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Audioquest DragonFly USB Digital-Audio Converter and Sydney Interconnect Sweepstakes
According to AudioQuest:
Beautiful Sound ... From Any Computer: DragonFly is an affordable and easy-to-use device that delivers far superior sound by bypassing the poor quality sound card that is built into your computer. DragonFly is a sleek, flash drive sized Digital-Audio Converter that connects to a USB jack on a Mac or Windows PC, turning any computer into a true high- fidelity music source.Whether you’re on the go or at home, listening on ear buds or connecting your computer to a stereo system, DragonFly reveals all the emotional expression and nuance that makes your favorite music, or movies, so enjoyable. However you connect it, DragonFly simply and easily makes any computer sound better.
Features:
Plays All Music Files: MP3 to 24-bit/192kHz
Drives Headphones Directly
Variable Output Drives Powered Speakers or Power Amp
Fixed Output Feeds Preamp or Receiver
Asynchronous Transfer Ensures Digital Timing Integrity
Two Clocks Enable Native Resolution Up To 24-bit/96kHzFor this special sweepstakes, included with DragonFly is a low-distortion AudioQuest Sydney analog interconnect cable with a 3.5mm "mini" plug at the DragonFly end and stereo RCAs at the other end. From AQ's Bridges & Falls series, Sydney is all that's required to connect DragonFly to a full-blown audio rig just like a traditional DAC or disc player, or directly to a power amplifier. Sydney employs superior materials and design, including solid Perfect-Surface Copper+ conductors, air-tube insulation, and AudioQuest's 3-layer Noise-Dissipation System for low distortion and high performance.
Click here for more info from Audioquest.
To enter the sweepstakes, all you need is an account on this website. If you don't already have one, click on the link labeled "register" at the bottom of this announcement or "Create new account" in the right column (under the ads). Then, enter a username and a valid e-mail address, and click on the "Create new account" button. A message will be automatically sent to the e-mail address you specified, which will include a link to activate the account.
You can enter once on www.analogplanet.com, audiostream.com, hometheater.com, innerfidelity.com and/or stereophile.com. No more than one entry allowed per website.
The final step (and only step for those who already have an account) is to log in and leave a comment right here on this announcement—any comment will do, as long as it's not profane or spam. Then, when the sweepstakes closes, a lucky commenter will be chosen at random to receive the prize. So post a comment, and good luck!
For complete sweepstakes rules, click here.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Enter the Void of Cygnus X-1: A Vinyl vs. CD Comparison (Kinda)
First on the platter was Bob Dylan’s John Wesley Harding which features 3-piece band orchestrations, punchy yet meandering bass lines, and anguished harmonica playing from Mr. Zimmerman. While listening, the bass player’s melodic fills on “All Along the Watchtower” muddied the mix and masked Dylan’s vocals. One week later, my problems of unruly bass had returned.
Now I worried that the bass resonances were not a result of lively corners and speaker placement but because resonant frequencies were traveling back up through the legs of my flimsy turntable stand and vibrating through the cartridge, something SM had warned me about. I was particularly suspicious of this since since my Editor’s Choice CD’s bass warble tones seemed tamed played back through my Oppo DV-980H.
To settle this, I compared two of the same recording: one on CD and one on LP. Unfortunately the list of duplicate recordings in my possession was very short. It included The Police’s Synchronicity and Rush’s Moving Pictures and A Farewell to Kings. These groups offered a choice between two prominent bass players: either the hypnotic and driving pulse of Sting or Geddy Lee’s tarantula-like fretboard crawls spinning webs of both melody and rhythm. Since I was most familiar with Geddy’s bass tone and since it would best mimic the thwackiness of Paul McCartney’s bass as well as his upper bass presence, the sounds where I first noticed my bass problems, unlike Sting’s which would be a bit more bottom heavy, good ole’ Dirk and his Rickenbacker it was to help me identify whether the bass resonances were coming through my turntable or as a result of my room.
The most logical way to test this would have been to listen to Abbey Road again, but I chose to not as a symptom of my mild music-consumption OCD which prevents me from listening to the same record twice over a short period of time if it has already been put back in the sleeve. There are just too many records to listen to and not enough time to absorb them all if I keep on playing Abbey freaking Road.
I put on “Closer to the Heart” from A Farewell to Kings. The bass response was still out of control. At one point, one of Neil Peart’s kick drum thuds sounded like his kick pedal had broken through the woofer. Something had to be up. I checked my EQ, and it turns out the bass was cranked. My roommate Leeor had been listening to his Animal Collective records. WTF. I mean, it’s cool; I told him he could, but this made me question whether all my previous listening tests had been tampered with. Maybe my bass has been cranked for the past three weeks? Doubtful: this bass was intense. Woofers were cracking. The house was shaking. Neil Peart was bursting through my speakers.
I turned down the bass on the EQ so I could finally start to make some real comparisons between the vinyl and CD versions of Rush’s A Farewell to Kings.
