Tabla de contenidos para May/June 2023 en The Absolute Sound

Feature If you're looking for more great high-end audio content, check out The Absolute Sound's new YouTube video channel. Our channel is chock-full of videos (more than 125 and counting) that cover everything from a nostalgic look at classic audio products to reviews of the latest components. We've got behind-the-scenes factory tours, show reports, audio-basics tutorials, and designer interviews. We've also got product reviews, primarily of lower to midpriced components that are stunning overachievers. New videos on our channel include an extended tour (in 4k video) of Michael Fremer's listening room; full coverage of the Florida show by Michael Fremer, Alan Taffel, and Andrew Quint; a review of the amazing Technics SU-G700M2 digital amplifier complete with an in-depth look at tins product's unique technology; an audio-basics video exploring subwoofers and…

Absolute Analog Ortofon MC Diamond Cartridge At Munich High End 2022, Ortofon introduced the MC Diamond, the company's latest top-of-the-line “Exclusive Series” moving-coil phono cartridge. Ortofon abandoned its usual reserved Scandinavian demeanor and pronounced the MC Diamond “The Ultimate Phonograph Cartridge.” That was a new approach, at least to Ortofon's marketing. Not including mono and SPU variants, the MC Diamond is by my count Ortofon's ninth SLM-bodied cartridge, which, simply put, laser-welds together, layer-by-layer, powdered metal micro-particles. Ortofon mostly uses titanium, which has effective self-damping properties when formed into the cartridge shape with internal reinforcement structures. (SLM is an initialism for “Selective Laser Melting.”) Ortofon's first SLM cartridge was the MC A90 introduced in 2008 to celebrate the company's 90th anniversary. At that year's High End Munich show in the private…

Electronics Focus Cambridge Audio Evo 150 Streaming Integrated Amp For a couple years now, my primary streaming device has been a product from Cambndge Audio. I'm familliar with the brand and its sound, and I was excited for the chance to review its newest everything-integrated, the Evo 150 ($3249). Opening the box, I was surprised by its size, but more so by its features—how did Cambridge Audio manage to jam every possible function inside? So often, the hifi world feels obsessed with inconvenience, and the mere whiff of ease-of-use can turn a hardened, world-weary audiophile against a product before she has a chance to give it a listen. Convenience is for the consumer audio masses—not for the lofty elites tinkering away with their custom tube amps, while getting high on the…

Electronics Focus AGD Productions Alto Preamp and Tempo Power Amp AGD Productions is a California-based company with some Italian roots, named after its founder and head designer Alberto Guerra. Its motto is “merging perfection and beauty in the art of audio reproduction.” In college, I learned perfection is never attainable in the real world, only in mathematics. However, I appreciate that Alberto is aiming for it, at least, as most audiophiles are—even those who don't have $100k or more to spend on a system. We can take steps towards perfection (sometimes with affordable tweaks), if not actually get as close to it as the finest megabuck gear does. As these are the most affordable units AGD makes, the potential for value is high. Started in 2017, AGD is a relative newcomer…

Equipment Report Technics SL-G700M2 Network and CD/SACD Player This review is easy to write in one key respect: The Technics SL-G700M2 is an excellent sounding unit that combines a superior disc player and DAC with equally good streaming capability. It sells for some $3500, so it is on the edge of today's higher-priced units, although high price is relative. Some other combinations of a DAC and disc player sell for over $14,000; the SL-G700M2 is moderately priced by comparison. At the same time, the sound of the SL-G700M2—like that of all the best current DACs—is superb. The sound quality of digital front ends is becoming steadily better. While the sonic nuances of given players can still be heard on most reference systems, they are often minor compared to the far greater…

Equipment Report A bit less than two years ago, Greg Beron came out with a statement tape machine, the United Home Audio SuperDeck, which I reviewed in the September 2021 issue of TAS. At the time, it was the most realistic playback device I'd heard. Loaded with bespoke parts (including ultra-expensive, custom-made resistors, capacitors, and gold-plated copper circuit boards) and equipped with a separate outboard EQ box (a first for Greg), separate power supply, and an optional, gel-damped, billet-aluminum stand to lower vibration to a minim, it was a front-end masterpiece. At $90k for the playback-only unit ($106k for the record/playback version), it was also very expensive and with three chassis (not counting the stand) fairly sizable, to boot. Comes now the latest version of Greg's “standard” machine—the single-chassis, 15ips,…

