Indice dei contenuti per July 2022 in Stereophile

Are well-heeled audiophiles ready for a knob-free future? Gryphon Audio Designs thinks so. In contrast to Gryphon’s volume knob–dominated Pandora preamplifier, the Danish company’s new Commander offers nothing on its bold front panel to grab or turn. Instead, there’s a large, extra-thick, triangular glass protuberance that extends dramatically below the chassis’s vertical dimension. That’s where you’ll find an “on/off” button, the main unit’s only physical switch. A 4.3" TFT capacitive touch screen incorporated within that triangular glass panel controls all this preamp’s functionality. The pushbutton remote control duplicates many but not all operations. More about that later. The Commander is an unusually large, heavy, two-chassis design featuring an 84lb power-supply chassis and a 67lb signal/control chassis. Each chassis weighs more than many powerful power amplifiers and measures approximately 18" wide…

I measured Lejonklou’s Entity phono preamplifier with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system.1 The single, moving coil–compatible input preserved absolute polarity and offered 70.2dB of gain. (Though this is slightly lower than the specified 71dB, my measurement was affected by the voltage-divider action between the preamp’s input impedance and the Audio Precision’s output impedance of 20 ohms.) The input impedance was 90 ohms with it set to “90,” 120 ohms with it set to “120,” and 180 ohms with it set to “180,” all values consistent from 20Hz to 20kHz. The output impedance is specified as 300 ohms; I measured 264 ohms at 20Hz, 295 ohms at 1kHz, and 297 ohms at 20kHz. The error in the Entity’s RIAA equalization (fig.1) was low, though there was a very slight, 0.2dB boost…

The Technics SU-G700M2 appears to be a less powerful, less–well-equipped sibling of the Technics SU-R1000 integrated amplifier that KM reviewed in December 2021, which offered superb measured performance.1 I measured the SU-G700M2 with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system,2 and as the amplifier has an output stage that resembles class-D, I inserted an Audio Precision AUX-0025 passive low-pass filter between the test load and the analyzer. This filter reduces RF noise that would otherwise drive the SYS2722’s input circuitry into slew-rate limiting. (Without the filter, there was 720mV of ultrasonic noise, with a center frequency of 67kHz, at the amplifier’s output terminals.) I used the filter for all the loudspeaker output tests, other than frequency response. I looked first at the Technics’s performance via its single-ended line inputs. The SU-G700M2 preserved…

I measured the Rotel Michi S5 with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system,1 preconditioning the amplifier by operating it at1/8 the specified power into 8 ohms for 30 minutes. At the end of that time, the top panel’s temperature was 86°F/30°C, and that of the side panels next to the heatsinks 101.1°F/38.4°C. Though the rear-panel fans had turned on and were venting hot air, they were silent. The Michi S5’s voltage gain at 1kHz into 8 ohms was 23.6dB for the balanced input and 27.7dB for the unbalanced input, both values close to the specified gains. Both inputs preserved absolute polarity, ie, were noninverting. The single-ended input impedance is specified as 12.5k ohms. I measure 12.7k ohms at low and middle frequencies, decreasing inconsequentially to 11.7k ohms at the top of…

Certain albums stand as monuments because of the influence they had on contemporary and future musicians despite having little commercial success. The Velvet Underground & Nico comes to mind. So do the early Ramones albums. And then there are albums that had just as much influence but were megahits—a much rarer thing. One of those, surely, is Rush’s Moving Pictures, a multiplatinum seller with hits that have stayed in rotation on certain FM radio stations ever since the album’s release more than 40 years ago. Moving Pictures has influenced generations of rock, prog, grunge, and even jazz musicians. Its pairing of virtuoso musicianship with radio-friendly riffs, hooks that are at once edgy and direct, and lyrics that are at the same time plain-spoken and enigmatic captured the imaginations of nascent…

