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According to Needle Doctor:

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Source : stereophile[dot]com

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I was introduced to audiophilia by my friend Gary Gustavsen. Although I'd known Gary since I was 13, I didn't discover his passion for music until that day in high school physics lab when I blurted out an obscure line from the Doors' "The Soft Parade," and Gary bounced back immediately with the next line. It turns out I shared my friend's passions for the Doors and Frank Zappa, but not for Mahler. Before long, Gary was dragging me to every audio store in our area to listen to potential speakers for his first high-end audio system. At the beginning of each trip he'd say, "Right now I'm partial to the Rectilinear 3s." Although I heard him say that many times, I never actually got to hear a pair of Rectilinear 3s.

Back then, in the early 1970s, the stores in our area pushed either Dahlquist DQ-10s or Bose 901s. My epiphany came when Long Island's Audio Breakthroughs announced the new Dahlquist DQ-1W subwoofer to partner with their DQ-10s. Gary and I attended a demo at the store, and I was smitten by the coherent, open, uncolored sound of the DQ-10s with DQ-1W, particularly the way the speakers articulated transients in the midrange. Then I felt a tap on my shoulder, and some guy handed me a crude little metal box. "We're coming out with this soon, which will let you drive the new subwoofer with its own separate amplifier," he said. The metal box was the only prototype of the DQLP-1 crossover, designed by Carl Marchisotto. The guy who'd tapped me on the shoulder was Saul Marantz.

Although it would be five years before I'd have the money and the space for my first Dahlquist-based system, Gary was ready to pull the trigger on a new pair of speakers that night. He ended up with a pair of ESS Laboratories AMT-1s, which featured the Air Motion Transformer ribbon tweeter designed by Dr. Oskar Heil. This tweeter moved air in a semi-perpendicular motion using a folded sheet supported by a series of aluminum struts positioned and immersed in a magnetic field. The diaphragm was expands and contracts in a motion similar to that of an accordion's bellows. Because such a folded tweeter "spits" out air in a way similar to the action of shooting a seed from between one's thumb and forefinger, the tweeters were known in their day as "cherry-pit squeezers."

At the time, Gary and I co-led the Hauppauge Avant-Garde Ensemble, an original jazz-rock and comedy music group. However, as I then owned no serious sound system—I played my records on a General Electric portable, complete with ceramic cartridge—we used his ESS AMT-1s to listen to and analyze our master tapes, and I got to know their sound intimately. I remember that the AMT-1s sounded dynamic, coherent, and uncolored, with crystal-clear, extended highs that had no trace of harshness.

Four decades later, while shopping for a TV for my grad-school roommate at a local audio store—Audio Breakthroughs again—I was taken by the sound coming from a pair of unassuming bookshelf speakers. "What are those?" I asked the owner.

"Oh, those are the GoldenEar Technology Aon 2s. Do you remember the Heil Air Motion ribbon tweeters on the old ESS speakers? The Aons feature a ribbon tweeter that's the direct descendant of that design."

I had to get a pair of Aon 2s in for review.

Design
In addition to its GoldenEar High-Velocity Folded Ribbon Tweeter (HVFR), each Aon 2 has a 6" woofer coupled to two 6.5" low-frequency radiators, one on each side panel. The woofer, too, is designed by GoldenEar, and has a polypropylene cone and a cast "spiderleg" basket with many thin radial struts, to present as little reflective area as possible to the back of the cone. This drive-unit also incorporates a "multi-vaned phase plug" designed to reduce interference near the apex of the radiated cone of energy. The passive radiators load the woofer in a similar manner to a reflex port, and extend the speaker's bass response.

Although the Aon 2's folded-ribbon tweeter is a direct descendent of the Heil driver, it differs in having a diaphragm of high-temperature–tolerant Kapton rather than the Heil's Mylar, and neodymium magnets, which GoldenEar claims makes possible a smaller diaphragm that's also superior in terms of dispersion and low diffraction. The cabinet, a truncated pyramid, was inspired by some of Dick Sequerra's early designs; its nonparallel sides minimize the production of standing waves inside.

I placed the Aon 2s on my 24" Celestion Si stands. Because of the speaker's unusual side-mounted passive drivers, the wraparound grillecloth is not designed to be removed. I listened with the grilles in place.

Listening
I approached this review with a bit of trepidation and some biases. Although I loved the sound of the original Heil tweeter 40 years ago, speaker design has advanced considerably since then. Even as recently as 10 years ago, some audiophiles would choose moving-coil dome tweeters optimized for tonal neutrality, while others opted for the detail, speed, high-frequency extension, and air of ribbons. Nowadays, a well-designed tweeter of any type should be able to accurately reproduce all aspects of every sort of music without compromise. The speakers I've chosen for my reference systems of recent years have had moving-coil tweeters; I've found that today's best moving-coil tweeters combine all the traditional strengths of ribbons and dynamic drivers and none of their weaknesses.

So as I hooked up the GoldenEars to my reference system, I had questions: How well would a modern folded-ribbon tweeter perform in a cost-constrained bookshelf design? Would it be able to articulate detail without adding its own colorations? And, most important, how well would it integrate with the dynamic woofer?

My sensitivities and biases went out the window right away. With all recordings, the Aon 2 revealed extended, detailed, pristine high frequencies with no trace of coloration. Massed violins in Antal Doráti's recording of Stravinsky's The Firebird, with the London Symphony (CD, Mercury SR 90226), and Pétrouchka, with the Minneapolis Symphony (CD, Mercury 434-331-2), were uncolored, with the requisite vibrant bite and shimmering sparkle intact, but with no sharpness or unnatural metallic edge. Jazz trumpets were also quite natural. Every track of Liam Sillery's Outskirts (CD, OA OA2 22050) showcased his trumpet with the same brassy bite I've heard in his live performances. Moreover, the ratios of the upper harmonics of his upper-register tones to their fundamentals were unaltered, and with none of the upper partials truncated.

On the guitar front, Derek Bailey's unorthodox technique on Improvisation (CD, Ampersand Ampere 2) was revealed in as much detail as I've heard with much more expensive speakers. The ringing, plucked harmonics of the upper strings sang, floating on a bed of air with extended and natural decay. And when I listened to "The Deer and Buffalo God Churches," from my jazz quartet Attention Screen's Takes Flight at Yamaha (CD, Stereophile STPH021-2), Don Fiorino's acoustic 11-string guitar, a Seagull flattop, was delicate and detailed—the Aon 2 perfectly captured the instrument's unique twang.

The GoldenEar's integration of the high and midrange frequencies was seamless—I heard no anomalies with instruments that contribute considerable energy near its mid-treble crossover frequency. On pianist Marilyn Crispell's Circles (CD, Victo CD012), there's some tense, dissonant interplay between alto saxophonist Oliver Lake and tenor saxophonist Peter Buettner. Throughout their horns' entire upper registers, I never felt that the players' melodic gymnastics sounded less than completely fluid, integrated, and uniform.

Article Continues: Page 2 »

Company Info GoldenEar Technology PO Box 141 Stevenson, MD 21153 (410) 998-9134 www.goldenear.com		Article Contents Page 1 Page 2 Specifications Associated Equipment Measurements

Source : stereophile[dot]com

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Colleen Cardas strongly urged me to try the Callas loudspeaker from Opera Loudspeakers (whose products she also distributes in the US), which she claimed was an ideal match for the Unison S6 amplifier I reviewed late August. In my experience, the stand-mounted Callas ($5000/pair) is unique among loudspeakers in being the logical contrapositive (inverted and flipped, so to speak) of the usual D'Appolito driver array of midrange-tweeter-midrange (MTM).

In the well-known D'Appolito array, one tweeter is partnered with two midrange drivers, one each above and below it. Opera's two-way Callas has one vertically centered 5" mid/woofer with a copper phase plug, and identical 1" soft-dome tweeters above and below it. As if that weren't enough, on the narrow rear panel are three more tweeters, identical to those in front, in a vertical array. The enclosure has two small ports, side by side at the top of the rear panel.