At first, the CD grabbed me with its forward presentation, fuller bodied sound, and Geddy’s tacky and attack-filled bass tone. At the vinyl’s start, I was off-put by its quieter level compared to the CD. The acoustic guitars at the start of “Closer to the Heart” were calmer and less metallic, which I took to be an indication of lack of clarity and high-end precision, but as I continued to listen, the actual sonic differences came to light.
On “Closer to the Heart,” guitarist Alex Lifeson and producer Terry Brown layer multiple guitars in both channels. Through the CD, what I first recognized as a “full-bodied” sound now revealed itself to be clutter between the various guitar layers fusing the notes together and making them difficult to distinguish. On the vinyl, the more delicate and quieter guitar layers gave the arpeggiating acoustic and electric guitars room to breathe and be distinguished from one another.
The second and most painful difference between these two versions was Geddy’s bass tone and the huge disparity in low-end extension and resolution between the CD and LP versions. During the guitar solo on “Cinderella Man,” Geddy lays down a seriously funky bass-line intertwining with Peart’s hi-hat work and kick drum accents. For years on the CD version, I had grown to appreciate Geddy’s brittle and distorted Rickenbacker as unique but white-bread, but as I discovered when listening to the vinyl, Geddy’s tone is actually DEEP and full of soul. The harsh nature of his CD mastered tone in-no-way brought out the natural swing in his playing and instead just emphasized the front-end of each attack putting Geddy ahead of the beat instead of behind it, and in the end, robs the guitar solo of the bumping groove it so deserves.
Finally, the CD version sounded dynamic-less compared to the analog, particularly in terms of the shading of Peart’s tom-tom hits where the attack, air, and release were lost in the missing frequencies.
What a sham. I felt I had been robbed of a tiny piece of musical childhood. Who knew Geddy’s bass was that funky? I thought he was a dork because he always sounded so un-funky. Strike that—Geddy Lee is cool.
I looked up my CD version of A Farewell to Kings, and it is just a random and currently out-of-print Mercury release (D-118703). My LP copy, SRM-1-1184, is not a first pressing, and like the CD is just a run of the mill press from Mercury.
The CD version was much harder to listen to. While listening to the CD I found myself not focusing on the music and instead thinking about my own life. The vinyl would not let me stew. The CD caught my ear the quickest with its forward presentation and Geddy’s bass accenting every attack, but it also facilitated my ear’s departure the fastest as I could not sink into the spaces between the sounds as I could with the vinyl. This is not the digital medium’s fault. Actually, I’m pretty sure this can all be blamed on the mastering engineer who transferred the Rush recordings to CD. There are great sounding CDs out there that can capture one’s attention, just not this one.
After doing this comparison, I realized I cared about sound quality because the subtle details can make a huge difference. I cared not about the difference between the CD version and the analog but about the quality of the experience provided by each medium. In this moment of revelation, I actually feel I became an audiophile, a title I had avoided because I did not feel my music listening habits reflected those of the “normal” audiophile. I spend most of my time playing my guitar live or watching concerts. Records were primarily reserved for relaxation on the weekends. But now I know what it truly means to be an audiophile: dealing with the struggle of caring about your listening experience. This experience taught me that quality can matter and can even change the message of the music. Scary stuff—and probably why Neil Young find mp3s so terrifying.
The next day, my guitar-brother Alex P., cofounder of Basement Floods a recording studio in Kensington that specializes in all-tape recordings, stopped by to jam and listen to some records. After a good hour of guitar explorations, I sat Alex in my room’s Sweet Spot to listen to Battles’ most recent record Gloss Drop, where he was struck by the Usher S-520’s accurate high-end and the soundstage’s depth. Being a recording nut, he kept freaking out about the album’s entrapping snare sound, sharp and woody at the attack but cushioned with a gated reverb pillow closing off the sound quickly and softly.
“Does anything sound weird to you?” I asked Mr. P.
“Nah dude, this sounds great…” Alex’s smile couldn’t be contained.
“The bass doesn’t sound too bloated?”
“Eh, it’s a little flabby, but don’t become a psychopath. This sounds great.”
The differences in the sonic characteristics between the two Rush recordings could not let me do an accurate bass response comparison because the bass tones between the recordings were so very different. I guess, I’ll have put Abbey Road back on there again. So maybe next time, I actually fix my system’s problems? Maybe?
Source : stereophile[dot]com
McIntosh Laboratory MC275 50th Anniversary Limited Edition power amplifier
I had two options: borrow an amp with the requisite characteristics that had already been reviewed in Stereophile, or use this as an opportunity to review an amp that had not been reviewed but seemed to fit the bill. McIntosh Laboratory's MC275 50th Anniversary Limited Edition (aka MC275LE, $6500)3 was kind of in between: previous versions had been reviewed by Sam Tellig (July 2004) and Fred Kaplan (October 2010), but McIntosh has since made some significant changes in the MC275LE, and John Atkinson suggested that it deserved a review. ST's and FK's reviews were highly positive, and the MC275 was already listed in Class A of "Recommended Components." The MC275LE's claimed output is 75Wpc, but JA's 2010 measurements indicated that this specification is quite conservative, the amp putting out about 90W before clipping. This could be exactly the extra power the Montises needed—and I was curious about the sound of a classic amplifier that had obviously passed the test of time.
