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This Christmas!
That tune is included on Donny Hathaway, Never My Love: The Anthology a new CD collection from Rhino Records. While this collection is not available yet as a high resolution download, HD Tracks does have a 192 kHz/24 bit version of Hathaway’s superb Live record (also included in Never My Love) which is arguably the best part of this four disc set. (Oddly, when you search for “Donny Hathaway” on HD Tracks much of the Sonny Rollins catalog comes up). Sadly, there is also no LP version of this set, though given that one entire disc of this set is filled with unreleased material, the expense of assembling masters, cutting lacquers, etc. is undoubtedly prohibitive. Although the original records have impossibly long lists of engineers, most of what Hathaway recorded for Atlantic was sonically good if not great. Even the live record, produced by Arif Mardin, is better than most.
Like Clifford Brown in the world of jazz trumpet, Donnie Hathaway is one of the great “might have beens.” In Hathaway’s case the catalog of existent recordings is even smaller than that of Brownie, which makes every scrap worth a listen. When he plunged out of a 15th floor room of the Essex House in NYC in 1979 at the age of 33, in what was ruled a suicide, Hathaway, who had been on meds for schizophrenia, was reactivating his career which had drifted since the 1973 release of his third album, Extension of a Man. His death left unanswered the questions about where he would have gone musically and how well–known and influential he might have become. On Never My Love the first disc, “Favourites” collects Hathaway originals like “The Ghetto Pts 1 & 2,” “I Thank You Baby” (a co–write with fellow Chicagoan Curtis Mayfield) and “Come Little Children” as well as the tunes he covered and made his own like, Ray Charles, “I Believe to My Soul” and Leon Russell’s “A Song For You.” This is also where “This Christmas” resides.
The second disc here is all unreleased studio recordings, almost all of it from the mid–70’s. For about half the 13 tracks on this disc it’s unclear even where they were recorded. Yet Hathaway’s impassioned singing and always underrated keyboard work remains as powerful as ever. “Never My Love,” which was a huge hit for The Association and a lesser hit for both The Fifth Dimension and Blue Swede, is given a sweeping rendition. “A Lot of Soul,” is believable country music. Then there’s “Let’s Groove,” recorded at the Record Plant in 1974, which is straight up cool jazz. Two instrumental tracks “Latin Time” and “Talley Rand,” recorded in 1974 and 1978 respectively, with Hathaway on electric piano, are different stabs at a similar tune, which sounds very much like Bob James music from that same era. “After The Dance Is Done,” complete with a bizarre flute solo, is the disco track that was obligatory for everyone trying to cash in during the mid–70’s. That’s mercifully followed by a 1968 track, “Don’t Turn Away,” which while a flawed Chicago soul track, is at least Hathaway back in a genuine soul groove. The final track on the unreleased disc is “ZYXYGY Concerto,” a massive 20–minute number that features a full orchestra, and Hathaway as impressionistic keyboard soloist, that harks back to a time when record labels (in this case Atlantic) would pay for artists to indulge/explore their musical imaginations.
While the fourth disc of duets with Roberta Flack is what many people actually remember Hathaway for, it’s the Live record, reproduced here on the third disc, that is really the centerpiece to this set and, in a larger sense, Hathaway’s entire career. Recorded at the Troubadour in Los Angeles and the Bitter End in New York, the performances beginning with the opener, a masterful cover of “What’s Going On,” are loose and powerful in the extreme. Hathaway’s voice alternately glides over or digs into such classics as “You’ve Got a Friend,” “Jealous Guy” and the eternal Hathaway classic, “Voices Inside (Everything is Everything).” Having a band with Willie Weeks on bass and Cornell Dupree on guitar only ices the cake. While CD boxed sets are seemingly in the twilight of their existence, Rhino and other labels keep coming up with absolutely essential packages like Never My Love.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Audience Au24 SE interconnect
A recent e-mail exchange with John McDonald, the president and CEO of Audience, got me wondering if it was time to hear their latest and greatest cables. He said that the $220 upgrade from the standard Au24e to the Au24 SE ($1190/1m pair) was "three times as big as the upgrade from Au24 to Au24e" (footnote 1). I was skeptical. But on the other hand, I've followed Audience's products over the years, and have learned that when they make a change, it's a significant one.