Run for Cover Records (16/44.1 stream, Qobuz). 2022. Anna Laverty, prod.; Laverty and Joseph Carra, engs. PERFORMANCE SONICS If the theme of Camp Cope’s third album, Running with the Hurricane, is personal growth, its core is Georgia Maq’s voice—specifically, a new way of using that voice, approaching it as an instrument, applying detailed skill to vocal production. Both her time of self-reflection during COVID lockdowns and the vocal cord surgeries she has needed led her to this new revelation. We all get to reap the benefits. Besides her magnetic singing, Maq is also the songwriter, pianist, and guitarist for this Melbourne-based trio, with Kelly-Dawn Helmrich on bass and Sarah Thompson on drums, which formed in 2015 and really gained notice in 2018 with their punk-feminist volcano of an album, How…

Fat Possum (16/44.1 stream, Qobuz). 2022. Jason Pierce, prod. and eng. PERFORMANCE SONICS When Spiritualized released its 2018 album And Nothing Hurt, leader Jason Pierce, also known as J Spaceman, announced that he was thinking about hanging it up. Too much emotional, mental, and physical toll was exacted in making a Spiritualized album. But the pandemic lockdown energized Pierce, who thrives on solitude. The result is the ninth album in the band’s 22-year history and a renewal of the wondrous majesty of their celebrated 1997 tour de force, Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space. One of the best things about Spiritualized has always been its inherent contradictions. Pierce claims to cherish isolation, yet this album teems with more than 30 musicians—fewer than some earlier records but still a…

Smith, tenor saxophone; Stevens, guitar; Kris Davis, piano; Dave Holland, bass; Terri Lyne Carrington, drums Whirlwind WR4783 (CD, available as download, LP). 2022. Smith, Stevens, prods.; Paul Antonell, eng. PERFORMANCE SONICS In Common is an uncommon project. Tenor saxophonist Walter Smith III and guitarist Matthew Stevens co-lead this quintet, and they change the rest of the personnel for every album. Their collaborators started strong and keep getting more distinguished. Their first two records had badasses like Joel Ross, Marcus Gilmore, and Linda May Han Oh. Their third release has two NEA Jazz Masters—bassist Dave Holland and drummer Terri Lyne Carrington—and a rising star, Kris Davis, on piano. In Common never feels like an all-star band. Smith and Stevens are less interested in showing off their assembled firepower and more interested…

Cleveland Orchestra/Franz Welser-Möst The Cleveland Orchestra TCO0004 (CD). Elaine Martone, prod.; Gintas Norvila, eng. PERFORMANCE SONICS The Cleveland Orchestra’s first post-pandemic public concerts, from which these Strauss performances are drawn, arguably represent an occasion worthy of preservation. In terms of purely musical value, though, the recorded performances prove less than deathless. Welser-Möst has consolidated his reputation and technique over a 20-year tenure in Cleveland, but these performances aren’t his best. Seducer Don Juan is breathless, not suave. Phrases could be separated better; even when the conductor underlines their motivic links, the effect is of a run-on sentence. (Bows that sit long on the strings don’t help.) The tempi as such aren’t rushed, but everything feels hasty, and a couple of sudden accelerations are herky-jerky. All told, it’s an exhausting experience.…

Lublin, Poland, is about 130 miles from Lviv, Ukraine, a town that has been in the news lately. That’s about the same distance as Hershey, Pennsylvania, is from my desk in northern New Jersey, where I’m writing this. They are close. Russian missiles struck Lviv on March 18, 2022, and today Lviv is preparing for more intense bombardment. J.Sikora manufactures turntables and tonearms in Lublin, Poland. Concentrating on something as frivolous as audio reviewing and not thinking about what’s happening in Ukraine is difficult enough. Lowering the stylus onto a record spinning on J.Sikora’s top-of-the-line Reference turntable, manufactured in the Allmet metal fabrication factory, which is so close to the mayhem, amplifies feelings of helplessness. Those feelings are further intensified by having met and spent time at more than one…

The Gryphon Commander’s power supply was too heavy for me to lift onto the test bench for the measurements, so I wheeled it into the test lab on a small dolly. I could lift the lighter preamplifier chassis onto the bench, but the power umbilicals weren’t long enough to reach the supply on the floor. I therefore placed the preamplifier on top of the supply, separating the two chassis with a stack of 2×4s to provide some separation and to avoid damaging the supply’s finish. Still, the proximity of the power supply could disturb the preamplifier’s noisefloor. I used my Audio Precision SYS2722 system1 to examine the Gryphon preamplifier’s measured performance. The Commander preserved absolute polarity (ie, was noninverting) with both balanced and unbalanced inputs and outputs. As set by…