What's New?
There are a number of differences between Version V of the MC275, which FK reviewed, and the new Version VI: some cosmetic, others functional, still others technical. V.VI has a gold-plated rather than a stainless-steel chassis, the binding posts are much more substantial, and the faceplate identifies it as the 50th Anniversary Edition. The power switch, which ST and FK criticized for being hard to access, has been moved to a more convenient position on the left side panel, near the front. A switch on the right side, near the rear panel, controls the Power Save circuitry. When this switch is in the On position, the MC275LE turns off after 30 minutes of having detected no signal. The MC275LE can be turned on and off by compatible McIntosh preamps and surround preamplifier-processors. The new Sentry Monitor protection circuit shuts down the amp in the event of malfunction, to prevent further damage.
The power-tube sockets have been slightly lowered, for cooler operation. A change from V.V that's partly functional and partly just fun is that, on turn-on, an LED incorporated into the socket of each of the MC275LE's seven small tubes glows first amber, then green if everything is okay—or flashes red if there's a malfunction. This feature, apparently a one-off prepared for an audio show, proved such a hit with audiophiles that McIntosh decided to put it into production.
The most important changes in the MC275LE are under the hood, and represent some significant technical improvements. According to Ron Evans, VP of engineering for McIntosh and chief design engineer for the MC275LE, they include:
• A new output-transformer winding process has resulted in wider bandwidth and better consistency.
• Because of the wider output-transformer bandwidth, the other gain stages could be optimized without sacrificing overall stability.
• Unlike in previous MC275s, the negative feedback is now taken directly from the output transformer's speaker winding. This has resulted in a significantly increased damping factor.
• In the main amplification stage, the power-supply voltage has been increased from 485 to 720VDC. This lets the 12AT7 tubes operate with increased linearity.
• Evans told me in an e-mail that "Careful attention to every other circuit detail has also improved linearity with less dependence on individual tube characteristics. These small but important details have together reduced the amount of tube thermal noise that actually reaches the speaker output."
Comparing the two models' published specifications reveals that: the V.VI's bandwidth is 10Hz–100kHz, a higher top extension than the V.V's 10Hz–70kHz; the damping factor has been increased from 14 to 22; and the signal/noise ratio has risen from an already-impressive (especially for a tube amplifier) 100dB to 105dB.
I had experience of two samples of the MC275LE. The first worked fine for a day, but when I powered it up on Day 2, the LEDs of three of the small tubes flashed red rather than steady green. I turned off the amp and, as per instructions in the owner's manual, turned it on again. Again the lights flashed red. I could see nothing that would account for this problem: the speaker cables weren't shorted, and the preamp worked fine with other amplifiers. This wasn't the first time I'd experienced a problem of this sort with tube amps—and, as manufacturers will attest, no matter how statistically rare a problem is, it's bound to occur with a sample sent to a reviewer. McIntosh quickly arranged with a local dealer (Audio Excellence, of Vaughan, Ontario) to get me a new sample of the MC275LE, which functioned flawlessly throughout the review period.
The MC275LE has both balanced and single-ended inputs. My Convergent Audio Technology SL-1 Renaissance preamplifier is single-ended only, so I used only the Mac's SE inputs. There are three sets of output terminals, to match speakers rated at 4, 8, or 16 ohms. I played around with these, and while there were some sonic differences, I ended up mostly preferring the 8 ohm terminals with the speakers I used.
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Source : stereophile[dot]com
Two Cool Hi-Fi Posters
Well now you can be that guy with the famous hi-fis.
At Hi-Fi Posters.com, a UK company is selling two posters: “A Visual Hi-Fi History of Turntables” and “Loudspeakers: A Visual Hi-Fi History”. Each poster tells a story of design, adventure, and sound reaching back through the past 100 years. The posters feature a honeycomb design with products ranging from the eccentric to the classic in each cell. Each poster is sold for £14.99 plus shipping and handling. All of your friends will be jealous.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Krell KRS-2 preamplifier
The Krell KRS-2 preamplifier is a case in point. I have now spent several months comparing it with every other unit I've been able to find. The end result is that this Krell has emerged as the equal of the Audio Research SP-11 in defining the state of the preamplifier art. Equally importantly, it is the only active preamp I have yet heard which meets the challenge posed by the new generation of passive preamplifiers.
When the output of the Krell KRS-2's high-gain stages are compared with the output of a purely passive preamp like the Mod Squad's Line Drive (reviewed in Vol.10 No.3), it produces a virtually identical degree of transparency. No other active preamp that I have yet been able to find has met this test to the same degree. While this may not be the result of a radical change in technology, it does seem to be an important advance.
