Tabla de contenidos para May 2022 en Stereophile

THIS ISSUE: How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Take a left on 57th. There’s a notion among audiophiles that we must be regular consumers of live music, especially live acoustic music. It’s the only way, the thinking goes, to calibrate our ears to the sound we should all be aspiring to at home. This notion persists despite some deep and obvious flaws. For one thing, it doesn’t matter what live acoustic music sounds like if that sound isn’t captured on the recording we’re listening to—it usually isn’t—and it’s impossible to know whether it has been or not. The very notion that grooves on a record or bits in a file even have a sound independent of the means of reproduction is questionable except as an abstraction or, at best,…

ATTENTION ALL AUDIO SOCIETIES: We have a page on the Stereophile website devoted to you: stereophile.com/audiophilesocieties. If you’d like to have your audiosociety information posted on the site, email Chris Vogel at vgl@cfl.rr.com. (Please 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. Note: Due to the ongoing pandemic, Stereophile recommends confirming that events are still taking place. CALIFORNIA ■ Saturday, May 14, 2022, 2–5pm: The Los Angeles & Orange County Audio Society will ILLINOIS ■ Friday–Sunday, April 22–24: AXPONA will be held at the Renaissance Schaumberg Hotel & Convention Center in Schaumberg, outside Chicago (1551 N. Thoreau Dr.). For more information and tickets, visit axpona.com. ■…

One day in the mid-1990s, my friend J and I sat sprawled on the carpeted floor of a hi-fi shop in lower Manhattan, playing records. J, who was employed there as a salesperson, had dimmed the lights and locked the door of the listening room behind us to make sure we wouldn’t be disturbed by actual customers. Earlier, he had lugged in a pair of homemade speakers that an elderly woman brought to the store, hoping to sell some of her late husband’s gear. The cabinets were made of thin, unfinished plywood and resembled floor fans. Mounted at the center of each box was a late-1960s 10" Tannoy dual-concentric driver. We knew these must sound as chintzy as they looked and set them down carelessly on the carpet a few…

Analog sources Garrard 301 turntable in a Box Furniture Co. plinth; Thomas Schick 12” tonearm and headshell. Hana Umami Red cartridge; Ortofon SPU Classic G cartridge; Zu/Denon 103 cartridge. Digital sources Sonnet Morpheus DAC; Denafrips Iris digital-todigital converter; Sonore opticalRendu; Small Green Computer sonicTransporter i5 server running Roon Core. Preamplification Shindo Aurieges; Sutherland Little and Parasound Halo JC 3+ phono preamplifiers. Amplification Line Magnetic LM-845IA (used as a power amplifier); Pass Labs INT-60; Mark Levinson No. 5805; Ayre AX-5 Twenty. Loudspeakers Altec Valencia 846A. Cables Interconnect: Auditorium 23; Speaker: AudioQuest Thunderbird Zero; Auditorium 23; AC: AudioQuest Thunder and Hurricane; USB: AudioQuest Diamond; Ethernet: AudioQuest Diamond. Accessories Box Furniture Co. Heritage stand; Box Furniture Co. amplifier stand; AudioQuest Niagara 3000 power conditioner; Sonore opticalModule; Sonore Audiophile Linear Power Supply, DJM Electronics…

Analog source Linn Sondek LP12 turntable with Lingo power supply, Linn Ekos tonearm, Linn Arkiv B cartridge, Channel D Seta L phono preamplifier. Digital source Roon Nucleus+ server; Ayre Acoustics C-5xeMP universal player; MBL Noble Line N31 CD player/DAC, Ayre Acoustics QA-9 A/D converter. Power amplifiers Parasound Halo JC 1+ monoblocks. Loudspeakers Golden Ear BRX, KEF LS50. Cables Digital: AudioQuest Vodka (Ethernet), AudioQuest Coffee (USB), DH Labs (1m, AES/EBU). Interconnect: AudioQuest Wild Blue (balanced). Speaker: AudioQuest Robin Hood. AC: AudioQuest Dragon Source & High Current, manufacturers’ own. Accessories Sanus 29" loudspeaker stands; Target TT-5 equipment racks; Ayre Acoustics Myrtle Blocks; ASC Tube Traps, RPG Abffusor panels; AudioQuest Niagara 5000 Low-Z Power/Noise-Dissipation System (amplifiers) and AudioQuest Niagara 1000 Low-Z Power/Noise-Dissipation System (source components). AudioQuest Fog Lifter cable supports. AC power comes…

Analog sources Kuzma Stabi R turntable with 4Point tonearm and EMT TDS 15N moving coil cartridge. Preamplification JE Sugden Masterclass LA-4, Shindo Allegro. Power amplifiers LKV Research Veros PWR+, Shindo Haut Brion. Loudspeakers DeVore Fidelity O/96, Klipsch Forte IV. Cables Interconnect: Analysis Plus Silver Apex, Shindo (RCA). Speaker: Analysis Plus Silver Apex. Accessories IsoTek EVO3 Aquarius line conditioner, Pro-Ject VC-S2 ALU Record Cleaning Machine, Audiodesksysteme Gläss Vinyl Cleaner Pro, Salamander five-tier rack; IKEA Aptitlig bamboo chopping boards; mahogany blocks (2" × 2" × 0.5") under boards. Listening room 12' L × 10' W × 12' H, suspended wood floor, 6"-thick walls (plaster over 2×4), wood-beam ceiling.…