CHANNEL D LINO C 3.3 PHONO PREAMPLIFIER Michael Fremer was impressed by the sound quality of Channel D’s Lino C 3.3 phono preamplifier when he reviewed it in his June 2022 Analog Corner column. Editor Jim Austin suggested I examine its performance on the test bench. The Lino C 3.3 ($3799, basic version1) resembles its predecessor, the Lino C 2.0, which Mikey reviewed in June 2019.2 The 3.3 is powered by a rechargeable battery and features a direct-coupled, wide-bandwidth, balanced, transimpedance circuit, which generates an output voltage that’s proportional to the current generated by a moving coil cartridge. The fully loaded review sample ($7082) was supplied with a remote control and fitted with the optional moving magnet input, voltage-mode moving coil input, ultrahigh-precision RIAA certification, and front-panel LED indicators. I…

My tastes coalesced around rock music, particularly the harder and faster kind, by the time I was in middle school. Earlier, they were oriented toward pop: The Beatles are my first and forever musical love. My two older brothers were into music. One of them skewed pop/top-40. The other skewed Doors, psychedelic, and prog. Both were influences. My best friend at the time had an older sister who was well-versed in rock music and the ’70s rocker-girl lifestyle; she turned me on to the Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath, Cream, and in other ways. Also, it was the heyday of rock-FM in the vibrant metro–New York City market. I started making mixtapes early. Later, that friend with the cool sister went away to prep school, got kicked out, and returned a…

World Circuit 752656 (CD). 2022. Oumou Sangaré, Nicolas Quéré, Pascal Danaë, prods.; Oubda Eliézér, Quéré, Mamadou Sidibé, Dick Beetham, engs. PERFORMANCE SONICS As she has since her 1989 debut catapulted her to world-music stardom, Sangaré, the most prominent exponent of the Wassoulou music of southwestern Mali, blends traditional and modern influences on her latest release, and with more sophistication than ever before. The songs, most of which she wrote while living in Baltimore during COVID lockdown, fit socially uplifting lyrics in the Wassoulou language to sweetly melancholic melodies in the pentatonic minor mode, giving the music a bluesy cast. Recorded in Baltimore, Paris, Bamako, and Ouagadougou (the capitals of Mali and Burkina Faso), Timbuktu inverweaves different takes from far-flung studios—lead vocals and responsive choruses, Western and African string, keyboard and…

Hamasyan, piano; Matt Brewer, bass; Justin Brown, drums; three guests. Nonesuch 075597911473 (CD, available as download, LP). 2022. Hamasyan, prod.; Pete Min, eng. PERFORMANCE SONICS On paper, StandArt looks promising. Tigran Hamasyan has been an exceptional pianist his whole life. (He started at three and made his first record, World Passion, at 17, in 2005.) Most of his music has been dedicated to bringing the traditional music of his native Armenia, with its distinctive scales and modalities, into jazz. StandArt is his first album of American standards. It looks even more promising when you see the list of A-list guests: tenor saxophonists Joshua Redman and Mark Turner and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire. But this album is not an unqualified success. Especially on the trio tunes, Hamasyan often gets caught up in…

Trío Arriaga. Eudora EUD-SACD-2201 (CD). Gonzalo Noqué, prod. and eng. PERFORMANCE SONICS The Tchaikovsky trio, cast in two large movements, frequently struggles to find an identity, or an aesthetic point. The Trío Arriaga’s recording is the first I’ve actually liked. In the first movement, the players project the two themes with clear contours and firm direction; in the codetta, they delve more deeply into typical Tchaikovskian yearning, turning introspective as the recap winds down. Their suggestive colors and character solve the unwieldy theme and variations: A mournful “Volga Boatmen” episode (track 6) segues into high piano chords with a Christmas-carol twinkle. Fugues were not Tchaikovsky’s strength, but the players articulate this one incisively. The Chopinesque, piano-dominated Mazurka gets dancing accents. The long final variation, perhaps striving for “substance,” is comparatively…

