DVD playback, including upsampling of conventional discs to 1080p, Faroudja digital processing (Faroudja makes the processors in many of today’s state-of-the-art video players and processors), as well as a universal music disc player for playback of CD, SACD, DVD-Audio, MP3 discs and so on. Short of Blu-Ray or HD-DVD discs, this machine will play just about anything. And it does it all very well. Many audiophiles have bought this machine just for its CD playback quality. But throw in the astonishing video performance and it’s hard not to recommend this slim unit. The video processing capabilities are far beyond those of any other similarly priced box and, if you are on a budget, this is the player to buy; even if you never use the video section, it’s a winner. But for top-of-the-heap performance at a rock-bottom price, the Oppo is the only realistic choice. As mentioned previously, if you have several HDMI components and want to keep them connected simultaneously (many TVs offer only one or two HDMI inputs), then employing an HDMI switch is a must. Oppo offers another true bargain in this category as well: the HM-31 HDMI switch ($99, online sales only), which allows for connecting three HDMI components into one input on your set. It is HDMI 1.3 certified, which means it meets all the latest standards for this all-in-one video-audio connection scheme, so all the quality inherent in your discs and components will be maintained through the chain. And this is a good thing. Higher up the evolutionary ladder of today’s finest disc players is the Esoteric UZ-1 (teac.com/esoteric; $5,300). This is not only a visually captivating device, but its performance quality is likewise spellbinding. It does everything the Oppo does, but just that much better, which, considering how nice the Oppo is, says quite a lot. Esoteric is the high-performance brand from industry stalwart TEAC. For years I’ve luxuriated in the sound of Esoteric’s various demonstration rooms at the Consumer Electronics Show and have never left their demos without feeling musically sated and fulfilled; their lineup of disc players, transports and processors is second to none. Now that they are featuring all-in-one players (one-box units with transport and DAC), they have become more accessible, financially speaking, and so it’s time to rave about them in more detail here. Esoteric products are decidedly over-engineered and that is also a good thing: Built like tanks, they will perform at incredible levels—way beyond the ordinary—for years and years. Since Esoteric engineers and builds everything itself (most manufacturers outsource transports and other component parts), it ensures that every nuance of construction, engineering and manufacturing fits extremely exacting tolerances. And it shows. The machined aluminum faceplate, chassis and disc tray reveal a solidity and durability not found in any other machine. Confidence-inspiring, to say the least. The sound? Well, the sound is the sound of music: Pianos are rock-solid, timbre and pitch-wise; cymbals ring like the clear brass they are; drums possess punch and drive; and bass? Well, it gets down to where it should with tunefulness and roundness, with just the right amount of percussive string attack to announce that low, low follow-up from the body of the instrument. Reality to the max. The Esoteric player allows the music to envelop you, to hypnotize you, to hold your attention. You can’t ask for better. But this is a video column, so let’s comment on that as well. The UZ-1 upsamples standard discs to 1080p and also uses a Faroudja processor. But the bar is so much higher with this unit. And the UZ-1 leaps right over that bar, scoring a perfect 10. Some inferior players allow jaggy edges to appear when playing certain types of motion-intensive material. Not so with this unit. I never sensed a bit of jerkiness in movement or instability of an image, and video “noise” was undetectable. Instead, the image was silky smooth, but still absolutely clear and focused. The effect is more like viewing film on a screen in contrast to the images we have become used to with standard-def sets and DVDs, in which the scan lines intrude on our illusion of reality. Sit back with a classic film or jazz performance and be transported to another world; the effect is that breathtaking. Esoteric has packaged a wealth of benefits into the UZ-1, a tidy, diminutive package with a surprisingly powerful punch. To surpass this level of performance to any meaningful level would be difficult and would require a much larger monetary commitment—and a bevy of separate components requiring much more space. The performance, compactness and ease of operation make the Esoteric UZ-1 an absolute stunner in its top-shelf, ethereal category. true

