Tabla de contenidos para November 2020 en Stereophile

From the outside, the Audio Research Reference 6SE looks identical to the Reference 6 preamplifier that Michael Fremer reviewed in December 2016.1 I measured the REF 6SE’s performance with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 “As We See It”2). Like the earlier preamplifier, the REF 6SE’s volume control operates in approximately 0.3dB steps. The gain with the volume control set to its maximum—“103” on the front-panel display—was 12.2dB, balanced or unbalanced input to balanced output, and 6.1dB, unbalanced input to unbalanced output. The unity-gain setting was “62.” Both sets of inputs and outputs preserved absolute polarity (ie, were noninverting). The unbalanced input impedance was 41k ohms at 20Hz and 1kHz, dropping slightly to a still high 34k ohms at 20kHz. As usual, the balanced input impedances were…

I measured the Alta Audio Alyssa’s farfield behavior with DRA Labs’ MLSSA system and a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone. I used an Earthworks QTC-40 mike for the speaker’s nearfield responses. A full set of measurements was performed with serial number ALY4004. I repeated some of the tests with serial number ALY4003. Other than when noted, the magnetically attached grille was left off for the measurements. Alta specifies the Alyssa’s sensitivity as 87.5dB/2.83V/m. My estimate was significantly lower at 81.5dB(B)/2.83V/m, and the Alta did sound a little quieter than the BBC LS3/5a that I always measure at the same time I have a loudspeaker on the test bench. (The LS3/5a’s sensitivity is 82.5dB.) Both samples of the Alyssa had the same sensitivity. Although the Alyssa’s nominal impedance is specified as 4…

I measured the Grandinote Shinai using my Audio Precision SYS2722 analyzer (see the January 2008 “As We See It”1). Before doing any testing, I preconditioned the amplifier by following the CEA’s recommendation of operating it at one-eighth the specified power into 8 ohms for 30 minutes. At the end of that time, while the black-finished chassis was warm, at 89°F (31.7°C), the chrome grille on the top panel that covers the internal heatsinks was very hot, at 125.8°F (52.1°C). I then performed the older FTC/IHF thermal stress test by running the amplifier at one-third the specified power into 8 ohms for an hour. At the end of that time, the chrome grille’s temperature was a little cooler at 123.3°F (50.8°C). As the Shinai biases its output devices into class-A, it…

I tested the Rotel Michi P5 with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 “As We See It”1). Looking first at its behavior via its line inputs, I performed most of the testing with the balanced inputs and balanced outputs and with the volume control set to its maximum. I repeated some of the tests with the unbalanced inputs and outputs with the volume control first set to its maximum, then at 77, which is equivalent to –10dB. (The volume control operates in accurate 0.5dB steps.) The maximum gain for the balanced input to the balanced output was 18.55dB and for the unbalanced input to the unbalanced output, it was a little lower, at 16dB. For unbalanced inputs, the maximum gain at the balanced output was 23.9dB. The…

In his September 2020 Gramophone Dreams, Herb Reichert reported on two D/A processors from Chinese manufacturer Denafrips1: their flagship Terminator, which costs $4498, and their least expensive model, the Ares II ($768). Like the Holo Audio May (Level 3 version, $4998), which Herb reviewed in August 20202 and which I wrote about in September, the De-nafrips converters employ R-2R D/A conversion schemes. Both offer two oversampling modes—OS Slow and OS Sharp—as well as a NOS (Non-OverSampling) mode. HR was impressed by the Terminator, writing, “Like the Holo Audio May DAC, the Denafrips Terminator seemed like an endgame, last-DACI’ll- need-to-own product. It satisfied all my music-listening desires.” He also liked what he heard from the affordable Ares II. “It felt and sounded like a Terminator that shrunk in the laundry,” he…

Forget almost everything you know about Vivaldi performance practice, authentic and otherwise, and shush all “shoulds.” Banish from your mind any thoughts that all Vivaldi sounds the same. Prepare your ears to hear Vivaldi as you’ve never heard him before. Blame what pours forth, if blame you must, on the astounding barefoot wonder, Moldovan-Austrian-Swiss violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Using her copies of a Baroque-era Gagliano violin and bow to play like an altitude-defying mountain climber bounding from precipice to precipice, Kopatchinskaja knows nothing of caution as she propels five of Vivaldi’s early 18th century Violin Concertos into our era. With Giovanni Antonini and his superb 15-member period instrument ensemble, Il Giardino Armonico, as equal daredevils, she does more than blow away close to four centuries of cobwebs. Kopatchinskaja approaches Vivaldi’s music…