McDonald's e-mail caught my attention for another reason. He said that the only difference between the Au24e and the Au24 SE is the latter's new RCA plug, whose center pin is made of a tellurium-copper alloy—the cable itself is the same as in the Au24e.
His tellurium-copper hook was set. For a metallurgist like me, what could be more interesting than a jump in a cable's performance due to the use of a new alloy?
What makes a good electrical connector?
Pure copper and silver are excellent conductors of electricity; gold is pretty good, with an electrical conductivity about 25% lower. All three, however, lack the stiffness and strength to support enough clamping force to make a solid connection and minimize contact resistance. They're also expensive and, worst of all, very difficult to machine. On a scale of 0–100, copper's machinability is about 25.
At the other end of the spectrum are brass and beryllium-copper, the materials most widely used in connectors. They're cheap, their mechanical properties are adequate, and they're much easier to machine than copper or the other noble metals. Unfortunately, their conductivity is only 25–30% that of copper or silver. Plating with silver or gold over an interlayer of equally low-conductivity nickel reduces contact resistance without affecting overall conductivity, but creates severe discontinuities in electrical and magnetic properties.
C14500, the tellurium-copper alloy that Audience uses in their SE connectors, is 99.492% copper, 0.5% tellurium, and 0.008% phosphorous. The use of C14500 has become relatively common in high-end electrical connectors, and compared to the other choices, it looks awfully good: It has 93% of copper's electrical conductivity, along with mechanical properties similar to those of brass or beryllium-copper. With a machinability of 85, it's easily and inexpensively made into complex shapes. Most tellurium-copper contacts are plated with silver or gold, but without the nickel interlayer. Because there's no interlayer, and the conductivities of the plating and the underlying alloys are very similar, the discontinuities between the two are very small.
One of Audience's design goals is to minimize the creation of eddy currents, which are caused by just such physical or electrical discontinuities. The smaller electrical discontinuity between tellurium-copper and the gold or silver plating reduces the formation of eddy currents, which should lower the noise floor and improve low-level linearity, detail, and clarity.
As much as I'd like to claim that any audible improvement from Au24e to Au24 SE was due solely to metallurgical factors, I can't—because Audience has also changed the design of their conductor. In the Au24e, the ground connection is made by formed tabs that encircle the entire jack. In contrast, the SE connectors are similar to the Bullet Plugs from Eichmann, which use a single, small contact point for the ground connection. Although the SE plugs actually have two small contact pads, only one of them is used, so the configuration is essentially the same as in the Bullet Plug. The reasons for using a single, small contact point are to emulate a star-grounding concept and—you guessed it—reduce the formation of eddy currents.
It's all about context
Not surprisingly, given my reader friend's observation, the system I used for this review is tried, true, and well understood. (See the equipment sidebar.)
Rather than my usual approach, which is to cable my entire system with the review product, I decided to instead insert a single 1m run of Au24 SE. Since the Au24e and Au24 SE interconnects are also used as Audience's Low-Z phono cable (footnote 2), I first installed the Au24 SE between my turntable and phono preamp. Later, to see how the Au24 SE worked with line-level signals, I used it between my Primare CD31 CD player and line stage. In both cases, the rest of the system was wired with Au24e. I threw other cables into the mix, but because I was most interested in the tellurium-copper plugs, I spent the bulk of my time alternating between Au24e and Au24 SE. Before installing the Au24 SEs, I burned them in for about a week using a Duo-Tech Cable Enhancer.
And in this context . . .
While the Cable Enhancer was cooking the Audience Au24 SEs, I worked through my reference cables to thoroughly refamiliarize myself with the sound of the Au24e. Ears and system dialed in, I spun Roy Orbison's Mystery Girl (LP, Virgin 91058-1). My analog system had a balanced, natural sound, with all of the things that have made the Au24e one of my reference cables: smooth and flowing, yet with enough immediacy and detail to draw me in—but with not so much of either that a hyperawareness of the sound intruded on my connection with the music.
My vinyl-playing system also passed the audiophile checklist with flying colors. The frequency response was extended and flat, the dynamic transients were large and clean, and the notes started and stopped quickly, yet flowed naturally from one to the next. All of the other, smaller things we obsess over—imaging, detail, focus, transparency, etc.—were excellent, and consistently reproduced across the audioband and loudness range. All good.
