Indholdsfortegnelse for June 2023 i Stereophile

I measured the DirectStream MK2 first using my Audio Precision SYS2722 system,1 then with the magazine’s higher-performance APx500. The review sample was fitted with the v2.3.5 FPGA firmware, but after I experienced some anomalous measured results, I installed the v2.3.3 firmware package, which was available as a download on the DirectStream MK2’s information webpage. I then installed the v2.3.6 firmware when it was available and repeated the testing. The DirectStream MK2’s optical input locked to sample rates up to 96kHz, the coaxial and AES3 inputs locked to datastreams with all sample rates up to 192kHz. Both Roon and Apple’s USB Prober app identified the USB-connected D/A processor as “PS Audio Extended Resolution USB” from “PS Audio,” with the serial number string “Version 3.02 11/30/2022.” USB Prober revealed that the USB…

The Momentum M400 MxV Mono amplifier ($79,500/pair)1 is the latest iteration of Dan D’Agostino Master Audio Systems’ debut amplifier of 2011, the Momentum Mono amplifier. Weighing 95lb, it is smaller and lighter than its entry-level sibling, the more powerful, 125lb Progression M550 Mono amplifier ($47,500/pair), and is veritably dwarfed by some other monoblocks, including the flagship D’Agostino Relentless Epic 1600 (570lb) and the Karan Acoustics POWERa mono (231lb), which I reviewed last month. But if the M400 MxV’s rock-solid look and feel and its exquisite aesthetics—a sleek amalgam of silver and copper fronted by a power meter that glows green and radiates Rolex quality—are any indication, a helluva lot is going on beneath its showy exterior. Once I took a listen, I discovered sound so smooth and satisfying that the…

I measured AVM’s Inspiration CS 2.3 using my Audio Precision SYS2722 system,1 controlling the amplifier with the AVM RC X app on my iPad mini. As the AVM is a class-D design, and class-D amplifiers emit relatively high levels of ultrasonic noise that would drive the analyzer’s input into slew-rate limiting, all the measurements other than frequency response were taken with Audio Precision’s auxiliary AUX-0025 passive low-pass filter. (The AUX-0025 mitigates noise above 80kHz and eliminates noise above 200kHz.) Without the filter, there was approximately 400mV of ultrasonic noise with a center frequency of 400kHz present at the loudspeaker terminals. Looking first at the single-ended analog line inputs: With the AVM’s Input Gain set to “0dB,” the volume control set to its maximum—the control operates in accurate 0.5dB steps—and the…

When Columbia Records dragged some recording gear into a small Greenwich Village nightclub, the Bon Soir, on November 5, 1962, it was a good evening for music—a great one in fact. Barbra Streisand was 20 years old, having made her professional singing debut in the same club two years earlier. About that occasion, Streisand has noted, “I had never even been in a nightclub until I sang in one.” Over three nights, Columbia recorded Streisand backed by a jazz quartet—Bon Soir house musicians plus Peter Daniels, Streisand’s regular pianist—intending to release a live recording that would be Streisand’s debut. The album was to be called Sweet and Saucy Streisand. No go. Barbra and her new manager had insisted on total control over artistic choices, in exchange for a lower pay…

Honey Jar Records (auditioned as CD). 2023. Chris Wood, Oliver Wood, Jano Rix, and Brook Sutton, prods.; Sutton, Rix, Evan Wilber, Dan Davis, Daniel Thiels, Trina Shoemaker, Eric Conn, engs. The Wood Brothers have built a remarkably loyal fan base through endless touring and music that often moves beyond the group’s Americana roots. Their special ability to live without musical borders is wonderfully present on their latest release, Heart Is the Hero. For this, their eighth studio record, the Wood Brothers (Chris Wood, bass; Oliver Wood, guitar; Jano Rix, percussion and keyboards) have embraced the chemistry of their live shows. The album was recorded quickly, with miking that was simple and spare. The engineers captured the performances in real time, direct from the studio floor to 16-track analog tape. They…