The Callas measures 14.8" high by 9" wide by 13.4" deep, its cabinet symmetrically tapering toward the rear, and weighs about 57 lbs. The cabinet is made of elegant solid woods and veneers in a high-gloss finish of medium-shade cherry (except for the recessed, black-painted base plate), with black leather cladding on the faceted fascia. There's a small brass badge on the base plate. Front grilles are provided, but I didn't use them. A single pair of robust, naked (non–Euro-Nanny) speaker terminals is at the bottom rear. Opera claims for the Callas a frequency range of 32Hz–25kHz, sensitivity of 86dB, and a nominal impedance of 4 ohms. The mid/woofer and front tweeters are crossed over at "around 1500Hz," the rear tweeters at 2000Hz.

Sound Quality
I placed the Callases on 24"-high stands about 5' apart, 2' from the front wall, and toed in to face my listening position, about 8' from each speaker, and toward the nearfield side of midfield listening.

After hooking up the Callases, I braced myself to be bombarded with five times as much treble as normal, even with a tube amp like the Unison S6 that was a bit on the rich side. My fears were totally unfounded. The Callas was very well-behaved, with a genuinely sweet disposition. That just goes to show that a name is not always an omen. (Diva Maria Callas was reportedly a bit of a handful on her bad days.) After quite a bit of listening to the Callas-S6 combination with Parasound's CD 1, via Cardas Clear interconnects and speaker cables, I came to some strongly held conclusions.

First, this is just a great system, ready for you to pack up and take home—a true get-off-the-audio-merry-go-round system. Colleen Cardas was right: the S6 and Callas are hugely synergistic.

Second, I was pleasantly surprised by both the dynamic capability and the bass extension of the Callas-S6 combo. Unlike with many two-way speakers, I never got the sense during most normal listening (as distinct from playing very loud to impress myself or friends) that there was "almost" enough bass—there really was enough bass.

Third, as expected, the Callas-S6 combination was the timbral polar opposite of the Spiral Groove Canalis-AVM receiver system. The latter led with information from the treble, the Callas-S6 with tones from the midrange.

The Callas-S6 combo delivered a sound that was, first of all, widescreen. I think the rear tweeters produced a wider soundstage than conventional speakers (there was no way to turn the rear tweeters off), in a way reminiscent of most Shahinian speakers. There was never a sense of too much treble unless the recording itself was too hot; the treble and midrange were very well integrated. In addition to being widescreen, the sound was a bit soft-focus, but by no means grainy. Last, tonalities were a bit on the Technicolor side, but always addictively enjoyable.

In addition to the recordings mentioned above and in my last column, the most frequent flyer of which was Aaron Diehl's The Bespoke Man's Narrative (CD, Mack Avenue MCD 1066), I spent a lot of time with a new set of old works by Arthur Bliss (5 CDs, EMI Classics 29018); a wonderful set of symphonies and orchestral works by Franz Berwald, performed by Roy Goodman and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and engineered by Tony Faulkner (2 CDs, Hyperion Dyad 22043); Iona Brown and Josef Suk's underrated recording of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante with the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields (CD, Argo/Decca 411 613); Lucia Popp's radiant disc of Mozart opera arias (CD, EMI Classics 09679); David Oistrakh's recording of Brahms's Violin Concerto with Otto Klemperer and the French National Radio Orchestra (CD, EMI Classics 74724), which sounded better than ever through the CD-1–S6–Callas system; Mahler's Symphony 3 with Glen Cortese conducting the Manhattan School of Music Orchestra (2 CDs, Titanic), which did not make the system cry "Uncle"; and, to change things up, Procol Harum's In Concert with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra (A&M/Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab) and L. Subramaniam's Electric Modes (2 CDs, Water Lily Acoustics WLA-ES-4&5-CD).

Summing Up
It's funny that, 10 years ago, while reviewing Unison's S2K amplifier, one of the speakers I listened to was the late, lamented ASA Pro Monitor, a two-way stand-mount from France that I and a few others (including Sam Tellig) found offered a musical trueness very difficult to describe. The Pro Monitor's recipe was simple: an Esotec rather than an Esotar tweeter, a Dynaudio 6.5" mid/woofer with a magnesium basket, a double-walled cabinet clad in ¾"-thick exotic hardwoods, and a simple crossover with premium parts. Perhaps the real secret, though, was that all of ASA's design decisions, such as using the less swank of Dynaudio's available high-end tweeters, were claimed to have been arrived at by listening. By the time ASA threw in the towel, the US price of the Pro Monitor had risen to $5000/pair.

Opera claims on its website that "every single aspect of the [Callas] design was subjected to intense musical listening tests at Opera." I can believe it—the Callas sounds like that kind of a speaker. So if you regret having missed the ASA Pro Monitor, here's that rare thing in life: a second chance. And the price hasn't even gone up.

To sum up the Opera Callas: luscious midrange, sweet treble, large soundstage, surprising bass, eminently listenable; Class B (Restricted Extreme Low Frequencies).

Article Continues: Specifications »

Company Info Opera Loudspeakers US distributor: Colleen Cardas Imports www.colleencardasimports.com		Article Contents Page 1 Specifications Measurements

Source : stereophile[dot]com

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For some, the Toronto Audio Video Entertainment Show ( TAVES 2013) is the show of the future. For others, it may signal a possible decline in the supremacy of two-channel audio. Either way, just two weeks after RMAF in Denver, with hardly any space between Stereophile's comprehensive coverage of that major two-channel show, TAVES 2013 takes place November 1–3 in the classy King Edward Hotel in downtown Toronto.

"From the very beginning, we had a vision to shape TAVES as more of a Consumer Electronics Show rather than just another audio show," show co-owner and Canada HiFi publisher Suave Kajko, 35, explained by phone. "This year, for the first time, I'm very happy to say that some 20% of the exhibit spaces will be showing home theater equipment or other products."

In its third year, the show has already doubled in size. Now occupying four floors of the King Edward, it will offer perhaps 70 live systems in perhaps 64 exhibit spaces. Attendance, which last year tracked at over 3000 unique visitors, will likely increase.

In a development reminiscent of T.H.E. Show Newport Beach's multi-ring circus (audio, cigars, cars, wine), Harley Davidson will occupy the hotel's entire lobby with their latest and greatest. Remind me not to tell idiot Rich, whose muffler-less Harley and blasting radio set off car alarms every time he drives to and from our block, that the company's infotainment systems include a 6.5" touch screen, the ability to answer phone calls and communicate with other cyclists on the road via a microphone inside your helmet, and the blessing/curse of listening to music streamed wirelessly from your iWhatever as your roar down the road. Please, please, please don't tell me that cyclists will be able to text from their touch screens as well.

"We attract what we think is one of the larger groups of women to the show," Kajko continued. "From the outset, we made this a goal, since more and more women are making the decisions in the home theater department. This year we've teamed up with a number of different women's networks, as well as taken advantage of social media, to promote the show to women and their significant others."

The show's two biggest coups are an advanced launch of the Sony Playstation 4 before it hits the stores, and the first-time presence of Sony and Samsung. Both will show 4K Ultra HDTVs. Samsung is bringing two curve-screen OLEDs to the show, including, the largest TV sets (84–85") available to Canadian consumers. Another first is the presence of a number of different and very unique watch manufacturers, who will show "distinct and artistic timepieces." Take that, Newport Beach!

In the headphone department, TAVES will not try to outdo Montreal and RMAF's huge headphone roomq. Instead, headphone products will be mixed in with others in a large exhibit ballroom. As for entertainment, expect the unamplified Ray Montford Trio.

The number of seminars, on the other hand, will be major, with more topics covered than ever before. For more commercially oriented attendees, TV personality Marc Salzman will introduce the Playstation 4 and Xbox 1 OLED and 4K. Balance that with two sessions on advanced turntable set-up. DSD DACs will be explored by exaSound, and speaker placement by Roy Gregory and Nordost. I expect the seminar on how to set up a hi-res system for under $10,000, as well as improve your existing system via tweaks, to be extremely popular.

