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AURALiC VEGA D/A processor
That sounded like a DAC I needed to review, but it wasn't until July that AURALiC co-founder Xuanqian Wang hand-delivered a review sample of the VEGA. And it wasn't until October 2013 that I was able to embark on this review.
AURALiC . . .
. . . was founded in Beijing, in 2008, by Xuanqian Wang and Yuan Wang. Xuanqian Wang trained as a professional engineer in both electronics and recording engineering, and also started playing piano at age four, while Yuan Wang studied sociology and management science in the US, before returning to China to start a company that manufactured precision instruments. The two met at a music festival in Berlin; their shared love of music and the "relentless pursuit of superior sound quality" inspired them to design and manufacture audiophile products. (From here on, I refer to the company and its product as Auralic and Vega—Stereophile's style is to reserve the all-caps treatment for actual acronyms and initialisms, and the capitalization and inverted camel-capping usage that Auralic has adopted looks too much like shouting in print.)
The Vega The elegant-looking Vega ($3499) is housed in a slim, brushed-aluminum enclosure. The front panel is dominated by a wide, rectangular, yellow-on-black OLED display, to its right a domed knob and a red LED. The rear panel offers single-ended and balanced outputs, respectively on RCAs and XLRs, and five digital inputs: transformer-coupled AES/EBU on an XLR (the default), two transformer-coupled coaxial S/PDIF on RCAs, one optical S/PDIF on TosLink, and a high-speed USB2.0 port. The AES/EBU and S/PDIF inputs handle 16- and 24-bit data with sample rates up to 192kHz; the USB port also operates with sample rates of 352.8 and 384kHz, and will accept DSD64 (2.8224MHz) and DSD128 (5.6448MHz) data using the DoP v1.1 protocol. No driver is required for correct operation with Mac OS10.6.4 onward; Windows users need to install the supplied driver (detailed instructions are included in the excellent manual).
While there is an on/off switch next to the IEC AC receptacle on the rear panel, the Vega is disturbed from its Sleep or Standby modes by pushing the front-panel knob. A second push brings up a menu, permitting selection of Input, Balance, Phase (polarity) Filter Mode (see later), and System parameters; otherwise, the knob controls the output level, allowing the Vega to be used as a digital-input control preamplifier. Pressing the knob to bring up the System submenu allows the user to set the Display brightness, Sleep mode enable/disable, internal clock mode (see later), and Volume mode: each input can be set to default to a different volume level, or all can be set to default to the same value.
The Vega can also be operated by remote control, a plastic controller being supplied as standard.
Technology
Inside, the Vega's digital and audio circuits are carried on a large printed circuit board that occupies the full depth of the chassis and most of its width. The toroidal power transformer sits behind the front panel and in front of a yellow shielded section that carries the AC input and filtering. A small daughterboard behind the USB jack is marked "AURALiC DSD over USB" and carries an XMOS USB receiver chip. Three surface-mount LSI chips live behind this board, the largest of which is marked "AURALiC Sanctuary Audio Processor powered by Archwave." Archwave AG is a Swiss company; their multi-core, ARM 9–based Sanctuary processor runs at 500Mips and is used in the Vega to upsample PCM input data to approximately 1.5MHz and 32-bit depth, to provide what Auralic calls the ActiveUSB buffer stage, and to implement four reconstruction filters for PCM data and two choices of low-pass filter for DSD data. The filter options are referred to by Auralic as Flexible Filter Mode—the PCM filters include linear-phase and minimum-phase options, as well as two slow-rolloff types; the two DSD options offer different degrees of ultrasonic rolloff, to prevent the format's noiseshaping from contaminating the downstream amplification.
The Vega uses a high-precision master-clock circuit that the company calls the Femto Master Clock. Covered by a hefty heatsink, this uses what is claimed to be an "aerospace grade," temperature-compensated crystal oscillator with an "ultra low noise" linear power supply. The jitter is specified as an extraordinarily low 82 femtoseconds, with phase noise at –168dBc/Hz. The user can choose between four clock settings: Auto (the default), in which the Vega uses the optimal clock window for any source; Coarse, which offers the widest bandwidth of input lock, to allow the Vega to work with very jittery sources; Fine, which narrows the lock acceptance window to give the lowest jitter with high-quality streams; and Exact, which will only give lock with only very low-jitter streams but gives the highest sound quality.
Once processed by the Sanctuary chip, the oversampled 32-bit data are fed to an ESS Sabre32 9018 D/A converter chip. This is a premium-quality, 32-bit, delta-sigma part with eight individual DAC sections, these operated, I believe, in two sets of four in push-pull parallel to get the lowest possible noise and the highest linearity, even at very low signal levels. Though this chip offers upsampling, this can be bypassed, in which case it will accept data of sample rates up to 1.536MHz, as in the Vega. It offers volume control for both DSD and PCM data. This chip is covered by a plate labeled "AURALiC DSD Direct Stream Digital DXD Digital eXtreme Definition." (DXD is the 24-bit/352.8kHz PCM format introduced by the Swiss company Merging Technologies for its Pyramix DSD workstation some years ago, to allow editing of DSD data without losing resolution.)
Texas Instruments' high-performance SoundPlus OPA1612 dual–op-amp chips are used for the Vega's I/V and analog low-pass filter stages. The balanced analog output stage, based on what Auralic calls the Orfeo module, is said to be "inspired by the Neve 8078 analog console's circuit design." (Orfeo is not used for the single-ended outputs.) The components in this module are claimed to operate in thermal equilibrium with very low open-loop distortion, the output transistors in class-A. Auralic says that the Vega's output stage will have no problem driving loads as low as 600 ohms from both its balanced and unbalanced outputs, which my measurements confirm (see sidebar).