Laubrock, tenor and soprano saxophones; Mazz Swift, violin; Tomeka Reid, cello; Brandon Seabrook, guitar; Michael Formanek, bass; Tom Rainey, drums Pyroclastic PR24 (auditioned on CD). 2023. Laubrock, prod.; Nick Lloyd, eng. Ingrid Laubrock is representative of what might be called the New Jazz Avant-garde. What is new is that, unlike the older version (Coleman, Ayler, late Coltrane, etc.), it is less noisy and more analytical. But it is no less challenging. Laubrock’s imagination is radical. The Last Quiet Place is a rare thing, a record led by a saxophonist that is not dominated by saxophone: Four of the six musicians (see above) play stringed instruments. They are well suited to Laubrock’s purposes, especially the bowed ones, with their capacity to generate sustained notes. Laubrock is interested in layered textures and…

Rachel Willis-Sørensen, soprano; Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Andris Nelsons Sony 824105 (CD, heard as 24/96 WAV download). 2023. Friedemann Engelbrecht, prod. & eng. Strauss’s sumptuous, late-career Four Last Songs are the final flowering of his romantic genius. Paired on this recording with the Final Scene from his last opera, Capriccio: A Conversation Piece for Music, these four orchestral songs ponder life’s eternal mysteries as they swirl, soar, then climax in sound so grand, ecstatic, and intoxicating that the songs are essential repertoire for any soprano with the pipes, intelligence, and breath control to do them justice. Both works have now found a near-ideal interpretive partnership. In the 11 years since American lyric soprano Willis-Sørensen finished training at the Houston Grand Opera Studio, she has assumed leading roles in many of the world’s…

Cleveland Orchestra/Franz Welser-Möst The Cleveland Orchestra TCO0006 (WAV download). Elaine Martone, prod.; Gintas Norvila, eng. Welser-Möst has a good feel for this familiar symphony, but in fits and starts. Ungainly, untapered bassi leave the opening minutes uniformly thick and full. The textures lighten as the music moves upward, with the brief trumpet interjections intimating the score’s lurking violence. The second group has an appealing flow, the violins opening into a full-throated lyric climax. Some attempted rhetoric is stiff owing to the conductor’s prosaic rhythmic sense, but the development begins in a magical hush, and pointed, pulsing triplets keep everything moving. I liked the smooth elision into the recap, where the oboe sings easily. The violent climax melts into the brief cello solo. The scherzo begins incisively, with an unusually shapely,…

PTP Audio Solid9 Thank you, Herb Reichert, for another great Gramophone Dreams column and for taking the time to try our PTP Audio Solid9 turntable. Like Art Dudley before him, Herb has clearly understood what we are trying to achieve. We hope our products stop their owners listening with an audiophile ear, to have them suddenly realize that a whole record side has passed and all they did was enjoy the music. With Herb, that seems to have worked perfectly. Our turntables are built around a few key vintage Lenco components. Around these character-defining parts, we have done a lot to refine that character and secure its soul, creating something well beyond what a standard or modded Lenco can achieve. We are grateful that Herb agrees with our work. Peter…

I wish that all who love LP playback as much as I do could hear a Thorens TD 124 or Garrard 301 or EMT 930 in their systems, but those products are subject to the vagaries of supply and demand: They are rare and pricey.—ART DUDLEY I have a friend named Yale, a record producer, who lives in a capacious, art-filled SoHo loft with enormous windows, craggy wood floors, and a high, tin-tiled ceiling. I enjoy Yale’s company because he has extraordinarily diverse, highly evolved taste in music, art, architecture, books, home furnishings, and hi-fi equipment. In one part of Yale’s loft, a large, tin cow weathervane stands on a bureau. Bolted to the ceiling above the dining room table is a greasy black 300lb electric motor with a wide…

I used DRA Labs’ MLSSA system and a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone to measure the TAD CE1TX’s behavior in the farfield, and an Earthworks QTC-40 mike for the nearfield responses. The mesh that covers the coaxial drive unit can’t be removed, but the measured behavior was taken without the grille covering the woofer. TAD specifies the CE1TX’s voltage sensitivity as 85dB/2.83V/m, which is 2dB lower than average; my B-weighted estimate was within experimental error of that figure, at 84.7dB(B)/2.83V/m. The speaker’s nominal impedance is specified as 4 ohms. My measurement, taken with Dayton Audio’s DATS V2 system, indicates that the impedance magnitude (fig.1, solid trace) drops slightly below 4 ohms in the lower midrange, with a minimum value of 3.61 ohms at 124Hz. The magnitude is higher than 8 ohms…

