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Regarding the death of the home stereo system
Yet, here we go again, this time discussing "the death of the home stereo system." CNN reporter Todd Leopold paints it as the classic struggle between quality and convenience, and seems to think that convenience has finally delivered the knock-out punch.
Nothing Leopold says is necessarily wrong, but I think his argument is a bit simpler and neater than reality. We tend to forget that quality and convenience aren't necessarily at odds. Even hi-fi, in its most basic sense, is an endeavor of convenience: Rather than travel to the concert hall, we choose to stay home and listen.
The truth, as I see it, is that quality and convenience are two sides of a long and happy marriage. Our interests sway from one side to another, of course, but, when things are at their best, the two sides are in perfect harmony. We're entering one of those phases now, with respected audio brands delivering intelligent, forward-thinking products fit to our current lifestyles—products that look good, sound good, are made to integrate with our homes or travel with us wherever we go, and are actually affordable.
As Jon Iverson so famously said, "Audiophiles perfect what the mass market selects." It just takes a little time.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Jenny Hval covers Paul Simon's "The Cool, Cool River," tours North America
Photo by Karl Edwin Scullin.
Released back in May, Jenny Hval's Innocence is Kinky, endures as one of my favorite records of 2013. I've played it countless times, and, in a few days, when Hval takes the stage at NYC's Mercury Lounge, I'll finally have the chance to see and hear the songs performed live.
It's happening on a Tuesday night. And it's the late show. And I'm old. But I'm still going. So, you know that I consider this one important. (Wednesday is going to be rough.)
Maybe I'll see you there. For now, we can also enjoy Hval's quiet, lovely cover of Paul Simon's typically bouncy tune, "The Cool, Cool River."
And, if you haven't already seen it, here's the video for "Innocence is Kinky," directed by the awesomely talented Zia Anger, who's also worked with Julianna Barwick, Angel Olsen, and other similarly wonderful artists. This video may not be safe for work. If you're offended by or uninterested in nudity, sexual content, strong language, latex, bubblegum, and/or the collision of pleasure and pain, you may want to avoid watching this video.
If you like nudity, sexual content, strong language, latex, bubblegum, and/or the collision of pleasure and pain, maybe I'll see you at the Mercury Lounge on Tuesday night.
If you can't make it to the Mercury Lounge, you'll have a few additional opportunities to see Jenny Hval this fall:
Friday, Sept. 27: Toronto, ON @ Rivoli
Saturday, Sept. 28: Champaign, IL @ Pygmalion Music Festival
Sunday, Sept. 29: Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle
Tuesday, Oct. 1: New York, NY @ Mercury Lounge
Wednesday, Oct. 2: Brooklyn, NY @ Glasslands
Thursday, Oct. 31: Hudson, NY @ Basilica Hudson
Friday, Nov. 1: Pittsburgh, PA @ Andy Warhol Museum
Tuesday, Nov. 5: Washington, DC @ DC9
Wednesday, Nov. 6: Philadelphia, PA @ Boot & Saddle
Thursday, Nov. 7: Northampton, MA @ Iron Horse Music Hall
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Croft Acoustics Phono Integrated integrated amplifier
As it turns out, this British company has been in business just 30 years—itself no small feat in perfectionist audio—and founder Glenn Croft actually doesn't spend his days winding transformers. Although Croft's first commercial product was, indeed, a tubed amplifier, he has dedicated the past few years of his professional life to making hybrid amps with decidedly simple—in the purist sense of the word, of course—solid-state output sections. The latest of these is the comparatively humbly priced and plainly named Phono Integrated ($1895), a sample of which made its way here some time between this year's Montreal and New York audio shows.
Description
For his latest product, Glenn Croft has combined in a single package—and thus, one assumes, a comparatively thrifty package—a pair of products that already exist in the Croft line, neither of them lavishly priced themselves: the Micro 25 preamplifier ($1395) and the Series 7 power amplifier ($1395). The resulting integrated amplifier, while possessed of specifications that slightly differ from those of its two forebears, is one in which line- and moving-magnet–compatible phono-stage gain is provided by vacuum tubes, and output power is provided by transistors.
From the Phono Integrated's gold-plated but blessedly non-massive RCA jacks, input signals go straight to a rotary input-selector switch, from which they are ushered to a dual-mono pair of volume pots. Phono-stage gain is provided by a stereo pair of ECC83 (12AX7) dual-triode tubes, made by JJ Audio of Slovakia, while RIAA equalization is applied by passive parts. A third ECC83, using a pair of P9NK50 MOSFETs as a constant-current source, is the voltage amplifier for the output section, which is built around a complementary pair of J162 and K1058 MOSFETs. In the right-rear corner of the Croft amp—as far as one can get from those small-signal tubes—is a simple and very cleanly executed analog power supply, with separate rectifiers for tubes and transistors.
Apart from a small circuit board containing the bipolar timer and relays for the amp's warm-up circuitry, the Phono Integrated is hand-wired, point to point, with neatly made solder joins and Bakelite terminal strips. Two separate aluminum brackets support the tubes and output transistors, the latter fitted with a heatsink of appropriate size, and while the Phono Integrated lacks a metal partition between its input section and its power supply, the amp proved free of hum and noise during use.
The two-part steel chassis was well painted inside and out, with all parts held neatly in place with appropriate fasteners. Build quality, styling, and ergonomics were all better than I expected for this product category and price range: In common with high-end amplifiers from before the dark era of thick faceplates, digital displays, and other sonically dubious decorations, the Croft's casework is quite nicely designed and finished, without weighing—or costing—an iota more than necessary. On unpacking the Phono Integrated, the first words that entered my mind were "Plain but cheaply elegant."
Setup and installation
As one might hope of such a product, the Croft Phono Integrated held no unpleasant setup surprises. Because it exhibited slightly less gain than necessary for the 1.05mV output of my EMT TSD 15 pickup head, I preceded the Croft's phono-input jacks with my Silvercore One-to-Ten step-up transformer, which also provides an appropriate load for the moving-coil EMT. That left three pairs of line-level input jacks for my two line-level sources: a Sony SCD-777ES SACD/CD player and a selection of different USB D/A converters (see "Associated Equipment"). The Croft's stereo pair of speaker connectors—which appear identical to the ones used on my Shindo amplifiers—suited the banana plugs on my reference Auditorium 23 speaker cables and a loaner pair of TelWire cables. I experimented with neither isolation devices nor aftermarket AC cords.
From the moment I flipped its front-mounted power toggle, the Phono Integrated required 69 seconds of warm-up before signaling that it was ready to play music (which it indicates by changing the hue of its pilot light from red to green); after that, the case never became more than moderately warm to the touch. Controls are basic, and though I regretted the lack of a mono switch, I was absolutely delighted by having separate volume controls for the left and right channels: my preferred way of doing things in any event. The Croft did not come with a remote handset, which suited me just fine: I seldom use them, and while it would be overstating the case to say that I resent having to pay for the things and their supporting circuitry, that isn't far off. To me, remote controls are much more an annoyance than a convenience.
Listening
Cold and out of the box, the Croft Phono Integrated sounded just a little bit grainy, but at the same time it was exceptionally involving and impactful for such an affordable product, with notably good frequency extension toward both extremes and a treble range that wasn't the least bit hard or glassy. The graininess diminished significantly over the following two days, and although the Croft's sound remained just slightly more textured than neutral, I found myself impressed with its character from that moment forward.