Sound Quality
Xuanqian Wang told me that he doesn't believe in burn-in. However, I found that the Vega took several hours from cold before its sound quality reached a plateau. This is apparently because both the Femto Master Clock and Orfeo output-stage components need at least an hour to establish thermal equilibrium before reaching their specified performance conditions. When I put the review sample in Sleep mode, the clock and output stage remain powered, eliminating the need for any further warm-up when the Vega is switched back into operational mode.
Prior to the Vega's arrival, my listening room saw some superb-sounding D/A processors in 2013. In order of rising price: the NAD M51 ($2000, reviewed in July 2012), the Musical Fidelity M6DAC ($2999, June 2013), the Electrocompaniet ECD2 ($3100, December 2013), the Arcam FMJ D33 ($3200, February 2013), the Marantz NA-11S1 ($3499, October 2013), the MSB Diamond DAC IV with Diamond Power Base ($43,325, October 2012), and the dCS Vivaldi system ($68,497 without its SACD transport, January 2014). But the $3499 Vega was in no way embarrassed by having to follow this company. In fact, though I felt a twinge of loss when the Vivaldi system went back to the distributor, the Auralic Vega proved a very satisfying replacement.
The English composer John Tavener passed away as I was installing the Vega in my system. One of the first recordings I played, therefore, was cellist Raphael Wallfisch's performance of Tavener's The Protecting Veil, accompanied by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Justin Brown (CD, Intersound 2847), feeding data to the Vega's AES/EBU port from my Ayre Acoustics C-5xeMP universal player. Like Michael Lavorgna, I found that Mode 4 was overall my favorite filter. It allowed the spaces between the notes on this hauntingly beautiful recording to be fully developed.
I was going to follow the Tavener with a needle drop of Joni Mitchell's 1978 album, Don Juan's Reckless Daughter (LP, Reprise K63003)—but I couldn't wait for the transfer to digital, which of course can be done only in real time. So I fed the AES/EBU output of my Ayre QA-9 A/D converter, set to 24/96, straight to the Auralic Vega. OMG! The low F and C that Jaco Pastorius strikes from his Jazz Bass at the start of "Cotton Avenue" were projected with almighty weight by the Vega, but without losing any of the definition to the notes' leading edges. Similarly, when Pastorius swoops down to the open D string at the start of "Jericho," which ends side 1 of this album, the combination of low-frequency weight and higher-frequency definition made it difficult to remember that I was listening to back-to-back A/D and D/A converters in the playback chain. I knew, from my review in November 2012, that the Ayre has superb sound quality, but it was obvious that the Auralic Vega was equaling that quality.
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Source : stereophile[dot]com
Matt Wilson's Gathering Call
Wilson is one of the most brilliant and versatile drummers out there. At a jazz festival several years ago, I saw him play as a sideman with four completely different bands on the same night—straight-ahead bop, screaming avant-garde, borderline classical chamber, and...honestly, I forget what the 4th band was like, but the point is, he delved deep into each type of music as if that were all he'd been doing for decades and he'd emerged as a master of the art.
His work as a leader spreads all over the map as well, but the bandmates he's recruited aren't always up to the full task and the outcomes, while boisterous and refreshing, are uneven.
Gathering Call, while no less wide-ranging, is completely surefooted, his best album as a leader since 2001's Arts and Crafts, maybe better.
It features his regular quartet plus pianist John Medeski (of Medeski, Martin & Wood), who flings a serrated edge at the proceedings without dominating them. It's a fine-honed touch; I hope they all play together often.
The album begins with a groove-laced cover of Ellington's "Main Stem," then flips back and forth between Wilson's own tunes (ranging from a rousingly jagged "Some Assembly Required" to a hauntingly lyrical "Dancing Water"), another Ellington (the obscure "You Dirty Dog"), Butch Warren's "Barack Obama" (insouciant cool with a bittersweet tinge), a Charlie Rouse, Beyonce's "If I Were a Boy," capped with the folk song "Juanita."
Talk about eclectic. But it swings, it sways, it all holds together, it croons from the same voice. And like many jazz albums I've heard in this 4th decade of the compact disc, it sounds good: not the sort of thing to show off your stereo, but it lets you into the music; there's no distractions, you feel not quite like it's there but it's close enough for pleasure.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Epos Elan 10 loudspeaker
Of the five Epos speakers I've reviewed, I have a soft spot for the M5i bookshelf ($899/pair). Ever since I reviewed it in the February 2011 issue, the M5i has been my benchmark for affordable speakers, has served me well in my evaluations of affordable electronics, and is usually the speaker I grab when I want to throw together a system for impromptu listening.
When I found out that Mike Creek was discontinuing the Mi models and replacing them with the new Elan series, I thought I'd better seek out the Elan model that replaces the trusty M5i. The catalyst was a letter I received from subscriber Richard Fischer, who suggested I review the Elan 10 ($1000/pair). (Fischer had also suggested that I look into Sonus Faber's Venere 1.5, which I reviewed in the January 2014 issue.)
Design
I discussed with Mike Creek his philosophies for the Elan and Mi series. Although the crossover topologies of the two lines are similar, the Elan models are designed to be more efficient and to present a more benign load to the amplifier, the result being higher SPLs with less powerful amplifiers. Creek has accomplished this by using more sensitive woofers, as well as a soft-dome tweeter that's more sensitive than the metal-dome unit used in the Mi models. Creek claims that, all else being equal, the Elan 10 will also play louder than the M5i.