Hyperíon CDA68169 (CD, auditioned as 24/96). 2022. Mark Brown, prod., Andrew Mellor, eng. PERFORMANCE SONICS More than a decade ago, when Alice Coote presented a song recital with Julius Drake in the San Francisco Performances series, the profundity of her interpretations took my breath away. I still recall how I rushed backstage to thank her and say, “I just want to touch the hands of a great artist.” In December 2017, when she was 49, Coote finally recorded some of Schubert’s most beloved lied. Those recordings are presented here. Although the voice is a bit raspy down low, softly hit high notes glow with a radiance that drives the gravity of her interpretations straight to the heart. Take, for example, her renditions of “Wandrers Nachtlied” (Wanderer’s Night Song) I and…

US: SCHAUMBURG, ILLINOIS Jason Victor Serinus Exciting. Engrossing. Exhausting. Enjoyable. Nothing but e-words from me. I could go on, but not without breaking out the thesaurus. —ROGIER VAN BAKEL, Stereophile’s newest Contributing Editor Numbers are one thing. According to statistics provided by the show, AXPONA 2022 attracted 7498 unique visitors plus 98 incontrovertibly unique members of the press. The show hosted 138 active demo rooms plus many Ear Gear and marketplace exhibits representing a total of more than 500 companies. Approximately 220 showgoers attended Friday’s 8pm “Blues Night with Toronzo Cannon,” and 300 defied Expo burnout to enjoy Lori Lieberman’s performance Saturday at 8pm. But numbers mean only so much. This AXPONA was all about emotion. “I’m no writer, but it was as if we all rose up out of…

Sometime around 483 BCE, in Kushinagar, the capital of the Malla Republic in what today is the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, an aristocrat named Siddhārtha Gautama—known better to us as the Buddha, or the Awakened One—passed away. For 45 years, he had wandered the North Indian River Plain teaching a method of over-coming ignorance, craving, and the cycle of death and rebirth to a growing community of followers. As he lay dying, the 80-year-old teacher was surrounded by disciples, many of them crying. Gautama was by no account a sentimental man, and several times he told the monks to cut it out. According to a Pali scripture called the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta, the Buddha’s last piece of advice to his disciples was “appo dipo bhava,” most commonly translated into English…

When I reviewed Technics’s SU-R1000 integrated amplifier for the December 2021 issue, I found its performance beyond my expectations. It practically rewrote the ritual of listening to music on my home hi-fi. With its wealth of technological advancements, significant user options, and clear, three-dimensional sound, it cast a large sonic shadow over the other integrated amplifiers in my possession. What’s more, joined to my reference system, the SU-R1000 upended my preconceived notions of what switching amplification sounds like and enlightened me about the sonic possibilities of those other innovations: Technics’s superspeedy GaN FET switching transistors; JENO Engine jitter reduction; ADCT (Active Distortion Cancelling Technology);1 Intelligent Phono EQ; LAPC (Load Adaptive Phase Calibration);2 and the SU-R1000’s practice of digitizing every signal that entered and departed its steel-encased frame. And then there…

Like an immense night bird aloft in the gold’n sky. I should like to sail off towards islands of flow’rs While list’ning to the perverse sea singing In its old and bewitching rhythm. It took some time to figure out why, in the middle of auditioning Rotel’s Michi S5 stereo power amplifier ($7499.99) with the room-shaking opening of Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, Ravel’s far subtler and perfumed setting of Tristan Klingsor’s lyrics from Shéhérazade came to mind. And then the pathway opened: As mundane a task as reviewing a component may be—listen to this, listen to that, compare to your reference, take copious notes, ponder, and proceed—we music lovers perpetually long for more. We want to be seduced by music and soar aloft on its wonder. We want to…

The Kingdom of Audiophiledom rests on a paradox. Inanimate audio systems and rooms aim to deliver music that animates our senses and touches our souls. The inherently lifeless exists to bring music to life. This holistic reality—that systems and rooms function as living organisms where every part is interconnected and interrelated—came home to me when, during one of the first AXPONAs in Chicago, I entered a long, cavernous basement room with several spongy “conference room” walls. “There is no way that any setup can deliver good sound in this room,” self said to self. Yet, the system sounded unbelievably good. Rock-solid bass, enviable transparency, smooth delivery, superb soundstaging, drop-dead beautiful sound. That thoroughly musical presentation compelled me to linger for quite some time. Before I left, I queried the exhibitors…