In March 2003, as news networks broadcast images of American tanks racing north toward Baghdad, my infantry platoon dug shallow foxholes in southern Iraq. We were part of a defensive perimeter guarding FARP Exxon, a helicopter refueling point for the Army’s 101st Airborne Division. The FARP was a small, boundaryless airfield marked not by a runway or buildings but by a couple of scattered antennas and several large fuel blivets. At our dug-in perimeter, the desert spread bare before us in every direction—except in the center of my sector of view. There, beyond a depression in the foreground, were a few makeshift structures on a ridge two klicks north. Every few hours, upon refuel, we buried our faces to escape the Blackhawks’ rotor wash; the tents’ fabric walls whipped as…

The Land That Time Forgot I got a chill down my spine seeing Chuck Prophet’s name had appeared in Record Reviews with his new release The Land That Time Forgot. Thank you, John Swenson! It simply came so unexpectedly. I have subscribed for 25 years. So, there I was in my listening chair listening to music when I patiently glossed past Norah Jones, Jason Isbell, some 88-year-old accordion player who piqued my interest, and then—whoa Nellie!—there’s Chuck getting attention in Stereophile! For those not familiar, Chuck is a staple of many of this country’s finest NPR stations including my favorite, WFPK out of Louisville. He has logged more hours in run-down Ford Econolines than any artist of his talent deserves. See him live! You will very likely become a fan.…

In place of my usual Wilson Alexxes, a pair of small (though very fine) two-way speakers has been in my system this past month: the Marten Oscar Duos I review elsewhere in this issue. Without my usual reference speakers in the system, I didn’t feel comfortable covering anything that affects sound quality for this column, so, with the exception of one item—the first—this column covers accessories that don’t require sonic evaluation. ISOACOUSTICS GAIA-TITAN CRONOS I can write about the IsoAcoustics Gaia-Titan Cronos loudspeaker footers because I did the evaluation before swapping out the big Wilsons for the Duos and then listened again once the Alexxes were back in the system, to reassure myself about what I’d heard. At the Expert Imaging and Sound Association’s (EISA) 2019 convention in Antwerp, Belgium,…

I measured the Marten Oscar Duo’s farfield behavior with DRA Labs’ MLSSA system and a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone. I used an Earthworks QTC-40 mike for the speaker’s nearfield and spatially averaged in-room responses. I didn’t have the optional magnetically attached covers, so I didn’t use them. The Oscar Duo’s drive-units are protected with individual metal-mesh grilles. My estimate of the Oscar Duo’s sensitivity was 85.3dB/2.83V/m, which is within experimental error of the specified 86dB/2.83V/m. Marten specifies the Oscar Duo’s impedance as 6 ohms, with a minimum magnitude of 3.1 ohms. My measurement indicated that the impedance magnitude (fig.1, solid trace) remains above 6 ohms for most of the audioband, with minima of 3.9 ohms between 35Hz and 40Hz, 3.8 ohms between 145Hz and 175Hz, and 3.9 ohms again above…

Ever since I stopped using my Audio Research SP10 preamplifier in the early 1990s—its eight phono-stage tubes used to get too noisy too quickly—I tried a variety of standalone phono preamplifiers. Seeing the most service through the 1990s and 2000s were, first, a Mod Squad Phono Drive EPS, then a Linn Linto, both of which I purchased. But when I measured Channel D’s Seta Model L, which Michael Fremer reviewed in the August 2010 issue,1 the Linto was pushed to one side. The battery-powered Seta L2 had the lowest noise and distortion I had encountered in a phono preamplifier, and I eventually bought the sample I had been sent for a follow-up review in 2013.3 The beautifully built Seta Model L ($3799) is intended for use with lowoutput moving-coil cartridges.…

Last month, I received so few vinyl reissues that I had to invite a guest writer—jazz critic and political commentator Fred Kaplan—to fill in. Fred had managed to grab an early copy of the excellent Analogue Productions 45rpm reissue of Bill Evans at the Montreux Jazz Festival. I didn’t get mine until a week or so after his review was submitted. This month, I have a tall stack to choose from, so I’ll mention several. On most celebratory Friday evenings at my New York City apartment, an album or two by New Orleans musicians finds its way onto my ’table: Professor Longhair, Tuts Washington, Dr. John, the Meters, the Wild Tchoupitoulas. James Booker is sometimes in that mix—one of his live albums usually, most often Piano Wizard Live! on Rounder…