The Elan 10 tweeter's 1" (25mm), doped-fabric dome tweeter has a high-temperature, ferrofluid-cooled voice-coil and a shielded neodymium magnet. Its 5.85" (150mm) woofer is built on an open-frame chassis of cast aluminum alloy and has a vented magnet pole. The mid/woofer is loaded with a port that's flared at both ends to reduce turbulence. The crossover is set to just above 3kHz and uses metal-oxide resistors and polypropylene-foil dielectric capacitors. The tweeter's air-core inductor and the woofer's coil, with a core of laminated-iron, are designed for low distortion at high power. The Elans are biwirable, and that's how I hooked them up.
I tested the Elan 10s using both Epos's ST35 stands (designed for the M5 and M5i) and my Celestion Si stands, the latter loaded with lead shot and sand. Unfortunately, it wasn't until after I'd completed the listening and had sent the speakers on to John Atkinson for measuring that I was contacted by Music Hall's Leland Leard, who, after a discussion with Mike Creek, had realized that I hadn't been told about the new companion speaker stand for the Elan 10, the ST15 ($299/pair). Creek then told me that the ST15 is made using constrained-layer damping, and that the Elan 10 will perform better with the ST15 than with the ST35. Music Hall agreed to send me a pair of ST15s; I'll report in a future Follow-Up on how well the Elan 10 performs with the stand designed for it.
The Elan 10 is available in either cherry or black oak real-wood veneer. I found my black oak sample to be unassuming and non-descript; it should easily blend in with any décor. The Elan 10 also has an innovative grille. Each speaker comes with two front baffles: one with a grillecloth affixed, the other without. The speakers are intended to be used with the clothless "audiophile" baffles (the scare quotes are Epos's); the second set of baffles are for music lovers who are concerned about damage to the speakers from small children and pets. I found that the "audiophile" baffles resolved a hair more detail, but that the two baffles otherwise sounded identical. I conducted most of my listening with the clothless baffles.
Listening
I was immediately struck by the low-level air and room ambience the Elan 10s were capable of resolving. With Gina Bachauer's performance of Chopin's Piano Concerto 1, with Antal Doráti conducting the London Symphony Orchestra (CD, Mercury 434 374-2), the Elans rendered every silky nuance of the orchestra in its deep ambient space. And with "Maracatu," from Egberto Gismonti's Works (CD, ECM 2692), I was struck by the bed of air enveloping each note of Gismonti's piano, Mauro Denise's flute, and Nana Vasconcelos's battery of percussion. And the Epos resolved gobs of detail that enabled me to listen deeply into the mixes of familiar recordings and experience them in a new way. On every track of Björk's Homogenic (CD, Elektra 62061-2), I found myself analyzing the harmonic and dynamic envelope of each of her synthesizer patches.
On the downside, the Elan 10 was ruthless at revealing less-than-well-recorded music. Although I normally enjoy listening to "Sex Kills," from Joni Mitchell's Turbulent Indigo (CD, Reprise 45786-2), even though I recognize that it doesn't sound as natural as her recordings from the 1960s and '70s, through the Elans I was distracted by the track's dynamic compression, the digitally processed acoustic guitar, and the electronic glaze on Mitchell's voice.
The Elan 10's ability to render precise and linear articulation of low-level dynamics from ppp to p made it an excellent showcase for János Starker's recording of J.S. Bach's Suites for Solo Cello (CD, Mercury 432 756-2). On every track, his cello resonated with wood, bow, rosin, and air. Listening to "Chan Chan," from Buena Vista Social Club (LP, World Circuit/Elektra Nonesuch 79478-2), I followed every subtle striking of the congas, bongos, and udu drum, whereas I usually focus on the voices. And when I heard "Sleeping Metronomes Lie," from my jazz quartet Attention Screen's Takes Flight at Yamaha (CD, Stereophile STPH021-2), I focused on my unaccompanied intro. Even though the piano I was playing is fundamentally an electronic instrument, the Epos enabled me to remember just how delicately the Yamaha AvantGrande can re-create the low-level dynamic articulation of an acoustic piano.
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Source : stereophile[dot]com
The Entry Level #38
I have mixed feelings about this. First, I have a hard time understanding why anyone would spend money on a product that doesn't yet exist—it strikes me as being a lot like gambling, and I'd always rather spend my money on a sure thing. I also have a hard time understanding how a well-established brand like Light Harmonic has the nerve (I've spent some time wondering if nerve is the right word, and yes, I think it is) to ask people to spend money on what amounts to little more than a promise. Light Harmonic doesn't need our money to fund the production of the Geek Out and Geek Pulse—the company's Gavin Fish confirmed this in my discussion with him last month—but nevertheless insists that crowdfunding has helped to create products that will better serve their customers. If that's the case, why doesn't Light Harmonic simply ask for our opinions instead of for our money? I suppose opinions have more value when they're backed by dollars.
Along those same lines, though, hi-fi products have more value when they're backed by dealers. This is where Light Harmonic's crowdfunding model really upsets me. The company has used Kickstarter and Indiegogo not just as crowdfunding platforms, but as powerful pre-sale destinations—each with a built-in community of prospective buyers and enormous marketing potential. Essentially, they've sidestepped the burden of having to establish a trustworthy dealer network. In the Geek Pulse campaign, there's even an option for a Reseller Pack. The blurb reads: "If you're a reseller, you can pre-order master cartons of 12 units at a much lower price than what wholesale will be once the product launches." This costs $2268—quite a deal. So far, LH Labs has sold six of the 30 available Reseller Packs. But who are these resellers? How much will they charge for their units? Where will those units be sold? And, once they're sold, who will provide repair, replacement, and tech-support services?