Listening to the first selection on Jacques Loussier's seminal Play Bach No.1 (LP, Decca/Speakers Corner SSL 40 500 S), it was impossible not to notice one of the Croft's greatest strengths: It clarified, better than my own electronics, the precise pitches of every fast-moving note played by the remarkable bassist Pierre Michelot. Not only that, but, through DeVore Fidelity's Orangutan O/96 speakers, the Croft did almost as good a job as the Shindo Cortese in getting across the idea of touch in the playing, especially the more subtle gradations of same in Loussier's piano. Besides, percussionist Christian Garros's triangle was perfectly audible—without undue brightness—and musical timing and pacing were superb.
With "Once Upon a Time," from Frank Sinatra's September of my Years (LP, Reprise FS-1014), the Croft showed good momentum, perhaps owing to the combination of tautness and sheer depth it brought to the plucked bass strings. The Croft didn't have the organic sense of note-to-note flow that characterizes my reference tube amps, and its string tones were a little ragged, seeming freighted with a bit too much (artificial) texture. Nevertheless, the Phono Integrated delivered the emotional goods, and pulled me into the song.
Similarly, the Croft didn't approach my Shindo separates in conveying the rich timbral colors in the strings that open my favorite recording of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, led by Anthony Lewis and featuring a young Janet Baker (LP, L'Oiseau-Lyre SOL 60047). Yet the Croft allowed them to sound just sweet enough—and, at the same time, did a fantastic job of nailing the attack components of all the notes, allowing the strings to sound pacey and vibrant and, again, very appropriately impactful. Notably—and also from the very first notes on this great disc—the recording's unusually big, wide scale was portrayed well by the Croft.
The amp's good scale served it well on mono discs, too, as on the great recording by Fritz Lehman and the Berlin Philharmonic of Brahms's Ein deutsches Requiem (CD, Deutsche Grammophon/ArkivMusic 457710), which exhibited fine substance and size through the Phono Integrated. The Croft also sounded compelling with such things as the very slow harp arpeggios in the first movement, although it did betray just the slightest harshness on massed vocal peaks there and in the second movement.
Well-recorded piano music—such as Chopin's Waltz, Op.34 No.2, performed by Witold Malcuzynski (CD, EMI Classics/ArkivMusic 68226)—showed the Croft at its weakest, timbrally, with a sound that was markedly more grainy, and even a bit chalky, compared with the best tubed amps. That said, in my estimation, the Croft more than made up for shortcomings in that regard by being more explicit than average with shadings of touch and tempo. Nor did other keyboards go wanting: The pounding piano in "Golden Opportunity," from Ian Hunter's Overnight Angels (LP, CBS 81993), never pounded as hard as it did through the Croft. Much the same could be said of Donald Bailey's drumming—not to mention Quentin Warren's electric guitar, plus the downright sensual note attacks of the electric organ—in "Sista Rebecca," from Jimmy Smith's Open House (LP, Blue Note BST 84269).
On the downside, although not at all bright or even light in its tonal balance, the Croft didn't spare me the bad news of the peaky top ends that made cymbals sizzle overmuch, over-emphasized vocal sibilants, and suchlike. Evidence abounds on Jenny Hval's slightly hot Innocence Is Kinky (LP, Rune Grammophone RLP3142). Ditto "Call Me Michael Moonlight" and "When the Damsons Are Down," from Martin Newell's brilliant but casually recorded The Off White Album (CD, Humbug BAH25). But this shortcoming wasn't as severe as with other amplifiers, and in any event, given the crazy-good job the Croft did with the electric bass line in the same album's "Miss Van Houten's Coffee Shoppe"—making that line more lithe and tight and colorful and deep than any other amp in the house—all was forgiven.
Conclusions
Halfway through my time with the Croft Phono Integrated, I already thought of it as one of the best affordable-perfectionist amplifiers I've heard: direct, punchy, and musical, if just a bit coarse when asked to perform outside its comfort zone. It was, if I may be forgiven for saying so, the sort of performance anyone would expect from a good circuit that isn't built with the finest or rarest of parts, but that isn't freighted with a lot of unnecessary bullshit, either. It was as honest as they come.
The Croft was, in many ways, the most impressive affordable amp I've heard in years: Not the best, per se, but the one that did the most to win me over, with its excellent build quality, its musically incisive and involving performance, and its stunning level of value. For some reason, a line from a long-ago film review, of David Cronenberg's 1986 remake of The Fly, comes to mind: "The original did more with less." Considered in such a light, the Croft Phono Integrated is that original.
And: It seems entirely possible that one could pay thousands of dollars to an industrial-design firm and still fail to achieve the clean and altogether classy appearance of understated quality that Glenn Croft has hit on here. The amp's casework is pleasant to behold, touch, and use, while avoiding altogether the ridiculousness of so many thickly faceplated and overpriced competitors.
It all comes back to my time with that Jacques Loussier album. I still remember when, a few months ago, I borrowed a current sample of the Shindo Cortese single-ended amplifier ($9995). Play Bach No.1 was the first record I played through it, and I was knocked out by a level of subtle impact that I'd never heard before from the LP. The Croft duplicated that experience. It didn't have the Shindo's timbral color or psychedelic flow, but it allowed the music the same level of excitement and impact, which is at least half the game, in my book. Maybe yours, too.
If I were a designer or a builder, this is how I would do the thing. If I were buying in this price range, this is the one I'd choose. Strongly recommended.
Article Continues: Stephen Mejias comments »
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Source : stereophile[dot]com
Marantz Reference NA-11S1 Network Audio Player/DAC
Ishiwata has been based in Belgium ever since. Marantz celebrated his first 30 years with the company in 2009 with the release of the Limited Edition KI Pearl components, but I first met Ishiwata in the early 1980s, to discuss the forthcoming launch of the Compact Disc. Even then, I suspected that I was talking to more than the typical corporate spokesperson when Ishiwata showed me the circuit of a quasi-complementary, all-balanced, all-tube, preamplifier he had designed. When he began to talk about his veneration for and the intimacies of the circuits of Marantz's original 7c preamplifier and 8b power amplifier, I knew it for a fact.
A new era
In March, to celebrate Marantz's 60th anniversary, the company launched the subject of this review, the Reference NA-11S1 network player ($3499), which Ken Ishiwata described to me as "a new start, a new era" for Marantz. Michael Fremer attended the European press conference announcing the NA-11S1, and I subsequently talked to Ishiwata via Skype.
"Really?" I asked. "A new era?"
"We are witnessing the end of packaged media," he replied, adding that the NA-11S1 embodies Marantz's legacy of sonic excellence and leadership in digital audio in order to meet the future well prepared. The two-channel player has a type-A USB connector on the front panel that can be used both to connect an iPod and to play files of up to 24-bit/96kHz resolution and sample rate from a USB memory stick. A rear-panel type-B USB2.0 port allows the NA-11S1 to decode high-resolution audio streamed from a PC. (Windows machines need a driver program, supplied on CD; Macintoshes work without a driver.) Coaxial and optical serial digital inputs are provided, though not a balanced AES/EBU port. There are also coaxial and optical S/PDIF outputs (on XLR jacks), as well as balanced and unbalanced analog outputs (on RCAs).
Most important, the rear panel sports an Ethernet RJ-45 jack, to allow the player to be connected to a local area network. The NA-11S1 can accept audio data streamed from any uPnP-compatible music server it finds on the network, as well as allow access to Spotify, Pandora, Sirius/XM, and Internet radio stations. The player lacks a WiFi connection, but if the local network has WiFi, audio can be streamed to the Marantz from portable audio devices and from computers running iTunes using Apple's AirPlay protocol.