2022 IS TURNING OUT TO BE A GOOD YEAR FOR LYLE LOVETT, NOT LEAST BECAUSE HE IS, TO USE A COWBOY METAPHOR, BACK IN THE SADDLE. “I’VE BEEN OUT OF WORK FOR TWO YEARS,” HE SAYS ARCHLY. NORMALLY, LOVETT PERFORMS MORE THAN 100 CONCERTS A YEAR, REGARDLESS OF WHETHER HE’S RELEASED NEW WORK. BUT THE PANDEMIC PINNED HIM DOWN AT HOME IN HOUSTON, WITH HIS WIFE AND THEIR NOW– four-year-old twins, in the house his grandfather built in 1911. Domesticity suits Lovett. “There was plenty to do every minute of every day. Absolutely no boredom!” He sounds like he means it; unselfconscious mentions of paternal tenderness bubbled up in our conversation from time to time. Still, for a change of scenery and to keep himself plugged in creatively, Lovett organized 20…

When your uncle is an award-winning producer and engineer, a band formed by you and your cousins has a higher-than-average shot at going somewhere. But even that family advantage can’t explain the immediate success of the Los Angeles–based Linda Lindas; they’ve earned their accolades through talent, hard work, and ingenuity. Their first album, Growing Up, offers proof of their worth and the promise of a stellar musical future. The band’s development and rise has been on fast-forward since the Linda Lindas formed in 2018. After a self-released EP and a handful of singles, some of which have already been used in movies and a Netflix series, the band signed with Epitaph records in 2021. This debut album was produced by the father of two band members, Carlos de la Garza,…

ATO Records ATO0602 (CD). 2022. Matt Ross-Spang and Old Crow Medicine Show, prods.; Ross-Spang, Morgan Jahnig, engs. PERFORMANCE SONICS Goodness, OCMS is a rock band now. For those unaware of the Nashville-based group’s near-quarter-century of inspired music-making, Old Crow Medicine Show dates back to the late ’90s, a messy amalgam of 1920s old-timey music (Charlie Poole, Uncle Dave Macon, etc.) and punk attitude and energy, by way of frontman Ketch Secor’s formative immersion in Bob Dylan. Along the way, the essentially uncategorizable band has gained and lost untold members, been inducted into the Grand Ole Opry, won a Best Folk Album Grammy (in 2015, for Remedy), and, by fits and starts, acquired a harder edge, tighter feel, fuller bottom, and, finally, with this album, an honest-to-God professional drummer. Paint This…

Martin, vocals, guitar; Grenadier, bass; 16-piece orchestra CARA 003 (CD, available as download, LP). 2022. Pedro Guedes, Rebecca Martin, prods.; Mário Barreiros, eng. PERFORMANCE SONICS Rebecca Martin is a singer/songwriter with a small but devoted following. After Midnight is a unique project for her, a collaboration with a well-established orchestra from Portugal. Martin’s husband, bassist Larry Grenadier, is a featured soloist. Martin is a rarity among jazz singers: a true composer. But her songs are performed infrequently by others, perhaps because they are so specific to her. They are real-time dispatches from the front lines of life in the 21st century. They document the circumstances of her soul. They deal with common subjects like love, with uncommon insights into love’s ongoing paradoxes (“In the Nick of Time”). Often she writes…

Kopatchinskaja, violin; Joonas Ahonen, piano Alpha 797 (reviewed as 24/96 WAV), 2022. Marion Schwebel, prod. & eng. PERFORMANCE SONICS It makes sense that Patricia Kopatchinskaja, a startlingly energetic and direct violinist known for pushing the interpretive edge, would embrace the Sonata No.1 for violin and piano by “The Bad Boy of Music,” futurist George Antheil. In strokes of programmatic genius, she and Ahonen surround Antheil’s stunner with works by three men who also upset the musical norm: Beethoven, who was Antheil’s musical hero; John Cage; and Morton Feldman. As much as Kopatchinskaja’s furious, sonically edgy reading of the first movement of Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No.7 in C minor (“Eroica”) may turn heads, her take on Antheil’s too-seldomly-performed sonata will do far more. The first movement, which starts Stravinsky-like jolly before…