"Act fast," the blurb continues. "International buyers: We will provide a shipping quote upon request."
I just don't feel comfortable with that.
Still, one can't deny Light Harmonic's success. In a little over two months, the company has raised well over $600,000 to support its design and manufacture of what will be relatively affordable hi-fi components. When it is produced and in stores, the Geek Out will have a retail price of $299, the Geek Pulse $499. If nothing else, Light Harmonic has shown that there's a very strong market for affordable hi-fi. But you and I knew that. If traditional hi-fi dealers begin to realize it, then we'll have something to get excited about.
Audio Art Cable
In October 2010, I received an e-mail from Audio Art Cable's founder, Rob Fritz, who was interested in having his products reviewed in Stereophile. "I manufacture and direct sell a lineup of high-end cabling products targeted at the 'audiophile on a budget' segment of the market," Fritz wrote. This captured my attention.
The Audio Art products seemed interesting and, even better, were relatively affordable—but because "The Entry Level" was then only an idea, I put Fritz in touch with Sam Tellig, who consequently wired his system with Audio Art's Classic Series IC-3 interconnects ($130/1m pair) and SC-5 speaker cable ($240/10' pair). Throughout much of 2011 and 2012, mentions of the Audio Art cables popped up in "Sam's Space." Sam seemed to like the cables, so I thought I'd give them a second look and listen, and learn a bit more about Fritz.
Like many audiophiles, Rob Fritz fell in love with music at an early age—his parents owned a high-quality console and kept their home filled with music—and he developed an appreciation for high-fidelity sound and equipment when he went away to college. Then, when Fritz was 18, an audiophile friend introduced him to a nearby audio/video retailer: Stereo Unlimited, in San Diego. "I've been hooked ever since," he told me via e-mail.
In 2003, after many years working in the electronics and custom-install industries, Fritz decided he wanted to start his own business. He explored a few options, made little progress, and finally turned to his old passion: hi-fi. But why cables? "Wires had been a curiosity for me from the start, so it seemed like a natural progression to build a business around this product. I made a few contacts, the roadblocks proved inconsequential, and things just took off from there."
One of Fritz's contacts was Darren Hovsepian, of DH Labs, who eventually worked with Fritz as a consultant, helping to design prototypes and select an overseas supplier. Fritz founded Audio Art Cable in 2005. Of his supplier, Fritz says, "They've been in the business of producing quality audio-cabling products for various companies for a number of years. High quality has been a hallmark of this supplier since long before Audio Art Cable was a twinkle in my eye. Nine years and miles of bulk cable have seen no defects."
The IC-3 interconnect uses conductors of silver-coated, oxygen-free copper (OFC), a foam polyethylene dielectric, aluminum-Mylar shielding, and a PVC jacket. The SC-5 speaker cable also uses silver-coated OFC conductors (14AWG), a foam polyethylene dielectric, and a PVC jacket, but forgoes the IC-3's aluminum-Mylar shielding and adds an internal packet of "vibration-absorbing filters."
I asked Rob Fritz how these ingredients influence the cables' performance.
"With conductive materials, speaking in general terms, silver has an open, airy, clear, fast, and precise sound. Copper, on the other hand, sounds warm, full-bodied, textured, and mellow. A silver-plated copper conductor, by design, would seem to be the best of both worlds. The foam polyethylene dielectric adds a silky sweetness to the mix, helping maintain the resolving properties of the silver without adding any trace of brightness or forwardness."
I agree with Fritz's assessments of the general characteristics of copper and silver conductors, but I wonder if other factors play equally important roles in determining a cable's sound. The purity of the metals used, the quality of the overall design, and the precision of manufacturing may be just as important as the choice of metals.
"A shield protects the conductive materials that are carrying a noise-vulnerable, low-level audio signal from interference," Fritz continued. "This creates a more noise-free environment, resulting in blacker backgrounds, a clearer, cleaner overall sound, and more accurate tonal qualities and harmonic structures."
The outer PVC jacket—shiny silver for the IC-3, sparkly blue for the SC-5—is intended to not only protect the cables' more delicate internal components but also make it look good. In terms of build quality and overall look and feel, the Audio Art cables most reminded me of models from Cardas Audio. I found them attractive and very pleasant to handle.
The IC-3 interconnect is available with either Audio Art's own gold-plated brass RCA plugs or, for $10 more, DH Labs' Ultimate XLR plugs, which use gold-plated copper pins and contacts. Fritz: "The brass in the RCA does add a bit more light, life, and sparkle to the overall character, while the DH Labs XLR sounds a touch smoother and more burnished." A 1m pair of IC-3 interconnect, terminated with RCA plugs, made strong connections with my NAD C 316BEE integrated amplifier and NAD's matching C 516BEE CD player.
I was less impressed with the SC-5's banana plugs—gold-plated brass types, sourced from DH Labs. (They appear to be DH Labs' B-1C model.) They worked fine, but looked and felt rather common—not necessarily bad, but reminiscent of RadioShack's crimp-on connectors, with rubber casings that conceal the termination joints. For $10 less, the SC-5 can be terminated with DH Labs' gold-plated copper spade lugs. The speaker cables are available in single- and biwire configurations ($295/6' pair with spades, $310/6' pair with bananas). I ran 10' lengths of single-wired SC-5 speaker cables from my amplifier to the pretty binding posts of KEF's LS50 loudspeakers.