195

2008-06-16T20:04:50-04:00

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2008-05-01T00:00:00-04:00

Big-screen television sets were once almost exclusively the property of the very affluent or the bad guys in apocalyptic sci-fi thrillers; now everyone has to have one of these bigger-is-better screens. But not all flat panels are created equal, at least not in this brave new world. Since the world of broadcast television is about to make a radical change, now just might be the time to consider purchasing a new television, not because you don’t want to be the last on your block to have one, but because these sets can really can make everything from serious movie-watching to casual boob-tubing more engaging. Now, about this radical change just mentioned: In case you’ve been living under a rock the past few months and have missed the barrage of advertisements touting the impending changeover, be advised that, as of Feb. 17, 2009, all over-the-air analog broadcasting shall cease, rendering your old, non-digital sets useless. Well, not totally useless. You can drop 40 or 50 bucks on a converter box that will allow the digital signal over the air to perform on your old set. Uncle Sam is even playing Santa right now, offering a limited supply of $40 coupons good toward the purchase of said box. Check their website, www.dtv2009.gov, to apply for a coupon and to learn more about the switchover. Now, if you don’t rely on an antenna for your television signal to enter your set, i.e., you subscribe to cable or satellite, don’t worry, the set-top box your service provider provides will do...

Watch the Changes

2009-03-02T00:26:14-05:00

4 Among the 1.85 million square feet of exhibit space at the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show, held in Las Vegas, Nev., Jan. 7-10, hundreds of audio equipment manufacturers proffered thousands of different solutions for extracting music from a black or silver disc, amplifying that electronic signal enough to drive a loudspeaker and, finally, trying to create the best speaker design around. Oh, and there were thousands of speaker cables, power cables, power conditioners, equipment racks, acoustic room-treatment products and vacuum tubes, just to mention a few other product categories. Mind-boggling is an understatement. One morning I sat in a demo room listening to music through a pair of wacky-looking speakers from Italy—they looked like two chrome-trimmed robots from a ’50s sci-fi flick, painted Ferrari Red—and wondered how people come up with so many different, often bizarre, engineering solutions for making beautiful music come alive. And though most of us think of simple rectangular boxes when we think of a loudspeaker, even seemingly spare enclosures can be remarkably complex and remarkably different, one from another. The possibilities seem to be endless, and the manifestation of most of those possibilities is at CES every January. For audio geeks, it is truly a marvel—like Christmas in July, only in January. There were no grand revelations this year, no big surprises to take the breath and ears away, but the overall quality and quality presented by established names and newcomers alike at this over-the-top expo attested to the basic vitality of the hi-fi world, guaranteeing that music fans will always have a wide selection of playback gear from which to choose. This is a good thing. Some highlights: The universe of Moon products, launched from Canada by Simaudio (simaudio.com), has recently increased by two heavenly bodies, the CD-1 CD player and the 50-watt i-1 integrated amplifier ($1,500 each). Yep, they sound great, as do all Moon units, and they are built ruggedly as are all the Moons—well beyond the standards of most equipment—but the real significance in these is their price point. Finally, just about anyone can afford this well regarded, well engineered and well built gear. Says Moon marketing chief Lionel Goodfield, “We set out to create a new line in which price just could not be a barrier, but would still carry our name and reputation with pride and merit. I think this stuff rocks.” And so do I. Goodfield promised review samples for JazzTimes later in the year. Another price-beater is the brand new Arcam Solo Mini ($999; audiophilesystems.com), a very affordable all-in-one—almost, ya gotta add speakers—component comprising a 25-watt per channel amp, CD player and AM-FM tuner. In addition, via Arcam’s optional rLead or rDock, you can run your iPod through the Solo Mini with full control of the iPod via the Arcam’s controls, and the iPod menu info will appear on the Arcam’s control screen as well. A great convenience, certainly, but one with the added bonus of greatly improved sound from your poddy thing. Arcam’s rep for sound beyond the price tag continues with the Solo Mini, making it a great solution for a second or third system, maybe for the kitchen, office or a small apartment. They will also offer a pair of matching speakers, featuring a rugged aluminum enclosure, for $300 apiece. Japan’s Almarro Products (almarro.com) displayed