Technical Details
Krell's flagship preamplifier is the dual mono, four-chassis KRS-1A, available in conventional unbalanced form for $8250, or completely balanced for $10,000. At $4500, the two-chassis KRS-2 represents designer Dan D'Agostino's assault on the real-world preamplifier market, but with many features in common with the cost-no-object KRS-1A. For example, the KRS-2, like the KRS-1A, is direct-coupled throughout. It does not have to rely on the designer finding the world's best-sounding capacitors—it simply eliminates them. The sound goes directly from the moving-coil cartridge input jacks to the output jacks without passing through a single capacitor in the signal path.
You also get one hell of a power supply, and this may explain a great deal of the KRS-2's transparency. The four 350VA transformers are housed in a separate unit and feed the psu box proper, which contains eight tracking regulators and 200,000µF of decoupling capacitance. The end result is that the Krell preamp's complete power supply outweighs most receivers and at least some high-end power amplifiers. Even so, the preamplifier chassis has another eight discrete tracking regulators and 20,000µF more capacitance.
The styling and construction of the KRS-2 is classic Krell—a Rolls-Royce standard of finish and quality of manufacture that ensures the unit is likely to outlive several generations of owners. As for features, there are inputs and outputs for even the most complex system, the usual controls for balance and volume, and separate controls for the main and tape outputs. The volume control is a top-quality, United Technologies dual instrument control.
The phono front end is an all-FET moving-coil stage, driving a FET/bipolar moving-magnet/RIAA stage. The RIAA compensation is adjusted for maximum error no greater than 0.1dB. There are internal DIP switches to select either moving-coil or moving-magnet operation, and a separate set of DIP switches for selecting the moving-coil load. Only the Audio Research SP-11 offers greater convenience in changing loads, but it offers only about one-third as many settings. If you leave the KRS-2 top panel unscrewed, you can make virtually instantaneous adjustments to loading, ensuring the proper match with a given cartridge to a degree I have seen rivaled only by the Klyne preamps. The high-level circuitry consists of all-FET gain stages, running in class-A, with FET outputs; the output impedance is a mere 6 ohms. As with all Krell designs, all the stages feature complementary symmetry.
In common with the other Krell preamplifiers, the KRS-2 features phase compensation for CD players. The CD input circuitry includes internal dip-switch settings to compensate for the phase error introduced by a CD player's reconstruction filters. Krell recommends different settings for different players, based on a diagnostic disc and computer modeling of the correct filter response. These settings do make an audible difference. They do not restore the fine musical detail missing in CD reproduction, but do make the sound richer, cleaning up some of the harmonics that are there and adding a trace of depth. Given the volatile state of the CD/DAT market, it may be better to have this feature in your preamp than to spring for something similar in an expensive CD player.
Passive vs Active
My experience with the newer CD players and an experimental DAT unit has led me to regard a "passive versus active" preamp test as increasingly important. It has now become clearer that the high-level stages of even the most expensive tube and transistor preamps introduce significant changes in sound character. There is no question that, even when these changes are euphonic, they come at an audible cost.
I should emphasize that I am not arguing that a passive preamp costing several hundred dollars is a proper substitute for an active preamp costing several thousand. Quite aside from the issue of giving up a phono stage and the need to buffer tape recorders, I have never yet been able to hook up a passive preamp in a way that did not slightly affect dynamics or upper octave response. My experience with CD players and open-reel tape units with variable volume controls has shown that the passive components and wiring/circuit board in a passive preamp are audible.
Further, it has shown that audiophiles who care about flat extension from about 1kHz up, or who want the full dynamics of music from the lowest to the loudest passages, are not going to get a "free lunch" by giving up the high-gain stage in an active preamp. Good as the latest passive units can be, the gain, buffering, and impedance matching of active units have important payoffs in allowing music to have the effortless energy present in any live performance.
However, if you use a top-quality passive unit like the Mod Squad Line Drive with very short, low-capacitance cables, you can come very close to the sound of a cheap straight wire without gain. Certainly you can get a neutral device with colorations tending more to be subtractive than additive.
Listening Tests
I have been conducting such comparisons with top-quality preamps ever since I received samples of the PS Audio 4.5 and Mod Squad Line Drive preamps; the results make an important preface to my review of the Krell KRS-2.
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Source : stereophile[dot]com
Richard Vandersteen at Advanced Audio Systems
Photo by chrissy from the Stereophile Galleries.