I installed the Au24 SEs, sat back, psyched myself up, and turned my reviewer radar up to High. I was determined to listen even more carefully to the areas that, per Audience's theory, should most benefit from the change to tellurium-copper and reduced eddy-current formation: image focus and resolution of detail. I also concentrated on detecting any electronic artifacts or textures that might be woven into the music or the open spaces when no sounds are being made by musicians.
Footnote 1: Click here for my review of the Audience Au24e in the June 2010 issue of Stereophile and here for my review of the original Au24 in the August 2002 issue.
Footnote 2: This turned out to be incorrect; see the "Follow-Up" on the next page.—Ed.
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Source : stereophile[dot]com
The Best Jazz Recordings of 2013
Maria Schneider & Dawn Upshaw, Winter Morning Walks (ArtistShare).
Darcy James Argue & Secret Society, Brooklyn Babylon (New Amsterdam).
Marc Cary, For the Love of Abbey (Motema Music).
William Parker, Wood Flute Songs, Anthology: Live, 2006–12 (AUM Fidelity).
Dave Douglas, Time Travel (Greenleaf Music).
Steve Coleman & Five Elements, Functional Arrythmia (Pi Recordings).
John Zorn, Dreamachines (Tzadik).
Matthew Shipp, Piano Sutras (Thirsty Ear).
Ben Goldberg, Subatomic Particle Homesick Blues (BAG Production).
Preservation Hall Jazz Band, That's It! (Columbia).
BEST REISSUES:
Clifford Jordan, The Complete Strata-East Sessions (Mosaic Records).
Jim Hall, Live Vol. 2–4 (ArtistShare).
My Slate column also contains some text and strategically selected 30-second soundclips from each album. As a bonus for this blog’s readers, here is the order in which I would have listed these same 10 albums, if the criterion was strictly sound quality: Winter Morning Walks, Time Travel, Subatomic Particle Homesick Blues, For the Love of Abbey, Dreamachines, Piano Sutras, Brooklyn Babylon, Wood Flute Songs, Functional Arrythmia, That’s It!
I should add a few remarks. First, all of these albums sound quite good; the first three are up to audiophile standards.
Second, I would have ranked That’s It! higher up, again for sound quality, except for the excessive, ill-advised artificial reverb. I should also note that it’s also available as an LP, which sounds better. (The bass is extraordinary.)
Third, it may be interesting to note that only one of these 12 albums comes from a major jazz label (That’s It! from Columbia). The others are from very small labels, several of them (ArtistShare, Greenleaf, Tzadik, and BAG) artist-owned. Does this reflect a decline of the (relatively) big labels or simply my taste (and the big-label publicists would add, my poor taste)?
In any case, Happy Listening and a Happy New Year!
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Meet Mat Weisfeld, President of VPI Industries
Ariel Bitran: So is it Mat or Mathew?
Mat Weisfeld: Mat works.
AB: Why Mat?
MW: I was usually Mathew when I was in trouble with my mom.
Empire and Kenwood gear surrounded Weisfeld in his youth. He remembers kicking in the woofers of his dad’s Raven speakers, not to his father’s amusement. When he became old enough to help at VPI, mother Sheila Weisfeld pushed her son away from the company so he could focus on his teaching career—the profession she left once VPI grew wings. While Harry Weisfeld designed turntables and record cleaners, Sheila Weisfeld handled customer orders and kept the business alive. Sheila Weisfeld died of pancreatic cancer in 2011. While sitting shiva for Sheila, Harry asked Mat, “Matt, you’re in this too. What do you want to do?” He replied with hiring suggestions and quality control advice for VPI. Harry was talking about the roast beef, but his son’s interest was not ignored.
Mat Weisfeld suited up and shipped off to CES 2012 to represent VPI and familiarize himself with the industry. The younger Weisfeld admits, “I had no idea what I was doing,” but when he received a Product of the Year award for the VPI Classic III from Stereophile, he says he realized Mom and Dad had created something special.