The NA-11S1 is smartly finished in black-anodized aluminum, with Marantz's traditional copper-plated rear panel. Its front panel is dominated by a large white-on-black, Organic LED display, with the usual five-button navigation array to its right. Individual buttons awake the player and put it to sleep; adjust the level of the 3.5mm headphone output on its front-panel; switch between inputs; adjust the display brightness (three levels and off); and control playback (Play/Pause, Next, Back, Stop).
All front-panel buttons are duplicated on the remote control, with additional buttons to select between two digital reconstruction filters, and to directly access: Internet Radio, Online Music Service, the front-panel USB jack ("USB"), the rear-panel USB jack ("PC"), the Music Server (if one is found on the network), and the setup menu. This menu includes on/off toggles for noise-shaping and a DC filter with a 1.7Hz cutoff. The former, called Marantz Musical Mastering, increases a signal's word length up to 48 bits. All of the NA-11S1's functions and controls are also available on a dedicated webpage that can be accessed using the browser program of any computer connected to the same network. An iPod/iPhone/iPad can also be used to control the NA-11S1 and any music-server software on a network-connected computer using the Marantz Remote app, available free from the iTunes store. There is also an Android version, I understand.
Inside the NA-11S1's hefty case, the digital circuitry is based on a DSD-capable DAC, the analog circuitry on Marantz's high-speed HDAM-SA2 and HDAM modules. Passive components, such as silver-topped audiophile-grade capacitors from Nichicon, were chosen after extensive listening tests. In our Skype conversation, I asked Ishiwata what had been his criteria in selecting components.
"It all comes down to harmony," he said. "It's like a football team: you can have the best players in the world, but if they can't work together, if there's no harmony, then no way will the team work. In the same way, there's thousands of electronics components inside [the NA-11S1, and] you have to make a harmony one way or the other. . . . Sometimes you have to select a certain component to counterbalance the character of another. And that's what we do. . . . It all boils down to harmony, and once you have that, then you can enjoy the harmony in music."
Marantz originally intended to launch the NA-11S1 in October 2012, but Ishiwata wasn't happy with the player's performance as a USB DAC. "We did extensive study of the problem of eliminating noise from the USB connection," he told me. "Some things, unfortunately, we can't change because that's decided by the designers of the PC side. Our solution was to isolate everything that we could do with the USB connection."
That goal must have been reached, because Ishiwata's preference, of all the different sources that the NA-11S1 can accept, is now for the USB connection.
He concluded our conversation with "I think you will have a lot of fun playing with the NA-11S1!"
Setup
The computers in my basement listening room connect to our home WiFi network, based on a router and DSL modem in the ground-floor kitchen on the other side of the house. This was not of much use with the NA-11S1, so I created a local network in the listening room with a simple Netgear switch, and ran a long CAT5 cable from the switch to the kitchen modem. To the switch I hooked up the Marantz, the Mac mini that serves as my system's music server, the MacBook Pro that lives on my writing desk next to the listening chair, and the PC that I use for music and video editing. The computers all recognized each other, and the Marantz immediately identified the Internet connection and let me know that a firmware update was available. Downloading and installing the update took 10 minutes; I was then ready to play music.
But from what source?
I began with files stored on a standalone hard drive plugged into the NA-11S1's front-panel USB port. First mistake: this was a Mac-formatted disk; the NA-11S1 expects to see either a Windows FAT or FAT32 disk. I tried again, this time with a 4GB USB memory stick. The Marantz recognized all the files on the drive, though it took a little while for the player to index them (a FAT32-formatted stick can hold up to 5000 files); Mac users will be confused by seeing all the metadata files, which are usually hidden and can't, of course, be played. The NA-11S1 can play WMA, MP3, Apple Lossless (ALAC), WAV, and FLAC files from USB sticks, with gapless playback available with WAV and FLAC files, though it's limited to sample rates of 96kHz and below with USB sticks.
The NA-11S1 can't play copyright-protected files from USB sticks, which is understandable. However, a problem for me, as a Mac user, is that neither will it play AIFF files from USB sticks. Yes, it's possible to convert such files to WAV or ALAC using Max or even iTunes, but I don't see why should this should be an issue at all.
Next, I tried playing music over the network. (The Marantz offers DLNA v.1.5 support for audio networks.) When I selected Media Server, the NA-11S1 recognized Twonky Server running on my Mac mini—and even found, on my MacBook Pro, Logitech SqueezeCenter, which I use with the Transporter network player I bought a few years back. Using the navigation buttons on the Marantz's remote, I selected Twonky and was offered a menu tree to find and select all the music files Twonky had indexed on the Mac mini's hard drive, including my iTunes library. I also tried a freeware mac program called MinimServer, which worked fine with the Marantz; PC users are recommended to use JRiver Media Center.
Files played with no problem, the Marantz retrieving them, via the network, from Twonky. Well, with almost no problem—once again, AIFF files were neither recognized nor played, and ALAC files were restricted to sample rates of 96kHz and below. Presented with a 192kHz ALAC file, the Marantz displayed "FILE FORMAT ERROR." This was a problem for me, as almost all of the growing number of 192kHz-sampled files in my iTunes library are Apple Lossless. Yes, I could go to the archive hard drive where I keep the original AIFF files and transcode them to WAV or FLAC. But why should I have to? However, I could play, via Twonky, recordings , I'd bought from iTunes, such as Yo-Yo Ma's performance of Bach's Cello Suite 1 (256kbps AAC).
Next up was to plug my iPod Classic 160GB into the Marantz's front-panel USB port. "DIRECT IPOD" appeared on the NA-11S1's display, and I could use the transport buttons on its front panel and remote to control the songs playing. Then I tried using the coaxial S/PDIF input with the digital output of my Ayre Acoustics C-5xeMP universal player. All worked correctly, as it did when I connected the Astell&Kern AK100 hi-rez portable player's optical output to the Marantz's TosLink input.
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Source : stereophile[dot]com
The Pursuit of Audio Excellence
This system has taken my listening sessions to an entirely different level. Over the many hours I have spent sitting in front of it, I have been trying to articulate what that means.
I think that when one climbs to the more rarified air of the audiophile environment, the reasons for that ascent become more varied, intense, sincere, and sometimes ridiculous. Only those who remain ignorant of hi-fi's power would contest the fact that a certain pair of speakers, the right cables, or stylus can bring a listener closer to the Playback Promised Land. All you can do is pity their box-wine-grade appreciation skills and move on.
Like many music fanatics, I have had a stereo system of some kind from a very early age. It wasn't until I got a bit older, heard better systems, found myself on both sides of a PA, and started spending incredible amounts of time in recording, mixing, and mastering studios, that I understood that the more optimal the playback, the more of the source tape and its intent would be revealed to me. This is what started a fairly obsessive journey, seconded only by my fascination, curiosity, and love of music itself.
Perhaps the single thing that inspired me to switch out gear and upgrade was listening to multitrack mixes through reference monitors during recording sessions—followed several months later by the frustration of getting the eventual LP of the sessions, playing it, and being so incredibly underwhelmed by what was coming out of the speakers. It's not as if you can snap your fingers and suddenly be in an acoustically tuned room cranking a mix from the 2" master tape, sharing what you heard with someone else. It was this dependable sonic bummer that was the catalyst for me to improve my listening environment whenever possible.
As a far more astute audiophile than I could ever hope to be, the average Stereophile reader can appreciate the following: My evaluation of playback has been influenced by the audio systems of my youth. No matter what setup I am experiencing, I am listening for the same things every time: clarity and complete realization of the lows, mids, and highs, and the ability to hear the full sonic bouquet of the source, without having to turn the system up loud to get there. If loud is the only way you listen, you often miss out on some of the best aspects of the music. Basically, since my 20s, I have been seeking the perfect blend of warm, listener-oriented enjoyment and nothing-but-the-facts-ma'am reference values for an immersive, persuasive, yet somewhat forensic listening experience. I want to be swept away by the overall sound, but still be able to hear the edits and punch-ins.