"Toronto, which is the New York of Canada, is the biggest consumer market in our country," says Kajko. "We have a lot more companies headquartered there, and TAVES has the potential to attract them as exhibitors."

Robert Deutsch will post reports from TAVES during and after the show. You can get your 84" eyeful and more by staying tuned to this very station.

Source : stereophile[dot]com

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In the mornings, just before I leave for work, I power up the system, turn the volume down low, and set the CD player to Repeat. I like to think that if I play calm, soothing music while Ms. Little and I are away, the cats will feel less alone and more relaxed. It's also nice, on returning home from work, to walk into a room filled with music. One evening a few weeks ago, I stepped into the apartment, dropped my bags to the floor, settled down into the couch with my iPhone, and began scrolling through text messages. I'd been seated for only a moment before I had to turn my attention entirely to the sound of the system, which, even at a very low volume, sounded warm, detailed, and unusually good—unbelievably, almost unbearably engaging.

The song had something to do with it, for sure. It was the title track of Sandro Perri's excellent Impossible Spaces (CD, Constellation CST085), which combines finger-picked acoustic guitar, hand percussion, sweet euphonium, and the surprisingly realistic sounds of distant birds—the last so expertly reproduced that the cats were as startled as I was. I sat there a while, transfixed, feeling almost lost, wishing that all of my friends and family could enjoy this level of sound quality in their homes. In what world, under what circumstances, would that be possible?

The system was mostly familiar: Wharfedale Diamond 10.1 loudspeakers ($349/pair), NAD C 316BEE CD player ($299), and AudioQuest Rocket 33 speaker cables ($329/10' pair) and Big Sur interconnects ($109/m)—each component representing extraordinary value and integral to the system's overall sound. Only the integrated amplifier was new. That day, it was NAD's D 3020.

The original NAD 3020
The D 3020 ($499) is a very new type of audio component that takes its name from a classic. In 1978, NAD, then called New Acoustic Dimension, released the original 3020 integrated amplifier, a rather funereal- but purposeful-looking thing with a drab gray chassis and large, blockish buttons. Stripped of all but the most necessary features, it was conservatively rated to deliver a meager 20Wpc and had the kind of cheap plastic speaker-binding clips that too easily break when carelessly used. Still, the 3020 became the best-selling integrated amplifier in the history of high-end audio. Counting its various iterations (3020B, 3020e, 3020i, 302, and 312), well over a million units were sold worldwide.

Why was the 3020 such a success?

Price must have had something to do with it. The amplifier's introductory price of $149 seemed an impossible bargain to most erudite audiophiles, but struck ordinary customers as fairly reasonable—not an insignificant expense, but one within their means. The 3020 was not only an affordable purchase, it was a smart one: Removable jumpers on its rear panel allowed users to tailor the 3020 to their specific needs. Stereophile senior contributing editor Wes Phillips spent lots of time with the 3020—as an integrated, as a dedicated preamplifier, and as a spare power amp. He told me via e-mail: "A lot of audiophiles did what I did and bought it expecting to utilize its separate pre- and power-amp sections, typically using it as a preamp when we bought our first power amps." Still, the 3020 wasn't merely a placeholder for something better down the road. "Those of us who moved on to separates usually kept the 3020 around as a backup," Wes added. "Few of us could part with it."

Appearance must also have been a factor. The 3020, modest as it was, was a radical alternative to the glitzier, feature-rich models then coming from Japan; by contrast, it was straightforward, no-nonsense, and entirely unpretentious: the workingman's amplifier. In the 1980s, Stereophile's webmaster, Jon Iverson, sold "boatloads" of them at Audio Ecstasy, in San Luis Obispo, California. "We joked about its military look," he told me, "but it always outperformed any similarly priced receiver. It gave us a secret weapon with a great story—killer sound, perfect set of features, and nothing more—and made customers feel like they'd made a move toward musical enjoyment."

So, sound had something to do with it. I've never actually heard a 3020, but everything I've been told suggests that its sound was entirely inoffensive and easy to enjoy—even impressive, for its special combination of smoothness, warmth, and detail. To those listeners more accustomed to table radios and prepackaged stereos, the NAD 3020 was a revelation—a small but important first step into the world of true high-fidelity sound, and an investment in quality. "When our customers bought a 3020, they felt like they had turned the corner and stepped up to caring about sound," Jon said. "I'm guessing it started a high percentage of today's audiophiles on their paths."

The 3020 became an unlikely status symbol, one that both diehard audiophiles and ordinary consumers could appreciate. "When we were able to sell one to a customer—and nobody had ever heard of NAD until they came into a store like ours—they then loved us and became a customer for life," Jon recalled. "If you walked into someone's apartment and they had a 3020, you thought to yourself, 'Yes. This person has audio discernment.'"

The 3020 wasn't perfect. "The sum was greater than the parts," Wes said. "Used separately, both the pre's and power amp's faults were more glaring than when connected. But the 3020 wasn't tizzy or flat or distant—it got you right into the music."

Could the 3020's success have been partially due to the state of the music industry and the popular music of the late 1970s and early '80s? Wes thinks so. "We had LPs then. Today, people have MP3s, so their music is stunted before it reaches the next stage. Demonstrating the superiority of the 3020 was easy: 'Hear how much better your music sounds!' Today, it's 'Well, your music sounds worse, because every file you own sucks!' A much harder sell.

"Plus, you had albums that stood out even from the average LP: Steely Dan's Aja, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, pretty much every Lyrita recording, and so on. These were immensely popular, they sounded great on crappy gear, and better and better as the gear got better.

"Who wants to hear that all of their music sounds crappy?"

Probably not too many people; certainly not a million of them.

The 3020 may have lacked most bells and whistles, but it did have two interesting features: a variable Loudness control and a Soft Clipping circuit. Custom A/V installer Robert Saglio, who sold plenty of 3020s during his time at Stereo Lab, in New London, Connecticut, believes the Loudness and Soft Clipping had much to do with the 3020's success. The former is intended to maintain music's natural tonal balance at low volume levels; generally speaking, the highs will still have sparkle, and the lows will still have impact. More intriguing was the Soft Clipping circuit, which cleverly limited the amount of high-frequency energy delivered to a loudspeaker, protecting the tweeter from damage and the listener from unpleasant distortion. Considering the inexpensive, easily agitated speakers typically partnered with the 3020 three decades ago, Soft Clipping now seems brilliant. If purist audiophiles didn't care for what Soft Clipping did to the overall sound, they didn't need to use it: Their speakers were fine. Others, however, could drive their cheap speakers to unusually high levels while getting completely lost in Dark Side.

Stereophile senior contributing editor Kalman Rubinson married into a 3020. Before she got to live with his big B&Ws and multichannel system, Kal's wife partnered her 3020 with a Bang & Olufsen turntable and a pair of small RadioShack speakers. "I remember the sound as uncommonly smooth and warm in this setup—which, considering the speakers, is remarkable," Kal told me.

NAD's 312 integrated amplifier, the last to use the 3020's audio circuitry, was discontinued in 1998. To this day, however, hi-fi collectors and enthusiasts still seek original 3020s. As I type, a handful of samples are for sale on eBay, some gently used, others downright abused. The cleanest of the bunch looks practically new, includes the original box and manual, and is said to be in perfect working condition. You can buy it now for $250. Steve Guttenberg, a Stereophile contributor and writer of CNET's The Audiophiliac blog, bought his first 3020 from an eBay dealer just two years ago for $66. Driving a pair of new Wharfedale Diamond 10.1 loudspeakers, the old NAD sounded rich, sweet, and unusually powerful, said Steve. "I doubt any of today's receivers or entry-level integrateds can handle low-impedance speakers as well as the 3020."

In November 2002, to celebrate its 40th year of continuous publication, Stereophile published "The Hot 100 Products," a list of the 100 most important hi-fi components of all time, chosen by the magazine's editors and writers. The NAD 3020 integrated amplifier was ranked No.19. John Atkinson wrote: "The ridiculously inexpensive 3020 showed that an amplifier didn't need machined faceplates, intimidating heatsinks, or technically glamorous components to be able to drive real-world speakers. It put NAD on the map, but they never matched the 3020's overall achievement."

