Table of contents for March 2020 in Stereophile

THIS ISSUE: Herb travels to the European Triode Festival in Bellême, France. The image above is not a modernist oil painting. It’s an airport x-ray of my friend Jeffrey Jackson’s backpack. Can you identify its contents? Did you notice the red rectangle alerting the inspector of a suspicious object? Do you know what that suspicious object is, or what it’s worth? That ominous-looking black silhouette is a 1930s-era Western Electric 555W “receiver”—ie, a compression driver for use with a horn. It’s about 10" in diameter and weighs around 15lb. It requires a 7V DC/1.4A power supply for its field-coil magnet and would cost about $8000 to replace. In the compartment to its right are some old tubes: The large ST-size (“Coke-bottle”) tube is an Elektromekano S6, made in Copenhagen around…

What motivates an artist to make great statements? Whatever it is, it’s certainly a shock to see a rock-era songwriter rediscover his muse after some 40 years treading water. So it is that Pete Townshend re-emerges at the end of 2019 with his most powerful collection of songs since Empty Glass and the best Who album since Quadrophenia. It’s even more dramatic because this is not a solo album but a Who album, featuring Roger Daltrey’s magnificent voice. The Who in its prime could not exist without John Entwistle and Keith Moon in the mix, but the years have peeled away and now it’s all about Townshend and Daltrey. That point is emphasized in the personnel. The Who have been using Zak Starkey on drums and Pino Palladino on bass…

BECCA STEVENS Wonderbloom GroundUP Music (16/44.1 WAV) 2020. Becca Stevens, Nic Hard, prods.; Becca Stevens, Nic Hard, Bill Stevens, David Turk, Charlie Webb, engs.; Dave McNair, mastering PERFORMANCE SONICS The best “smart” pop album of the new year, so far at least, Wonderbloom is a flowering beauty by singer/multiinstrumentalist/songwriter Becca Stevens, who joyfully burns groove fuel and dives deep into poignant poetry and social commentary. Featuring a cast of 40-plus top-tier contributors, this is the most ambitious outing of the singer’s career, which previously saw her acoustic band run the gamut from Appalachian-tinged jazz to Irish folk. Wonderbloom stretches far beyond those vibes with a layered, multi-instrumental sound (from electric charango and hammered dulcimer to roto-snare and guitar loops) and perfect arranging by Stevens and Nic Hard, known for his…

CARL MARIA VON WEBER Der Freischütz Andreas Schager (tenor), Lise Davidsen, Sofia Fomina (soprano), Alan Held (bass-baritone), Corinna Kirchhoff, narrator, others; Frankfurt Radio Symphony, MDR Leipzig Radio Choir; Marek Janowski, cond. Pentatone PTC 5186 788 (2CDs). 2019. Job Maarse, prod; Jean-Marie Geijsen, Philipp Knop, engs. PERFORMANCE SONICS There are three great reasons to hear this mostly excellent new recording of Weber’s 1821 Der Freischütz, one of the first German operas and possibly German opera’s prototype. First, there’s Marek Janowski’s big-boned, fluent leadership of the fine Frankfurt and Leipzig forces. Second is the unreservedly perfect reading of the role of sensitive, prayerful Agathe by 32-year-old Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen, whose gorgeous voice manages to be both bright and warm at once. Her two arias are delivered nobly, the high A floated…

THIS ISSUE: Mikey listens to Rega’s new, ultralight—and very high-tech—P10 turntable, RB3000 tonearm, and Apheta 3 cartridge. Lately it seems that the more Rega charges for one of its turntables, the less you get—and from Rega’s performance perspective that’s a good thing. While some turntable designs pile on the mass, hoping to tame resonances and better isolate the record from the outside world, Rega has long advocated ultralow-mass designs. What’s up with that? Rega defines a turntable as a “vibration measuring machine.” Therefore, they contend—and this is putting it as simply as possible—the lower the mass, the less energy the system can store, only to be later released to confuse and muddy up the sound. Overdamp a turntable and it can sound dull, dead, and lifeless. I’ve reviewed a few…

In an era when polar opposites compete as absolutes, it can be a challenge to acknowledge the different and equally valid ways in which audiophiles approach musical truth. But the reality is that our perceptions of how reproduced music should sound are determined, to a large extent, by how we approach the live experience. For live acoustic performances, some of us prefer a direct, up-close sound, where highs are most vibrant, the spatial nature of sounds is most distinct, swells in volume can sometimes seem assaultive, and detail is most easily perceived. Others would rather sit farther back or in the top balcony, where highs mellow out while lower octaves remain strong, and the resonance of the performing acoustic adds warmth and glow to the musical experience. The collective skill…