You're perhaps thinking I could save myself a lot of time and effort by merely hanging a pair of Altecs from the ceiling and calling it a day. Many years ago, I actually considered that.
My first pair of "real" speakers were handmade for me by Dave Levine, of the now-legendary Rat Sound, in 1986. They were two large boxes with 12" woofers on their bottoms, a mid and a tweeter on their fronts. He made them out of parts he had around the shop. It was all I could afford. I gave them away only a few years ago, and would have kept them if I'd had the room—they were great, and I got a lot of use out of them in the hovels I was living in around the Los Angeles area. A few years later I upgraded, and have been doing my best to ascend ever since.
This pursuit of sonic excellence was due not only to my time spent in the studio and live-music environments, but also to the rapidly expanding diameter of my appreciation for music. I found that systems that "rocked" didn't necessarily treat acoustic recordings very well. As my affection for jazz went from strength to strength, the frustration I felt at my system's relative boneheadedness became a distraction.
Initially, when acquainting myself with my new setup, I listened to records I was very familiar with, to allow my brain to make contextual evaluations of the sounds. Led Zeppelin albums were perfect for this. Like some of you, perhaps, I have spent literally well over half my life listening to those records. A deeper emotional connection with them I could not have imagined. The new system not only makes this possible but fairly inescapable. The attention to detail, the energy and depth that the Wilsons and VTLs never shy away from, provide a listening experience that is so completely immersive, you can forget your life before the record begins to play. There is nothing between me and the music. It is simply that damn good. This system blows my mind on a regular basis.
A man was at the house earlier today, making a repair in the kitchen. He looked at the Alexandrias and asked me, "What are these?!"
"Robots," I replied.
It is this that I have been after for decades: to have the music become part of my DNA, to lock in to music as I have while onstage, where there is nothing else on earth happening but that moment.
Music has not lost any of its awesome power. I used to sit transfixed in the small apartment bedrooms of my childhood, listening to records over and over again. Friday is still my favorite day, a holdover from high school. After classes were over, I would have two days of no teachers, no uniform, and nothing to keep me from listening to music for hours undisturbed. As I get older, the place that listening to music holds in my life only gets larger and more intense. Most of the people I speak to on a regular basis are music fanatics, and we talk of little else.
I would hope that, in part, your pursuit of audio excellence is an attempt to get closer and closer to the music, not to merely accumulate items to impress others. Music should be at least one place where we can suspend our cynicism. The many audiophiles I have spoken to, their unguarded joy when they describe what they have been listening to, how it moves them, and the excitement rendered by the technology meeting the perfect humanity of music, is quite heartening.
I think it's necessary to have at least one thing in your life that leads you to say: "This is what it's all about." For me, that's music. I think we should all feel quite lucky that we found it. Listening to the jams, whatever they may be, is the most perfect use of time I know.
Henry Rollins is a singer, a songwriter, a radio DJ, and an author. His new book, Before the Chop, is available now.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
The Annual High End Prague hi-fi show
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Listen to the Sounds
"Listen to the sounds."
I stood inside the designated listening square and closed my eyes. To my right, I heard cars rushing on the not-so-distant Washington Bridge. I thought of pink noise. To the left was the nothingness of the salt marshes and above green leaves rustling. From all around, birds chirped, tweeted, and brrrrrd. The rapid-fire tock-tock-tock-tock-tock-tock-tock of a woodpecker punctuated the air.
There is music everywhere if you listen closely.
At the loop by the Spuyten Duyvil Creek, I read an informational sign. To paraphrase: Welcome to Inwood Hill Park. Trees and bushes are good for the park because they inhibit erosion, the loss of soil over time. Please follow designated paths. Making your own trail contributes to erosion as you are killing plant life by stepping on it.
When I started my adventure, I followed unbeaten paths to visual wonders: shorelines, boulder peaks, and bridges. With each step up an unused incline or down a soggy hill, I broke a tree limb, disrupted anthills, and made each pathway just a little clearer for the next human.
After reading the sign, I wondered: "What have I done to the music?"
Source : stereophile[dot]com
We Don't Get No Respect
Some people like fancy watches. I like to look at Rolexes and Patek Phillippes—but the idea of wearing something costing 20 grand or more, maybe a lot more, at the end of my simian arm where I can bang it to bits on a doorframe, strikes me as insane. Oh, well; I don't badmouth people who buy or wear such things, just because I choose not to. The prices might make me gasp in disbelief, but that happens with a lot of things.
Speaking of which: what about that Hermes bag recently shown in a Hong Kong shop window—priced at the equivalent of $70,000 US? Is it more functional than a $70 bag? Likely not. Is it stunningly, heart-stoppingly beautiful? Ehh, not to me. Does the material or worksmanship justify the price? Not so much. I don't get it, but I don't hate someone who buys and carries such a bag—unless she happens to be a Kardashian.
What about cars? Almost everybody loves cars. Unless it's horrifically whorified like the Beebs' leopard-print Audi R8, no one abuses the buyer of an expensive or exotic car, even ones which cost millions. There might be a head-shake or a "Really??", but reactions to expensive cars generally tend towards admiration or amusement—not violent rage.
Enter the audiophile. Short of announcing that you're an officer in NAMBLA, you've just gotten back from bow-hunting baby seals with Ted Nugent, and you've decided to cast Grandma adrift on an ice-floe in the "time-honored" way—almost nothing you can do will guarantee a shit-storm of abuse like referring to yourself as "an audiophile."
Granted, anything ending in "-phile" tends to sound a tad precious and twee; how many wine-lovers refer to themselves as "oenophiles" without irony? But it's not just that damned pretentious word. It's...it's...well, what is it?
Music is everywhere. The iPod makes it possible for anyone to carry a zillion songs they might've liked once, anyway, everywhere they go. Fine. Carrying a 'Pod, wearing headphones—even around the neck—is acceptable. In certain circles, it's almost mandatory.
So why is it unacceptable, weird, even, to have a bunch of music at home, along with the gear needed to listen in a social environment where the pleasure of listening can be shared? Wouldn't you think that sharing music in one's home would be more socially acceptable than the act of walking around in public, isolated from others by piped-in sound?
Is it that collecting thousands of LPs and CDs smells a bit of hoarding? Or that monolithic speakers speak to overcompensation of personal shortcomings? Or that We don't get no respect! That those who indulge in either are occasionally, shall we say, deficient in areas pertaining to personal style, fitness, and hygiene?
I don't know, and I don't get it—but there is no abuse greater than that cast upon audiophiles. Take a look at the comments following recent articles about audio enthusiasts on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal websites. You'd think that the subjects had held Girl Scouts captive in their cellars, rather than inviting people into their homes for a pleasant evening listening to music.
I like listening to music. I even like the equipment I use to do that. "Is that so wrong??"
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Spendor BC-1 loudspeaker
This smallish loudspeaker system has been getting high ratings in the English audio magazines for some years but was not available to US consumers until recently, when the small firm (literally a Mom'n'Pop enterprise, footnote 1) arranged for US distribution through Audio International. The Spendor BC-1 is about as unimpressive-looking as any other smallish three-way loudspeaker, of which there are countless hundreds of models being made in the US at present. In fact, we were so ho-hummed by the mundane appearance of this speaker that we found it hard to connect the pair up and give them a listen.