the prototype for a new amplifier; tube of course, based on the indestructible 6C33C-B tube that was developed for guidance systems in Soviet-era MIG fighters. Their A340 (around $5,500) is a monoblock design employing two of those meaty tubes for each channel to produce 40 watts of delicious Almarro juice. I’ve used an Almarro amp with these same tubes for several years and it just purrs like a kitten with no sign of fatigue. Long tube life is apparently a hallmark of Almarro and this particular tube type, as is fantastic performance and engaging musical reproduction. On the other side of the price spectrum, VAC, Valve Amplification Company (vac-amps.com), introduced a new preamp, the Phi Alpha ($11,000), a jaw-droppingly handsome box; and a new amp, the Phi Alpha 160 Monoblocs ($7,000 each channel), likewise knockout beauts. VAC also debuted a new DAC (digital-to-analog converter), the Alpha D/A Converter ($7,500), which mates handily with the other two components. All of these inherit the technology and most of the incredible sonics of the VAC Phi Beta components that have been very favorably noted in these pages in the past. Designer and prez Keith Hays has an enviable rep in high-end audio for his attention to detail, his ability to create highly musical electronics and his dedication to eking every bit of nuance and quality from his tubes. Vienna Acoustics (sumikoaudio.com) unveiled a breathtakingly attractive new speaker with breathtaking sonics, The Music ($25,000), which takes advantage of several innovative features to produce music at lifelike sound-pressure levels that nonetheless maintains the necessary delicacy and nuance of the real thing. This is the top model of a new line inspired by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt. The cabinetry is top-notch and a pair of these in the living room would provide endless hours of great listening, as well as serving as a catalyst for hours of conversation. Sumiko also showed a cool USB version of their Pro-Ject Debut III turntable ($449) that allows for easy connection of the table to your computer via an included USB-equipped phono preamp. This gadget makes transferring LPs to CD much easier, and helps guarantee a good sounding transfer to boot. Named for another great artist, the Callas Monitor loudspeakers ($5,500), from the Northeast Italian-based Opera company (epitomeav.com), sang in the Venetian Hotel much like their namesake: with great authority, tremendous finesse and obvious ease. Powered by Unison Research’s (epitomeav.com) gorgeous new P70 tube amp ($7,000), the sound was seductive, like Callas doing Puccini, and the two created a system any jazz lover would covet. Unison also showed a less powerful version of this amp, the P40 ($4,950), which sacrifices only a bit of sheer muscle but doesn’t lose any of the grace or inherent sonic strengths of its larger sibling. Any of the entries in the Unison lineup would please even the most discriminating jazzophile or audiophile, or any combination thereof. From Profundo, an importer and distributor of ultra high-end stuff located in the SF Bay Area, we show-goers were treated to luscious, tasty music from a Basis Audio turntable setup ($22,000) rigged with a Transfiguration Orpheus phono cartridge ($5,000), run through the sexy Trenner & Friedl Miles loudspeaker ($27,000)—they also sell a Mingus, an Ella, a Dizzy and Duke model, among others—all powered by Viva Audio electronics, the Linea F preamp ($22,000) and Verona Tre mono amps ($24,000/pair). Proprietor Bob Clarke played some Beatles from George Martin’s glorious remix LP Love, and I was transfixed—I’d never heard the music sound so transparent, detailed and moving. Some of the most magical speakers I’ve ever heard used to come from Germany’s Audio Physic. A couple of years ago, owner/designer Joachim Gerhard left AP to form a new company, Sonics, distributed by Immedia (immediasound.com) in Berkeley. His speakers continue to perform an amazing disappearing act: They really seem to totally vanish from the listening environment so that the music is just there in the room, sort of hanging in the air, with no apparent point of origin. And the music that is so holographically projected is nothing short of startling, honest and real. Put some jazz on the Spiral Groove turntable designed by Immedia’s head honcho Allen Perkins and suddenly Blakey is in the room. Music Matters chief Joe Harley, one of the guys responsible for the wonderful 45-rpm LP reissues of classic Blue Notes (musicmattersjazz.com), put on a couple of hot acetates of upcoming releases. The music was convincing, airy, quick, loaded with snap—but no crackles and pops—so believable, it made the hairs on the back of my goosebumps stand up. The Sonics Allegretto model in question is fairly priced at a mere $4,500—yes, in this high-end world, that is cheap, particularly considering the level of pleasure that can be achieved with them. Benchmark (benchmarkmedia.com), a youngish company making great waves with their affordable and musical DACs, was showing their