US: MAPLE GROVE, MN Julie Mullins If audiophiles were asked to rank companies that define US-made hi-fi, Audio Research would rank high. This year, the Maple Grove, Minnesota, company is commemorating its 50th anniversary by releasing a 220-page book, Making the Music Glow, covering its first 50 years of history—and also by going independent. Making the Music Glow was written by audio reviewer Ken Kessler, who wrote the McIntosh book For the Love of Music, published in 2006, and, in 2003, Quad: The Closest Approach. Glow contains interviews, product profiles, and—presumably, since we haven’t yet received our copy—coffee-table–worthy photos. The book will retail for $150 at Audio Research dealers and online at audio-research.com. Two thousand copies are being printed. Now the real news: The company will start its second half-century…

The 1980s was a decade when I needed three jobs to support my wife, infant daughter, and octogenarian dad. My primary job was to make and sell art, and I’m sure you know how that can go. Between exhibitions, I was forced to do construction work and to find, repair, and resell old tube amplifiers. What I remember most from that period was how much I loved Phil Rizzuto and Yankee baseball on AM radio and how often I burned myself on the soldering iron. Except for each brand’s unique wiring layout, chassis construction, and finish, the tube amps I repaired were mostly boring. Circuit-wise and sonics-wise, they were quite similar to each other and generally unremarkable. After fixing and auditioning scores of these crusty boxes, I realized that the…

“As long as you’re happy.” That’s the line long uttered by the most dreaded members of my family, and their friends, whenever they tried to pry into my personal affairs. Often the last word, “happy,” was uttered with a downward cadence and accompanied by a shrug. Then came the kicker. “You are happy, aren’t you?” said with eyes boring into my soul. “Well, as long as you’re happy.” Cue the telltale shrug. With disapproval voiced and points scored, it was time for the obligatory peck on the cheek, handshake, or—worse—mutual male hug disguised as burp assistance. Thus were the seeds of doubt planted by those who used words and looks in place of cordless leashes and electroshock. Was I truly happy, or was I masking deep-rooted existential dis-ease? What does…

I was doing my press beat for Stereophile in the hallway of Montreal’s 2019 Audiofest when I glimpsed something that stopped me in my tracks. It was a marketing slogan, across the room on importer/exhibitor Goerner Audio’s floorstanding banner: “Tubes or semiconductors? Magneto-solid technology amplifies emotions.” Intrigued and with pen and paper in hand, I settled into one of the listening chairs and soaked in the smooth, luscious, musical sound coming from a system with the Grandinote Shinai integrated amplifier at its core—and wondered: tubes or transistors? The line was blurry. I’d never heard of Grandinote, whose electronics have an unobtrusive, elegant look that sets them apart from the typical fare. The man helming the room—Goerner Audio’s amiable Reinhard Goerner—clued me in. Designed and manufactured in Italy, Grandinote products are…

Before starting this review of Rotel’s Michi P5, the 60-year-old, Japan-based audio company’s recent preamplifier design, I thought it appropriate to consider “What is an audio preamplifier? What should it do?” There are plenty of opinions to be found at stereophile.com: “What a preamp ought to do, apart from changing volume and switching sources, is as little as possible,” wrote Stereophile Editor Jim Austin in his 2017 review of the PS Audio BHK Signature preamplifier. And yet “the preamplifier is the heart of a system,” noted Technical Editor John Atkinson in his 2013 review of Pass Labs’ XP-30 line preamplifier, “[in] that it colors and adds its own character to every signal that passes through it.” Every preamplifier has features, from the most minimal (source selection and volume control) through,…

YAMAHA A-S3200 INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER The Yamaha A-S3200 is a strikingly beautiful, all-analog integrated amplifier. When switched on, it gives off a brilliant, slightly warm light from its dual glassfronted VU/Watt meters. Looking at it makes me feel good but also reminds me how much of a baby boomer I really am. The A-S3200’s sleek, knob-and-switch–lined silver faceplate triggered clearas- yesterday memories of my youth reading Audio, Stereo Review, and High Fidelity magazines, then going to J&R Music on Park Row here in New York City and staring at the wall of made-in-Japan integrated amps. My friends all bought Sansui or Pioneer, but to my ears and eyes, Yamaha was the class of the J&R pack. Sadly, after ridiculous amounts of spec comparisons and deliberation, I bought a midlevel Kenwood integrated…

EVERY YEAR, a panel of judges from the Expert Imaging and Sound Association convenes at some exotic locale to hear presentations by companies vying for the awards in a range of categories—home theater (audio and video), photography, mobile devices, in-car electronics, and hi-fi—listen, and vote. It’s a gathering of representatives of the most important specialist publications worldwide, from the United States, Europe, India, Japan, Australia, Russia, Canada, and Hong Kong. Every year, that is, except this year. This year, due to COVID-19, we all stayed home, and they sent the products to us. Instead of taking place over a few days, the judging extended over months as the competing products were shipped among all the EISA member countries. Products were discussed via various electronic means. It wasn’t as much fun…