On the return flight, Weisfeld drew up the design for the Traveler turntable, and returned to work alongside his father, but movement was slow. Harry, who normally cabled the tonearms, was absent and grieving. Friend and New Jersey neighbor Steve Leung of VAS Industries stepped in and began cabling tonearms while Mat Weisfeld took on managerial responsibilities. Harry Weisfeld has since retired, and Mat Weisfeld became the president of America’s top hi-fi turntable manufacturer. Harry Weisfeld is still around, giving input on turntable design, offering wisdom when his son has a question, and listening to the factory’s in-house system. When I visited, Harry indulged in a recently purchased ATR reel-to-reel, the last Ampex rebuild from Mike Spitz before his passing.
The VPI factory is based in Cliffwood, New Jersey, in a cluster of warehouses. Ten on-site employees work in the two warehouse divisions. Mat Weisfeld recently purchased four more units in the business park, an additional 5000 square feet, which have yet to be utilized.
Sheila Weisfeld ran a paper only office. Mat Weisfeld has since updated the office with computers and power outlets.
Leo has worked at VPI for twenty-seven years, ever since the introduction of the HW-19. Here he builds the Classic III.
Igor who commutes from Brooklyn is responsible for assembling parts and building record cleaning machines.
While talking to Leo and Igor, Mat Weisfeld burst from the office with a scream, “We got the feet!” They were missing feet for their Scout 1.1, Scout 1.2, and Scoutmaster turntables, which held back a shipment to a French distributor. Weisfeld blamed the missing feet on the part suppliers who had been unable to meet VPI’s growing production schedule.
The missing parts problem has repeated across different models for the past two years. While it has led to frustration, it has also led to creativity. This past summer, VPI ran out of pumps for their HW-16.5 record-cleaning machine. Months passed and no pumps arrived. In response, Weisfeld built the MW-1 Cyclone, a pump-less $1000 record cleaning machine that spins records from their perimeter rather than the center, which Weisfeld claims evens out pressure exerted on the LP when pushing down with the cleaning brush. As another reaction to the missing parts, Weisfeld hired a programmer to develop inventory-tracking software to recognize when pieces for their turntables are in short-stock. Coordinating inflow of parts to match their amped production schedule is still a challenge, but Weisfeld says operations are improving.
AB: On an average day, how many turntables are built?
MW: We just keep making them. If we had to, we could make 20 Travelers in one day.
AB: Would that be the only VPI turntable you make in that day?
MW: That would just be Jan. He’s the Traveler guy. This year is different. This is our first full year where we’ve had better supplies and been on top of everything. We’re able to produce a lot more. In the past to make ten Classics would take all week. Now we can do five or ten in a day.
AB: What do you attribute to those improvements in production time?
MW: Mass production. We’re making a lot of pieces. Little things here and there have made production flow much smoother.
AB: How do you guys make these realizations?
MW: Failure! With vinyl coming back, we were getting orders, and we just couldn’t fill them.
AB: What’s the lead time for a Traveler?
MW: Traveler can sometimes be same day. We always keep them. We know they’re all going to go eventually so we keep making them. This past summer, I had them working as if it was Christmas. Harry was getting concerned, “What do we do with all these tables?” ‘Don’t worry, they’ll go,’ I said. And they have. All the old tables we stocked in the summer are already gone, and we’re restocking them.
AB: Do you feel any pressure from your dad?
MW: Oh yeah. He has his moments, but it’s really good to have him around.
AB: What are his concerns? What are your concerns?
MW: He didn’t feel there was a need to go to the young audience. He looked at it as, “We’re high end. Let’s stick to the old guys. College kids can’t afford this stuff.” I’m always and still looking at the idea of bringing hi-fi to the next generation. Even if college kids can’t afford it right now, they will.
Matt admits that the $995 Nomad turntable might be a little high for a college student, but VPI Industries will offer a 20% discount if the buyer can confirm enrollment at a university. Weisfeld stripped down the Traveler to make the more affordable Nomad. The Nomad tonearm, built in-house, is a derivation of the Traveler tonearm but with the top and bottom bearings removed. An MDF platter and chassis replaces the Traveler’s aluminum platter and chassis. The table was designed in conjunction with Mat Weisfeld, Harry Weisfeld, and their Computer Assisted Design (CAD) team.