DAC1 Pre ($1,575), a new unit combining the functions of a DAC, preamp and headphone amplifier into a handy compact package. Benchmark DACs have been praised for their recovery of detail and outstanding level of performance, all at very moderate price points. The sound of their room, shared with Studio Electric’s wonderful spherical loudspeakers (studio-electric.com) was one of those that invited long, languorous listening. Canadian Tash Gorka (divertech.com) is a man who loves music. His wife loves music. They love JazzTimes. So devoted is he to music and its definitive reproduction that Tash has become a minor legend in high-end audio, partly for his distribution of Antique Sound Labs, an affordable line of tube amps, but principally for his role in developing the Reference 3A lineup of speakers, all of which are tube-friendly. Tash had his flagship model, the Grand Veena ($7,500) fired up in his room with a pair of his ASL Hurricane amps ($6,200/pair) and the combination created some powerful Category Five audio. The resulting music did indeed blow me away, but the sound in Tash’s demo rooms always does. He also introduced a new model, the Episode ($5,500), which was on display but not playing when I was in the room. Tash told me it produces most of the qualities of the Grand Veena, though with just a bit less bass. Space doesn’t allow us to elaborate on the terrific sound we heard in several other demo rooms including those playing gear by E.A.R., Bel Canto, Esoteric, Paradigm, DeVore Fidelity, Art Audio, Joseph Audio, PrimaLuna, Triangle, McIntosh (more on their fantastic new turntable in a future issue) and many others. In future issues we’ll try to make sure what was heard in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas. *** Sonic Boom: Teresonic Speakers Make Big Sounds with Few Watts We’re always on the lookout for real-world speaker solutions to mate with low-powered tube amps. Precious few speakers can do more than sputter with the flea-powered amps that have achieved cult status in the past 15 years. Try putting a three-watt monster amp in front of the speakers most of us have in our living rooms. Wouldn’t be a pretty sight: sparks maybe, lousy sound for sure. Teresonic (teresonic.com), a small company based in the Silicon Valley, has built a name for itself by producing speakers that can really scream, or better said, sing loudly, with those same three watts. In addition to this rare quality, the boxes themselves are nearly art objects—the shapes are unique and the finishes are second to none. They achieve such high efficiency ratings using a single driver in each enclosure to span the entire sonic spectrum, in contrast to more typical designs employing tweeters and woofers to cover the same spectrum. I spent an extended time in a Las Vegas hotel room listening to Teresonic’s Ingenium ($9,975), and went away lusting after a pair of the smaller model as well, the Magus ($3,985), for my three-watt bedroom system. The operating word is naturalness. The Teresonics produce a natural sound that is just not found with most other speakers. Music possesses something special through these speakers, a particular coherence and ease peculiar to single-driver systems. It is just spooky real. And though some complain of missing bass with so-called horn speakers, with proper placement, bass is actually more than good—maybe not window rattling, but certainly plentiful and satisfying. But who cares? With the other qualities this speaker possesses, you don’t really pay attention to how much bass is present; however, these Teresonics are just not lacking in that regard. Listening to Chet Baker’s “For All We Know” was a joy. There was lots of space and air around the instruments, his vocal instrument was full of that special character he projected, and nothing was congested or choked. Each and every instrument sounded real, as were the timbres. His trumpet was clean, clear and brassy, with no tinge of any thickness or smudginess to the tone. Just like a live trumpet. Uncanny for sure. On a Ben Webster tune, I could hear the reedy quality of his tone. Nothing in the playback was sluggish or muddy; instead, the sound was lucid. In fact, I am sure I could even feel the air coming out of the bell of his horn. On a Ray Brown Trio selection, the drums came across as drums should: punchy, sharp and percussive. Ray’s bass was deep, tuneful and fully present. The smaller Magus shares most of the qualities of the larger model, with a slightly reduced level of perceived size. But most importantly, they are equally natural and musical. For smaller rooms begging for a high-efficiency speaker, the Magus is a great performer well worth auditioning. The Teresonics have managed to pull off the difficult task of making one lonely driver perform the work of two or three. And they have done it in high style. If you love the sound of tubes, especially the low wattage single-ended triode amps with only a handful of watts to share, Teresonic just might be what you need to make beautiful music long into the night. true