Founded in 1978, VPI Industries appears to be one of the most successful turntable manufacturers in the world—certainly in the US. The New Jersey–based company sells turntables, tonearms, cartridges, record clamps, plinths, record cleaning machines, and a phono preamp. But that’s not all. The company offers VPI-branded pillows, candles, mugs, stickers, T-shirts, and a tell-all company history, 40 Years on the Record. And talk about turntables! From the entry-level $1499 Cliffwood to the top-of-the-line $104,000 Vanquish (found under the website’s “VPI Luxury” page, accompanied by the adage, “Settle for Nothing but Extravagant”), VPI is clearly and rightfully proud of its analog achievements. Like many successful small businesses, VPI is a family affair. Cofounder and designer/engineer Harry Weisfeld designed the tables that established the company’s reputation. Sheila, Harry’s late wife and…

Before I tested one of the Dan D’Agostino M400 MxV amplifiers, serial number 5879, with my Audio Precision SYS2722,1 I preconditioned it by following the CEA’s recommendation: I ran it at one-eighth the specified power into 8 ohms for 30 minutes. At the end of that time, the side-mounted heatsinks were hot, at 106.1°F (41.2°C), and the top panel was hotter, at 110.5°F (43.7°C). After testing the amplifier at high powers, the temperature of the top panel had risen to 120.4°F/49.1°C. The M400 MxV needs to be well-ventilated. The D’Agostino’s voltage gain was 26.9dB into 8 ohms, and the amplifier preserved absolute polarity (ie, was noninverting). The specified input impedance is 1M ohm. I measured 183k ohms at 20Hz, 152k ohms at 1kHz, and 129k ohms at 20kHz. Though lower…

MOBILE FIDELITY ELECTRONICS SOURCEPOINT 10 LOUDSPEAKER The SourcePoint 10 loudspeaker from MoFi Electronics1 is an interesting, even unusual design. Sized somewhere between a conventional standmount and a small floorstander (but intended to be used on stands), the SourcePoint 10’s beefy cabinet is similar in size to my 1978 Spendor BC1, but the SP10’s 10" coaxial driver, which utilizes Andrew Jones’s “Twin-Drive high-flux neodymium magnet system,” is all new. The SP10 is heavy—at 46.2lb, nearly as heavy as the somewhat larger DeVore Fidelity O/96 (55lb). Perched on its dedicated stand—whether positioned vertically or horizontally, as John Atkinson, who reviewed the SourcePoint 10 for the May issue, did it—it’s solidly a standmount. Up front, the SourcePoint 10’s sculpted façade recalls Eero Saarinen’s TWA terminal at New York’s Kennedy Airport; the baffle’s multisectional…

When an artist has written hundreds of songs, it seems a logical request that he list the 15 or so that, as Fulks put it, “don’t embarrass me.” Would he consider this list “The Essential Robbie Fulks”? “Sure,” he said, “it’s fine if you want to say that.” Here they are, from the most recently released to the earliest, with the albums on which they appear. “Angels Carry Me,” Bluegrass Vacation (Compass, 2023) “Molly and the Old Man,” Bluegrass Vacation (Compass, 2023) “I Just Lived a Country Song,” Wild! Wild! Wild! with Linda Gail Lewis (Bloodshot, 2018) “Seventies Jesus,” Revenge of the Doberman (53-song release at robbiefulks.com, 2018) “Fare Thee Well, Carolina Gals,” Upland Stories (Bloodshot, 2016) “America Is a Hard Religion,” Upland Stories (Bloodshot, 2016) “Sarah Jane,” Upland Stories…

1972 is widely praised as the most fertile year ever for rock albums, notching such classics as The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street, David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, and Neil Young’s Harvest. But albums released in 1973 and currently celebrating their 50th anniversary may be even better: Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, ZZ Top’s Tres Hombres, and Bruce Springsteen’s The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle, among others. But of all the enduring albums of ’73, the most exotic, audacious, and ultimately entertaining must be Alice Cooper’s Billion Dollar Babies. If first impressions are key, then the look alone of the Billion Dollar Babies LP made it an instant classic.…