Digital sources Oppo Digital UDP-105 universal disc player, custom Baetis Prodigy-X4i music server running JRiver Media Center v28 and Roon 1.8, Mytek Brooklyn+, exaSound s88 streaming DAC and Okto dac8 Pro D/A processors. QNAP TVS-873 NAS. Preamplifiers Coleman Audio 7.1SW for source switching. Power Amplifiers Benchmark AHB2, NAD C 298. Loudspeakers Revel Ultima2 Studio with IsoAcoustics Gaia I isolation feet. Revel Performa3 f206 for surrounds. Two SVS SB-3000 & one SB-2000Pro subwoofers. Cables Digital: AudioQuest Coffee USB, generic HDMI. Analog interconnects: Benchmark Studio&Stage XLR-XLR, Kubala-Sosna Anticipation (RCA), Cardas Cross (subwoofers). Speaker: Benchmark Studio&Stage, Canare 4S11 (Blue Jeans Cable). AC: Kubala-Sosna Emotion, Signal-Cable MagicPower 20A. Accessories AudioQuest Niagara 5000 and Brick-Wall BrickWall 8RAUD power conditioners, Teddy Pardo 12V PS (for exaSound s88), HDPLEX 400W ATX Linear Power Supply and CyberPower 850PFCLCD…

THIS ISSUE: Industry stalwart Anthony Chiarella explains one reason why dealerships are essential. You never forget your first time. Ask any audiophile about that first moment hearing music through a good hi-fi system—how it rocked their world and changed their life. Maybe it was at a friend’s parents’ house when they were a kid. Often, though, it was the first time they found themselves in a hi-fi dealership, back in the day. Yes, back then, hi-fi dealerships played a critical role in exposing people to good sound. According to industry stalwart Anthony Chiarella, they still do—indeed, they must. The industry, though, faces serious challenges—including continuing to introduce newcomers to hi-fi. He shared his perspective with me in a recent Skype call. Chiarella used a film—not music—to illustrate the role dealerships…

THIS ISSUE: In which Tony hangs with the avant-garde master of the pocket trumpet In the spring of 1969, as an aspiring jazz drummer of 15 pretentiously and largely uncomprehendingly drawn to the music’s difficult avant-garde, I learned that Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman’s alter ego during Ornette’s starvation years and an icon of free jazz himself, had recently moved to the village of Congers in my native Rockland County, New York, just north of New York City. Ornette was putting together a group drawn mostly from his early cohorts, and the call went out to Stockholm, where Don had settled—to the extent that he settled anywhere—with his Swedish wife, Moki. Hence his arrival practically on my doorstep. One evening after dinner, without thinking twice—what nerve, I’ve often thought—I dialed 411,…

TAKE HEED! Unless marked otherwise, all letters to the magazine and its writers are assumed to be for possible publication. Please include your name and physical address. We reserve the right to edit for length and content. March delights Thanks for two especially delightful parts of the March 2022 issue. JVS’s tribute to and traverse of art songs reached me at my soul. I’ve always delighted in melting friends’ hearts by playing recordings of Kathleen Ferrier. Jason’s wonderfully rich and heartfelt article thrillingly expands that wonderland. Thanks and kudos to Jason for such a generous and encouraging share, and to Editor Jim Austin for the sidebar encouraging listening for the beauty and power of performances not presented in the highest of fi. Tom Fine’s follow-up on the Pro-Ject Phono Box…

THIS ISSUE: Three vinyl accessories, and a new, premium phono cartridge from EMT. Let’s get right to it: The best way to set azimuth, as I recently wrote in this space,1 is to measure crosstalk using either a high-quality voltmeter or a digital oscilloscope and a good test record like Analogue Productions’ The Ultimate Analogue Test LP (AAPT1). The traditional, qualitative procedure—setting the headshell so that it’s parallel to the record surface—assures only cosmetic satisfaction. The AP test record’s second band contains a 1kHz tone, on the left channel only. The third band repeats that tone on the right channel. Measuring output on the unmodulated channel, in comparison to the output on the modulated channel, gives you the crosstalk, which ideally should be zero but never is. I went over…

Oswalds Mill Audio’s products espouse a sort of steampunk-meets-modern visual style, but the company’s philosophies are straight from hi-fi’s ’50s and ’60s glory days, an era when idler-drive turntables, low-power tube amps, and horn-loaded loudspeakers were the norm. That history and hi-fi’s future fascinate and inspire Jonathan Weiss, OMA’s proprietor. “The DNA of OMA is in fact ‘Old School,’” Weiss wrote in a post on the OMA blog called “Audio Heirloom?” “There is no reason our loudspeakers, amplifiers, or even turntables won’t be running and playing music in a hundred years, just as the RCA equipment in our reference collection, most of which is 80 years old, still works just fine. That equipment, made for professional cinema use before WW2, … [before] planned obsolescence became the norm in US industry,…

