Table of contents for July/August 2022 in The Absolute Sound

MAX TOWNSHEND, designer and owner of Townshend Audio, has died. He passed away on December 31, 2021, aged 78. For decades, he was an inventive and invigorating presence in audio in the UK, with worldwide influence. He took a pioneering interest in many ideas that became widespread in audio later on—and in some that did not but should have. These included exotic stylus shapes for phono cartridges in his moving-coil cartridge with parabolic stylus; metal drivers and ultra-rigid enclosures in his Glastonbury speakers; curved driver arrays for exact time alignment of drivers in his curved line-source speaker; heavy, inert platters for belt-driven turntables in his Rock Reference; the damping trough on the front end of the tonearm (originally suggested by Jack Dinsdale but brought to production by Townshend) in the…

This interesting tonearm is produced by the same Auburn, Washington, company that introduced vinyl fans to the KD-CLN-LP200 Ultrasonic Vinyl Record Cleaner. In development for several years, the KD-ARM combines two types of tonearm designs, linear-tracking and pivoted, in an attempt to provide the benefits of both. The Klaudio ’arm is supplied with an automatic ’arm lift that mechanically controls all up/down functions via a button added to a laser-light module. There is also a (user-adjustable) proximity sensor located at the edge of the automatic arm lift that detects when the tonearm reaches the end of a record’s runout groove and automatically raises the ’arm. Options include the choice of either standard nickel-plated or a gold-plated finishes and the selection of tonearm length, either 10.5” or 12” (equivalent pivot-to-spindle mounting…

Good luck finding Riggins, Idaho, without a good map. Located in the west-central edge of the state in the Pacific Northwest, Riggins, an hour north of McCall, is just over a ridge where the Snake River courses through Hells Canyon. Beautiful, rugged country, but as unlikely a spot for a cable company as I can imagine. Nonetheless, that’s where you’ll find Snake River Audio and its affable founder/designer Jonny Wilson. And business is good. Snake River Audio (SRA) designs and manufactures analog and digital cables across most categories, including power cords and guitar and pedal cables. Its business model is factory direct. The company prides itself on customer communication and service. Playfully or alarmingly (depending on your comfort level with these reptiles), each Snake River model is named for a…

After Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab began releasing remastered pressings of popular recordings in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the label quickly had a ripple effect on the listening habits of music lovers. Suddenly more fans of well-known artists (remastered titles by Steely Dan, Al Stewart, Supertramp, and Fleetwood Mac were among the popular early releases) became aware of how much mastering (and pressings, and high-quality vinyl, among other things) mattered and in turn felt compelled to up their game when it came to buying stereo equipment. Mobile Fidelity also expanded its audience by remastering jazz, classical, and other genres, again broadening interest in all things audiophile. Later, Mobile Fidelity continued to transform the music and audio worlds instead of simply mirroring already-existing trends. Innovations included the Original Master Recording™…

MUSIC SONICS John Lee Hooker: Don’t Turn Me from Your Door. Atco/Speakers Corner (LP). It’s easy to imagine that, if that essential American music we call the blues could be reduced to its bare-bones quintessence, John Lee Hooker would be the result. He delivers his lyrics in a way that seems almost casual, and it can escape the attention of casual listeners what a fine vocalist Hooker really was. Meanwhile the guitar backing moves between hypnotic bass lines, off-beat chord riffing, and stinging, unpredictable stabs of melody Like Lightnin’ Hopkins, Hooker occupies a stylistic middle ground between prewar and modern blues, but he strips things down so much that even early Delta blues players seem rococo by comparison. There is something modern in this minimalism; the twisted guitar lines are…

Roger Skoff is back. Yes, the same Roger Skoff of XLO, the guy who knows more about cables than most people have forgotten. Roger sold XLO in 2003 after concluding that he had taken the products as far as he could without implementing technologies that were simply not available at that time. He occasionally offered consultation on design as the company developed its own personality and also focused on writing reviews for many online and print magazines, which he still does today. Ever the researcher and tinkerer, his passion for cable design never waned, and the temptation to re-enter the fray with a new company and new cable line became overwhelming, as the technology and material quality that had not previously been available came into its own. Enter RSX Technologies.…