NAD (footnote 1) has made several technological advances over the last decade—its Master Series components offer state-of-the-art performance both on the test bench and in the listening room—and the company continues to produce exceptional entry-level products. Is the 3020 still NAD's greatest success?

"Yes," JA told me recently. "The 3020 was so good and so cheap that later NAD amps, though objectively better, never achieved that combination of value for money and sound quality." Echoing Steve Guttenberg's comments, JA added: "The original 3020 could drive big speakers with difficult impedances with aplomb."

"It was understated and underspecced and it overperformed," Robert Saglio summarized. "With its variable loudness control and soft-clipping feature, people could play pop music louder than expected, and it would still sound good. I think NAD could have made it forever. All they'd have to do today is add an iPod input."

With the new D 3020, NAD has done that and more.

Rethinking the 3020
Why now? Many of NAD's recent budget amplifiers, including my own C 316BEE ($380), have been marketed as descendants of the great 3020, but none has borne its name. Why was this the right time to finally resurrect the hallowed 3020 model number?

"The D 3020 started as a way to celebrate our 40th anniversary," Greg Stidsen, NAD's director of technology and product planning, told me (footnote 2). "Instead of gold-plating a C 326BEE and squeezing another micron of performance out of the very mature analog technology, we decided to rethink the elements that made the 3020 so relevant in its day and re-create the concept using today's most advanced digital technology."

The D 3020 was unveiled to a limited audience at NAD's 40th Anniversary Distributor Conference, held in Munich in spring 2011. "The response we received from our distribution partners was intensely positive," said Stidsen.

"Meeting the objectives of price, performance, size, and efficiency was something else," added Bjørn Erik Edvardsen, NAD's longtime designer and the man chiefly responsible for the original 3020 and now the D 3020. "The challenge led to some new ideas and the application of some really advanced technology." NAD spent another two years developing the D 3020's audio circuitry. "We rejected promising circuits that didn't meet the performance targets," said Edvardsen. "I wouldn't sign off on it until we got it exactly right."

In terms of appearance and features, the D 3020 bears almost no resemblance to its namesake. You might not recognize it as an integrated amplifier at all. The industrial design was conceived by David Farrage, whose DF-ID firm boasts a client list that includes Donna Karan, Movado, and Lamborghini. The D 3020 is sleek, shiny, and minimalist, made to look right at home with today's personal computers, smartphones, and other high-tech devices. Uncommonly sensuous for a hi-fi component, with a textured volume knob and soft, smooth side panels, the D 3020 practically begs to be touched. In fact, it features a touchscreen that occupies all of its front panel and extends through one entire side panel—either its topmost or right-hand side, depending on how you orient the chassis.

Weighing just 3 lbs (1.4kg) and measuring an unusual 73?8" (186mm) high by 25?16" (58mm) wide by 85?8" (219mm) deep, the D 3020 can be placed horizontally, like a traditional component, or stood upright, like a modem or hard drive. This aspect of the D 3020's physical design may be cool and unique, but struck me as unnecessary and ultimately compromised. For it to really work, the visual display would have to automatically reorient itself to the amplifier's placement—like an iPhone's or iPad's display, which adapts to the user's needs by assuming a landscape view when held horizontally, a portrait view when turned upright. The D 3020's display is static.

Placing the D 3020 horizontally within a standard component cabinet, as I initially did, calls for some awkward craning of the neck when reading the volume level, and does no justice to the amplifier's good looks. Several times while switching cables I accidentally tapped the D 3020's power button, thus knocking the amplifier out of sleep. And, for some reason, though I could reliably power up the amp via its touchscreen, I could turn it off only by using its remote control—a mild annoyance. For its part, the uncluttered remote is perfectly suited to the D 3020, with the same pleasantly smooth feel and a similarly distinct look. You won't want to lose it. That such a considered remote can be included with a $499 product leaves me wondering why so many far more expensive components come equipped with unwieldy plastic afterthoughts.

In any case, the D 3020 wants to stand upright, out in the open, where it can be easily seen and touched. Furthermore, a vertical orientation will provide the best dissipation of heat. Placed horizontally in a rack, the D 3020 ran warm but not alarmingly so. It uses an energy-efficient class-D output stage rated to deliver 30Wpc into a standard 8 ohms. NAD has always placed greater emphasis on their products' more impressive IHF "Dynamic Power" ratings, however (footnote 3). The D 3020's IHF ratings are 65Wpc into 8 ohms, 105 into 4, and 150 into 2.

I almost forgot to mention the outer box, a very attractive slipcase. Right out of it, the D 3020 sounded clean, clear, and resolving, if a bit small and bass shy. After only a day or so of use, however, the D 3020 sounded far bigger and more powerful than its size and weight would suggest.

For the most part, I partnered the D 3020 with small, affordable loudspeakers—PSB Alpha B1 ($299/pair), Pioneer SP-BS22-LR ($129/pair), Wharfedale Diamond 10.1 ($349/pair)—but toward the end of the listening period I hooked it up to a pair of glorious KEF LS50s ($1499/pair) and turned the volume up high. I was bowled over by the sound, which easily matched the best I'd ever heard at home, and reminded me in many ways of what I'd recently experienced with the tubed Croft Phono Integrated ($1895).

If there was a weakness in my system, it was not the NAD.

Digital ins and outs
The D 3020 is a decidedly modern integrated amplifier for the modern listener. With its coaxial and optical digital inputs, users can connect satellite and cable receivers, integrate content-management devices such as the Apple TV media streamer, or process the digital signal from a CD or DVD player. But if you really want to get the best sound from your CDs, you should rip them to your computer using something like X Lossless Decoder (for Macs) or Exact Audio Copy (for PCs), then send the signal to the D 3020's 24-bit/96kHz–capable asynchronous-mode USB input, thus bypassing your laptop's own compromised audio circuitry. Or forget about CDs altogether and instead take advantage of the growing number of online retailers now providing music in high-resolution and CD-quality digital formats. A few of my favorite download sites are Bleep, Boomkat, and HDtracks, but there are many others. Specialized media-player softwares, such as Amarra (Macs) or JRiver Media Center (PCs), should work seamlessly with Apple's ubiquitous iTunes, but will provide automatic sample-rate conversion and better sound (footnote 4). You'll want to know that you're getting out of the NAD D 3020 exactly what you're putting in.

The D 3020's rear-panel iPod input is a sign of our times, but is also the amplifier's least impressive feature. I suspect NAD thought so, too, which is why they've included a TosLink mini-adapter to convert it to an additional optical input, which will also accept the digital-audio output from a MacBook Pro. The D 3020 has only one traditional (RCA) analog input, a fact that I at first mourned—until I realized that one was all I really needed. Do I need a Disc input? No. Do I need an Aux input? No. Do I even know what a Tape input is? No.

I do want a headphone output. Do I need one? Not really, no—for the most part, I listen to headphones outdoors, on the go. The D 3020 has one—a front-panel minijack, perfect for use in a desktop system with today's popular headphones. You won't be able to use the D 3020 to drive old-fashioned cans that have ¼" phone plugs (unless you employ an adaptor), but you can use it right away with your Skullcandy Aviator, B&W P3, Harman/Kardon CL, Grado SR60i, Sennheiser Momentum, Monster DNA, Beats Solo HD, or any of the other exotic, colorful, celebrity-endorsed 'phones.

---

Footnote 1: NAD Electronics International, 633 Granite Court, Pickering, Ontario L1W 3K1, Canada. Tel: (905) 831-6555. Web: www.nadelectronics.com.

Footnote 2: NAD was founded in December 1972. You can see a timeline of the company's history here.

Footnote 3: John Atkinson discussed this in "Must We Test? Yes, We Must!," his "As We See It" for the August 1989 issue.

Footnote 4: For a comprehensive list of download sites and invaluable information about digital-music hardware and software, visit the "How-To" sections at AudioStream.

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Thanksgiving will mark two years since Charles died. I still miss him.