Digital sources dCS Rossini DAC and Clock and Transport; Synology 5-bay 1019+ NAS, Roon Nucleus+ music server, Uptone Audio EtherRegen with AfterDark Giesemann Emperor Double Crown Master Clock, Small Green Computer Sonore opticalModules (2) and Deluxe opticalModule, Linksys routers (2), and Arris modem, all powered by HDPlex 300 (3) and HDPlex 200 linear power supplies (3); Apple 2017 iPad Pro and 2017 MacBook Pro. Preamplifier Dan D’Agostino Momentum HD, darTZeel NHB-18NS. Power amplifiers Dan D’Agostino Progression M550 monoblocks. Loudspeakers Wilson Audio Specialties Alexia 2 with Acoustic Diodes. ables Digital: Nordost Odin 1, Odin 2, and Valhalla 2 (USB and Ethernet); Frey 2 (USB adapter); Wireworld Platinum Starlight Cat8 (Ethernet), OM1 62.5/125 multimode duplex fiberoptic cables. Interconnect: Nordost Odin 2. Speaker: Nordost Odin 2. AC: Nordost Odin 2, AudioQuest Dragon, Dragon…

Analog sources OMA K3 and Acoustic Signature Montana NEO turntables, Schröder K3, Acoustic Signature TA-7000 tonearms; EMT JSD Novel Titan, Miyajima Labs Madake Snakewood cartridges. Digital sources dCS Vivaldi One SACD player DAC; Lynx Hilo A/D-D/A converter; Mac mini running Roon, Audirvana Digital Audio Player; Pure Vinyl and Vinyl Studio software. Preamplification darTZeel NHB-18S, Ypsilon MC-10L, MC-16L, and MC-20L and X-quisite SUT X-20 step-up transformers; Ypsilon VPS-100, CH Precision P1 with X1 PSU. Power amplifiers darTZeel NHB 468 monoblocks, Music Reference RM-200 Mk2. Loudspeakers Wilson Audio Specialties Chronosonic XVX. Cables Interconnect: TARA Labs Zero Gold, Zero Evolution, Zero and Air Evolution, AudioQuest Dragon, Analysis Plus Silver Apex, Stealth Sakra & Indra. Speaker: AudioQuest Dragon, TARA Labs Omega EvolutionSP. AC: AudioQuest Dragon, Dynamic Design Neutron GS Digital power cord. Accessories AudioQuest…

WHEN I NEED INFORMATION ABOUT RECORDINGS, I GO TO DISCOGS. AT DISCOGS, KEVIN GRAY HAS MORE THAN 2500 ENTRIES. THAT’S AS GOOD AN INDICATOR AS ANY OF THE AMOUNT OF GROUND HE HAS COVERED IN HIS CAREER SO FAR AS A CREATIVE PARTICIPANT IN THE RECORDED-MUSIC ART KNOWN AS MASTERING. SINCE STARTING OUT IN THE EARLY 1970S, IN LOS ANGELES, HE HAS WORKED FOR ALL THE MAJOR MUSIC LABELS AND MANY INDEPENDENTS, IN ALL MUSIC GENRES. At one time, behind-thescenes jobs like Gray’s were anonymous and technical—not really viewed as real creative work. When the Beatles started recording for EMI, audio personnel wore white lab coats. No one knew their names. But as the culture of recorded music became more varied and sophisticated, listeners became more aware of the contributions…

THIS ISSUE: Representatives of Musical Surroundings, Sublima Research, JBL, and Fleetwood Sound Company respond to our reviews of their products. Fozgometer V2 Thanks for reviewing our unique, convenient tool designed to help you get the best sound possible from your turntable and system. Michael applauds the accuracy and convenience but never mentions the considerable sonic improvements in stereo imaging, focus, coherency, and musicality. All Fozgometers come calibrated from the factory. The V2’s AC power option always assures a true 9V for accuracy. Designed for use with the Analogue Productions Test LP, we like to say the meter reads in “Foz” units. We calibrate them with 1kHz test tones at–30dB. Most modern cartridges use Line Contact and Microline styli with a very small contact area compared to an elliptical. These require…

In his introduction to this review, Alex Halberstadt describes the conversations we had that led to the project of which this review is the first result. In those conversations, I suggested he seek out current commercial speakers that share virtues with his beloved vintage Altecs, ideally with fewer sonic compromises. What compromises? The late Art Dudley, himself an Altec enthusiast (and Valencia owner), wrote about the Altec’s shortcomings. When he first set up his Valencias, Art described “an aggressive and, at the worst of times, a downright steely quality woven within the lower treble. Some records that sounded reliably sweet through my Audio Note AN-Es or my borrowed DeVore Orangutan O/96s were shorn of that quality, and a small percentage of innately bright recordings in my collection were now off-putting…