Saturday, November 3, 12pm: Advanced Audio Systems (6450 Tacoma Mall Boulevard, Tacoma, WA) will host a seminar with iconic loudspeaker designer Richard Vandersteen. The event will consist of product demonstrations and a question and answer session with Vandersteen. To register for the event, follow this link.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
The Hi-Fi Expo Sofia
Source : stereophile[dot]com
dbx 14/10 graphic equalizer
Properly used, a suitable equalizer can often improve the listenability of mediocre recordings (footnote 1), and can offset some of the deficiencies of many loudspeakers. Improperly used, an equalizer can undo all of the potential for fidelity that your system has to offer, and even when not used at all—with all its controls set for Flat—all of them cause a certain amount of veiling and loss of depth. With a good one, though, the signal degradation is small enough to be outweighed by the benefits it can bring, and—if installed in the preamp's Tape Monitor loop—it can always be switched out when it isn't needed (footnote 2).
There are two basic kinds of equalizers: system equalizers and program equalizers. Because real-world loudspeakers in real-world rooms tend to generate lots of narrow frequency-response peaks and dips, the first requirement for a system equalizer is that it have high resolution. That is, it must have enough controllable bands, of sufficiently narrow width, to allow it to pull down a peak without unduly affecting the adjacent areas. The best ones (very rare) have 1/10-octave resolution, which means about 100 bands for each channel, while an excellent one will typically have 30 1/3-octave bands per channel. And this is precisely why a good system equalizer doesn't make a good program equalizer. Two hundred controls, or even 60, are just far too many to have to contend with every time you change records.
For program equalization, the resolution requirements are far less stringent. In fact, for most audiophiles (except, of course, those reading this magazine), a pair of well-designed tone controls—bass and treble—will do a more than adequate job of program correction. Most of the problems afflicting recordings are spectral aberrations, affecting a wide range of bass and/or treble frequencies, and ordinarily tone controls are best at compensating for these problems. A more critical listener, however, may observe that a recording has too much midbass and not enough deep bass, or has a mid-treble peak and a normal extreme-high-end balance. Clearly, no conventional tone controls can cope with either.
It is generally conceded that program equalization is best accomplished with a so-called octave equalizer—one that offers 10 or 12 octave-wide controllable bands. On a unit having separate controls for each channel, that's still 20 to 24 knobs to operate when you change records, but when you consider that only six or eight of those per channel may have to be changed from one record to the next, it becomes reasonably manageable. The ideal, of course, would be to use ganged controls, where one knob affects both channels simultaneously, but that sacrifices the ability to make different adjustments in the two channels. Or at least, it usually does. In the case of the dbx 14/10, it doesn't.
The dBX 1410
The 14/10 is one of the most sophisticated graphic equalizers on the consumer market today. It is sort of a hybrid device, combining the functions of a system equalizer and a program equalizer. It divides the lower half of the audio spectrum (where most loudspeaker/room-induced response irregularities occur) into half-octave bands and the upper half into one-octave bands, and has 14 knobs which can either control both channels at once or either channel individually. The knobs are actually small lever switches which raise or lower the gain of their controlled band electronically, depending on whether they are pushed up or down. The front-panel LED display shows (as +1dB or –1dB) where each control is set, and the rate of change in each band switches from slow to fast if you hold the knob for more than a couple of seconds. At one end of the display is a continuous signal-level monitor, and the whole LED panel can also be switched to display a 14-channel real-time analyzer (RTA) readout, with vertical bargraphs showing signal amplitude within each band. A switch allows the RTA to monitor either the line signal coming into the equalizer, or the output from its own microphone (supplied). The RTA offers two display-response speeds: slow and fast. The former makes it easier to observe response readings, the latter is for checking peak signal levels. A hold button can be used to put either display into a storage mode which "freezes" the highest-amplitude reading in each band until the button is depressed a second time to release them.
Operation
Connected to its calibrated condenser microphone, and supplying its own pink-noise signal to the system, the 14/10's RTA can be used to measure and display the audio system's frequency response in the listening room. Then if you push the appropriate buttons, the device will automatically equalize the system for the flattest possible amplitude response, and show the resulting EQ curve on the display. Because pink noise has continually varying level in each octave, each eventually averaging out to flat, it takes upward of 30 seconds for the computer to ascertain exactly what the RTA is reading and to equalize for it. The RTA auto-ranges over a fairly wide range in normal use; that is, it adjusts its sensitivity to the signal level so that the display is always more or less vertically centered. For auto EQ, though, the device requires that the pink-noise signal be above a certain threshold. There's a volume control for the pink-noise signal, and if this is not set high enough, a red light next to the Average button will flash on and off for a few seconds after you depress the button. If the level is adequate, the red light stays lit until the auto EQ is completed.
The RTA or the auto-equalization function can work on either channel or in both simultaneously, and once you have the EQ curve you want, you can assign it to any one of 10 numbered front-panel buttons for later recall. Another button restores the equalizer to flat response, but all stored curves remain in its memory, even when it is turned off or unplugged from the wall outlet. A lithium battery preserves the stored data during power-off periods, for up to a claimed seven years.