High Moon (auditioned as CD). 2023. Various prods., engs. High Moon Records is on a mission. Used-record crate diggers and musical anthropologists at heart, they have introduced lost artists like Ace of Cups and Sons of Adam to a new audience of fans. Their latest project may be their best yet. Gemini Girl augments the out-of-print Laurie Styvers releases Spilt Milk (1971) and The Colorado Kid (1973) with previously unreleased material including demos, alternate takes, and original songs thought long lost. The 36 tracks reside in a deluxe package with a 48-page booklet that includes liner notes by compilation producer Alec Palao. They delve deep into Styvers’s singer/songwriter legend via recollections of those who knew her, with never-before-seen photos, rare memorabilia, and more. Laurie Styvers wouldn’t become a household name,…

Absolute Records BOBT893CR4 (auditioned as 16/44.1 WAV). 2023. Thomas Mitchener, prod & eng. Almost a half-century after the release of The Damned’s debut single, “New Rose,” which heralded English punk’s noisy arrival on record, Darkadelic proves that they are still producing music that’s exhilarating, theatrically campy, and energetic in approximately equal measures. This album should further increase critical respect for this band, which has been rising since their earliest days, when they didn’t receive the respect they deserved (though audiences always loved them). The Damned never conformed to punk orthodoxy. When they made Music for Pleasure in 1977, they were hardly toeing the anti–Pink Floyd line! The ’60s have always been a strong influence, and so it is here: Darkadelic is a glorious mashup of psychedelic rock, goth, pop, and…

Escoffery, tenor and soprano saxophones; seven others Smoke Sessions SSR-2303 (auditioned as 16/44.1 WAV). 2023. Paul Stache, Damon Smith, prods.; Chris Allen, eng. The album title refers to the fact that most of the players here are Escoffery’s long-term associates. The core quartet has pianist David Kikoski, bassist Ugonna Okegwo, and drummer Mark Whitfield. There are four guests: trumpeter Tom Harrell, singer Gregory Porter, guitarist Mike Moreno, and percussionist Daniel Sadownick. Jazz musicians place huge importance on likemindedness because jazz is the most communal of art forms, in its creation and its consumption. These guys do sound like they were meant for each other. Escoffery and Moreno take the tight corners of the quickon-quick opening title track as if bonded at the hip. The next piece is Charles Mingus’s “Nostalgia…

Christiane Karg (s), Elisabeth Kulman (a), Prague Philharmonic Choir, Czech Philharmonic/Semyon Bychkov Pentatone Music PTC5186992 (CD). Holger Urbach, prod.; Stephan Reh, eng. From the opening attack, Bychkov’s Resurrection grabs your attention. The resonant bassi are alertly accented. The reed entry rides clearly above the strings. Within the movement’s turbulence, the aspiring second theme provides needed repose. The development’s slow march builds with careful control; dotted rhythms can feel lazy, but the pounding dissonances are crisp. Past an initial cutesy hesitation, the Ländler strides with confident elegance. The contrasting triplets inject an agitated note, then the basses’ accent muddles the scansion. Cellos sing warmly on the first return, and the woodwinds, here and throughout, are nicely daubed into the textures. The “St. Anthony” scherzo whirls cheekily, bassoon and duetting clarinets balanced…

When Art Dudley reviewed the original PS Audio PerfectWave DirectStream D/A processor in Stereophile’s September 2014 issue, he very much liked what he heard. “For those who’ve waited for a computer-friendly DAC that offers, with every type of music file, the best musicality of which DSD is capable, the PerfectWave DirectStream may be in a class by itself,” he concluded. It was computer-friendly because, with an add-in card, you could connect it with USB or to an Ethernet cable and use it with, for example, Roon or JRiver. DSD? The DirectStream’s D/A conversion engine, designed by former Microsoft engineer Ted Smith, was unusual in that it synchronously upsampled all input data—regardless of format and native sample rate—to a 30-bit word length running at 28.224MHz followed by a digital-domain volume control.…

While Technics certainly fired the starting pistol on the 21st century’s fledgling direct-drive revolution, VPI was still quick out of the blocks with its belt-free HW-40 40th Anniversary. The Avenger Direct uses the same nonferrous motor design with its claimed 2.68Nm/s torque, bringing the 24lb (11kg) platter, complete with peripheral ring clamp, up to speed in a little over 1s. Absolute speed was a mere 0.03% fast in the sample tested here, while the 0.02% peak wow and 0.03% peak flutter (fig.1) indicated some tightening of production tolerances over the HW-40. Pitch stability is clearly excellent. Through-groove rumble, on the other hand, is about 2dB higher than seen with the HW-40 at –71dB (DIN-B wtd) and slightly poorer again at –70dB with the LP weight in place (blue vs black…