I first met Charles in the 1990s, around the time I began to review recordings and audio equipment. I had just left my apartment and was driving slowly down the street when I spied a somewhat bent-over, wizened-looking man carrying a copy of Stereophile under his arm. My astonishment at discovering another Stereophile reader whom, it turned out, living just two buildings away, brought my car to a sudden halt.

I opened my window. "You read Stereophile?" I exclaimed.

"Why, yes, I do," replied Charles, with that curious mixture of intellectual engagement, hauteur, and combative distance that I was soon to know too well.

So began our friendship. One of the many things that bound us together, in addition to equipment, was our love of classical music. While Charles championed Bruckner, whose music can drive me up a wall, and initially disparaged my beloved Mahler, we both shared a love for renaissance music and "natural" sound.

Within a week, we'd begun sharing recordings and critiquing each other's systems. Mine was certainly in need of improvement. But the system in Charles's apartment occupied another plane entirely.

Charles was an individual for whom the diagnosis Audiophilia nervosa seemed overly generous. In the darkened front room of his extremely stuffy flat, whose windows had not been opened for years, sprawled a system that defied description. To the right of his closely spaced speakers—Charles thought all that "soundstage stuff" was hooey—and not many feet from his ragged couch were his components and cables, positioned in a frightening, widely spaced array that might best be described as a Coney Island roller-coaster run amok.

Each component was suspended on a frequently deflating Townshend Seismic Sink and among them ran cable arrays suspended on various homemade contraptions draped with pieces of white silk. Each shred of silk had found its final position through extensive listening to what Charles felt were the ultimate tests of a digital system: a CD of a single lute or theorbo, and a horrible-sounding, early digital, Deutsche Grammophon recording of Herbert von Karajan conducting a Bruckner symphony.

The silk, Charles was convinced, improved the sound. So did the Cable Jackets, more and more of which seemed to appear as the years went on; the Shun Mook devices, some of which were suspended on amazing, 5'-high, Erector Set–like contraptions that increasingly dominated his house of audio horrors; and the ever-proliferating bass traps that, toward the end of Charles's life, completely surrounded his speakers to the point of musical asphyxiation.

Regardless of the efficacy—or lack thereof—of the many tweaks Charles added, he refused to acknowledge that his speakers were an insurmountable problem. (So were mine, but at least I knew it.) He'd bought them used, without having listened to them, after a reviewer for an absolute authority had declared their midrange one of the finest the reviewer had ever heard. It took me but one listen to deduce that the reviewer had dwelt almost exclusively on the speaker's midrange because its tweeter was a bright, edgy travesty.

The speaker was so flawed that the company soon went out of business. But rather than acknowledge that he'd made a mistake and replace them, Charles bought more and more tapestries, Shun Mook devices, and bass traps. He was determined to get that hideous Bruckner CD to sound right.

"Charles," I would say, "that recording is so flawed that if you ever manage to tame its highs and get its midrange to sound full, every other recording in your collection will sound wrong."

Nice try. It was like trying to convince my Jewish mother. Charles bounced from lute to Bruckner and back again. One day, he'd declare that everything sounded right, only to call back the next to complain that he'd been wrong. Then he would shift a single Shun Mook Mpingo disc 1/16", and call me to rejoice—only to later confess that he'd spoken too soon. One longtime audiophile dealer whom Charles paid for advice declared that he'd never met anyone whose ideas of system setup were so diametrically opposed to his own.

Eventually, I decided it would be best to cease listening to and critiquing his system and simply enjoy Charles for who he was. As much as I found it impossible not to laugh at Charles, there was always a warm place for him in my heart. He was, after all, a reflection of my own obsessed self, magnified 50 times in a fun-house mirror. The more I grew to embrace my own inner Charles, the more I loved the original.

Lord knows how many hours a day Charles spent climbing his ladder to suspend more Shun Mook devices and rare tapestries on the wall. Then, one day, when he was in his early 70s, he fell off the ladder and ended up in the hospital. As his diabetes worsened and his heart problems increased, he began to take even more drastic sonic measures. Once, when I shopped for him, I discovered that he'd shrouded his speakers in plastic and draped them with silk and polyester stuffing. The house of audio horrors had become a wax museum.

As his days grew increasingly dominated by visits from doctors, Charles still occasionally called to share his feelings about recordings. During those moments, we felt as one. But when he stopped discussing his system altogether, I feared the end was near.

After David and I bought and moved into our new house, miles away, I saw less of Charles. On Thanksgiving Day, 2011, I was tempted to call, but knowing that he'd undoubtedly chosen to spend the evening alone, I thought it best to wait. When subsequent calls went unanswered, I drove to our old neighborhood. There I learned that, while his neighbors were visiting family for Thanksgiving, leaving no one near to hear his cries, Charles had suffered a diabetic attack, gone into shock, and died alone.

May you rest in peace, Charles. I hope that death has brought you all the glorious Bruckner chorales your heart desired. Know that you were loved.

Source : stereophile[dot]com

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Bob Dylan: Another Self Portrait (1969–1971): The Bootleg Series Vol.10
Columbia/Legacy 88883 73488 2 (4 CDs). 2013. Bob Johnston, Al Kooper, orig. prods.; Neil Wilburn, Don Puluse, Glyn Johns, orig. engs.; Elliot Mazer, Glyn Johns (Isle of Wight disc); Jeff Rosen, Steve Berkowitz, prods.; Greg Calbi, mastering. AAD? TT: 4:06:32
Performance ****½
Sonics ****½

It wasn't until I'd read Michael Metzger's write-up of Self Portrait in "Records To Die For" (Stereophile, February 2002) that I was prompted to revisit Bob Dylan's once-critically-scoffed-at musical enigma from 1970. Sandwiched between the new country of 1969's Nashville Skyline and the decidedly folkier New Morning from late 1970, the two LPs of the original Self Portrait sounded like the work of an artist, albeit one still in his late 20s, wanting to unplug from the world and his already staggering body of work. With its quirky cover versions and unfocused song selection, it left plenty of fans scratching their heads.

But as Metzger suggested, Self Portrait has aged well; once underappreciated, it is now revered. Columbia/Legacy's stellar Bootleg Series of Dylan recordings—live and in-studio, and now numbering in the double digits—is home to masterfully unearthed and polished treasures heretofore unavailable legitimately. Vol.10 adds mightily to Dylan's legacy, and to that of Self Portrait.

Another Self Portrait takes us back to the turbulent years of the first Nixon administration, shortly after Woodstock. All these years later, this now feels like the musical escape many searched for in those dark days, but in a more intimate, benign way than the strident rock and progressive jazz of the day.

The 35-track, two-CD edition comprises unreleased and/or alternate versions of songs, many traditional, from the Self Portrait sessions, as well as ones from Nashville Skyline and, even better, New Morning. The four-CD edition adds the 17 songs of Dylan's previously unreleased Isle of Wight concert of August 31, 1969, with the Band, as well as the original Self Portrait, newly remastered. Splurge on the latter, if you can.

Among the revelations that unfold again and again on Another Self Portrait is just how good a singer the Bard could be. The traditional "Spanish Is the Loving Tongue," an unreleased track from the original Portrait, features Dylan alone on piano, his voice wistful as he sings "Oh how a night would go a-flyin' / All too soon, I'd hear her sighin' / In her sweet and quiet tone / Mi amor, mi corazón." The song, which grew out of an old Charles Badger Clark poem, would later appear on Dylan (1973) with a south-of-the-border flavor, but without these lyrics or this splendor.

An alternate version of Skyline's "I Threw It All Away" again shows off Dylan in his warm, let-me-tell-you-a-story voice as he atones and urges all who listen, "If you find someone who gives you all of her love / Take it to your heart, don't let it stray." It's one of Dylan's most poignant songs, and at 2:21 one of his most economical. Charlie McCoy and Kenneth Buttrey, Nashville players and members of A-list session band Area Code 615, are heard here, and frequently on Another Self Portrait.