I CAN REMEMBER being in the Photo Lab at my local junior college when the first single from The Cars, “Just What I Needed” blasted out of the speakers. It was 1978, and I was hooked. The Roy Thomas Baker “Saturated-As-Hell™” drum sound when the tom fills finally roll in...I thought it not dissimilar to the “Queen” and “Journey” recording approach. Bought the LP and checked the credits against the others. Bingo. Some years later, while working as an audio engineer for Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab, I had the good fortune of being employed in the late 80s alongside a mixing engineer from Sound City in L.A., who regaled me with industry “RTB” stories. He told me that Roy owned one of the few custom-made 40-track Stevens multitrack analog tape…

MUSIC SONICS Kenny Dorham: Matador United Art- ists/Impex (LP). Impex’s new edition of Kenny Dorham’s Matador marks the first time this relatively obscure nugget has been reissued on 180- gram vinyl. Joining Dorham’s soulfully lyrical trumpet is the outstanding quartet of Jackie McLean (alto), Bobby Timmons (piano), Teddy Smith (bass), and J.C. Moss (drums). The Brazilian-inflected “El Matador” introduces the group’s easy camaraderie, with McLean delivering an especially tasty solo, leading into his three-part suite, “Melanie, ” which is the musical heart of this release. Here everyone shines, notably Timmons with his breathless, bluesy piano solo. “Smile” is a straight-ahead bopper with an excellent break by Dorham, while the ballad “Beautiful Love” is another sweet showcase for McLean. “Prelude, ” by Heitor Villa-Lobos, is reimagined as a lovely duo featuring Dorham…

MUSIC SONICS Ukrainian Moods. Violina Petrychenko. Ars Produktion. Degreed in musicology as well as performance, Ukrainian pianist Violina Petry-chenko has devoted her recorded output to promoting and contextualizing the work of Ukrainian composers, much of it previously suppressed. She maintains a teaching and international concert career from her base in Cologne. Her first disc on Ars paired works by Scriabin and Viktor Kosenko, who was much influenced by the former’s early romanticism and was one of Ukraine’s most recognized composers. This SACD showcases miniatures by four Ukrainian composers spanning the 20th century. Lewko Revuzkij and Kosenko took the European tradition of Chopin to the threshold of modernism before being constrained by Stalinist post-avant-garde reaction. Mykola Kolessa, Igor Schamo, and his son Jurii found ways to use folkloric elements (dance forms,…

Luxman LMC-5 Phono Cartridge After a 40-year absence from the phonocartridge market, Luxman introduces the LMC-5 moving-coil cartridge, featuring a one-body design using a Shibata-profile stylus fixed to a low-mass, 0.5mm aluminum-pipe cantilever— the preferred combination for sonics and high trackability. To secure the fulcrum of the vibrating system, the single-point support uses a high-precision piano wire some 80 micrometers in diameter, about the thickness of a human hair. The mc generator incorporates a cross-mounted iron core with the left and right coils wound symmetrically for superior channel separation. To achieve optimally consistent coil windings with minimum moving mass, the coils themselves are even thinner than piano wire. The precision-machined aluminum body is anodized to a deep red, Luxman’s corporate color, with a laser-etched Luxman “L” in front. Price: $2695.…

Denon may be the oldest audio company in the world if you factor in its prehistory, which commences four years before the end of the nineteenth century in the person of one Frederick Whitney Horn, an American entrepreneur seeking his fortune in Japan. He began by importing tools in Yokohama, then moved on to selling gramophones, eventually producing discs, soon opening a recording studio the better to standardize and control the entire process from source material to playback. By 1910 he had formed the Japan Recorders Corporation. I have no intention of detailing the whole half century of swings, roundabouts, and mergers during which JRC developed into the entity we now know as Denon (a more detailed history is here: highfidelity.pl/!ev/artykuly/09_02_2007/ denon.html). I unearth its origins rather to draw attention…