In the 1960s, my dad gave me a Panasonic receiver with two cube speakers, just in time for the advent of FM stereo radio in the San Francisco Bay Area. Out of the blue one night, he just walked in with it. The receiver allowed me to plug in a record player, though I only had a few LPs. Later, when I went off to college, my mom took me shopping for a new stereo. I chose a Kenwood integrated amplifier—without a tuner but with the capability to plug in a tape deck, which I did. During my undergrad years, it served me well. Later, I switched to an NAD receiver, which allowed me to listen to the radio again. When it was time for my sons’ high school graduation,…

Mute (auditioned as 24/44.1 WAV). 2023. A Certain Ratio, prod. & eng. Ponos was the Roman god of hard labor. Other mythologies have similar deities; 1982 is only the third album from A Certain Ratio (ACR) in this century, so if post-punk has such a deity, it’s probably not them. A Certain Ratio has gone through several incarnations since their post-punk/funk origins. Gone is the dancing in the shadows of the days of Factory Records. Modern ACR still has the funk, and there’s a touch of that old post-punk edge, but generally it’s shiny, bright, and light. I doubt many folks are drawn to ACR primarily for the vocals of Jez Kerr, nor, indeed, the lyrics. The guest vocalist, Ellen Beth Abdi, adds her sweet neo-soul vocals; she sounds delightful…

Omnivore Recordings (auditioned as CD). 2023. Original production by Stephen Stills. Reissue produced by Kevin McCormick & Stephen Stills. In the summer of 1971, Stephen Stills headed out on his first solo tour, supporting his second solo album. He opened each show with a solo acoustic set and closed each night with a set that was fiery and electric. Then known as “The Memphis Horns Tour,” those dates found Stills at the top of his game, in great voice and musical form. Even his stage banter was upbeat and fun. This is all captured on Stephen Stills Live at Berkeley 1971, a 14-track collection of previously unreleased live performances from that tour, recorded at the Berkeley Community Theater in Berkeley, California, on August 20 and 21, 1971, available on CD,…

Kadleck, trumpet, arrangements; various combinations of 41 others Alternate Side ASR#014 (auditioned as CD). 2023. John Fedchock, prod.; Roy Hendrickson, eng. For more than 30 years, Tony Kadleck has been one of the first-call trumpet players in American music. His resumé is a name-dropper’s dream: Frank Sinatra. Ella Fitzgerald. Barbra Streisand. Tony Bennett. Stevie Wonder. But even in the inner circles of the New York jazz scene, where he is entrenched, Kadleck’s arranging chops are not common knowledge. Sides is only his third album as a leader and his second featuring his big band charts. This record is modern mainstream large ensemble jazz in its highest state of evolution. A repertoire of popular and jazz standards is presented in immaculate, creative arrangements, performed by the best big band players in…

Anna Prohaska, soprano; Patricia Kopatchinskaja, violin; Camerata Bern Alpha739 (CD, reviewed as 24/96). 2023. Louise Burel, prod.; Peter Laenger, eng. When has violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja failed to make a provocative record? Here, she joins forces with Anna Prohaska, a marvelous soprano who brings an early music sensibility to contemporary music, and the leaderless Camerata Bern. Alongside her collaborators, “PatKop” creates a uniquely themed recital. Determined to shatter myths about the so-called equality of women with their counterparts in today’s music industry, Kopatchinskaja and Prohaska assembled Maria Mater Meretrix to explore “the three classical female phenomenologies into which, since time immemorial, the (unfemale!) eye and ear have divided up the complex being of ‘Woman’ as Saint, Mother, and Whore.” Interspersing music from the 11th century (Hildegard von Bingen’s “O rubor sanguinis”)…

I have been haunted for 15 years by these words: “Very often if I was given the choice of listening to a piece of music I really liked or listening to nothing at all, I would choose nothing at all. … These days I don’t listen to a lot of music, and I find a lot of pleasure in no music. There’s a kind of silence and just hearing some conversation from outside, or hearing a police car in the distance, just these fragments of daily life are very poetic and very peaceful somehow.” They were spoken by Britisher David Toop,1 confirmed musichead, someone who has spent his life playing, listening to, and writing about music. Why would a person who amassed such a dragon’s hoard of obscure releases that…