Another world-class participant is George Harrison, contributing guitar to "Working on a Guru," an unreleased Dylan song from New Morning, with a pinch of "Old Brown Shoe." Harrison also sings and plays guitar in "Time Passes Slowly #1." Musical nectar. As is the jubilant, upbeat "New Morning"—with horns! It's as if Dylan's trying to exorcize the tumult of the day, the hell with Nixon and the war.

Also wafting throughout the collection are the ghosts of heroes Woody Guthrie (no Guthrie songs here, though), in "Railroad Bill" and Dylan's own "Only a Hobo," and Lead Belly ("Bring Me a Little Water").

Then there's the Isle of Wight concert, four months after Skyline's release and just before the unveiling of the Band's seminal second album. Fittingly, Dylan imbues many of the vocals with his sweet twang of the time, with Robertson, Danko, Hudson, Manuel, and Helm his ace accomplices. "It Ain't Me Babe," part of Dylan's solo segment, feels like it could've come from Skyline, despite being written years earlier. Same with the bouncy "She Belongs to Me" and the boozy "The Mighty Quinn." More delicate is a solo "Wild Mountain Thyme," earlier recorded by Dylan protÇgÇs the Byrds, and a retro "To Ramona," in which what could be some minor amp buzz provides a touch of additional intimacy to a timeless concert, one Dylan sounds happy to be playing (footnote 1).

In a collection generous in songs not written by Dylan, it's interesting that the words of a relatively obscure songwriter nicely sum up the Another Self Portrait vibe: relax, slow down, and savor the moment rather than rebel against it. Accompanying himself on harmonica and joined by Al Kooper and David Bromberg, the master sings, "Take off your thirsty boots / And stay for a while / Your feet are hot and weary / From a dusty mile." "Thirsty Boots" was written by Eric Andersen, and the greatest songwriter of our time sings it as if it were his own. Here, indeed, it is.—David Sokol

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Footnote 1: What I found fascinating about the Isle of Wight concert was the way the Band almost staggered into each song's intro. It's as if Dylan didn't have a set list, instead reaching into his memory to select the song on the fly, secure in the knowledge that the Band would recognize the first note.— John Atkinson
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Friday, October 25, 6–9pm: Whetstone Audio (2401 East 6th St. #1001, Austin, TX) will host its next "Hi-Fi Hootenanny." Rega's Paul Darwin will introduce the company's new Elicit-R integrated amplifier and Saturn-R CD player/DAC, which made their official debuts at last week's Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. For more info, visit WhetstoneAudio.com.
Source : stereophile[dot]com

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It ranks among the most astounding turnarounds in American music. John Zorember—erstwhile bad-boy impresario of the downtown New York jazz scene—spent last month touted as a modern master, and Manhattan's pride, by the city's most venerable institutions of high culture: the Metropolitan Museum, the Guggenheim, Lincoln Center, Columbia University, and NYU.

The occasion was Zorn's 60th birthday (which fell on Sept. 2), and these vaunted halls and galleries hosted concerts of Zorn playing, or fronting ensembles of favored collaborators playing, his compositions almost every night all month long.

Zorn deserves his newfound place on the pantheon of "maverick" American composers, and in that realm his work dwarfs anyone's for its versatility. Jazz, rock, symphonic, chamber, choral—Zorn is master of all these domains, and some of his most recent music is among his most satisfying.

Early on (late 1970s through early '90s), it was common for critics and profilers to note that Zorn in German means anger. Much of Zorn's music was angry, rebellious; some of it set out to assault the sensibilities. (A friend who attended one of Zorn's early Soho-loft concerts recalls that admission was free, but to be let out cost $3.)

In 1993, Zorn started exploring his Jewish roots, attracted by the creed's outsider status—the appeal of a community joined by its members' outsiderness. He wrote 100 tunes for a book of songs he called Masada. Each tune was written in one of the two "Jewish scales" (a major scale with the 2nd note flat or a minor scale with the 4th note sharp). The first Masada group consisted of Zorn on alto sax, Dave Douglas on trumpet, Greg Cohen on bass, and Joey Baron on drums. (Their first concert was at the Knitting Factory in the East Village, as part of a month-long celebration of Zorn's 40th birthday.)

Masada was one of the three or four signature jazz groups of the decade; their music was riveting, adventurous, but also graceful, swinging and deep in the blues. The quartet recorded 10 studio CDs of 10 songs each, on the Japanese DIW label. Then Zorn formed his own label—Tzadik—which released five double-disc albums of live concerts. He then wrote a few hundred more Masada tunes and formed different ensembles to play them—the Masada String Trio (Cohen on bass, Mark Feldman on violin, Erik Friedlander on cello), the Bar Kokhba Sextet (the trio augmented by Marc Ribot on guitar, Baron on drums and Cyro Baptista on percussion), and more. One of the Zorn@60 concerts this past month was a 4½ hour "Masada marathon," consisting of 11 different bands and two soloists, each playing three Masada compositions. (The soloists were Erik Friedlander on cello and Uri Caine on piano, both—like nearly everyone that night—at peak powers.)

Since the turn of the century, Zorn's music has grown richer, subtler, more complex, and more graceful. One of his recent Tzadik CDs, A Vision in Blakelight, is inspired by the mystical writings of William Blake, and there's a Romantic reverie, a meditative depth, to Zorn's take on Blake that I think the earlier Zorn would have skirted—or perhaps touched on, then maneuvered around—in favor of the poet's grislier dark side. Part of it is the ensemble Zorn has put together: piano, harp, and vibes (played by John Medeski, Carol Emanuel, and Kenny Wolleson), as well as drums, percussion, and bass (Baron, Baptista, and Trevor Dunn). Vibes and harp don't figure much in early Zorn, but they do in a lot of his recent recordings.

Dreamachines, another new album, is inspired by the "cut-up" techniques of Bryon Gysin and William Burroughs, who in the early 1960s literally cut up passages and paragraphs they'd written, then rearranged them in random order—a literature of collage. Zorn has experimented with musical equivalents of this for a long time. But while his earlier renditions have a slash-and-burn vibe, this new one is infused with the melodic lyricism of Masada, and features the same group as the Blake album (minus the harp). I don't mean to draw too sharp a contrast. Zorn's early collages weren't harsh; they were witty, imaginative, sometimes ingenious. And I wouldn't call Dreamachines "mellow"; they're too riveting for that. But even on some of the Masada albums, a gorgeous swaying tune would be followed by a noise-feast. Now Zorn has figured out how to put everything he knows into a single composition. The more closely you listen, the more amazing this stuff is.

Zorn has always been attentive to sound quality, and these albums, engineered by Marc Urselli, is no exception. They sound terrific.

One more note. Don't think that John Zorn has abandoned his avant ways, his native Zorn. Toward the end of the Masada marathon last month, the Electric Masada band took the stage, and for the first time that night, Zorn played his alto sax, beginning with his loft-day squeals and squalls, before settling into a virtuosic blues groove, then putting the horn aside to conduct the band, pointing from one player to another as signals to come in, fade out, join in, go their own way, merge. At one point, a pure sonic energy heaved forth from the stage, I wouldn't know how to describe it, don't know how he pulled it off, Zorn seemed dazzled too, as he turned around to face the audience, holding his arms out, smiling, nodding his head, as if to say, "Can you believe this," and the audience roared in amazement.

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We end this show report as we started, with a photograph (this time by John Atkinson) of singer Lillian Boutté, who both opened and closed the RMAF with her band Eric Gunnison on piano, Mike Marlier on drums, and Mark Simon on bass, in the Denver Tech Center Marriott’s Atrium.

I’ve seen no official statistics, but my strong feeling is that the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, perhaps for the first time in its 10-year run, saw decreases in attendance, energy, and overall excitement. Opening day was quieter than in the past; on floors 4 and 5 of the Marriott Atrium, exhibitor rooms were often slow; overall, there seemed to be fewer women and young people; by Saturday night, just about everyone seemed sick, tired, or both; by Sunday afternoon, many of us were long ready to head home. And, still, the show was a success.