Like his father’s previous designs, the Nomad is built for upgrades. One can upgrade his or her Nomad turntable to include a Traveler tonearm or aluminum platter. Likewise, the Traveler is also undergoing upgrades. In its first year on the market, the Traveler suffered from durability issues, user error, and a lack of aesthetic grace. The cheap-looking plaque on the old Traveler has been replaced with a laser-etched logo. A new textured paint no longer flakes. Packaging for shipment is improved. Gimbaled bearings replace the sapphire bearings that popped out too easily when users misused the counterweight. Stephen Mejias plans to do a followup on the upgraded Traveler.
With only two years at the helm of America’s top hi-fi turntable manufacturer, the inexperienced Mat Weisfeld has made significant changes: two new turntables, a new record cleaning machine, an additional 5000 square feet of factory space, and an amped up production schedule. He’s also added a 3D-printed tonearm to the catalog and utilized social media to increase sales. After posting a picture of a prototype Classic III in Rosewood to the VPI Industries Facebook page, he got eight phone calls to purchase the turntable in this unreleased finish. He’s transitioning VPI into a world where not just zany audiophiles want a new, quality turntable. Through mass production and more affordable products, Weisfeld wants to make VPI more available for normal people—people who listen to Maroon 5, Passion Pit, and Linkin Park, Weisfeld’s tunes of choice. Just as his father passed the tradition onto him, Weisfeld’s more affordable turntable designs are inviting a new generation of listeners to high end audio.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
The Fifth Element #82
Norway's 2L label has an enviable track record in choral music. In 2006 they were nominated for Grammys for Best Choral Performance and Best Surround Sound Album, for Immortal Nystedt (SACD/CD, 2L-029-SACD). Knut Nystedt's composition Immortal Bach, performed by Ensemble 96 conducted by Øystein Fevang, is a stunning fractal reworking of J.S. Bach's "Komm, sÅsser Tod." It's available for individual download at www.2l.no, and it costs nothing to listen to the teaser sound byte. (Several other complete performances of the work, done with varying degrees of assurance, can be heard on YouTube.) 2L has since issued a greater proportion of choral recordings than most "audiophile" labels.
2L's latest choral release, Hymn to the Virgin, features Oslo's chamber choir Schola Cantorum under the direction of Tone Bianca Sparre Dahl (SACD/CD & BD, 2L-095-SABD). Disc 1 is an SACD/CD, disc 2 a Pure Audio Blu-ray disc that offers the music in four formats: 24-bit/192kHz LPCM stereo, 24/192 DTS HD MA 5.0-channel, and "mShuttle" FLAC and MP3 for use in portable devices. The master recordings were made in 24/352.8 DXD PCM.
Pure Audio BD's "Unique Selling Proposition" is that it allows for navigation of these audio-only programs without the need for a television or monitor to be connected to the audio system. That is accomplished by use of the colored buttons that are standard on BD player remote controls. Last I heard, interested parties had petitioned the Audio Engineering Society to recognize Pure Audio BD as an audio-engineering standard.
The music on Hymn to the Virgin extends from Bruckner's Ave Maria to contemporary works such as Lauridsen's O Nata Lux, Whitacre's Lux Aurumque, and Gjeilo's Tota Pulchra Es. (There is an official and wonderful video of the Bruckner here.) I found the Gjeilo a pleasant surprise—it had more backbone than other of his works I have heard, which sometimes struck me as innocuous crunchy noodlings. A great pick for the audiophile choral-music fan on your list.
By now, most choral-music fans are aware of England's "supergroup" choral ensemble, Stile Antico. Their latest release, The Phoenix Rising, features Tudor-era works by Byrd, Gibbons, Morley, and Tallis (SACD, Harmonia Mundi HMU 807572). The unifying theme is that those works first came to widespread attention in the 1920s, owing to their having been compiled and published in the Carnegie UK Trust's vastly influential anthology Tudor Church Music. It's another predictably great Stile Antico disc, but if you're unfamiliar with the group, I think the best introduction remains their Music for Compline (SACD, HMU 807419), which I praised in the December 2007 issue.
If you're prepared to open your wallet or checkbook a little wider, an eye-popping bargain is to be had for $150 or less. Deutsche Grammophon is celebrating their early-music imprint, Archiv Produktion, with Archiv Produktion 1947–2013, a 55-CD, 59-hour survey of the label's history (Archiv 529 906-2). The music runs from Anonymous to Zelenka, and chronologically from Gregorian Chant to Beethoven—including knockout performances of the latter's Symphonies 5 and 6 by the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique under John Eliot Gardiner, in great sound.