Listening
Let it first be said that this speaker does have shortcomings, not the least of which includes a tendency toward mid-bass drumminess and a mild but sharp peak around 12kHz, which adds a subtle hissing edge to the sound of massed violins. Above about 12kHz, the high end falls off rapidly, resulting in a perceptible deficiency of airiness. This was a source of puzzlement to us, since we find it hard to understand how a system that is claimed to cross over into its tweeter at 13kHz can have a progessively falling response above 12kHz. Perhaps the Spendor people can explain that one. . .
The BC-1 has in common with most British speakers a paucity of deep low-end range and of noise-making ability. The bottom, according to Spendor's own curves (and verified by our tests) falls off rapidly below 55Hz, and the system is rated at a maximum SPL (sound pressure level) of 101dBA. (The "A" refers to the so-called A-weighted frequency-resposne scale for SPL measurements. The A-weighted scale actually corresponds more closely to the ear's response at low listening levels than it does to high-level listening, but it was recommended Walsh-Healey Environmental-Noise Act becasue it better delineates that part of the audible spectrum that is most likely to cause traumatic damage to our hearing. It has thus become the standard weighting for most SPL measurements.) An SPL of 101dBA is very loud for any music except for closely miked symphonic material and hard rock, which latter doesn't qualify as music anyway. So much for the BC-1's liabilities.
Its assets include truly remarkable reproduction of depth and superb imaging and scale (footnote 2). Instrumental placement remains stable across the stereo "stage" between the speakers, and there is no tendency toward that U configuration where center instruments sound distant and vaguely imaged while flanking ones are definite but crowded toward the sides.
But the BC-1's strongest asset, its musical naturalness, is unfortunately going to be lost on most audiophiles who, unfamiliar with the sounds of live acoustical instruments, are incapable of recognizing it when they hear it. Despite their manifest shortcomings, these speakers can recreate the gestalt of live music like few systems—so well, in fact, that we found ourselves digging out old records we hadn't listened to for years and enjoying them for their content as well as for their naturalness.
It is considered very fashionable in some misguided circles today to equate "musicality" in sound reproduction with rounded-off edges and muzzy detail, and to contrast it with "accuracy," which, it seems, implies the analytically sharp reproduction of surface noise, mistracking, and the steeliness of microphone peaks. The BC-1s do not round off details—with that 12kHz peak, they tend, if anything, to do the opposite—but their accuracy is of the kind that makes discs sound the way they should in view of the microphones used and the tamperings (of lack thereof) that went into their mastering, rather than exaggerate their flaws (which is, in fact, what many audiophile-oriented systems do). Yet they manage to be so revealing of the quality of the signal fed to them that they allow one to really appreciate excellent equipment up front or to suffer the consequences of using less-than-perfect ancillaries.
Both the mid-bass drumminess and and that little 12kHz peak (see fig.1) can, however, cause problems if the BC-1s aren't carefully matched to the rest of the system. They do not, for example, fare too terribly well with most solid-state electronics, because the slight grittiness at such amplifiers' high ends tends to exacerbate the audibility of that peak, adding a nasty sizzle to the top. Most moving-coil cartidges are out for use with the Spendors, too, for much the same reason: Most have more or less of a 5–8kHz brightness suckout—if you don't believe this, look at the frequency response read-out that their manufacturers usually supply—and our ears make this sound like a rising response above 9kHz. Many tube amplifiers, on the other hand, have a tendency toward low-end heaviness, which doesn't help the BC-1's low end any.
Fig.1 Spendor BC-1, subjective frequency response. (Subjective frequency response curves show how a component sounds as if it behaves at different frequencies, rather than how it measures. A barely visible deviation from horizontal reflects a barely audible response deviation.)
An ideal combination that we found was a tubed power amp (practically any good tubed power amp) and Ace Audio's Model 3000 "pancake" preamp, with any phono cartridge that measures better than ±0.5dB from 40Hz to 14kHz, of which there are very few. (Stanton sphericals, Shure V15 IIIG (spherical), and the new Shure V15 IV are some of them.) The Ace 3000 mates unusually well with the Spendors because of a slight error in its RIAA equalization, which places the lower part of the spectrum (below 400Hz) about 2dB lower than the range above 2kHz. (Incidentally, Audio magazine's curve for RIAA error in its April 1978 issue, disagreed with ours: Our sample was flat at the high end and we verified our measurement's accuracy.) Other preamplifiers will do almost as well as long as they don't err in the opposite direction, toward mid-bass heaviness, and as long as their high end isn't marred by the the typical solid-state dryness or grittiness.
Against the LS3/5A
How does the BC-1 compare with the little BBC/Rogers LS3/5A speaker (footnote 3)? The Spendor isn't as smooth nor as extended at the top, nor is it quite as tight as the low end. But they will play louder without stress, they image just as well, they reproduce depth equally well, and they are just a mite more felicitous to instrumental timbres through that crucial midrange. (The LS3/5A has a slight brightness suckout, which needs the compensating brightness of most tubed electronics; the Spendor has no such suckout, which is why it has more of a sense of aliveness than the LS3/5A.)
Conclusion
Summing up, then, we would characterize the Spendor BC-1 as a music lover's speaker system rather than an audiophile's system. Mated with suitable accessory components, they can provide a level of sheer listening enjoyment offered by very few contemporary speaker systems. Audiophiles will not, we're afraid, be able to get much past that slight 12kHz sizzle and the deficiency of floor-shaking low end. A subwoofer would take care of the bottom, but the high end is there to get used to or to eschew.
After having lived with a pair of these speakers for a month now, listening to a wide variety of program material ranging from commercial discs and tapes to our own master tapes of choral and full-orchestral groups in the area, we must confess that the BC-1 is now our favorite $600/pair loudspeaker, mainly because (as we have stated many times) we feel that middle-range accuracy is the single more important prerequisite of a high-fidelity reproducer, and the Spendor has that accuracy in spades along with very nearly the aliveness and "snap" of electrostatics.
We cannot, however, over-emphasize the point that if you do not get to hear live, unamplified music more often than a couple of times in a year, you may not relate to these speakers at all. But if we were to be asked to recommend the best moderately priced complete system for the music lover/record collector who wants to live with his components for a few years instead of forever playing the upgrade game, a pair of Spendor BC-1s would be at the speaker end of that system. (At a somewhat lower price, our choice would be the LS3/5As, but we would have to qualify that choice with more reservations concerning low-end range and power-handling capability.)
For the benefit of those readers who are aware that Spendor makes other, larger speaker systems, our grapevine informs us that the BC-2 sounds, by comparison somewhat nasal and quite heavy, overall, while the BC-3 is smoother and more extended through the low end but still slightly more colored through the middle range than the BC-1 and with not as much "snap." (All three use the same high-frequency driver.)
One parting shot: We wish to God the English would realize that, in those parts of the world where banana plugs are used. dual banana plugs are more convenient than two separates. Many English speakers exported to the US have banana-plug connectors on them; we have yet to see one of them in which the plugs were spaced ¾" apart so that a dual plug can be used. Is it really too much to ask that one of those little holes be moved just a bit?
Footnote 1: The company's name, Spendor, derives from the first names of its founders, Spencer and Dorothy Hughes.— Ed.
Footnote 2: "Scale" refers to the apparent size of musical intruments. A voice, for example, should sound neither too light nor too heavy, and should image as a virtual pointsource.
Footnote 3: Spencer Hughes worked on the development of the acetate/wood-pulpצbased plastic Bextrene as a cone material while working in the BBC's Engineering Department. He was chief engineer on an acoustic modeling speaker that was subsequently developed into the LS3/5A.—Ed.