And that's not all. There's even an averaging function, which allows you to call out several stored curves, as might be made from a number of different microphone positions, and average them out into one. And if you want one or two of those curves to carry more weight in the averaging process than the others, there is even provision for doing that. Averaging can be done with the automatically derived curves, or from ones you set up manually on the basis of listening, or from a combination of both.
I tried EQing two speakers I had on hand that have sounded as if they had frequency-response-related problems. In both instances, the sound was dramatically improved. This may not be the best way of compensating for mediocre speakers, but at $1300, it may be the cheapest. But, you may ask, doesn't a system equalized to measure flat at the high end sound tipped-up? Yes, it does, but dbx has thoughtfully taken that into consideration too, by providing a High-Frequency-Rolloff (HFR) button that adds the necessary HF correction. Note also that the equalizer will always try to flatten out the low end too, as indeed it should, but that if your system has little output below 40Hz, the auto EQ will boost that bottommost octave to the 14/10's +12dB limit. If this happens, do not take its advice in this regard; 12dB of boost at 31Hz will very definitely overload and possibly damage your woofers, your amplifier, or both. Pull that control down to, say, +3dB, then, if you wish, push it up a dB or so at a time until you start to hear the woofers bottoming out (or the amplifier overloading occasionally) on deep bass; then back it down a couple dB and leave it there, putting the revised curve into storage.
There is no advantage to doing the system EQ manually. The automatic EQ gives the same results in a fraction of the time, and sets the level properly as well. (Manual EQ usually results in the equalizer sounding much softer or louder than the straight-through signal.) Also, pay attention to the fact that one mike position will not give you an accurate assessment of what's going on response-wise. You must take several EQ runs, from different mike positions near where your ears will be, then average them; the more different mike positions you use, the better the EQ will be.
What about carrying out system EQ by ear? This is not recommended, unless you're a much better judge of recorded sound than most audiophiles. And consider: You don't really know what any of those favorite recordings of yours are supposed to sound like—certainly not well enough to EQ your whole system with them. It's best to do the room EQ (if at all) using the mike and the RTA or the auto-equalizer, and then store it in Register 1. The HFR correction, by the way, can be added to your final EQ and stored along with it, so the corrected curve comes up with your No.1 button. You can then call this up as the "default" each time you fire up the system, and use it as the starting point for any program EQing you wish to do.
Of course, there's nothing that says you must use the system-EQ feature. It's just there if you need it. A better approach would be to use other means, such as loudspeaker-driver balance adjustment, to get the response as flat as possible, using the RTA as a means for monitoring your progress. In fact, this is a wise thing to do first even if you do plan to EQ the system with the 14/10. But the unit does cause some signal degradation, even though it is slight. The previous 10-band, 1-octave 10/20 version of this equalizer had a slightly murky quality to its sound; this does not. Yes, it does add a small amount of veiling—probably more than you would care to tolerate when listening to, say, a Sheffield or Wilson Audio or Reference Recordings disc, but you shouldn't need to EQ those if your system is pretty close to being flat to begin with. If it isn't, you may prefer its sound with the equalizer in, veiling or not.
For program EQ, you must rely on your ears, because music never has a flat frequency response. But you don't necessarily have to do it for every record that needs it. Apart from storing different curves for averaging, the curve-storage registers and callout buttons have another very useful function: They can eliminate, most of the time, the necessity for laboriously resetting the EQ manually for different recordings. Each time you encounter a recording that needs correction, do it by ear (starting with the system-EQ curve if you choose) and store the result in one of the vacant memories. Then, next time a bad recording comes along, you can try each stored curve before manually doing another and storing it. There are 10 memories, and 9 plus your start-up button No.1 should be enough for just about any recorded response aberration. You can even copy a curve from one memory into another, by calling it up into the equalizer from one and then storing it in the other. This way, you can "organize" your curves so that the low-numbered buttons are for, say, low-boost curves and the high-numbered buttons are for high-cut curves. This will avoid having to punch all nine before you find something approximating what you need. You can then tweak that one if necessary, but you're not obliged to store it if it's similar to another that will be used more often.
Conclusion
This well-thought-out and well-engineered product has got to be one of the most versatile and usable graphic equalizers of them all. Some others will EQ a system with more refinement, and some will do almost as well for program equalization, but I don't know of another that is this effective and this easy to use. The dbx 14/10 is highly recommended to anyone whose audio religion it doesn't offend. But do use it with discretion, or it will do more harm to your sound than good.
Footnote 1: The philistine audio purist's view is that an audiophile has no business listening to mediocre recordings. The artistic, sensitive, music-lover's view is that some recorded performances are good enough to listen to from Edison cylinders, even the monophonic ones, and that any device which can make the experience less onerous is worthwhile.— J. Gordon Holt
Footnote 2: All equalizers, however, introduce time-domain distortion. Though this is conventionally held to be inaudible, I do not like the idea of using something which interferes with the purity of the signal.—John Atkinson
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Source : stereophile[dot]com
The 2012 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest:That's a Wrap
"We had the same number of exhibitors in the main rooms but CANJAM added a few more this year. Approximately 431 companies were represented. I did a precursory look at the stats for attendance and we had the same amount of countries as last year—30—and 47 out of 50 states (no AL, RI, or WV). The countries represented were Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, and the UK. Unbelievable!!"