MUSIC In 1960 an aspiring British pop star whose full name was David Robert Jones dubbed himself Davy Jones. When another British singer named Davy Jones arrived on the scene in 1965, however, Davy Jones #1 donned a stage name that, in retrospect, seemed quite prescient in light of the meteoric rise to fame his namesake was about to experience as a member of the Monkees. For the artist who christened himself David Bowie, the name change turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as a fresh new persona must have seemed liberating to an artist who, as his career developed, would constantly reinvent his image. There was still work to be done, however. During the late 60s, Bowie had a tough job distinguishing himself from other dreamy-eyed folkies,…

Absolute Analog Lyra Etna Lambda Phono Cartridge Product names typically serve as unspoken code between manufacturers and buyers. A newly appended roman numeral, or one that's been incremented upward, indicates a new generation, with commensurately major upgrades. The signal to the user: You can expect a broad and substantial performance improvement. On the other hand, the use of a modifier in a new model name—unless preceded by the word “Reference”—signals small design changes and relatively minor (though still significant) performance improvements. Lyra's Etna Lambda, the latest version of its acclaimed Etna cartridge, runs afoul of these normally reliable conventions. Here we have a cartridge that's been given the “Lambda” treatment—modest design tweaks—but the improvement is anything but minor. In fact, the Etna Lambda doesn't sound like an incremental upgrade at all;…

Electronics Focus Amped America AMP2400 Power Amplifier Over the years in my capacity as a reviewer I've had my wits addled by a bewildering variety of manufacturers’ names and product designations. Some were morbidly amusing, such as Your Final System, while others merely inscrutable, like SMSL. I'll admit to some minor mental warpage, because when confronted by the manufacturer Amped America, my first thought was, “Do they sell protein supplements?” But no, Amped America makes audio electronics in the United States using its own proprietary designs. That's why they have come to my attention and, henceforth, yours, as well. Currently Amped America has three products in its roster, a preamplifier, the AAP-1, and two stereo power amplifiers, one with 200 watts and the other with 400 watts per channel. The AMP2400,…

Equipment Report MoFi Electronics SourcePoint 10 Loudspeaker During the summer of 2021, MoFi Electronics hired Andrew Jones (AJ) as its chief loudspeaker designer. With decades of combined experience at KEF, Infinity, Pioneer, TAD, and ELAC, he is undoubtedly one of the best known and most respected names in the audio industry, His mission was to design MoFi's first loudspeaker with the aim of delivering a product that would do justice to the company's studio heritage. It became clear that it made no sense to compete at the low end, directly with previous AJ designs (e.g, ELAC) that are still out there in the marketplace. And so, MoFi gave AJ the latitude to design something new and interesting while maintaining the core principles for which he is known. Given his previous interest…

Those of you who've been following me in TAS already know that I'm a huge fan of reel-to-reel tapes and tape players. I reviewed two of the latter last year (the SuperDeck from United Home Audio and the Tourbillon from Metaxas & Sins) and, in addition to the Ultima5 in this issue, hope to wnte about one or two others later this year. But tape decks are no good unless you can get first-rate tapes to play back on them. So, in keeping with the tradition of our annual Super LP List, I've compiled a selection of recommended tapes, which you'll find below. Of course, I haven't been able to listen to all the many 15ips reel-to-reel issues and reissues that have been marketed over the past few years. Though…

MUSIC Satoko Fujii—pianist, composer, free improviser, bandleader—wasn't keeping track of how many records she had made in the 26 years since releasing her debut, Something About Water, a collection of duets with her mentor, pianist Paul Bley. “I was just following the things that I wanted to do,” she explained in a recent video conversation from the home she shares with her husband, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, in Kobe, Japan. “Someone actually had to tell me, you have one hundred albums very soon. And then I counted.” One of the most prolific of 21st-century avant-garde jazz musicians (a label she might challenge), Fujii has recorded solo piano discs; duo sessions with trumpeter Tamura, violinists Mark Feldman and Carla Kihlstedt, pianists Myra Melford and Alister Spence, bassist/ flutist Joe Fonda, and vibraphonist…

MUSIC In 2011 Norwegian guitarist Hedvig Mollestad released her first record as a leader. Earlier in her career, Mollestad led what could loosely be described as a fusion-influenced progressive power trio whose music never lacked for energy—or, for that matter, depth and complexity. On 2020's Ekhidna, Mollestad worked with an expanded lineup that included two keyboardists who helped usher in a more layered sound with antecedents in 70s Miles or Lotus-era Santana. For her next release, Tempest Revisited (2021), Mollestad added more instruments while putting her own spin on compositions by the Norwegian classical composer Arne Nordheim. On her latest record, Maternity Beat, Mollestad joins forces with the 12-piece Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, whose instrumentation includes saxophones, violin, flute, trumpet, keyboards, double bass, percussion, and drums. Again the expanded lineup seems…