Most of the music stands on its own, but a few exceptions fall into the category of "Eat your spinach, it's good for you." One hearing every 35 years or so of Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion, a 13th-century French secular play with music, does it for me, but I listened to the Zelenka CD several times. One-stop shopping gets you a very respectable early-music collection for less than $3 a disc. Highly recommended.
Lindell & the AMPX
Lindell Audio, a Swedish professional-audio company, was founded in 2010 by recording engineer Tobias Lindell, and claims to offer equipment "by engineers, for engineers." Tobias Lindell specifies the features and functions that he wants each product to incorporate; the actual circuit designs are by others. Although Lindell's corporate headquarters are in Sweden, the products are manufactured in China, and are competitively priced.
Lindell makes rack-mount and "lunchbox" compressors, limiters, and microphone preamplifiers. They also make a 32-bit/192kHz digital-to-analog converter, as well as a power amplifier intended to drive passive monitoring loudspeakers such as Yamaha's NS-10 and ProAc's Studio 100.
I became aware of Lindell Audio when I saw a photograph of their handsome AMPX dual-mono, class-A–only power amplifier in an e-newsletter from New York City retailer B&H Photo, which also has a pro-audio division. I was intrigued by the amp's appearance, but I fairly goggled at its suggested US retail price of $1599. I got in touch with Lindell's US importer, RAD Distribution, who agreed to send me a review sample as soon as one was available.
The AMPX arrived in sturdy double boxing—prudent, given that it weighs about 42 lbs. The loaner obviously had been around the block a few times. It showed some signs of wear, and its footers' rubber inserts were missing, along with its power cord and manual. No big deal on any count. Anyway, I'd rather have an experienced review sample than one that someone might later claim to have needed 500 hours of break-in.
RAD sent me a new set of footers, and Tobias Lindell told me that new amps come with all of the aforementioned items, plus a cloth bag and a pair of cotton gloves. So much for the oft-heard claim that reviewers get special treatment.
At 18.8" (483mm) W by 3.5" (90mm) H by 17.4" (445mm) D, the AMPX is one rack unit wide. Its faceplate, machined for rack mounting, is heavy, about 3/8" thick, and dominated by two large, blue power meters (wonder where they got that idea from?), calibrated to show watts into 8 ohms. The stated power output is 20Wpc, which, after extensive listening, strikes me as a conservative claim. Centered between the power meters is a round black pushbutton for On/Off—apparently just that, not standby. There are front-panel legends with the maker's logos, model name, and descriptions in script. On startup, the meters blink for about five seconds; perhaps some diagnostic function is going on. I downloaded the owner's manual from Lindell's website, but it was silent on that issue.
The sides of the AMPX are occupied by thick-finned modular heatsinks, considerately designed with slightly chamfered edges to reduce the risk of cut fingers—this is one dense amp. For some reason, however, it looks lighter than it is. The heatsinks got so hot that placing the AMPX in the bottom of a rack full of equipment would probably be unwise. I estimated the temperature of the heatsinks to max out at about 124°F.
The rear-panel layout is mirror-imaged, reflecting the AMPX's dual-mono construction. Lindell claims that the right and left power supplies are completely isolated from each other. An IEC power-cord inlet is in the middle; to either side of it are the speaker binding posts, then the input jacks. The connection hardware is respectable but not ne plus ultra. Input is by XLR connectors only; RCA input is not an option. The circuit design itself is single-ended, so the balanced inputs are unbalanced by op-amps.
One unusual and potentially useful feature is that both channels' female XLR inputs are mirrored by a corresponding male XLR output (or, rather, throughput). If your speakers are biampable, you could vertically biamp them with two AMPXes. In that scenario, the input signal would go into one channel, then an XLR jumper cable would connect that channel's throughput jack to the other channel's input, giving you a biamped total of 40Wpc.
Tobias Lindell describes his circuit design as being "rather simple." He arrived at the decision to offer an energy-inefficient class-A–only design entirely through listening tests—nothing else sounded as good. To reach an output of 20Wpc, each channel uses four pairs of complementary Sanken 2SA1695 PNP and 2SC4468 NPN output transistors.