195

2008-06-17T19:20:43-04:00

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18240

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200804

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2008-04-01T00:00:00-04:00

Among the 1.85 million square feet of exhibit space at the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show, held in Las Vegas, Nev., Jan. 7-10, hundreds of audio equipment manufacturers proffered thousands of different solutions for extracting music from a black or silver disc, amplifying that electronic signal enough to drive a loudspeaker and, finally, trying to create the best speaker design around. Oh, and there were thousands of speaker cables, power cables, power conditioners, equipment racks, acoustic room-treatment products and vacuum tubes, just to mention a few other product categories. Mind-boggling is an understatement. One morning I sat in a demo room listening to music through a pair of wacky-looking speakers from Italy—they looked like two chrome-trimmed robots from a ’50s sci-fi flick, painted Ferrari Red—and wondered how people come up with so many different, often bizarre, engineering solutions for making beautiful music come alive. And though most of us think of simple rectangular boxes when we think of a loudspeaker, even seemingly spare enclosures can be remarkably complex and remarkably different, one from another. The possibilities seem to be endless, and the manifestation of most of those possibilities is at CES every January. For audio geeks, it is truly a marvel—like Christmas in July, only in January. There were no grand revelations this year, no big surprises to take the breath and ears away, but the overall quality and quality presented by established names and newcomers alike at this over-the-top expo attested to the basic vitality of the hi-fi world, guaranteeing that music fans will always...