I used DRA Labs’ MLSSA system to measure the Sonus Faber Olympica Nova 1’s farfield behavior with a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone. For the speaker’s nearfield response, I used an Earthworks QTC-40 mike, as its ¼ " capsule won’t obstruct the radiated sound. The Olympica Nova 1’s specified sensitivity is 87dB/2.83V/m. My estimated sensitivity was very close to that figure, at 86.7dB(B)/2.83V/m. Although the Olympica Nova 1’s nominal impedance is specified as 4 ohms, the solid trace in fig.1 reveals that the impedance remains above 4 ohms for the entire audioband. The minimum value is 4.2 ohms at 205Hz, and while the electrical phase angle (dashed trace) is high at some frequencies, this will be ameliorated by the high impedance magnitude at those frequencies. The Olympica Nova 1 will be…

The components I needed to choose for my first system were never in doubt: a turntable or record changer, an integrated amplifier, and a speaker. One of each, please, in those mono days. Today, even in stereo, that trinity would be regarded as rather traditional—or, if you prefer, purist. Digital has exploded the range of source options and loudspeaker options. Yet amplifiers have not changed much in how and what they do. They take an analog voltage signal from the source, increase it, and back it up with enough current so that the output can power a relatively insensitive device, the loudspeaker. Amps still do the heavy lifting, and that includes today’s popular class-A, class-AB, and class-D power amplifiers, none of which involve any digital operations. These being mature technologies,…

The Quad Electroacoustics Ltd. Artera Solus is a multifunction audio component that was designed to look smart on top of a bureau in a living room or office. It comes with a thick, removable smoked glass top that complements its compact dimensions. It weighs 25lb, and, in addition to being attractive, feels genuinely solid and well-made. Like its Artera series stablemates, the Artera Solus strikes an intriguing engineering and aesthetic balance between decorator-friendly lifestyle product and serious audiophile product worthy of the Quad name. Description The Artera Solus was designed by veteran Quad engineer Jan Ertner. It includes a line-level preamplifier, a 75Wpc class-AB power amplifier, a headphone amplifier, a DAC, and a CD transport built by JVC. The Solus’s front panel floats above the unit’s recessed base and features…

The idea of using digital signal processing (DSP) to convert digital audio data sampled at 44.1kHz or 48kHz to a higher sample rate is not new. I first heard the beneficial effects of upsampling at Stereophile’s 1998 hi-fi show in Los Angeles, where a pro-audio dCS 972 digital-to-digital processor1 was being used to convert 16-bit/44.1kHz CD data to a 24/192 datastream. So persuaded was I of the sonic. improvement offered by upsampling that I bought a dCS 972 to upsample CDs to 24/88.2 to feed my then-reference Mark Levinson No.30.6 Reference DAC. As D/A processors improved, my need for upsampling faded away. (While my dCS 972 still sees some use, this is for the opposite purpose: downsampling my hi-rez recordings to 16/44.1 to produce CD masters.) I subsequently wrote that…

MAREK NAPIÓRKOWSKI Hipokamp Marek Napiórkowski, guitar; Jan Smoczyński, electric keyboards; Pawel Dobrowolski, drums; Luis Ribiero, percussion; Adam Pierończyk, soprano saxophone Agora 001 (CD). 2019. Marek Napiórkowski, prod.; Leszek Kamiński, eng. PERFORMANCE SONICS Even if you travel frequently in Europe and pay attention to jazz from that continent, you can still be surprised. Marek Napiórkowski is so good, and so unheralded, that you wonder what other badasses lurk under the radar in places like Poland, where he lives. Hipokamp could be mistaken for a fusion record. Napiórkowski is a guitarist who can rock out and knock you down. He writes catchy tunes. His band is all electricity and percussion. Tracks like “Profesor Kuppelweiser” and “Flashback” are nasty funk. They get you twitching in your chair. But Hipokamp has qualities rarely encountered…

THIS ISSUE: Just because Stereophile has many voices doesn’t mean it lacks a point of view. On the contrary. The stars are matter. We are matter. But it doesn’t matter.—Don Van Vliet Only sensibilities trained on poetry can wholly appreciate it. —T.S. Eliot (writing about Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood) In the 17th century, steam engines began appearing throughout Europe and Asia, ushered into existence by any number of different inventors. More recently, multiple inventors conceived and cooked up the atomic bomb, the jet engine, and the solid-body electric guitar. Virtually every race of Homo sapiens has invented the bow and arrow, and people on at least three different continents invented the crossbow, all by themselves. Every culture with dairy resources has come up with cheese of some sort; every culture with a…

