Table of contents for February 2020 in Stereophile

ATTENTION ALL AUDIO SOCIETIES: We have a page on the Stereophile website devoted to you: stereophile.com/audiophile-societies. If you’d like to have your audio-society information posted on the site, email Chris Vogel at vgl@cfl.rr.com. (Note the new email address.) Please note that it is inappropriate for a retailer to promote a new product line in “Calendar” unless it is associated with a seminar or similar event. ARIZONA ❚ Wednesday, January 29, 2020, 7–9pm: Andrew Jones of Elac will be speaking to the Arizona Audio/Video Club on the art and science of speaker design. The event will be held in the recreation room of Faith Lutheran Church at 801 E Camelback Rd, Phoenix, AZ 85014. This event is for members only. For more information on joining the Arizona Audio/Video Club and attending…

“Everything that earned Triton Reference Stereophile’s highest Class A Rating in a gorgeous, super sounding, more compact and even more affordable package!” “…amazing…auspicious…simply spectacular…as if you were in Symphony Hall…among the best I have heard in my room regardless of price.” –Kal Rubinson, Stereophile GoldenEar Technology is pleased to announce the introduction of the new Triton One.R. This extraordinary new reference quality loudspeaker is a smaller, less expensive follow up to the Triton Reference. The T Ref has been compared with speakers selling for over ten times its surprisingly affordable cost. It has had a remarkable response from both music and hifi enthusiasts as well as press and reviewers from around the world, who have bestowed upon it innumerable Speaker-of-the-Year and Product-of-the-Year awards. Now the T One.R is here for…

For a decade, the sound of the Vivid Giya loudspeakers, which I had heard only at CES in private demonstration suites, beguiled me. My positive impressions were completely consistent from one show to the next—but then, so were the host and the surroundings. I had to wonder how much those factors contributed to my impressions. I had a similarly positive reaction to the sound of the new Vivid Kaya speakers in a tiny demo room on the show floor at the 2018 High End Show in Munich. Smaller and simpler in appearance than Vivid’s flagship Giyas, the Kayas are also significantly less expensive, even though they incorporate the same major design features. When Art Dudley and I sat down to talk about the Kayas with Vivid’s Laurence Dickie and Philip…

In my personal life I prefer the minimalist, one-box architecture of integrated amplifiers. Always have. Before I started writing for Stereophile, my only audio system consisted of a pair of 15 ohm Rogers LS3/5a loudspeakers (with factory wall mounts) and an ancient Creek integrated amplifier, connected to my computer via a Halide DAC HD, and to an Oppo CD player. That system had pitch-perfect tone and was satisfying with all types of music. I would never purchase an integrated amplifier with a DAC or phono stage residing in the same box. To me, that’s like buying an active loudspeaker. Why would I pollute a fine audio component with a nonupgradeable and possibly third-rate ancillary? For digital, I want a superquality DAC like the HoloAudio Spring I used for this review.…

I was blown away by the seemingly boundless soundstage and maximum color saturation. I thought I knew what a preamp could do. But when the Dan D’Agostino Master Audio Systems Momentum HD preamplifier ($40,000) arrived for review, all my expectations flew out the window. The two-piece Momentum HD preamp wasn’t exactly a stranger. I’d heard it in two of the finest sounding systems I have ever encountered, at a March 2019 event at Seattle’s Definitive Audio1 and, a month later, at Chicago’s AX- PONA.2 Both systems included Wilson Audio Specialties’ Alexx loudspeakers and Subsonic subs; D’Agostino Relentless monoblock amplifiers paired with the Momentum HD preamp (and other D’Agostino products); dCS Vivaldi digital stacks; Clearaudio Master Innovation turntable and cartridges; top-level Transparent Audio cabling; and HRS racks. But without hearing the…

In Herb Reichert’s review of the original Schiit Audio Ragnarok integrated amplifier,1 he wrote, “Schiit Audio’s Ragnarok [is] the first amplifier of my experience that plays earth and sky, mind and body, brown eyes and blue, speakers and headphones, with equal narcotic intensity.” Herb’s colorful conclusions so persuaded me of the Ragnarok’s worth that, when Schiit Audio’s Jason Stoddard and Mike Moffatt announced the impending release of the Ragnarok 2, I pitched a Stereophile follow-up review. I soon learned that the new amp is more than just a refined version of the original. The Ragnarok 2, which Schiit says is the first example of their new Nexus current-feedback differential amplifier topology, is a modular amp that can be ordered as “Just An Amp,” with two balanced (XLR) and three single-ended…