Lindell claims for the AMPX a frequency response of 10Hz–100kHz, ±1.5dB, a signal/noise ratio greater than 100dB, and the virtues of "high resolution, high headroom, accurate, easy-to-mix sound at an affordable price."
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Audio Beginnings
I mean, I have lots of ideas—I feel like Butch Cassidy: "I have vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals." But there's a huge gap between having a good idea and starting a company that successfully gets that idea out in front of the public. And, I suspect, there's an even greater gulf between getting a product out there and actually making a living at it.
The great thing about this job, though, is that I don't have to just ponder such questions. The press pass in my fedora's hatband means I can actually call people up and ask 'em about it.
The first generation of audio pioneers is sadly disappearing from the landscape, so I couldn't call Saul Marantz or Avery Fisher, but I could talk to Lew Johnson of Conrad-Johnson, one of the companies that can legitimately be said to have created the current high-end scene, back in the mid-1970s. At that time, the idea that there might be hand-built audio separates that were based on tube circuits seemed almost heretical. I don't know which concept will be more alien to you young 'uns out there—that in 1975 there was no High End or that there was no tube gear. Either way, C-J is one of the companies that changed that.
Lew Johnson remembers the beginnings of Conrad-Johnson
In 1975, Bill Conrad and I met when we were both economists at the [Federal Reserve]. Bill was assigned to write a commentary on a research paper I had written, and for about four months or so, that was the basis of our relationship. It wasn't until we both attended a Christmas party that we discovered that we were both into Marantz and Dynaco and the tube gear of the time. We just thought it sounded better.
We were just typical audiophile types doing the "You show me your system and I'll show you mine" thing, and we did a little comparing and arguing over what was better than what—and then we exchanged preamplifiers. We were interested to discover significant differences between Bill's preamp and mine, and we began to speculate about why that was.
It occurred to us that it might be possible to combine the best properties of our two components and have a preamplifier that we were both really happy with. Bill has an extraordinary facility for determining what things are actually going to cost, and we reckoned we could make a product we could actually price competitively.
At first this was an intellectual exercise, but after a week of discussion, we started taking it pretty seriously—and then we spent all of 1976 learning how to build a preamplifier and literally building one from scratch. I made a chassis out of a flat sheet of aluminum and made my own printed-circuit boards, and Bill and I did all the circuit design work. That's how the original Conrad-Johnson Preamplifier was born.
How did you turn C-J into a real business?
With a lot of false starts and a lot of sweat and tears. We spent all of 1976 building the prototype and most of the first half of '77 ordering the bits and pieces and finding someone to assemble it for us, since we didn't have any facilities. We were finally able to incorporate and start selling our first pieces in June of '77. It took roughly six years for us to be able to quit our other jobs.
Do you think you could do it today?
Knowing what I know today, I probably wouldn't attempt it! It's a very different world out there. We were present at the creation of the second golden age of audio, and there's a very different landscape out there today. It would be much harder for a startup company.
Chris Sommovigo recalls how he started Illuminati and Stereovox
Chris Sommovigo was present at the creation, too, only he was present at the creation of the Internet as an audio force to be reckoned with. Ironically, he became involved in the High End because of a claim that he thought made no sense.
Chris Sommovigo: I was a participant on The Audiophile Network bulletin-board server back in the early days of the Internet, and someone on TAN suggested that a digital cable could make a difference. Now that offended me. I had an Audio Alchemy DDD and a Luxman transport and I was pretty happy with them. So this guy sent me some cable that I thought was awful—but that meant it sounded different, and that meant that digital cables did make a difference. So I began talking to John Bauer, a microwave engineer I found through the Yellow Pages, and through him I met a lot of folks doing work in that field. Eventually, John and I came up with the Datastream Reference cable—having basically learned that you needed to match the load to the cable and the connectors.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
My Favorite Records of 2013
Note: I’ve linked to sites where you can learn more about the music, sample the music, enjoy it in its entirety, and/or purchase it. The formats listed are simply those that I happen to own; in most (if not all) cases, other formats are also available. (Usually, I just buy the first format I can find and/or afford.)
Random observation: Lots of black-and-white album art this year.