Presented in public for the first time in North America by Suncoast Audio of Sarasota were two loudspeaker models from Swiss manufacturer Clarisys Audio. In business since 2014, the company's stated mission is to build full-range ribbon transducers in the style of those produced by Apogee between 1981 and 1995. (In fact, Clarisys can refurbish your old Apogees, if you're so inclined.) The Minuet Neo ($33,800) stands four feet tall, weighs in at about 165 pounds, and has a frequency response specification of 28Hz to over 25kHz. The Auditorium Neo ($140,000) is 6' 8", tips the scale at more than 500 pounds, and operates from 16Hz to more than 25kHz. Apogees were notorious for their challenging impedance characteristics; not so with the Clarisys Auditorium model, where even the treble panel…

It is a commonplace to say that the reproduction of the sound of a full symphony orchestra is one of audio's biggest challenges. The dynamic range is large. So is the frequency range, although, unless a pipe organ is involved as a supplement, that range does not go all the way down in terms of fundamental frequencies. The multiplicity of instruments (a full orchestra typically contains at least 90 players), the number of independent lines that can be playing simultaneously, the complex textures created by many players playing the same lines, the variety of tone colors, and the importance of similarities and contrasts among them all add up to a complex sonic picture that is hard to reproduce. The picture is so complex that it can seem almost unbelievable that…

Absolute Analog Kuzma Safir 9 Tonearm When your job is reviewing audio equipment and you're not also an electrical or mechanical engineer, you must often rely upon the expertise of others. That doesn't mean you should parrot what you're told or buy into everything tossed your way, especially by manufacturers or their publicists, but it does mean that often you are “flying blind,” even when you try to corroborate information with other trusted sources. And sometimes even the most reliable outside expert can make a mistake. For instance, my analog set-up guru, the late Wally Malewicz, who was a mechanical engineer and heavily invested in improving vinyl playback, once posited that “skating” was caused by a pivoted tonearm's angular offset, winch is created either at the head shell of a straight-pipe…

Electronics Focus Schiit Audio Loki Max Equalizer If the Loki Mini+, which I reviewed in February 2002, is an introduction to broadband EQ on the cheap (but good), the Loki Max is a head-on assault on the best possible analog EQ of the broadband type. It is, in a sense, a contemporary reply to the famous Cello Audio Palette EQ device introduced in the early 1990s. It is less massive and less expensive than the Palette, but it has similar sonic goals and similar aims of uncompromised quality— aims which are accomplished superbly well. Purists may find this hard to accept, but Schiit has come up with an EQ device that is transparent down to the level of the cable connections involved. Anything one inserts in a signal path will do…

Equipment Report AudioQuest ThunderBird Cables and Interconnects ThunderBird Zero is the entry level of the three models in AudioQuest's new Mythical Creature Series of cables that includes the FireBird and top-of-the-line Dragon. ThunderBird packs the same superb fit ’n’ finish of its stablemates and much of AQ's sophisticated noise dissipation technology at a more affordable price. But entry level it most assuredly is not. To my mind it could very well be the sweet spot of AQ's top-rung speaker wire and interconnects. ThunderBird Zero speaker cables use 10AWG high-purity Perfect Surface Copper+ (PSC+) conductors; the same metal is featured in the interconnects. The PSC+ conductors are made from solid copper, are directionally controlled, and are designed to minimize distortion caused by grain boundaries and to reduce RF. In AQ's view, opting…

MUSIC “I try to live within the line between despondency and hope,” Bob Dylan once told the LA Times. “I'm suited to walk that line right between the fire.” He nailed that high-wire act on Time Out of Mind, the 1998 Grammy winner for Album of the Year, which arrived at a time when many fans felt the rock legend had lost his mojo. Now that album has spawned the insightful Fragments—Time Out of Mind Sessions (1996—1997): The Bootleg Series Vol. 17. This beautifully packaged ten-LP super-deluxe edition is built around a newly remastered edition of Time Out of Mind, remixed by star engineer Michael Brauer. He skillfully peels back producer Daniel Lanois’ heavy poly-rhythmic percussion and hi-tech sheen to expose the emotional bones of the material. The recordings are…