The Rocky Mountain Audio Fest succeeds for several reasons, perhaps none more important than the passion and commitment of the show’s organizer, Marjorie Baumert. Throughout the three-day event, she and her tireless staff raced everywhere, always happy and willing to help, and almost always with bright smiles.

The Rocky Mountain Audio Fest brings people together. I was moved by the story of the Darwin Cable Company, whose founders had met, for the very first time, at this year’s show. I was pleased to meet the couple from France, who’d been traveling across the US for several weeks and made sure to stop in Denver for RMAF. As always, it was an absolute joy to meet the people behind the gear, the men and women who work hard to bring ever more beautiful music to our homes.

Most pleasant of all, for me, was getting to meet and shake hands with our readers: For the most part, a writer has no idea of what happens to his or her words once they’ve left the screen—whether they’ve hit a target, missed by a mile, or were read at all. To those readers who stopped and said hello: Thank you. I heard so many kind things. (I also often heard some variation of: “I used to hate your writing, but now . . .”)

The Rocky Mountain Audio Fest provides a venue where the press can meet with manufacturers to discuss the industry’s biggest news. The biggest news right now comes in the form of DSD technology, the websites and hardware supporting it. There were exciting announcements, and absolutely beautiful sounds, from Sony, Jared Sacks of NativeDSD.com, and Chad Kassem of Acoustic Sounds. If you read no other posts from our coverage, read those. We have every right to expect even more exciting news to come in 2014.

Also know that there may be nothing more musically spectacular than a Peter McGrath demonstration of the Wilson Audio Alexandria XLF loudspeakers, bi-amped by Parasound and VTL amplification, supplemented by the big Thor subs, with music sourced from a dCS Vivaldi stack, playing David Wilson’s half-inch, 30ips master tapes converted to DSD—whew!—all running through Transparent cabling. The sense of touch, the sense of real musicians making real music, was absolutely magnificent. Soul-stirring. Only a few people in the world can afford to own such a system. So what? If you were at this year’s RMAF, you at least got to own it for 30 minutes. And, if you were there, I’m sure you’ll never forget it.

By the Sunday afternoon of the show, there were just a few copies of the November issue of Stereophile left on our booth. Within minutes, they were all gone. (Photo: John Atkinson)

Best Sound of the Show
The aforementioned system made of gear from Wilson, dCS, VTL, Parasound, and Transparent, followed by: Sony, both in their own room and in Chad Kassem’s room, in a system comprising Sony speakers and media player and Pass Labs amplification; and Philip O’Hanlon’s suite, with a system made of Vivid, Luxman, Brinkmann, and Transparent gear.

Best Music of the Show
Tony Joe White, in a live recording from Acoustic Sounds’ Blues Masters at the Crossroads event.

Best Beer of the Show
Great Divide Brewing Company’s Fresh Hop Pale Ale

Biggest Disappointment of the Show
Not enough Daft Punk

Biggest Surprise of the Show
Just enough Diana Krall

***

After every major hi-fi show—and often during every major hi-fi show—we find ourselves wondering: “Are there too many of these things?”

We can stop wondering. There are too many of these things. There are too many hi-fi shows and not enough hi-fi dealers—a major problem that must be addressed. For now, however, let’s look forward to more great music and sound, further advancements in the art of high-performance music playback, more high-quality audio components that real people can actually afford, more great times with friends and colleagues, and another successful Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. To the readers, exhibitors, and most of all, Marjorie Baumert and her dedicated staff, thank you for bringing us together.

For more outstanding RMAF show coverage, please visit InnerFidelity, AnalogPlanet, and AudioStream.

Source : stereophile[dot]com

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Wired with Transparent cables, the extreme audio system in the large room at the Denver Tech Center Hyatt—dCS Vivaldi digital source, VTL TL7.5 III preamp, VTL Siegfried power amps, Wilson Alexandria XLF speakers driven full-range and twin Thor's Hammer subwoofers driven by Parasound Halo JC 1 amplifiers below 38Hz—worked its magic both on the disco-meets-EDM of Daft Punk's "Lose Yourself to Dance" and the delicate harmonic traceries of Dave Wilson's Debussy violin sonata recording transferred to DSD by Puget Sound's Bruce Brown. In both cases, there was a sense of loss when the music stopped. It is difficult to imagine how music reproduction could get any better than what I heard in this room the Saturday afternoon of the show!

To show off what the subwoofers could do, Wilson ambassador Peter McGrath (above) played me a recording of John Williams' Liberty Fanfare, performed by the Air Force Band. Usually the bass drum is placed sideways on to the audience, but in this case it faced the microphones and had been struck with what Peter described as the "mallet of death!" And indeed, you could almost see the onset of the waveform as it left the Wilson speakers and subwoofers and struck you in the chest!

Source : stereophile[dot]com

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Resonessence—what a great name for the equipment that closed out my three days of blogging RMAF 2013. Happily it sounded really good as well, especially when JA pointed out that the reason this simple system’s top at first seemed rolled off was because the only way to align our ears with the tweeters of the 20-year old, unusually short B&W mini-towers was to either crouch way over or kneel on the floor.

Thus did Resonessence Labs of Kelowna, BC Canada bring me to my knees. But why, pray tell, did the company pair its Invicta Mirus ($4995), their top-of-the-line, all-in-one music player that uses 8 Dual ESS 9018 DACs per channel to decode up to DSD 64/128 and DXD 24/384, with older loudspeakers, generic power cables, and a distinct lack of set-up graces (as in racks, supports, resonance control, and the like) save for AudioQuest Rocket 88 cabling? Because at RMAF 2012, where they also got great sound, too many visitors attributed their success, not to their electronics, but to the $20,000/pair loudspeakers they were using. I suppose if they charged $15,995 for the same electronics, people would have been less skeptical (sigh).

Streaming music from an SD card, the Invicta Mirus transcended speaker and set-up limitations, and displayed a gratifyingly warm midrange and beautiful tonalities on Pink Floyd in DSD. Then, Yello’s “Planet Dada” provided electronic stereo silliness in 16/44.1, as well as dimensionality for days. I’ll bet, with superior loudspeakers, cabling, and set-up, the Invicta Mirus is a knockout. I’d love to hear it with those $20,000 loudspeakers and some good power cables (for starters). As Stephen Sondheim says at the end of “Send in the Clowns,” “Maybe next year.”

And, with that send-off, he who is sometimes a clown despite his best intentions bids adieu to another year of blogging the one audio show that everyone I know in the industry actually looks forward to, the warm, user friendly, and consistently rich Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. Here’s hoping these blogs, and the untold hours of effort that manufacturers, distributors, dealers, and show organizers put into RMAF 2013, help enrich your life with great music.

John Atkinson adds: I was impressed by the tiny Herus USB D/A headphone amplifier in this room (above). Selling for just $350, the Herus uses the ES9010-2M chip, has an asynchronous interface, and will decoded both single- and double-DSD, as well as 24-bit PCM up to 352.8kHz.

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“It’s all on this USB stick,” declared digital genius and Wavelength mastermind Gordon Rankin, as he pressed lots of data into my hand. Once accessed, I learned that I had enjoyedg a Macbook Pro Retina 15 16G/480GSSD connected via Thunderbolt to a 4T library; Wavelength’s battery-powered Crimson + Denominator DAC ($9000) connected to the computer via an AudioQuest Diamond USB; Wavelength’s new Europa analog/digital preamplifier ($7500) with ESS ES9018 DAC chip, network support, three analog inputs, and either Ethernet or Wi-Fi remote; Wavelength’s new all-silver Napoleon 300B amplifiers; Vaughn’s new Plasma loudspeakers ($15,000/pair, or $20,000/pair for the signature series w/upgraded power and MagneQuest custom modulation transformers); and Audioquest’s Sky interconnects and Redwood speaker cables.

Gordon explained that since the Plasma loudspeaker has no mechanical parts, but rather a very, very hot flame produced by the historic Duquesne Plasma tweeters, there are no resonance issues. The speaker also has a Fostex 208 Sigma midrange and power subs rolling in under 80Hz. This system produced a wonderful midrange, and controlled percussion wonderfully on Dave’s True Story’s “Sex Without Bodies” (24/96) and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Dance of the Tumblers (Reference Recordings, 16/44.1). Bass and depth were fabulous on the latter. Only some treble brightness detracted from the presentation.