Viva Las Vegas

2009-03-02T00:26:18-05:00

4 Bird and Diz. Metheny and Mehldau. Bix and Tram. Miles and his million partners. What do these teams connote? Well, at least on the stand, they connote synergy: a magical musical melding that always produces more energy, more excitement than the sum of the individual parts. Like bleu cheese and bacon. Red beans and rice. Brunello and Pecorino di Pienza. In audio, the English were onto the wisdom of component synergy long ago: Leak components always worked better together than when matched with competing brands. Then the high priest of modern British high-end, Ivan Tiefenbrun, creator of the legendary Linn LP12 turntable, revitalized the concept in the 1970s promoting the Linn system approach to audio, beginning with his ’table and ending with Linn speakers. How could it get any better than that? Well, many today agree with the concept and though few in high- performance audio consumption really practice it, the opportunity exists to assemble a system of related gear that, when compared to other, often-mismatched kits, sounds like the audible version of manna from heaven. Back in the ol’ motherland, Naim, Arcam, Creek, E.A.R., and Rega are some of the prime exponents of this philosophy, while on this continent, McIntosh Labs, Bel Canto Design, Ayre and Simaudio are some of the leaders in the component-matching arena. One of my systems—of course I have more than one!—is a three-watt Fi “X” amplifier and the matching Fi “Y” preamplifier designed by Don Garber to operate optimally as a pair, sort of like chromosomes, so that the electrical stuff in one is engineered to mate perfectly with the other, no guessing, no out-of-whack impedances or voltages. They sound fantastic together, and they look great, too: The chassis of each is configured in the shape of its namesake letter. System mismatching is an unfortunate occurrence that is all too common, even in the world of four- and five-thousand-buck components that have often been purchased based on magazine reviews, with little consideration for how they will interact in the context of the buyer’s existing system. Many less-than-conscientious dealers just want to make a sale and don’t investigate the all-important environment into which a pair of $50,000 speakers is headed. Too bad. With a little research and a competent dealer, it’s really quite easy to purchase a system that will, as only the combination of Bird and Diz can, really salt your peanuts. We’ll examine a couple of examples of single-brand synergy, but if you already own one or two proven components and need to add another, consult with your dealer about which brand or individual piece will work best with what you have. However, if you’re starting from scratch, it’s a no-brainer to go with one of these examined below. All members of the team are designed to work together from the get-go. The reviews that follow refer to sound produced by the entire system, though we’ll examine the details of each component as well. *** Rega System: Mira Integrated Amp, Apollo CD Player, R5 Loudspeakers We’ve praised Rega (rega.co.uk) products in this column many times over the past years and will surely continue to do so in the future. Company founder and spiritual leader Roy Gandy has had one goal in all his work with Rega: make music sound like music. His unanimously lauded line of turntables led to the creation of a full catalog of audio products from head to tail, i.e., from phono cartridge to speakers. And what many don’t seem to realize is that all Rega equipment is built in-house in the company’s cozy factory somewhere in the wilds of England. A few parts are outsourced, in Britain, but all of the design work and assembly takes place in the Rega workshop, under the careful supervision of people who share Gandy’s love of music and quality. The Rega system at hand comprises the Apollo CD player ($1,195), the Mira 3 integrated amp ($1,195) and the R5 speakers ($1,395), all connected with Chord cabling, another U.K. import, provided and endorsed by Rega’s U.S. distributor. The Mira is a “full-feature” amp, 60 watts worth of high-octane juice, which offers a phono preamp, as well as five additional inputs including a full tape monitor section. It is a handsome package that mates well with the Apollo (or the big brother Saturn) CD player. The Apollo, reviewed here in 2006, is one of the most amazing CD player values on the planet, reproducing music in a nearly analog naturalness and featuring a totally new design of the CD processing software, an amazing feat considering most players are still using software written back at the birth of digital in the early ’80s. The R5 speaker sports Rega’s latest developments in speaker design and construction, utilizing a side-firing seven-inch woofer that mates seamlessly with the midrange without the aid of a troublesome, often distorting crossover. Good thinking, Roy and crew. The result of Rega’s devotion to music is nothing short of spectacular sound via a system with a very reasonable price tag. This entire group costs less than some spend on wire alone, and will knock the socks off many of those systems using such wire with its innate sense of easy, natural musicality. Tonal balance is absolutely correctly proportioned from the sparkling, crisp highs down to the pleasing, tuneful bass. An old Candid recording of Eric Dolphy with Mingus sounded as fresh as last week’s Botti with sharp, defined hi-hat snaps and plunging bottom from Mingus’ big fiddle, while Dolphy’s bass clarinet was similarly well rounded. From Miles Davis’ box on Prestige, The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions, we hear a fully fleshed-out Coltrane tenor, convincingly locomoted by Philly Joe’s splashing cymbals and creamy, resonant calfskin-headed snare—yes, with this system you can really tell that it’s calfskin and not plastic. The Rega manages to grab the listener firmly but gently and place him or her in the middle of the performance. I’ve heard lots of systems at lots of audio dog-and-pony shows and very few come close to producing the comfort level and the ease of listening that the Rega system generates. From the first moment I plugged it all in, I knew there was something special going on. And yeah, I knew some of that was due to the synergy of all the parts working together. But when a particularly mournful Billie Holiday was resurrected in my study, an absolutely real tear came to my eye. When a system touches one’s soul in this way, one must pay attention to it. Music is about emotion, after all, and Rega reaches that rarest of rare spots, playing music that speaks to the heart. Can it get any better than that? A special nod here to the Chord cabling. As mentioned above, the cost of wire in high-performance audio can rise to astronomical heights, but this stuff, the Chameleon Silver Plus ($225/meter pair) and the Rumour 4 speaker cable ($14/foot), cranks out fantastic sound reproduction for a relatively low price, and Chord wire can be had for even less via its entry-level wires, the Crimson interconnect ($85/meter pair) and Carnival Silver Screen ($3.50/foot) which, in my opinion, get pretty darn close to the slightly higher-priced spread. Though not a Rega product, they mate amazingly well without breaking the bank. I’d known the Apollo CD player to be a great addition to just about any system, but hadn’t known how successful Rega was in assembling a full lineup of equipment to complement its source gear. And since its designers are truly