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Source : stereophile[dot]com
As We Listen, So We Are
We're all familiar with this shift in listening habits. While there's certainly a plus side—more people than ever are listening to music at all hours of day and night—there's also a huge public minus. Between cell phones and iWhatevers, it's no longer easy to pass a slow walker on the street, or even speak to the person next to you; many of them have no idea you're even there. Countless accidents are now attributed to people who, plugged into music, a cellular conversation, or both, walk in front of cars or bicycles blissfully unaware. One of the more horrifying situations I've spied of late is watching young mothers carrying on animated cell-phone conversations while dragging multiple small children across busy intersections, oblivious to oncoming vehicles.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live, a man on a municipal light-rail train recently pulled out a .45-caliber pistol and shot another passenger as he was exiting the train. Although security-video footage revealed that the gun was clearly visible before the shooting—the man had pulled it out of his pocket and waved it about on multiple occasions—not a single passenger noticed; everyone was too consumed with their screens and music.
With the change in music-listening habits from home systems with loudspeakers to portable devices with earbuds has come a shift in music's role in human interaction. When I and many Stereophile readers were growing up, friends would regularly get together to share music. I'll never forget those post-college afternoons and evenings, beginning in the summer of 1967, when we sat in a circle on thrift-store furniture, passed a joint or pipe, and discovered, for the first time, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Magical Mystery Tour, and Their Satanic Majesties Request. Though it's hard to separate the collective high of musical discovery from the collective high of getting high, there was no question that the catalyst for our camaraderie was music.
For audiophiles of all ages—including those who attend shows and audiophile-society get-togethers, as well as those who love to hang with music-loving friends—this sense of collective ritual remains. With it comes a feeling of belonging that puts in perspective the individual egos that daily run amok on audio forums in futile attempts to legislate personal reality.
Contrast the time-honored ritual of shared listening with our brave new world of personal listening. It seems almost as if we've taken a step beyond workplaces where people plug away in walled-off cubicles; we've now walled ourselves off in public. Our penchant for connectivity has left us strangely disconnected from our surroundings, and from each other.
The ramifications of this switch in listening habits extend well beyond the realm of music. In the 1960s, when we were listening to psychedelic rock and expanding our consciousness on multiple levels, one of the spiritual teachers of that age was Ram Dass, who published his seminal book, Be Here Now (Lama Foundation, San Cristobal, NM) in 1971. The idea was—by means of meditation, personal growth and awareness, and other techniques—to transcend the chatter and fear of the mind so that we could be totally conscious in the present moment, without distraction.
By contrast, today's mantra has morphed from "Be here now" to "Be somewhere else now." Rather than dropping out, we search for the best noise-canceling headphones that will allow us to tune out everything around us as we plow through the present. Instead of sharing music via collective listening as we pass around an illegal joint, we listen privately, share the experience via texting, and pass around illegally obtained files.
I can't be the only audiophile who finds himself disturbed by the replacement of collective ritual with private absorption. Not only have we become so oblivious of one another that we literally, physically crash into each other, we also clash with each other on social and political levels.
While there's always danger in drawing parallels between listening habits and political macrocosms, especially in the space of a single page, I don't think it mere coincidence that our shift from public to private listening, and from collective exploration to private absorption, comes at a time when the dichotomy between what is best for the collective good and the desire for personal gain threatens our very existence. So many people are caught up in their own private realities that they fail to see what lies ahead. This is more than a case of not seeing the forest for the trees; people are now so blind-sighted that they're obliterating trees and forests, to right and left. Even worse, to reference Bob Dylan, their ears are so plugged up, their minds so distracted with gadgetry, that they can't even hear the wind, let alone tell which way it's blowing.
As someone who heartily embraces and reviews computer audio, and who sometimes enjoys music through a wonderful pair of Audeze headphones, I'm hardly a Luddite. Yet I can't help feeling that, to the extent that we abandon collective rituals of listening to music, we sacrifice the sense of connection that binds us together in a social and spiritual whole. While I have no simple solutions to our society's increasing sonic isolation, other than the heartening embrace of vinyl that Michael Fremer is helping to document at AnalogPlanet.com and in his "Analog Corner" column for this magazine, I invite you to spend a day with ears unplugged. As you do, please join me and Stereophile in affirming the sense of connection that comes with gathering 'round the home stereo and sharing in the transcendent mysteries of musical exploration.
Footnote 1: See CNN Tech pundit Todd Leopold's "The Death of the Home Stereo System," cited by Stephen Mejias here.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Recording of the Month: Classified: Remixed and Expanded
Before anything else, there's his musicality. No one has ever played the piano like James Carroll Booker III. If the piano is New Orleans' preeminent musical instrument, then Booker is its most talented virtuoso. A child prodigy who went on the road as part of Little Richard's band when he was 14, the Ivory Emperor, the Bronze Liberace, Li'l Booker, Little Chopin in Living Color (as he was variously known throughout his life) was breathtakingly gifted. Although he could play blazingly fast, it was his grand gestures and his uncanny ability to drop quotations into a piece—the theme song of the Woody Woodpecker cartoon series inserted into a Chopin Nocturne is a memorable example—that made him such a singular talent. While grounded in stride and New Orleans second-line rhythms, Booker also knew his Bach, and was a fan of the ornamental flourishes of Liberace.
His thin, crackly singing voice made up in ebullience what it lacked in actual quality. His stage outfits—a gold cape over a purple Speedo comes to mind—were amusingly deranged. And where on earth is there a cover version of "King of the Road," just James Booker belting it out and playing piano, with as much feeling, or as much ability to simultaneously draw both a smile and a tear? That's just one of the many jewels on the newly remixed and expanded edition of Classified, one of the few records Booker released in the US during his lifetime.