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Bel Canto's John Stronczer was excited. "The Powerstream amplifier's S/N ratio is 120dB measured at the speaker terminals!" I was impressed. This is equivalent to 20-bit digital audio, which means this digital-input monoblock, which costs $15,000 each, is one of the quietest amplifiers I have encountered. It offers 300W into 8 ohms, 1200W into 2 ohms. Audio data presented to the ST-optical inputs are reclocked and then converted to analog with a BurrBrown PCM1792. The analog signal is then fed to an output stage based on the well-regarded Hypex class-D modules, used in a proprietary low-gain configuration to maximize dynamic range.

The complementary Stream Controller ($20,000) shown at the top of the detail photo accepts digital data in all the usual formats—USB, AES/EBU, Toslink, uPnP-compatible Ethernet—sampled at up to 384kHz and reclocks them to minimize jitter. A 64-bit DSP engine is used for the volume control and there are two ST-optical outputs and one AES/EBU output. Both the Stream Controller and the Powerstream are housed in black-anodized chassis machined from solid aluminum with constrained-layer damping applied to the baseplates to minimize resonances.

In a system featuring TAD CR1 speakers, Kimber Select cables, and HRS racks, the sound in this room with the familiar Reference Recordings Rite of Spring (24-bit, 176kHz WAV file on an HRX disc) was superb, and the best I have experienced from the TADs.

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Listening to Scaena's Silver Ghost speakers ($153,000/system) had been a highlight of last March's AXPONA in Chicago. At the Denver Tech Center Hyatt, the speakers had been set-up by Sunny Umrao (in photo) firing diagonally across a much larger room than in Chicago. With a system comprising a dCS Vivaldi digital source driving an Audio Research Reference 75 stereo amplifier for the towers and six inexpensive Crown class-D amplifiers for the six woofer modules operating below 120Hz, the sound of a live recording of Dave Brubeck's "Rondo a la Turk" did indeed sound live.

And in response to one critic who suggested that because the circular cross-section of the Scaena's woofer enclosure means that there will be a strong radial mode, this will lead to coloration, it should be remembered that the diameter of the enclosure is small compared to the wavelengths of the low-frequency sounds be generated. It is probable, therefore that this resonance will be too high in frequency—ie, well above the drive-unit's low-pass corner frequency—to be excited.

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Very clear and open sound, with a shiny treble and lovely midrange distinguished the room that partnered four lithium battery-powered components—a Kronos turntable ($32,000) outfitted with Lyra Atlas cartridge and Black Beauty tonearm, Veloce’s Platino Series LP-1 phono stage (NLA), Lithio Series LS-1 linestage ($18,000), and Lithio Saetta 400Wpc monoblock amplifiers ($18,000/pair)—with YG Acoustic’ Kipod II loudspeakers ($38,000/pair) and Kubala-Sosna Emotion cabling.
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By the time I reached the Tower’s 11th floor—my final floor, thank God—at 5:35pm on Saturday, I had been at it for over 8.5 hours, and my cold and fever were at their peak. It felt as though nothing short of the Balm of Gilead could bring me solace. But when I heard, in succession, impressively full-range sound and excellent low-bass definition on Mahler’s Symphony 2, and gorgeous warmth and color on everything soprano Arleen Auger sang, I felt as though I could simply float through the rest of the day in a state of peace. (That I didn’t was due to the vagaries of GPS navigation, but we’ll save that sad and silly story for another day.)

Welcome to the world of the sold-direct Volti Audio Vittora ($17,500/pair). Art Dudley reviewed this 104dB-sensitive, 3-way fully horn-loaded loudspeaker with a 15" bass driver in a single folded horn enclosure, 2" outlet midrange compression driver, wooden Tractrix midrange horn, 1" high-frequency compression driver, elliptical Tractrix tweeter horn, and hand-wired passive crossover networks in our September 2013 issue. I go into all that detail because this retro-looking baby sounds far, far better than one might think. Mated with Volti Audio’s Vittora subwoofer ($2900) and a Marchand Electronics MB42 subwoofer amplifier ($1500), the speakers sang thanks to three components from BorderPatrol: the S20 ESC dual-mono 18W/channel Parallel SET amplifier w/dual external power supply units ($25,750), Control Unit EXT1 triode line stage preamplifier ($12,250), and DAC2 with 6SN7 tube output stage ($9750). Despite a bit of softness to the sound—a slight gray tinge that I associate with SET amplification—the end result was both convincing and, with celestial music, absolutely heavenly.

Thank you, Volti Audio and BorderPatrol, for the gift of music in Room 1102.

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I went into the SimpliFi room expecting to see the excellent Weiss MAN301 media player and effective DSPeaker room correction and D/A devices. Yes, there were there at RMAF but SimpliFi's Tim Ryan wanted to talk about the Swiss Klangwerk Ella active speaker ($15,000/pair) shown in my photo. This modest-looking floorstander uses DSP to make it work as a time-aligned virtual point source. A constrained layer-damped Corian front baffle supports an advanced Aerogel-dome tweeter from Audax and a 5.5" woofer; two more 5.5" woofers covering the same passband are placed on the speaker's sides, and all three are reflex-loaded with a downward-firing port. The advantage of this design is that it has a wide listening window on both vertical and horizontal planes, explained Tim, and indeed, on Dire Straits' "Brothers in Arms," I found that I could move up and down and from side to side without any significant change in the perceived balance.
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Michigan retailer Paragon Sight & Sound's room on the Marriott's ground floor featured the Wilson Alexia speakers $48,500/pair. I was familiar with the Alexia, having just finished reviewing it for the December issue of Stereophile, as I was with Audio Research's CD9 CD player ($13,000), but not all with the Doshi Jhor 160 tube monoblocks (projected price of <$36,000/pair) that were driving the Alexias via Transparent Audio Reference XL cables, or the Doshi 3.0 tubed line stage and Doshi 3.0 tubed phono stage, both of these projected to sell for <$20,000 each. Michale Fremer was playing a Acoustic Sounds 45rpm test pressing of a Beach Boys album on the Pro-Jekt HL Signature turntable, fitted with a Koetsu Azule Platinum cartridge, when I entered the Paragon room, with all the equipment mounted on impressively engineered HRS racks and stands. "Midrange magic!" I wrote in my notebook as the Beach Boys launched into "In My Room." But when Michael put on a CD-R needle drop of Pet Sounds, I felt my comment in the forthcoming Alexia review that the speaker needs an amplifier that can control its low frequencies with a tight fist was confirmed, the bass not having as much definition as I was expecting from my experience with solid-state amps.

The Dhor 160 uses a 26 lb output transformer supplied by the respected English Sowter company, and a similarly over-specified power transformer from Toroid Corp in the US. Two pairs of KT-120 tubes are used for each channel to generate 160W.

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"Together, We Make Beautiful Music" proclaimed the one-sheet that was handed to me in this room. "You are listening to a complete audio system that cost under $15,000," it continued, adding that "we put together this relatively modest playback system to better demonstrate the musical purity and refinement produced with products manufactured by: Mojo Audio, Atomic Audio Labs, VH Audio." $15,000 doesn't sound "relatively modest" to me, but the sound in this room was surprisingly good considering that the speakers were a DIY design using a full-range 8" unit and the amplifiers were vintage Allen organ tube models, based on the Williamson circuit.

The Mac mini in my photo had been upgraded with Mojo's Joule II low-noise linear power supply and rests on an Atomic Labs resonance-tuned platform. This fed data to a Mojo Mystique D/A converter (from $1495, top in photo), which uses an Analog Devices AD1965 18-bit ladder-DAC chip without oversampling or even any aperture effect response compensation. This will handle sample rates up to 192kHz and it, too, rested on an Atomic platform. Power and signal cables were from Mojo and feature carbon-fiver shielding and a cotton dielectric; speaker cables were VH Audio's Counter-Helix Litz array.

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