Indeed it was. RMAF 2012 was one of the most upbeat shows I have attended since my very first in 1969. My thanks to: Marjorie and her staff for their hospitality and help; Art Dudley, Stephen Mejias, and Jason Victor Serinus for writing up a storm on our website; to Roy Gregory for organizing the seminar room; and to all the exhibitors and attendees who made the Show such fun. See you all in 2013. Happy Listening!
Source : stereophile[dot]com
The Peachtree Way
This was different.
In addition to a large static display, there were three active systems in the room. The first was built around a pair of Zu Audio Definition Mk.4 loudspeakers ($12,800/pair), being driven by Peachtree’s 220 power amplifier ($1399), a 220Wpc, class-D design; and the company’s Nova PRE preamplifier ($999), which utilizes 24/96-capable asynchronous USB operation.
The music was being streamed from somewhere—perhaps Pandora, perhaps “the cloud,” perhaps even the powerful mind of Peachtree’s Jonathan Derda—first at 320kbps MP3 and later at CD quality. Either way, it sounded good: forceful when called for, laidback when called for, and always compelling and fun.
Describing the new Bang & Olufsen ICE module employed in the Peachtree 220, Derda admitted, “We were skeptical, but all those negative feelings we had about class-D designs were vaporized once we heard what this thing could do.”
We turned our seats around. Moving to a larger, more ambitious system, comprising TAD’s Reference One loudspeaker ($78,000/pair), Peachtree’s David Solomon explained, “We want you to be able to enjoy the speaker you want, no matter what it might be, which is why we built the Grand Integrated.”
The Grand Integrated ($4499) is rated to deliver a massive 440Wpc into 8 ohms, and combines an amp, preamp, tube buffer stage, headphone amp, and a high-quality ESS Sabre DAC into a single, handsome chassis.
Solomon used the fancy-pants system to dem a wide range of music, from CD-quality to 24-bit/192kHz high-res files. Yet, despite the system’s resolving power, Solomon reminded listeners that an incredible world of music exists at lower resolutions—something like 18 million tracks on Spotify, for instance.
“Just keep in mind,” he quipped, “that the higher up we go in terms of resolution, the more pretentious the music gets.”
While Solomon was quick to praise the efforts of streaming services like Spotify, Pandora, and MOG, he also applauded the work of Cookie Marenco’s Blue Coast Records and David Chesky’s HDtracks—companies that offer high-quality sound and music.
Solomon was using a MacBook Pro running the latest version of Amarra, which “finally brings the product into the real world,” with a $189 price tag. Also on display in the Peachtree room was the company’s new X1 Series 24-bit/192kHz-capable, asynchronous USB-to-S/PDIF converter ($199), a bus-powered, plug-and-play design, set to ship next month.
It soon became clear that Solomon and Derda weren’t merely attempting to sell their own products, but that they were attempting to sell an entire way of listening and relating to music. First, Peachtree took note of how people listen to music and responded with products to enhance that experience. Then, they looked at how their customers used Peachtree products and responded again to give their customers exactly what they needed.
“When I want to really listen, sure, I’ll sit down in the sweet spot and bring out my collection, but, most of the time, when I’m cooking or cleaning or playing with the kids, and I want some good music in the background, I’m listening to Spotify,” Solomon continued.
We turned our seats around again, this time to the smallest system in the room: A simple Solid Steel equipment rack held Peachtree’s Decco65 65Wpc integrated amplifier ($899), which easily drove Peachtree’s handsome D5 standmounted loudspeakers ($999/pair); speaker cables and interconnects were provided by Kimber Kable. Solomon streamed MOG’s 320kbps MP3s from his iPhone, and we all enjoyed the music.
“Now, this is fun,” Solomon said. “High-end doesn’t have to come at such an expensive cost.”
Exactly.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Gob-smacked by DEQX
Source : stereophile[dot]com
YG Speakers Big and Small
Frustrated, not by the system, but by the ego-driven performance of the violin concerto that surrounded me in my youth, I moved on to the big room. In a space where it could strut its stuff without constraint, the mighty YG Acoustics Anat III Studio Signature ($68,000/pair) kept company the Accuphase DP-600 SA-CD player ($21,000), Veloce Audio LS1 Mk.II battery-powered linestage ($18,000), Tenor Audio 175S stereo amplifier ($55,000), and Kubala-Sosna Research Elation! Interconnects & speaker cables ($6000/first meter) and power cables ($1800/first meter).