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Source : stereophile[dot]com
Surpassing Expectations: Pioneer's Andrew Jones
While preparing the review, I took the opportunity to ask Andrew Jones, Pioneer’s chief engineer, a few questions about hi-fi, music, and loudspeaker design. As always, Jones was forthright and charming; his answers to my questions were often enlightening.
Stephen Mejias: In the July issue of Stereophile, two of your loudspeakers were reviewed: the $29,800/pair TAD Evolution One and the $129.99/pair Pioneer SP-BS22-LR. It’s not entirely uncommon to find two products designed by the same person in any issue of Stereophile, but I doubt we’ve ever reviewed in one issue two products by the same designer that have had such radically different prices. How do you feel about that? Do you take more pride or happiness in one design over the other?
Andrew Jones: I feel great about that! I remember when I started the design of the original versions, the BS21, that I thought it would be fun to design a true entry-level speaker that would perform to such a surprising degree that it would excite first-comers into hi-fi and inspire them to get more interested in their music and our hobby. Kal Rubinson was the first person to be surprised at their performance level when he heard them at CEDIA over two years ago. The BS22 are an evolution from the BS21, and allowed me to take the designs even further. They also take me full circle: Back when I was at KEF, the first design I did after moving from research into product development was an entry level speaker (the C45, I seem to recall), so now after 25 years or so I’m back at square one!
To design these speakers at the same time as designing almost cost-no-object speakers is particularly satisfying. Each has its own design challenges and subsequent satisfaction when completed, but the great thing is that lots of people can afford the entry level Pioneers and don’t have to feel disenfranchised that hi-fi has become too expensive.
SM: Can you explain the differences in designing a cost-no-object speaker and an entry-level speaker like the Pioneer? What are the different challenges? What are the different rewards? Do you have more fun designing a cost-no-object speaker or a very affordable speaker?
AJ: In truth, even a cost-no-object speaker has some cost objective, otherwise, as an engineer, one would never stop and never get the design to market! It’s just that the cost objectives are different and so the design decisions are different.
In an affordable speaker, every cent spent has to be evaluated in terms of its contribution to sound quality. In particular one is looking at what decisions can be made that have no cost implication. A good example of this would be cone and surround profile on the bass cone. Time spent in evaluating this aspect of the design has great rewards, because it has influence on the requirements for the crossover network, integration to the tweeter and overall smoothness of the response, both on- and off-axis.
It is surprising what kind of decisions have an influence over how good the design will sound, because of where one can free up cost to put towards performance. Although not a secret in the industry, one interesting aspect is the choice of cabinet/packaging/carton size: Shaving a few millimeters off of the size makes a difference to how many will fit in the shipping container. An exact fit will reduce wasted space and reduce shipping cost. Maybe only a few cents per speaker, but this can then be spent on performance by adding perhaps more absorption, or a better spec capacitor in the crossover, etc.
At the other end of the scale, the challenge is in looking to see what hasn’t been tried yet, what is waiting to be discovered, understood and then exploited. It is more research- than development-oriented, with longer time scales to allow for explorations that might not work out, at least for now. The reward is just as great, but shared by fewer.
Engineering is a game of challenging the rules while at the same time being bound by them. The rules are different for the two cost objectives, but they are equally challenging and equally fun. Of course, the reaction from friends and colleagues can be equally fun, ranging from, “Wow, only $30,000!” to “Really, $30,000?!”
In this video, Andrew Jones describes some of the technology behind Pioneer's SP-BS22-LR loudspeaker.
SM: How did you first become interested in music? In hi-fi? In speaker design?
AJ: My interest in music came from the gift of a Dansette record player: Changer, tube amplifier, and speaker—all in one portable cabinet. With this, came a stack of 45rpm records, mainly from the ’50s and early ’60s. Next was listening to Top of the Pops on BBC television, and Radio Caroline and Radio One.
Hi-fi came from my interest in electronics, first by way of my twin brother’s interest. We both started designing electronic circuits, then became interested in hi-fi, then, for some reason I’ve never understood, I switched my interest to speakers and started to cut wood and try building stuff. I never seemed interested in doing things the easy way, so a lot of my projects were, let’s just say, experiments that never got finished! I’m sure some of my colleagues will say that I have not progressed much since those days, which is why I generally need a good project manager behind me!
SM: You studied physics and acoustics while in university. Were you building speakers at the time? Can you tell me about the very first speaker you designed? How has your design philosophy changed over the years?
AJ: I had built speakers while at school, or, I should say, I started lots of projects. One was a transmission-line speaker: I got as far as cutting all the wood! The second was an attempt to mimic the Rogers cylindrical speaker. I tried rolling my own aluminum sheet into a cylinder. Needless to say, that didn’t get very far. The first completed speaker was for my final year project at university, a stepped baffle “linear” phase active speaker, with active filter circuits designed by my brother. I can’t say I had a design philosophy at that early stage, other than the desire to always attempt to push the boundaries of design. Of course, my real learning experience was at KEF, which, at the time, was the best speaker university of all.
SM: If you had no limitations and could design any loudspeaker you wanted, what would it be? In other words, can you describe your “dream” speaker?
AJ: I always had a love of electrostatics, and have, and still own, many different examples. My dream is to combine the best qualities of electrostatics but without their dynamic and directivity limitations.
Andrew Jones (left) and Stereophile's John Atkinson (right) discuss the finer points of speaker design, with Stereophile's Kalman Rubinson and Sound & Vision's Mark Fleischmann. Photo: Kristen Somody Whalen.
SM: In broad strokes, can you describe the experience and process of designing a speaker like the SP-BS22-LR? How much of the process is theory? How much is application? How much is measuring? How much is listening?
AJ: With such a low cost speaker, the work is all in the optimization of the components to take out cost with the least compromise in sound. Which parts of the speaker have the greatest contribution to the sound? Which parts can be optimized with no impact on cost? There is a lot of measurement involved to speed the process, but in the end it comes down to listening. However, where I think many low cost speakers fall down is in the expectation level of what can be produced. I have very high expectations because of my involvement with TAD. That is the sound I have in mind when I am tuning the speaker and I don’t settle until I can at least have some resemblance.
SM: You’ve gained a great reputation for outstanding demos at hi-fi shows, providing detailed guidance and interesting music that highlights a system’s strengths. When designing a speaker, what music do you listen to?
Andrew Jones, demming TAD's Reference system at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show—one of the most complete, entertaining, and impressive demonstrations I've ever experienced.
AJ: In the design process, I firstly use music I am intimately familiar with, much of it music that I obtain from studios and engineers where I have either listened in when the recordings have been made, or am able to get the opinion of the recording engineers as to the capability of the speaker. This is generally the same music that I use at shows. Additionally, it is always music that I personally find emotionally involving. I rarely play music that is simply a “demo” piece. Even with the dynamically spectacular type pieces, they are still ones that I enjoy listening to. This way I know that if a prototype doesn’t give me that emotional connection, then it isn’t yet tuned correctly.
SM: What do you listen for in a speaker? In your opinion, what makes a good speaker?
AJ: Clearly, a good speaker is one that has wide bandwidth, low distortion, controlled directivity, and high resolution. However, it should not be resolving in a way that initially sounds impressive, but ultimately fails to be musically satisfying. I want to relax back in my seat when listening, not be on the edge of my seat. Too many systems sound like “hi-fi!”
SM: The SP-BS22-LR uses a sophisticated, six-element crossover network, comprising a single film capacitor and air-core inductor in the tweeter feed, and a laminated steel-core inductor and electrolytic capacitor in the woofer feed. How are you able to use such sophisticated design while maintaining such an affordable price?