1) Jenny Hval: Innocence Is Kinky (CD/LP, Rune Grammofon RCD/LP3142)
2) Daft Punk: Random Access Memories (CD/LP, Columbia 88883716862)
3) Kanye West: Yeezus (CD, Def Jam B0018653-02)
4) Aidan Baker: Already Drowning (LP, Gizeh Records GZH43LP)
Note: Already Drowning was Stereophile's "Recording of the Month" for June 2013. And, at the end of May, I interviewed Aidan Baker.
5) Julia Holter: Loud City Song (LP, Domino Recording Company WIGLP306)
6) Oneohtrix Point Never: R Plus Seven (LP, Warp Records WARP240)
7) Circuit des Yeux: Overdue (LP, Lewis + Lynn Records/Ba Da Bing 92)
8) Blood Orange: Cupid Deluxe (LP, Domino Recording Company WIGLP322)
9) Sigur Ros: Kveikur (CD, XL Recordings XLCD606)
10) Tim Hecker: Virgins (LP, Kranky KRANK 183)
11) Laurel Halo: Chance of Rain (LP, Hyperdub HDBLP021)
12) Darkside: Psychic (LP, Matador OLE-1035)
13) La Luz: It’s Alive (LP, Hardly Art HAR-076)
14) L. Pierre: The Island Come True (LP, Melodic MELO 081)
15) The Asphodells: Ruled by Passion, Destroyed by Lust (DL, Rotters Golf Club BRC-347)
16) Fuck Buttons: Slow Focus (LP, ATP Recordings ATPRLP49)
17) The Knife: Shaking the Habitual (LP, Mute 9556-1)
18) Beacon: The Ways We Separate (CD, Ghostly International GI-180)
19) Moderat: II (CD, Monkeytown 9571-2)
20) King Krule: 6 Feet beneath the Moon (LP, True Panther Sounds TRUE-101-1)
21) Willis Earl Beale: Nobody Knows (LP, HXC Recordings 6 34904 07011 3)
22) The Memories: Love is the Law (LP, Burger Records BRGR301)
23) Dean Blunt: The Redeemer (LP, Hippos In Tanks HIT025LP)
24) Ulrich Schnauss: A Long Way to Fall (LP, Domino Recording Group LPDNO318)
25) The Haxan Cloak: Excavation (LP, Tri Angle Records TRIANGLE18)
26) David Lang: Death Speaks (LP, Cantaloupe Music CA21092)
27) Falty DL: Hardcourage (LP, Ninja Tune ZEN192)
28) Marina Rosenfeld: P.A./Hardlove (LP, Room 40 RM452)
29) William Winant: Five American Percussion Pieces (LP, Poon Village PV007)
30) Matmos: http://www.stereophile.com/content/The+Marriage+of+True+Minds (LP, Thrill Jockey THRILL 316)
31) Four Tet: Beautiful Rewind (LP, Text TEXT025)
32) James Blake: Overgrown (LP, Polydor B0018305-01)
33) Zomby: With Love (LP, 4AD CAD3305)
34) The Underachievers: Indigoism (DL, Brainfeeder)
35) The Stranger: Watching Dead Empires in Decay (LP, Modern Love LOVE
36) Lucrecia Dalt: Syzygy (LP, Human Ear Music HEMK0032)
37) Lee Ranaldo and the Dust: Last Night On Earth (LP, Matador Records OLE-1041)
38) Standish/Carlyon: Deleted Scenes (CD, Felte)
39) Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Push the Sky Away (LP, Bad Seeds, Ltd.)
40) Wale: The Gifted (CD, Atlantic Records)
41) Justin Timberlake: The 20/20 Experience (LP, RCA 88765-47850-1)
42) A$AP Rocky: Long.Live.A$AP (CD, Polo Grounds Music/RCA)
43) Locust: You’ll Be Safe Forever (LP, Editions Mego 162)
44) Miles: Faint Hearted (LP, Modern Love LOVE081)
45) Lawrence English: Lonely Women’s Club (LP, Important Records IMPREC367)
46) Matana Roberts: Coin Coin Chapter Two: Mississippi Moonchile (CD, Constellation Records CST098)
47) Savages: Silence Yourself (CD, Matador Records OLE-1036)
48) Mohammad: Som Sakrifis (LP, Pan 37)
49) Ashley Paul: Line the Clouds (LP, REL Records REL20)
50) Mary Lattimore: The Withdrawing Room (LP, Desire Path Recordings PATHWAY006)
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Source : stereophile[dot]com