music lovers, the sonics of this assemblage are far beyond expectations, and far beyond their total cost. I’ve been enjoying hour upon hour of jazz, rock and classical music through this system. While some systems do some things better, few get it all as right as Rega does across the board. And I have nothing short of total respect for the people at Rega’s insistence on doing just about everything themselves. They might not smelt the metal, but they probably would if they thought it would improve the sound. *** Shindo Laboratory System: Aurieges Preamplifier, Montille Amplifier, Shindo and Auditorium 23 Cables, Auditorium 23 Phono Step-up Transformer I first paid serious attention to the somewhat esoteric gear from Shindo Labs (toneimports.com) a few years ago at the same time that I became a total covert to the sound of the DeVore Fidelity speakers (devorefidelity.com), reviewed here last month. I’d heard the DeVore Silverbacks teamed up with some powerful solid-state amps at a New York City audio confab, and was impressed with their overall musicality, but not overwhelmed. The next day, I visited a Greenwich Village audio salon where the same speakers were paired with some unassuming green-painted tube electronics from Japan. Shindo. Hmmm, I’d seen and heard them before, but, the way they transformed the DeVore speakers from pretty good to astonishing was, well, astonishing. Jaw-droppingly so. I later realized I had to pay them more respect and attention in the form of a proper review. So here we are. The bad thing for my checkbook is that, as when I finally got the DeVore speakers in-house, now that I’ve heard Shindo in my home, I can’t see how I can let this gear go back to the American importer. It’s just that good, that addictive. Some background: Ken Shindo gave up his job designing televisions for Matsushita (Panasonic) in Japan back in the 1970s in order to concentrate his energy and time on the creation of better and more tonally accurate audio components that would allow listeners a more transparent and accurate window onto any given music event. His belief is that the classic parts engineered in the 1950s and ’60s are much more capable of achieving that end, so he’s been stockpiling these tubes, resistors, capacitors and so on in order to build his equipment with the good stuff, now long out of production. The upside is audio gear that has few peers at any price point. The downside? Once a given part is gone, he’s got to redesign an amp or preamp utilizing some substitute or another, likewise vintage, such that, by definition, or by sheer reality, all Shindo equipment is limited edition. In addition, each piece is hand-built by Ken and his family upon order, so any Shindo unit you purchase will be built specifically for you and can be, within limits, customized for your particular needs. This system consists of the Shindo Aurieges preamp ($3,895), the Montille amplifier ($3,995), and Shindo silver interconnects ($975), filled out by the Auditorium 23 step-up transformer ($975) and A23 speaker cable ($950). And though technically the A23 gear is not branded Shindo, it has been designed specifically to accompany Shindo electronics. The Aurieges includes a phono stage, but that’s only compatible with high-output moving magnet cartridges, so A23 created the step-up transformer to allow low-output moving-coil phono cartridges to sing along with Shindo. The amplifier is a modest 15-watt job featuring EL84 output tubes manufactured by British Mullard in the 1950s. Need new tubes? Shindo has earmarked a healthy supply of his private stock as replacements, so not to worry, new tubes, of the proper vintage, of course, are just an express shipment away. One note: Since, by design or otherwise, the Shindo gear is totally synergistic with DeVore’s speakers, they regularly exhibit together at audio shows, and since I own a pair, the DeVore Nines ($6,500) are the speakers utilized within the context of these comments. As well, the source component was primarily my trusty Nottingham Ace Space turntable and Shelter 501MkII cartridge combo played through the A23 phono step-up transformer—talk about synergy! To put it bluntly, played through the Shindo, music is presented as I’ve never heard it before, at least in my own listening environment: spot on, solid, dimensional, palpable, just friggin’ real, with no artifacts added and nothing taken away. Music has naturalness unlike anything my personal references can recall, other than live in a club or theater. I can almost reach out and put my hand around the neck of Kenny Burrell’s guitar as he vamps with Coltrane, or grab that famous tenor. Each note that pours from Trane’s horn is almost like an aural soap bubble, rounded and clear. I can hear it and feel it, the holographic-ness of the image is that pronounced. It’s liquid without being squishy. It’s punchy without being harsh. It’s relaxed without being lazy. It sort of oozes from the speakers, but in a good way, without being syrupy or sappy. Details emerge where they should without calling attention to themselves, but act only to reinforce the illusion of reality. To paraphrase the question posed by an old ad slogan, I’d ask, “Is it live, or Shindo?” To my ears, it seems alive, but will not blow one out of one’s chair, or mess up one’s coif; real music doesn’t do that. Instead, the Shindo draws you into the performance, say, a Larry Young tune from his Young Blues LP. The organ flows, the drums propel, the bass kicks ass and lays the foundation solidly, with unquestionable authority. The result is like a musical cocoon surrounding you, or maybe it’s like getting into a time machine drifting back to that very session in September 1960. The only thing the Shindo can’t do is re-create the stench of the musicians’ cigarette smoke. Many reviewers, myself included, are not totally capable of explaining or defining all the qualities the Shindo gear possesses. Speaker designer DeVore put it this way in an e-mail: “The Shindo is a revelation. I’m fucked until I can sell my old amp. I’ve been inviting everyone over to hear my system. It’s the best it’s ever been, but I have trouble describing why. It just does everything. There is no return from Shindo, if your setup is amenable to it. I still don’t know why. Some days I think it’s just a bit better than everything else, some days I think it’s in its own galaxy, light years better than anything else could ever hope to be. What I’m hearing now is the lowest noise floor, plus the most finely nuanced low-level detail I’ve ever heard in the system. That with better dynamic punch and more three-dimensionality than ever. More perceived extension on top and bottom, too. There’s no area [in which] it’s not better.” Well, he did manage to convey additional impressions after all and maybe explain some of the magic. But magic is magic, and so is Shindo. If your pocketbook allows, audition some Shindo, next time around. You can spend relatively little, or enough to equal a small house in the Cedar Rapids suburbs. Rega or Shindo—each can weave the spell, and each can do music the way it should be done. We have to give great thanks to Roy Gandy and Ken Shindo for their unlimited dedication to bringing forth this level of synergy, and for allowing such a musical reality to enter into the privacy of our own homes. But one important caveat as you are listening: Please don’t sip your Brunello along with salted peanuts. That would be an awful combination for sure, totally lacking in synergy. true