This one is different. Different and better. The different part is easy: Put on a record, listen to it with the same cartridge you listened to it with on some other turntable, and hear the difference. People who have written about Pear Blue turntables before noticed the difference, all right. The trouble is that sometimes they did not understand why the difference they heard-the less edgy, “softer” sound that they all commented on-was better, as, indeed, it is. This is one of the best turntables in sight. But that is just how it is with turntable reviewing, and for that matter a lot of other things in audio. Not knowing what ought to happen is a problem. People are pretty acute about hearing differences. And why not? All you have…

I enjoy tubes and particularly like tube phonostages. I’ve owned quite a few in my day and have found they capture music remarkably well, despite the challenges of maintaining very low noise while amplifying minute signals. Although Zesto Audio has made quite a name for itself in the high-end audio community in a relatively short period of time, the Andros Deluxe II was my first exposure to one of its products. The word Zesto is Greek for “hot.” That seems applicable for a firm making tube products, but tubes are also really cool! I had the opportunity to speak with George and Carolyn Counnas about their audio journey. (They are the husband-and-wife team that founded Zesto.) George is the engineering side, and Carolyn is the marketing side, including creating the…

About two years ago, my aging Sota Cosmos turntable received a long overdue factory-reconditioning. Upgraded to Cosmos “Eclipse” status, it was effectively a new ’table. Among the numerous improvements were a new electronics package and a magnetic bearing. Physically, it looked like my old Sota (more or less), but sonically, it was almost unrecognizable with more precise imaging, tighter bass, a wider dynamic envelope, and a much deeper dive into the pool of resolution and transparency. Outside of the turntable, however much had remained unchanged. The tonearm/cartridge tandem was the same tried-and-true SME V and Clearaudio Charisma V2. No concerns there. But one key link hadn’t been examined for a few years–the interconnect that ran from the tonearm to the Pass Labs or Parasound JC3+ phonostage (a five-pin DIN-to-RCA). I…

Little did Cécile McLorin Salvant know when she was studying French law in Paris while also taking classical piano classes on the side that she would end up winning the 2010 Thelonious Monk International Vocal Competition, sign a contract with the Detroit-based Mack Avenue Records label, subsequently win three consecutive Grammy Awards for Best Jazz Vocalist, AND be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (commonly but unofficially known as the “Genius Grant”) in 2020 and 2021. The daughter of a Haitian father and French mother, she and her older sister only spoke French in the house with their parents while growing up in Miami, and though she remembers her mother playing records by Dinah Washington and Nancy Wilson around the house, she herself wasn’t deeply connected in her formative years to the…

THE TERM “AZIMUTH” refers to the perpendicularity of the tape head to the tape. If the head is aligned precisely at 90° with respect to the tape, we say that the head has perfect azimuth alignment. If the head is tilted slightly in either direction, the head has an azimuth error. It’s vital that the azimuth be set correctly, as even a slight error will result in a loss of high frequencies. That’s the simplified explanation. Azimuth error is more precisely defined as a difference between the angle of the record head in relation to the angle of the playback head. If you play a tape on a machine that has a perfect 90° alignment of the playback head to the tape, but the record head on the machine that…

‘I believe we as an industry need to do a better job of being more approachable and inclusive.’ How did your interest in the high end begin? I started the same way as most of the folks reading this did: I heard a system that caught me off guard and absolutely took my breath away. Never before had I listened to anything that made me do a double take. The musicians were in the room, playing live. It was so real, so immediate, so magical it was absolutely transformative. I’ve been chasing that dragon ever since. What gear made up your first system? It was the very speakers above that caught my attention, a pair of Energy-22 CBC studio monitors, a Luxman tube/hybrid integrated amplifier, and an AR turntable with…