AJ: This is where buying power comes in. When designing and costing any speaker, clearly manufacturing quantities significantly affect parts cost. With the original design, Best Buy had requested us to design an entry-level speaker, based on their knowledge of what I had done with TAD and the EX speakers. With such a large retailer, we had a very clear idea of potential sales quantities and projections month by month. This allowed for very strong negotiations on price. In fact, when I started the design of the prototype, I ignored general price consideration and built something that I wanted to try and build, then started looking at costings and must admit that I was surprised at just what I could incorporate. Since then, the designs have proven to be such big sellers that, when it came time to develop the MKII version, the costing process was much more straightforward.
SM: I’ve been told by other loudspeaker manufacturers that the time for affordable bookshelf speakers has expired, that people shopping in this price range are more interested in purchasing powered desktop speakers.
AJ: Well, judging from sales of these speakers, that’s clearly not the case! Perhaps young people getting into the hobby are more likely to gravitate towards powered speakers to plug into their laptops, as that is their preferred access point for music, but the counter to that is the current resurgence of vinyl with those same young buyers.
SM: Who is the target customer for the SP-BS22-LR?
AJ: My target was all those people that we normally cannot access, those who don’t walk into a hi-fi store. I wanted them to be surprised at what they had bought rather than merely meet their expectations. I want people to listen and think, “Wow, I wasn’t expecting that, listen to how much better my music sounds.” I also wanted an entry-level speaker that all of us already interested in hi-fi could honestly recommend to all their friends that ask for a recommendation, and that are not at all interested in paying even the amount that we would normally consider the starting point for entry level hi-fi.
SM: I think it’s absolutely outstanding that you’ve provided such a high-quality product at such an affordable price. Do you think it’s important that the high-end audio industry provides such affordable products?
AJ: I think it’s crucial to provide such products. You only have to look at the comments when expensive hi-fi is mentioned on the blogs. I would say that such articles receive almost universal condemnation and derision in the comments sections. We need that to change, and the only way is to provide product at low enough entry price that we attract new blood onto the upgrade path, so that they begin to understand that listening to hi-fi can be intensely rewarding and that the expensive product does ultimately justify itself in the performance it provides.
It’s also important that the very high end companies find some way to provide this, to show that we care about encouraging new listeners and that we are not just an elitist club.
SM: Do you think it’s important for the high-end audio industry to attract younger customers? What steps, other than offering affordable products, need to be taken in order to do so?
AJ: Yes. We need to recognize how and when younger customers listen, and tailor product to their needs while also satisfying our wish to show them a better way to listen. It’s a difficult balancing act, but one that needs to be accomplished.
SM: Agreed! Thanks very much, Andrew. It’s been a pleasure.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Listening #129
The Vittora is designed and built by Greg Roberts (footnote 1), a longtime audio enthusiast who bought his first pair of Klipsch La Scala loudspeakers when he was 14. (He has owned a number of pairs of Klipschorns in the years since, having settled on an especially nice-looking set from 1967.) A woodworker by training and a homebuilder by trade, Roberts began, in 2001, to offer his services as a commercial restorer of Klipsch's "heritage" products: the Klipschorn, the Belle Klipsch, the La Scala, and the Heresy. In time, restoration turned to modification, as Roberts developed a midrange horn and other components to improve the performance of classic Klipsches that hadn't always been built to perfectionist standards. Not long after that, Roberts decided to incorporate what he'd learned into a completely new, if unabashedly Klipschian, loudspeaker of his own design. Thus, over several years, did Volti Audio and the Vittora loudspeaker come into being.
The Vittora is a three-way, fully horn-loaded loudspeaker in two enclosures per channel, both made entirely of Baltic birch plywood. The bass cabinet is a single-fold bifurcated horn in which a rear-facing woofer fires into a splitter that, according to Roberts, took considerable time to develop—as did the shape of the bass horn: "The size of the mouth is a big determinant for lower bass: It is what it is," he says. "But I found that upper bass was something I had control over, and I used cheap OSB [oriented-strand board] to build multiple prototypes." The result is a design in which the sides of the enclosure—and thus one surface along each of two paths—are curved. The high-sensitivity, 15" bass driver has a stiffly suspended paper cone—Roberts estimates its Q as approximately 0.3—with a free-air resonance in the neighborhood of 40Hz.
The cabinet's curve is repeated in the sides of the upper enclosure, which houses the Vittora's midrange and treble horns, both of which are derived from Roberts's modifications of Klipschorns. The rectangular midrange horn, made of plywood and bendable hardwood, has a tractrix flare, and is driven by a 2" compression driver (a BMS 4592) with a phenolic diaphragm. The elliptical treble horn is made of composite and is driven by a 1" compression driver with an aluminum diaphragm. The two horns fit side by side, the latter secured in an opening that Roberts designed into the former.
The upper enclosure also contains the Vittora's crossover network, which is user-adjustable for treble output: By substituting different preassembled resistor modules—which work within the Vittora's capacitor- and autoformer-based network to create different L-pad configurations—the owner can suit room or taste by raising or lowering the tweeter's output across its operating range, from 6kHz up. The crossover network is accessed through a panel on the back of the upper cabinet, and the resistor modules are connected with integral gold-plated spade lugs, making soldering unnecessary. Roberts says that the bass portion of the crossover also includes an adjustable contour filter—a notch filter, really—that helps flatten out a known response peak.
The Volti Vittora is built in a shop—as opposed to a garage, a driveway, or somebody's mother's basement—solely dedicated to the production of loudspeakers and loudspeaker components, and which Roberts has equipped with state-of-the-art power tools and an air-filtration system. Cutting and shaping are done with high-tech European table saws and bandsaws. Wooden parts are bent to shape in a vacuum-bag system—also used to apply veneer—and catalyzed polymer finishes are applied in a separate, room-sized spraybooth. The build quality of my review pair, finished in bosse cedar, equals that of the finest American loudspeaker cabinetry I've seen, DeVore Fidelity and Thiel Audio included. Roberts makes his own wooden cabinet feet, and even irons and applies his own vintage-style grillework—it all contributes to one of the best-built audio products I've had in my home. Forgive the ham-fisted cliché, but even my wife, who was at first put off by the idea of a speaker that takes up more space than a front-loading clothes-dryer, was impressed.
It rained. Of course.
Janet was also impressed with Vittora's sound, going so far as to call it the best horn speaker she's heard. But that's getting ahead of myself—before any listening got done, Greg Roberts and I had to get the Vittoras through the door, which meant that we uncrated them in my driveway. It rained. Of course.
The crates themselves were well made, each containing a single channel's bottom and top enclosures, separated from one another with sheets of sturdy foam. Carrying inside the 60-lb top enclosures wasn't too terrible, but the 127-lb bottom enclosures gave us a spot of trouble on the way up to my porch, especially as the enclosed stairway is 31" wide and the uncrated enclosure's depth (its smallest dimension) is 29". A few knuckles were scraped that day, a few curses cursed.
Once inside, the setting-up was fairly easy. Roberts shares my preference for using felt pads on the bottoms of his loudspeaker feet (provisions exist for those who endure in preferring spikes), so the heavy lower enclosures were easy to slide on my hardwood floors. The upper enclosures are fitted with spikes, the points of which correspond with dimpled discs atop the bottom cabinets; fitting together the two enclosures is a two-person job, but neither person need be terribly clever or strong, merely possessed of good depth perception. (I scarcely filled the bill.) In order for me to have the complete Vittora experience, Roberts also brought a matching sample of its optional subwoofer ($2900 without its corresponding Marchand amplifier/crossover), beautifully finished in the same bosse-cedar veneer. That said, we began our fine-tuning and our first few hours of listening without it.