Beneath Booker's exuberance, native intelligence, and rakish charms, there was also a tragic love of the dark side and unhealthy doses of fear and nagging doubt, all of which are on display, or at least hinted at, in Bayou Maharajah: The Tragic Genius of James Booker, a new documentary directed by Lily Keber. Watching this film—the best of a recent crop of stellar music documentaries whose subjects include the Muscle Shoals music scene and the great Doc Pomus—you're struck by how lonely and deeply troubled Booker was. Even more striking is the fact that not one of the people interviewed in the film expresses any real affection for him. I'm sure his personal demons made him a high-maintenance friend, but no one deserves to die alone in a corridor of New Orleans' Charity Hospital, sitting in a wheelchair after having been dropped off there by a "friend."
Asked about Booker's death, even the famously reticent Dr. John seems especially uncooperative and sheepish, responding with an oddly bloodless "That's what happens in the music business." Mac Rebennack is the source of the most widely quoted remark on Booker: that he was "the best black, gay, one-eyed junkie piano genius New Orleans has ever produced"—which is either hilariously funny or, to my ears, callously cruel.
Having been fortunate enough to have seen and heard Booker's music and his mouth a number of times, mostly at the Maple Leaf Bar, in New Orleans, I can attest to the fact that he was a handful and then some, and both his enthusiasms and his weaknesses come through on Classified. Lily Keber's request to hear the Classified tapes set the album's original producer, Scott Billington, on a path to remix and reissue the album with nine additional tracks of unreleased material from the original sessions. The 24-track, 15ips analog master tapes, recorded on Ampeg 456, were first baked to stabilize the binding; they were then converted to digital at 24-bit/88.2kHz and loaded into Pro Tools, where they were remixed and edited using a combination of analog and digital outboard gear. The 24/88.2 remixes were then mastered in analog for the vinyl edition (an HDCD CD is also available). While the sound of the original album was clean, clear, and uncluttered, the remastering is sonically spectacular.
In the liner notes that Billington wrote for this reissue, he shows a gift for understatement when he says that 30 years ago he was "not fully cognizant of what I was getting into" The original sessions at Ultrasonic studios, in New Orleans, with A-list New Orleans players Alvin "Red" Tyler (tenor saxophone), James Singleton (bass), and Johnny Vidacovich (drums), were erratic and mostly unproductive until the final day of recording, when most of what fills these two LPs was captured in a single afternoon's work. At the conclusion of that momentous final session, Billington gave Booker a check for $3000. Booker promptly disappeared for several weeks, during which time he may or may not have ended up in jail under an assumed name. The album was released in May 1983. Six months later, Booker was gone.
Yet the flashes of brilliance he left behind in the short pieces on Classified still burn bright, and none brighter than his ballad "If You're Lonely," one of his best tunes, which he sings here with a yearning that clearly came from his personal travails. The standout among the unreleased tracks is his take on "Warsaw Concerto" (composed by Richard Addinsell in the style of Rachmaninoff for the 1941 film Dangerous Moonlight), which is both playful and sweepingly grandiose. An instrumental version of "Theme from The Godfather" is a quiet success, and in the instrumental version of Doc Pomus's "Lonely Avenue," which features Red Tyler's sax, Booker shows that he could be a first-class accompanist.
Overall, a welcome reissue done right.—Robert Baird
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Digital Demo at Coup de Foudre
Featured gear will include Luxman’s new C900u and M900u amplifiers, the latter replacing the M800A reviewed by Michael Fremer in November 2008; Luxman’s DA-06 digital-to-analog converter; and Vivid’s G3 Giya loudspeakers, which will be reviewed by John Atkinson in the April 2014 issue of Stereophile.
To RSVP, contact Coup de Foudre at (514) 788-5066 or info@cdfaudio.com.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Mary Halvorson’s Illusionary Sea
Since then, I’ve listened to a couple of her CDs. The compositions started out with furtive intrigue and striking imagination, but sometimes, after a couple of minutes, the improvs would devolve into chaos, as if she or her band didn’t quite know where to take the premise.
But her new album, Illusionary Sea (Firehouse 12 Records), marks a breakthrough. The band is a septet, instead of her usual trio or quintet, and maybe all she needed was an expansion of sounds, timbres, and harmonic possibilities to fill the space.
The songs (all but one by her) are head-spinning adventures, but they also swing, and, even when the musicians soar out beyond the head, they never lose the thread, never abandon the anchoring beat, groove, template, or whatever.
Halvorson, 33, is an unusual jazz musician. She told the New York Times’ Nate Chinen, in 2008, that she never much liked jazz guitar, doesn’t listen to jazz guitar records. As far back as high school, she found herself drawn more to Ornette Coleman, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and Anthony Braxton (who wound up teaching her at Wesleyan University). Among guitarists, her model was Jimi Hendrix rather than, say, Wes Montgomery.
Her band is a young stellar bunch. It grew out of her trio with bassist John Hebert, who’s also in Fred Hersch’s trio, and drummer Ches Smith, who often plays with Tim Berne and Marc Ribot. The others are trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson, who plays in Steve Coleman’s Five Elements; Jon Irabagon, the tenor saxman in Dave Douglas’ quartet; Ingrid Laubrock, who’s played alto sax with Kenny Wheeler but also Siouxsie & the Banshees; and trombonist Jacob Garchik from Slavic Soul Party and John Hollenbeck’s Large Ensemble.
They’re all composers and leaders in their own right, and worth following.
I’m not familiar with Nick Lloyd, who recorded, mixed and mastered this album, and also works as chief engineer at Firehouse 12, a New Haven recording studio that also serves as the small venue for a live jazz series. The sound is very good: dynamic, well-blended, tonally true. (I just now see that the album is also available on vinyl. I’ll check that out.)
Source : stereophile[dot]com
What to Make of CES 2014 and Beyond?