195

2008-06-18T19:44:50-04:00

false

18394

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200803

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2008-03-01T00:00:00-05:00

Bird and Diz. Metheny and Mehldau. Bix and Tram. Miles and his million partners. What do these teams connote? Well, at least on the stand, they connote synergy: a magical musical melding that always produces more energy, more excitement than the sum of the individual parts. Like bleu cheese and bacon. Red beans and rice. Brunello and Pecorino di Pienza. In audio, the English were onto the wisdom of component synergy long ago: Leak components always worked better together than when matched with competing brands. Then the high priest of modern British high-end, Ivan Tiefenbrun, creator of the legendary Linn LP12 turntable, revitalized the concept in the 1970s promoting the Linn system approach to audio, beginning with his ’table and ending with Linn speakers. How could it get any better than that? Well, many today agree with the concept and though few in high- performance audio consumption really practice it, the opportunity exists to assemble a system of related gear that, when compared to other, often-mismatched kits, sounds like the audible version of manna from heaven. Back in the ol’ motherland, Naim, Arcam, Creek, E.A.R., and Rega are some of the prime exponents of this philosophy, while on this continent, McIntosh Labs, Bel Canto Design, Ayre and Simaudio are some of the leaders in the component-matching arena. One of my systems—of course I have more than one!—is a three-watt Fi “X” amplifier and the matching Fi “Y” preamplifier designed by Don Garber to operate optimally as a pair, sort of like chromosomes, so that the electrical...

All Systems Go

2009-03-02T00:26:24-05:00