The Vittoras
Bass extension with the Vittoras alone (Greg Roberts says they reach down to 50Hz, in-room) was superb from the get-go: The bass horn loaded the room exceptionally well, with no egregious dead zones. Our work was confined to selecting the optimal distances between the speakers and the front and side walls; we noted, without surprise, that when those two dimensions were too similar, bass notes lost some of their distinctness of pitch and clarity. Our best results were had with the cabinets only a few inches from their respective sidewalls, and with about 26" between the back of each cabinet and the wall behind it. A gentle to moderate amount of toe-in was preferred, the handed enclosures arranged so that their treble horns were on the outside edges of the midrange horns.
At the far end of my room, driven by the 25W Shindo Corton-Charlemagne amplifiers, the Vittoras sounded nothing short of wonderful. Their trebles were smoother and altogether softer than those of my metal-horned Altec Valencias, while their bass range had the same touchtone, vintage magic: a little less sharp and a little more colorful than the Altecs, and just as big, just as full of impact and nuance and feeling.
Footnote 1: Volti Audio, PO Box 544, Fairfield, ME 04937. Web: www.voltiaudio.com.
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Source : stereophile[dot]com
Music in the Round #62
The concert seemed to me to be badly programmed, and I predicted that the three Beethoven symphonies to be performed—1, 2, and 5, in that order—would lack variety. How wrong I was. Fischer announced that the intermission would take place between the first two and last two movements of Symphony 2, and that it would be the occasion for changes in the orchestra's personnel. We heard Symphony 1 (one of my favorites) and half of Symphony 2 (not a fave) with a small orchestra such as would have been familiar to Haydn and Mozart—but Beethoven, from the beginning, was infusing his music with raw emotion and greater power. From our seats on the right side of the floor about midway back, the orchestra sounded clear and direct, but hardly filled the hall.
After the break, all sections of the orchestra were augmented, most notably the brass and timpani. When Symphony 2 resumed, the sound was bigger, with wider dynamic range, but it was still clearly characterized by the hall's capacity to focus the sounds of individual instruments directly at the listener. And in the magnificent Symphony 5, the sound got larger still, even when it was not louder, and even with the added power, the hall's acoustic retained its characters of clarity and focus. Fischer had clearly demonstrated, and the hall had revealed, how Beethoven was changing his style as he matured.
The next night, at the Musikverein, in Vienna, we heard a concert of Stravinsky's Petrouchka and Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand and his Daphnis et Chloé Suite 2, with Daniele Gatti and the Orchestre National de France. Here the sound was suffused with a richer ambience that didn't diffuse the focus of the instruments so much as present them with an acoustically bigger sound. Fischer's analysis-by-performance would not have been as transparent here, but with the Musikverein's support, the ONF sounded appropriately ripe and fluid, particularly in Daphnis et Chloé.
But the best demonstration of the effect of acoustics on instrumental sound was during a visit to Haarlem, back in Holland, where Jared Sacks was recording violinist Rachel Podger for Channel Classics (see photo). We arrived at a small, old, wooden church, now a Mennonite sanctuary, during a break in the recording enforced by the rehearsals of the resident women's choir, which we could hear only through the doors. When Podger, Sacks, and Channel Classics' Tom Caulfield returned, we entered the church, where Sacks told us of its history as a recording venue, including many recordings in Telefunken's Das Alte Werk, which, along with Deutsche Grammophon's Archiv series, introduced many baby boomer listeners to the glories of baroque and renaissance music. While the church looks plain, when Podger put her bow to the strings of her 1739 Pesarini violin, the sound came alive from all around us. The instrument sounded warm, full, and preternaturally vivid. I was only a few feet from her, and it sounded distinct as an instrument, but its sound was inseparable from the ambience. That support of the sound of an instrument by a hall's ambience, as we had heard in the Concertgebouw and the Musikverein, cannot be properly reproduced except by multichannel recordings played through multichannel audio systems. I can hardly wait for the release of this one.
The Trinnov Optimizer
I reviewed a Sherwood R-972 audio/video receiver in the May 2010 issue ($1799.95 at that time) because I wanted to try Sherwood's implementation of the Optimizer from Trinnov Audio. But I go way back with Trinnov. At an Audio Engineering Society convention in Manhattan more than 10 years ago, I witnessed a demonstration in which a Trinnov representative moved the sounds of instruments around the soundstage at will, using a Trinnov-equipped mastering console. It deeply impressed me, although, at the time, I had no idea how it could be useful to me. Since then, my involvement in multichannel sound has blossomed.
The Optimizer's suite of tools was severely pared down for the Sherwood R-972, but the potential was clear. However, this AVR was something of an overreaching product for Sherwood, and had several operational quirks. Though it seems to have disappeared from Sherwood America's product roster, the R-972 has developed a bit of a cult following; NOS units can still be found at attractive prices.
My experience of the R-972 whetted my appetite for the full Optimizer, and ever since, I've been corresponding with Curt Hoyt, an independent consultant who is also Trinnov's director of USA operations (footnote 1). The abiding issue is which model to choose. No Optimizer model has all the features I need for 5.1-channel audio, including both analog and digital inputs, that doesn't also bristle with lots of features I don't need.
The model ST2-HiFi ($7000, based on the June 2013 exchange rate) has analog and digital ins/outs, but only four channels. The Magnitude32 can be order with anywhere form 4 to 32 channels, but all ins/outs are analog. The Amethyst has everything, including a phono stage, but it's a two-channel preamp. The audio-only Ovation Cinema Processor is on the way, but it seems intended for use in commercial movie theaters (footnote 2).
The Optimizer is included in all of these models and, after a few years of hearing my pleas, Hoyt agreed to send me a full-blown MC Processor ($13,000) configured so that I could feed it eight channels of balanced analog input and three S/PDIF digital inputs, and get from it eight channels of balanced analog output. The MC's modular architecture makes it possible for users to configure it to their particular requirements. The Optimizer's operation and performance are identical across the Trinnov line. Everything that follows applies to all models.
What the Optimizer does
First, it measures each speaker's responses of frequency (direct and time-integrated), phase, and impulse, and its relative volume level and distance from the microphone. These measurements can and should be examined and, perhaps, repeated at various levels to determine which measurement set best represents the characteristics of the speaker and room that need correction. Since I was using bass management, there was little need to compensate for the deepest bass response in the main channels. So before imposing bass management, we steeply cut the sub-40Hz response of the front channels and the sub-80Hz response of the surrounds. Conversely, we also cut the response above 200Hz of my two subwoofers. In addition to bass management, the Trinnov can also implement complex crossover functions for active speakers, but I didn't venture there.
Second, Trinnov's special calibration microphone (provided), with its central tall element surrounded by three shorter elements, allows the resolution of the horizontal and vertical angular disposition of each speaker. The value of this is the mapping of the speakers in 3D for comparison to ITU and SMPTE standards for the placement of speakers in a surround system. One can use this to reposition the speakers, or electronically remap them to conform to one of these standards.
Footnote 1: Trinnov Audio, 2 Avenue de l'Europe, 94360 Bry-Sur-Marne, France. Tel: (33) (0)1-47-06-61-37. Fax: (33) (0)1-47-06-61-37. Web: www.trinnov.com. USA Operations: Curt Hoyt, Huntington Beach, CA 92649. Tel: (714) 840-1065. E-mail: curt@cahoyt.com.
Footnote 2: Audio Design Associates (ADA) in New York City offers Trinnov Optimizers with analog ins/outs, in 4-, 8-, and 12-channel versions. Though functionally equivalent to the Trinnov-sourced products, they differ in providing useful front-panel controls in addition to Trinnov's standard OSD and network-based menu system. Click here for details.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