Next to Christmas carols, Sousa marches, and the collected works of Bobby “Boris” Pickett, there’s no more seasonal music than bluegrass, which comes to life at the 30 or so major outdoor festivals and scores of smaller events that take place every summer throughout the US. As I write this, on the day after Thanksgiving, 2019’s bluegrass season is only a memory, and the 2020 season is more than a half a year away. So I’m cheered to have a bluegrass reissue to recommend this month: the 20th anniversary LP release of Yonder Mountain String Band’s first album, Elevation (2LPs, Frog Pad Records, no catalog number). Recorded when the band members were in their 20s, and produced by Dobro ace Sally Van Meter, who also plays on the album’s “40…

In 2013, when I first wrote about it,1 the TechDAS Air Force One ($105,000) was that company’s best and most expensive turntable; it joined the handful of products that have earned an A+ in our semiannual Recommended Components feature—a rating that remained in place for six years. But too much time has passed since the Air Force One was auditioned by a Stereophile writer, so it has now fallen from that list. The Air Force One is still available, but it’s now a special-order product that, according to distributor Graham Engineering, can take up to six months to deliver. So rather than revisit the One, I decided to check out the readily available Air Force One Premium—the upgraded and costlier version ($145,000). The TechDAS Air Force Two and Air Force…

This, our February issue, is the first Stereophile issue to arrive during the year 2020, which marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of Audio Research—in my view one of the key events in the history of high-end audio. So it makes sense for this issue to include an Audio Research review—in this case, of the $20,000 Reference 160 S stereo amplifier. Following an auspicious start, hi-fi in the ’60s got complicated. It went backward by going forward. Hi-fi expanded to reach a larger audience. But it did so partly by going mid-fi, with a focus on style, convenience, and broad appeal. Technological advances also took hi-fi back. Believe what you want about today’s tube-vs-transistors debate: Back then it was no contest. “Solid state” audio—remember that trademark on all those…

Using DRA Labs’ MLSSA system, I measured the Vivid Kaya 45’s farfield behavior with a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone and its nearfield responses with an Earthworks QTC-40 mike. The Kaya 45’s specified sensitivity is 87dB/2.83V/m. To my surprise, my estimated sensitivity was higher, at 90dB(B)/2.83V/m. (I say “surprise” because my experience is that measured sensitivities are often lower than the specified figures, but they’re rarely significantly higher.) The Kaya 45’s nominal impedance is specified as 6 ohms, with a minimum magnitude of 2.8 ohms. The solid trace in fig.1 shows that the impedance drops below 6 ohms throughout the upper bass and lower midrange, with a minimum value of 2.4 ohms at 122Hz. The electrical phase angle (dashed trace) is often high, and the combinations of –51° and 4.3 ohms…

Prior to measuring the Pass Labs INT-25 using my Audio Precision SYS2722 system,1 I preconditioned it for an hour at one-third power into 8 ohms. At the end of that time, the heatsinks on the amplifier’s sides were hot, at 122°F (50°C), as was the top panel, at 116.6°F (47.8°C). Owners should make sure this amplifier is well-ventilated. The amplifier’s maximum voltage gain into 8 ohms was 25.4dB, and the amplifier preserved absolute polarity (ie, was noninverting). The Pass Labs’ input impedance is specified as 47k ohms; I measured 46k ohms at 20Hz and 1kHz and 37k ohms at 20kHz. The small reduction at the top of the audioband will be inconsequential. The output impedance was very low, at 0.06 ohms at low and middle frequencies, rising very slightly to…

I measured the Dan D’Agostino Momentum HD’s performance with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 “As We See It”1), checking some of the measurements with a loaned sample of Audio Precision’s top-of-the-line AP555x system. The gain at 1kHz for the balanced inputs to the balanced output with the volume control set to the maximum was 10.85dB for the low-gain setting, which was how JVS auditioned the preamplifier. (Unless indicated otherwise, all the measurements were taken with this gain setting.) Setting the gain to “26” resulted in a gain at 1kHz of 26.2dB. To my surprise, as this contradicts what is described in the Momentum HD’s manual, the preamplifier inverted polarity with the front-panel meter illuminated green. Pressing the Phase button on the remote control turned the meter’s…

I performed a full set of measurements on Schiit Audio’s Ragnarok 2 using my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 “As We See It”1). I preconditioned the amplifier by running it at one-third the specified power into 8 ohms for 45 minutes. At the end of this period, the temperature of the top panel had stabilized at 106.0°F (41.1°C), while the heatsinks measured 126.9°F (52.8°C). This amplifier should be placed in a well-ventilated location. Looking first at the small-signal measurements with line-level input signals, the Schiit amplifier’s maximum voltage gain, measured at the loudspeaker outputs, was 29dB into 8 ohms with the gain set to “25,” 18.6dB with it set to “8,” and 5.9dB with it set to “2.” (Schiit specifies gain in multiples—2×, 8×, 25×—instead of the…