Photo: John Atkinson
Before you lies what I expect is the most comprehensive coverage of CES 2014 "high-performance audio" exhibits available on the Web. Combined with the online coverage at our sister web publications, AudioStream, InnerFidelity, and AnalogPlanet, it gives you far more than a snapshot of the vast array of new audio equipment on active and passive display at CES 2014 and T.H.E. Show. The implied optimism that motivates so much new equipment, and so many innovations, gives signs of strength and renewal in a world where listening habits and means of music distribution are ever-changing and, in the minds of many, evolving.
So much new equipment is especially welcome in a year when it was impossible to evaluate the state of the industry by assessing attendance. January's flight-grounding weather, a manifestation of radical climate and atmospheric changes that will ultimately affect our industry and lives in ways that will dwarf the impact of the iPod, iPhone, wireless connectivity, and emerging audio formats, set CES off to a slow start. If Convergent Audio Technology's Ken Stevens couldn't make it to set up shop until the third day, neither Joe Reynolds of Nordost of Massachusetts nor Stereophile's Rosemarie Torcivia could rebook on a flight that would arrive in a timely fashion, Michael Lavorgna of AudioStream only made it pulling an overnight in Denver, and the Marchisottos went through hell to arrive in time for their Nola pre-show opener (with a system that had not yet begun to settle in), imagine how many other people from multiple countries decided to join Joe and throw in the towel.
What is certain is that while the rooms of CES's The Venetian venue were crammed with equipment, its rooms and halls were less filled with distributors and retailers. The lower-priced alternative T.H.E. Show at the Flamingo appeared to fare even worse. To quote a private email from an industry veteran who flew to Las Vegas this year solely to attend meetings, "We did not exhibit, as we had been told that T.H.E Show wasn't going to be successful this year. The predictors of this news were correct, the place was a ghost town, very depressing." The poor showing does make me wonder about the future of T.H.E. Show Las Vegas, especially since its sister, the far more consumer-oriented T.H.E. Show Newport Beach, has both been successful and has grown since its inception in 2011.
Photo: Jason Victor Serinus
In one of his finer think pieces, posted on the last day of CES, Paul McGowan, aka Mr. PS Audio, not only questions why CES remains an exhausting four-day show for the high-performance audio industry, but also discusses why he no longer presents an active exhibit. Instead of lugging an entire system to CES, and attempting to engage with a challenging mix of industry professionals, press, get-in-by-any-means-necessary consumers, and site-seers who attend CES for reasons other than high-performance audio, Paul instead rents a suite where he holds three days of meetings with dealers and distributors. He may show them new products on passive display, but he reserves the whole ultra-expensive dog and pony show for the host of consumer shows that now take place in the US, Canada, and beyond.
It's a convincing argument, but one that ignores one vital new development CES 2014: the new Hi-Res TechZone in the Sands Convention Center. Situated downstairs and through the woods from the high-performance exhibits in the Venetian Tower, where only a few companies such as Parasound choose to exhibit, the Hi-Res TechZone was a major attempt on the part of HDTracks, Acoustic Sounds' Super Hi-Rez.com, Blue Coast Music/IsoMike/Mytek, NativeDSD.com, Sony, and AIX Records to disseminate information about high-resolution audio to industry members who are not necessarily affiliated with the high-performance audio community.
According to Cookie Marenco of Blue Coast Music, fully 50% of visitors to the zone were not even familiar with the high-resolution "movement" before they set foot in the place, poked around, or attended one of the three star-studded panels. "There's a buzz going on about DSD," Cookie told me by phone, "and when two different chip manufacturers from different parts of the world mentioned to me that they're agnostic about DSD, but all their manufacturer customers are now requesting DSD chips, it made me think that this is much bigger and happening much faster than I anticipated."
Cookie was very happy with attendance. "We got out of it much more than we thought we would. For us, it was about education and long-term development. In that respect, it succeeded. And I also got to know all the other retailers, which was great. There were even jokes about the food fight between the DSD side and PCM side of the room."
David Chesky of HDTracks not only shares Cookie's optimism, but also postulates what's coming next. "Just the fact that a multi-national giant such as Sony has taken an interest in hi-res shows its potential to influence far more than our audiophile market," he says. "We audiophiles have always been considered a niche cult. Thanks to hi-res, there's a growing understanding of the importance of sound quality. The average person will now become aware of better sound, we can swing the pendulum from 'MP3s are good enough' to a desire for something better, and a new eco-system will develop to support the hunger. This could ultimately make both the music and audiophile industries stronger."
Photo: John Atkinson
In short, just as the combined impact of headphone listening, portable listening devices, palm-size DACs, and hi-res audio is transforming the high performance industry as we have known it, so too are fledgling forays such as the High-Res TechZone transforming the face of CES. Whatever your feelings about love-it-or-leave-it Las Vegas, when it comes to CES, there's plenty of life left in the old baby. It will be more than interesting to see how this all plays out in the year ahead, and discover what CES 2015 will bring. The guy in the picture below might already be tweeting about it!—Jason Victor Serinus
Photo: Jason Victor Serinus
Source : stereophile[dot]com
JA’s Best Sound at CES: Vandersteen’s Model 7 Speakers
The Naim/Focal, Marten/Pass Labs, and Sony/Pass Labs exhibits got close to the Vandersteens in absolute sound quality, and all were even better in some respects. But neither were quite so musically perfect across the board!