I measured the Métronome t|AQWO and c|AQWO using my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 “As We See It”1), making sure that the transport and the processor were each powered from the appropriate Elektra power supply. Although the c|AQWO offers choices of six different reconstruction filters, three different output levels, tube or solid-state circuitry, and both balanced and unbalanced outputs, except when I say otherwise, the measurements were performed from the balanced solid-state outputs set to the highest level, with the Sharp Roll-off filter. Looking first at the t|AQWO transport, its error correction was one of the best I have encountered—there were no glitches in its output until the gaps in the data spiral on the Pierre Verany Digital Test CD reached 2.5mm in length. (The Compact Disc…

I measured the Nova Olympica 1’s in-room frequency response with a digital track of uncorrelated pink noise and Studio Six Digital’s Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) module in their Audiotool’s smartphone app. I set this module to ⅙ octave, 1-second delay, flat frequency response plot, full frequency range (20Hz to 16kHz), no peak tracking, averaging mode, and log frequency scale. I started by averaging five room responses across a 2' horizontal window at the level of my ears sitting in my listening chair. Averaged across this broad window, the Nova Olympic 1’s frequency response was fairly flat between 40 and 16kHz, ±5dB.1 1 Although a suckout can be seen near the ~3kHz crossover frequency, which suggests that this measurement was taken above the tweeter axis. See JA’s commentary on fig. 6…

I tested the Parasound Halo A 21+ with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 “As We See It”1). I preconditioned the amplifier by operating it at one-third the specified power into 8 ohms for an hour. (With a class-AB output stage, one-third power results in the maximum dissipation in the output devices.) At the end of this time, the side-mounted heatsinks were very hot, at 162.8°F (72.7°C). The top panel was also hot, at 116°F (46.7.1°C). The Parasound’s voltage gain into 8 ohms measured 29.2dB from the balanced inputs, 29.4dB from the unbalanced inputs. In bridged-mono mode, the gain was 34.9dB into 8 ohms. The amplifier preserved absolute polarity (ie, was noninverting) with both balanced and unbalanced input signals and with the right channel used as the…

After driving to Sasha Matson’s place in upstate New York last September to measure the Wilson Sasha DAW speakers that he reviewed in the January issue, I stopped off at Art Dudley’s place in Albany on my way home the next day to measure the Rethm Maargas. As always, I used DRA Labs’ MLSSA system and a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone to measure the Maarga’s frequency response in the farfield, and an Earthworks QTC-40 mike for the nearfield and spatially averaged room responses. I used my usual Krell KSA-50 amplifier for the quasi-anechoic measurements but measured the room response with the Shindo Haut-Brion, with which Art had done most of his auditioning of the Maargas. When testing a loudspeaker, I raise it off the floor so that the tweeter is…

I measured the Quad Artera Solus using my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 “As We See It”1). I precondition amplifiers by running them at one-third power into 8 ohms for an hour. (One-third power results in the maximum dissipation in the output devices.) The Quad survived this demanding test, though the side mounted heatsinks were very hot, at 141.3°F (60.8°C). The front panel was cooler at 124°F (39.1°C). Looking first at the Artera Solus’s performance as a preamplifier and headphone amplifier, both sets of outputs preserved absolute polarity, ie, were noninverting. With analog input signals, the maximum voltage gain at the headphone jacks was a modest 1.6dB, that at the preamplifier outputs was 1.02dB, balanced, and -5.6dB, unbalanced. The headphone output impedance was appropriately low, at 5.5…

It was difficult to decide which tests would be best at uncovering what the Chord Hugo M Scaler was doing. If I examined, with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 “As We See It”1), the analog output of Chord’s DAVE or another D/A processor when fed upsampled data from the M Scaler, the result would be obscured by the anti-aliasing filter of the AP’s A/D converter. I could examine the digital output of the M Scaler, but the analyzer’s S/PDIF input is restricted to sample rates of 192kHz and below. Despite these cautions, I feel the following measurements do characterize the M Scaler’s behavior. For the testing, I fed data sampled at 44.1kHz or 48kHz to one of the M Scaler’s optical inputs from either the Audio…

THIS ISSUE: New LP reissues from Analogue Productions, Blue Rose Music, and Mobile Fidelity. In the January 2020 Stereophile, I described my transformation from John Fahey skeptic to John Fahey fan; suffice it to say, the late guitarist was far from the only musical artist whose work I came to enjoy only after a number of failed attempts. Another was the English band Yes, which I saw in concert in 1977, at New York’s Madison Square Garden: I was so bored by the many lengthy instrumental solos, each one remarkable only for the sheer number of notes being squirted at me, that I literally nodded off. (In my defense, it was also very warm in there.) Today, having been exposed to the group’s pre-1977 catalog, my appreciation for their ability…