This system delivered the kind of end-of-the-show lift, punch, and wow that sends you home smiling. When I entered, raucous rock sounded just as gut-shaking and raucous as one might wish. But when we switched to my SACD of Ivan Fischer conducting Mahler’s Symphony 2, the sound was equally big, effortless, remarkably full-range, and supremely controlled. I need to emphasize the latter point, because when the orchestra’s timpanist launched into a rapid timpani roll, the blur that I am accustomed to hearing was instead rendered as distinct, even, and extremely rapid thwacks. Combined with the presentation’s great height, width, and depth, this was a major wow.
There was just one thing. As superb and neutral as the sound was, it all seemed just a little bit unyielding, just a tad removed. It felt as though the system had not fully let down its guard. Since, to my mind, that suggested that something wasn’t performing to its full capacity, I emailed Bill Parish of GTT Audio after the show to ask if everything in the room had been fully broken-in before show time. Thus I learned that while the speakers were fully broken in, all the rest of the components, including the cabling, came fresh out of factory-sealed boxes on Thursday, three days before I visited the room.
“We feel that the components that we represent sound good out of the box and get more refined with usage,” Bill wrote. While I certainly cannot disagree, I wonder how many people who visited this room and heard what I heard left with the impression that the system was to some extent cold and unfeeling. If so, that’s a shame, because the room’s components, individually and collectively, are some of the most musically expressive components the high-end has to offer.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Hegel’s H300
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Ayon Shows Off Yello
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Daedalus–ModWright–WyWires
So enjoyable was the sound in this room that I would have liked to stay for more music but unfortunately the people in the room were engrossed in conversation, degrading the S/N Ratio.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Bully Sound
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KEF’s Blade
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KEF’s 50th Anniversary LS50
Source : stereophile[dot]com
High Water Sounds and The Architecture of Loss
Sigurdsson is also the founder of Iceland’s renowned recording facility, Greenhouse Studios, where Bedroom Community’s offerings acquire their special sense of space, their deep, deep quiet and heavy feeling. The Architecture of Loss, which also takes significant contributions from NYC-based composer Nico Muhly, has been performed live by Sigurdsson, acclaimed violist Nadia Sirota, and multi-instrumentalist extraordinaire, Shahzad Ismaily, and set to dance by the Stephen Petronio Company.
I regret not having attended the performance here in NYC, but I’ve already placed an order for the LP, the sumptuous sound of which impressed everyone in Catalano’s room.
The Stephen Petronio Company will perform The Architecture of Loss in Irvine, CA, and Dallas, TX, this November.
While the music washed over the still room, Catalano opened his eyes and motioned toward the system: “Who gives a shit about all this stuff,” he said, holding the LP sleeve in the air, “if you can’t have this?”
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Sanders Sound Delivers
The source? A Tascam solid-state recorder ($400). Why such an inexpensive source for a system that costs $22,000 without cables, supports, or anything else? “Roger Sanders,” explained the man running the demo, “says that so much that is being sold is unnecessary.” I’ll bet that makes some critics of the high price of components happy. Then again, $13,000 isn’t exactly chump change.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Carver Towers
Combined with an AMR Red Book reference CD player ($11,000), Purity Audio Design Silver Statement preamp ($20,000), Bob Carver VTA305M 205W monoblocks ($12,900/pair), a Sunfire Subrosa dual 10" subwoofer with Sunfire external 2000W power amplifier ($4500 total), and Analysis Plus cables ($7500), Bob Carver’s system was mighty impressive. I look forward to hearing it in a bigger room.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Gershman Acoustics and VAC
In the first room, the Idol (above), with an impedance of 6 ohms, frequency range of 34Hz–20kHz, and most attractive grill, hung with the VAC Sigma 160i integrated amplifier ($9900), Clearaudio Ovation with Clarify tonearm ($5500) and Stradivari v2 MC phono cartridge ($3750), HRS Analog Disk record clamp ($200), and Esoteric K03 CD player ($10,900). Here, Yarlung’s excellent recording of Antonio Lysy’s cello sounded hard and wiry. The midrange was well balanced and warm, but bass was weaker and not entirely in control. Far more successful was a recording of Jennifer Warnes singing, “Somewhere, Somebody,” which sounded very fine if not ultimately transparent.
The larger and considerably more expensive Black Swan (pictured above), in turn, kept company with VAC’s Signature Mk IIa preamplifier with phono ($19,500) and Statement 4505 Stereobloc ($39,000); Clearaudio’s Innovation Wood table with Universal 9” tonearm ($15,000), OuterLimit peripheral ring clamp ($1350) and Goldinger Statement moving-coil cartridge ($15,000); and Esoteric’s P02 ($23,500), D02 ($23,500), and GOrB clock ($17,800). Highs were beautiful on voices, but bass control issues arose on the organ that accompanies the Cantate Domino LP’s “O Holy Night,” sung in either Swedish or Norwegian. Highs? Less successful was a recording of the Holly Cole Trio which, when played too loud, became bright and wiry with a hard edge. I can only surmise that the Black Swan needs a larger space in which to show its best.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