Designed with engineer Dean Klinefelter, the M7-HPA provides a high-pass filtered output (above 100Hz) to the upper-frequency drive-units of Model 7s, which has an integral powered subwoofer. The amplifier uses a tube input stage and two single-ended solid-state output amplifier stages with npn bipolar transistors operating across the speaker load, all mounted in a chassis machines from solid aluminum, with a sprung suspension from HRS and kept cool with a liquid cooling system. Specified output power is 600W into 8 ohms.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Naim’s Statement Amplifier
The Statement is the result of three years’ work by a team led by the company’s Electronic Design Director, Steve Sells. Steve showed me the interior of the power amplifier (above) to emphasize that the topology is based on a vertical layout, with the power supply in the base of each unit suspended on an A-frame and coupled to the floor using spikes. The audio signal paths are kept as short as possible, with a three-dimensional layout minimizing electromagnetic interference and eliminating parasitics. Even the output devices are made especially for Naim, and mount the transistor die directly to the heatsink to lower the thermal impedance and shunt heat away from the transistor as fast as possible. The circuit was described as an error-correction type and Steve said that the amplifier was so stable that you could clip it continually at high frequencies without breaking anything.
The class-A preamplifier also features vertical layout and disconnects unused inputs to lower the noise floor. It has a unique dual-action volume control: volume is established by a resistor divider; however, this is only when the volume is set; when the volume control is turned, reed relays disconnect the resistor ladder and the new level is set by a Cirrus Logic volume-control chip; as soon as the volume control is released, the Cirrus chip is disconnected and the better-sounding resistor ladder immediately assumes the new setting. I tried this out and could not detect any glitches that might result from this process. It was seamless.
One more photo of the Naim Statement, this time from Jason Serinus, to emphasize the gorgeous industrial design, which sculpts the heatsinks with a wave motif. The sound in this room, with the Statement driving Focal Stella Utopia speakers, was one of the best I experienced at the 2014 CES, with an enormous dynamic range and the feeling that you could follow reverberation tails on a recording like John Rutter’s Requiem down for ever into the ultimate silence. Amplifiers that can play very loudly are plentiful; Naim’s Statement is the rare amplifier that simultaneously plays extraordinarily quietly without the music becoming submerged.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Wilson’s New Sasha
The old Sasha used a titanium-dome tweeter; the new speaker’s soft-dome tweeter resembles that used in the Alexandria XLF and Alexia but is, in fact, somewhat different. And other than the styling, most of the improvements between the old and new Sashas lie under the skin. The top unit’s baffles is now machined from X Material, the stiff, Massy mineral-loaded phenolic composite used by Wilson for critical panels, and the vibrational behavior of the Sasha’s enclosures has been optimized using the Brüel & Kjaer laser vibrometer that the Utah-based company purchased during the development of the XLF and Alexia.
There is one other external difference: Below I compare the back panel of the new Sasha (top) with that of the old Sasha (bottom). You can see that the new speaker offers much more flexibility of the angling and position of the HF/MF module compared with the older speaker—27 positions compared with four.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Vivid’s new Giya G4
I also met famed Dutch engineer Bruno Putzeys in the On A Higher Note room, where the “substantially upgraded” production versions of his Mola Mola amplifiers ($15,000/pair) were being used to drive the Vivid G4s using Kubala-Sosna cable. (Philip O’Hanlon made Bruno wear his jacket for my photo of Bruno and Dic.) Jon Iverson has already reported on Bruno’s prototype DAC—see here and here—but I was also interested in the new phono preamp board Bruno has designed for the $10,000 Mola Mola preamplifier. This is based on a discrete op-amp circuit, but with the discrete transistors guaranteed made from adjacent dies on the original wafer to ensure the best matching of electrical characteristics. An app for an iDevice will allow the equalization and loading for MM and MC to be switched on the fly, using relays to choose the appropriate resistors and capacitors. And as you can see form the photo below, Bruno shed his jacket in order to explain the circuits more efficiently to me.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Pass Labs Pays Tribute to Sony
As mentioned in our report from the 2013 Burning Amp Festival, the veteran designer showed his "simplest amp," created with “two transistors, a [Jensen] transformer and wire—the fewest parts he'd been able to use to make it work.” The transistors weren’t identified back then but it turned out that they were Sony Vertical Field Effect Transistors or VFETs (footnote 1), a device Sony had developed 1972 to mimic the transfer function of a 300B triode tube. Sony and Yamaha both made amplifiers using this unique device, but discontinued them in the early 1980s when lower-priced power MOSFETs became available soon after.
Nelson’s Burning Amp used two complementary VFETs, part numbers 2SK82 and 2SJ28, the only ones Nelson had to hand, but he then set to work finding more. Eventually, he uncovered a stash in Singapore and bought all of them, enough to make the single pair of “Sony VFET Amplifier 40 Year Commemorative Edition” amplifiers at CES. This uses 24 pairs of VFETs as complementary followers and front-end/driver circuitry based on a Pass Labs’ XP topology. Output power is specified as 250W into 8 ohms—it sounded like more!
1 To avoid confusion with MOSFETs, devices with a vertical rather than lateral structure are now called Static Induction Transistors or SITs.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Magico's New S3
Key to the speaker's sound quality, Magico's Alon Wolf told me, was a new, teardrop-shaped sub-enclosure, made from a polymer material, for the midrange unit.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
The Ultimate Magico
Seen from behind, I was reminded of something I have felt for a long time: that a successful full-range horn speaker must be a multiway design, as a horn’s linear passband is relatively limited by the cutoff of the flare at the low-frequency end and by the internal reflections from the mouth of the horn at the high-frequency.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
DartZeel's Integrated Streaming Amplifier
Keep your eyes peeled for this one. Love to Blue Light Audio's Jonathan Tinn, who stayed home to heal a wicked case of the flu.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