When I first heard mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli in person some 29 years ago, at her West Coast debut in the “Cal Performances” series at Berkeley’s Hertz Hall, she was just 24 years old. Along with the rest of the audience, I was astonished at her ability to ally phenomenal coloratura technique with an out-of-the-box range of expression—unheard since the prime of Maria Callas. It was clear why Decca had already signed her and released her first recording the year before, when she was just 23. Astonishingly, 30 years later, Bartoli’s musical powers have increased. On Farinelli’s 11 tracks, she spans nearly three octaves and executes multioctave leaps without apparent effort. Her embellishments remain as tasteful and consonant with the music’s emotional expression as they were at the start of her…

US: NEW YORK, NY Jason Victor Serinus On November 8, at the very small New York Audio Show, Paris-based music streaming service Qobuz announced that it has streamlined its subscription plans, lowered prices—and eliminated MP3 files from its streaming catalog. At a press event, Dan Mackta, managing director of Qobuz USA, said that Qobuz now offers “Studio Premier” subscriptions for $14.99/month or $149.99 for a full year. Studio Premier grants subscribers unlimited access to Qobuz’s catalog of more than 50 million CD-quality tracks and also millions of hi-rez tracks up to a resolution of 24/192. Qobuz will continue to offer its “Sublime+” plan ($249.99/year), which includes streaming access plus a “substantial” discount for hi-rez download purchases from the Qobuz store. The service’s other plans have been eliminated—which means, importantly, that…

Only recently did I learn that successive generations of the Chevrolet Corvette are referred to by the cognoscenti with two-character alpha-numeric identifiers: C1, C2, C3, and so on. I learned this while reading about the most recent version—C8, known to non-cognoscenti as the 2020 Corvette—which happens to be the first version since C2 that impresses me. (I say that as one who used to work for the owner of a C3, a then-middle-aged male who actually boasted, while under the influence, that he and two of his C3-owning friends drove them solely because their juvenile styling attracted juveniles. Rest assured I left his employ within days of that revelation.) In most ways, the Shindo Cortese power amplifier ($13,500 with F2a output tubes) is as far from an audio Corvette as…

It’s 3am. You’re lying in bed. Something woke you up—you don’t know what it was. You pull back the covers, get up, and tiptoe out to your listening room. There, standing by your record rack, thumbing through your prized LPs, is a man in black (no, not Johnny Cash—a different man in black). You see a bulge in his pocket; it could be a gun. Something shiny catches your eye—there’s a switchblade knife between his teeth! At his feet, leaning against your record shelf, is a cudgel. Oh, and it looks like he might have some infectious disease. You, of course, are in your PJs. You notice, at the top of the stack of records that he holds under his arm, that one record, the one you love the most,…

I used DRA Labs’ MLSSA system and a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone to measure the Magico M2’s frequency response in the farfield, and an Earthworks QTC-40 mike for the nearfield and in-room responses. The 165lb loudspeaker was too bulky to move outside for testing or to lift onto my computer-controlled turntable. I therefore had to do the quasi-anechoic measurements in my listening room, where the proximity of room boundaries led to more aggressive windowing of the time-domain data than usual, which in turn reduced the graphs’ resolution in the midrange. Although Magico specifies the M2’s sensitivity as 88dB/W/m, my estimate was slightly lower, at 86dB(B)/2.83V/m. The M2’s impedance is specified as 4 ohms. My measurements indicated that the impedance magnitude (fig.1, solid trace) was close to 4 ohms in the…

As with the Audio Research Reference 160 M amplifier that was reviewed in the October 2018 issue of Stereophile,1 measuring the Reference 160 S was a complicated business. The amplifier has balanced and single-ended inputs, output stages that can be run in either triode or Ultralinear mode, and three output-transformer taps. In effect, it is 12 different amplifiers. I performed full sets of tests using the balanced inputs in both triode and Ultralinear modes from the 4 ohm, 8 ohm, and 16 ohm output taps, then repeated some of the tests using the single-ended inputs. After I installed the tubes, I used the Tube Check button on the front panel to make sure all was well with the eight KT150 beam tetrode output tubes; the four LEDs for each channel…

PS Audio Stellar Phono Editor: Thanks to Michael Fremer for his incredibly thorough and detailed review of our Stellar Phono preamplifier. Because I started PS Audio 46 years ago with a phono preamplifier that performed well above its price, Darren Myers’ creation is very special to PS—and to me, personally. That first phono preamp was my baby, designed through trial and error, based upon extensive listening tests. My design didn’t follow the textbook standards of the day, but it sounded great. The same is true of Darren’s design, and we couldn’t be prouder of it. Michael’s praise is especially meaningful given his unmatched experience and superb reference system. We’ve all heard moderately priced components that sound fine when used in a not-too-revealing system but that fall apart in a great…