Indholdsfortegnelse for September 2023 i Stereophile

Platter matters The next time you’re preparing to play a record, try doing a little experiment. Once you have the record mounted and spinning but before you lower the stylus into the groove, lower your gaze to just below record level and look for a gap between the platter and the record. It helps if there’s a light source or a brightly colored wall behind the platter. You may discover a gap—that very little of the record’s playing area is making true contact with the platter mat or (if there is no mat) the platter. Another way to test this is to take a record you don’t care much about, put it on the platter, then tap with your finger in the groove area listening for a click as your…

I measured Mytek’s Brooklyn Bridge II Roon Core using my Audio Precision SYS2722 system.1 I powered up the Mytek then connected it to my router with an Ethernet cable. However, the processor remained inert—it needed to be powered up after the Ethernet connection had been made. When I opened the Roon 2.0 app on my iPad mini, Roon identified two Brooklyn Bridge IIs in the Audio Settings window, one a generic ALSA device, the other a networked audio device not yet certified. I managed to enable the latter. The Brooklyn Bridge II was recognized as a Roon core. I activated it, but when I tried to send audio to the Mytek nothing happened, because, as I learned, only one Roon core can be active in a system; I needed to unauthorize…

MONOBLOCK POWER AMPLIFIER I should have trusted my ears. When I first encountered Infigo (pronounced In-FEE’-go) electronics, paired with Alta Audio’s Adam loudspeaker, at T.H.E. Show 2022 in Long Beach, California, I wrote,1 “Timbres were beautiful on bass and high-pitched percussion. The chimes and vibes sounded special and clean, colors were plentiful, and deep bass was all of one piece.” Nor was I exaggerating. In that system, Infigo’s Method 3 monoblocks ($55,000/pair) pleased my ears as much as their blue-illumined interiors delighted my eyes. Rather quickly, Editor Jim Austin suggested I review the Method 3. Perhaps he’d already been tipped off by Ken Micaleff’s praise when he first encountered Infigo in November 2021 at the Capital Audio Fest, and by the ensuing buzz.2 I was concerned, though, that the Infigo…

THIS ISSUE: Three recent piano albums refract American Standards into new patterns. The curse of composition Something has happened in jazz culture in the new millennium. There is more emphasis on original composition than ever before. There has been remarkably little discussion and analysis of this phenomenon, perhaps because many assume it is a positive development. Jazz, after all, prioritizes originality. There is a counterargument. It goes like this: Jazz today is vital and dynamic because great players keep popping up, all over the world. Very few of those great players are also great composers. Yet they apparently feel obliged to be. A large proportion of new jazz albums contain all or mostly originals. Economic incentives are in play. Original compositions possess the potential to generate royalties, in addition to…

New or vintage? I read with great interest the article by Alex Halberstadt in the May 2023 issue. The topic of which vinyl version of an album sounds best has been on my mind for many years. Mr. Halberstadt was able to get down on paper and explain it so very clearly. This is just like my best college professors, who articulate many complex topics in a way that is more easily digested by us commoners. Thank you, Stereophile, and Mr. Halberstadt for a job well done. Alex Weiss Charlotte, North Carolina David Lindley’s passing Many thanks to Tony Scherman for his heart felt tribute to legendary musician David Lindley. It is a very well-informed piece and is right on the money in almost every respect. I was fortunate to…

Psychoactive analog I’m going to tell a story about blind listening, because it illustrates what I consider the most important issue in today’s audiophile environment. I’m going to skip the names of the participants because you probably know them. And I’m not going to name the components, because their role in this story is merely as symbols of their type. Here is what I’ll reveal: We were playing LPs through an expertly curated, six-figure–priced sound system in a largish room that suited the large speakers perfectly. The occasion was a “listening party” at a friend’s apartment. The guest list included me and four of the most experienced listeners I know. The plan was for everyone to nosh lightly, drink good wine, and weigh in on a new, unnamed, not-free low-output…

INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER The first true high-end component I owned was an Audio Research SP-10. I reviewed this two-box, tubed preamplifier in the May 1984 issue of the English magazine Hi-Fi News & Record Review. “The SP-10 presented [recorded] information in a more coherent, less distorted manner than any preamp I’ve tried,” I wrote in the review, concluding that “the SP-10 made me realize how many good records I owned.” I purchased the SP-10 and brought the preamplifier with me when I moved to the US. Four decades later, I still have that SP-10. “Every now and again, when I want to be reminded of the magic it brings to my music, I set it up, plug in the tubes, and spend an evening spoiling my ears,” I wrote for an…

I used DRA Labs’ MLSSA system with a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone to measure the MoFi SourcePoint 8’s behavior in the farfield and an Earthworks QTC-40 mike for the nearfield responses. I left the grille off for the acoustic measurements. The SourcePoint 8’s specified sensitivity is 87dB/2.83V/m; my B-weighted estimate was the same. The SourcePoint 8’s nominal impedance is specified as 8 ohms, with a minimum value of 6.4 ohms. I measured the speaker’s impedance magnitude and phase with Dayton Audio’s DATS V2 system, but for consistency with Stereophile’s presentation of impedance graphs for the past 33 years, I created fig.1 with the Audio Precision System One software. The speaker’s impedance magnitude (solid trace) is greater than 8 ohms for almost all the audioband, dropping to 7.47 ohms at 120Hz. If…

Logistical issues meant that I measured different samples of the Infigo Method 3, serial numbers 3022-0002 and 3022-0003, than those auditioned by JVS. I started the testing with sample ’0003, using my Audio Precision SYS2722 system.1 Initially, I used a balanced connection between the Audio Precision’s signal generator and the Method 3. I preconditioned the amplifier following the CEA’s recommendation, operating it at one-eighth the maximum power into 8 ohms for 30 minutes prior to testing. At the end of that time, the right-hand heatsink was warm, at 101.8°F (38.8°C), but the left-hand heatsink was at room temperature (see later). Then I encountered problems: I saw bursts of high-frequency noise coinciding with the waveform peaks; these bursts went away when the XLR ground (pin 1) was floated. But with the…

THIS ISSUE: An 8-LP set celebrates late Mingus. Charles Mingus’s Changes: The Complete 1970s Atlantic Studio Recordings The standup bass genius and jazz force of nature Charles Mingus made his first album for Atlantic Records, Pithecanthropus Erectus, in 1956. Several of his most memorable musical masterpieces, including The Clown (1957), Blues and Roots (1960), and Oh Yeah (1962), followed as he intermittently returned to the label throughout the 1960s and early ’70s. Beginning in 1974 with Mingus Moves, the cigarillochomping, famously gruff Mingus recorded most of his final albums for the label as he progressed from composer/player to wheelchair-bound writer and musical director. His final seven studio albums for the label and a single LP of outtakes, all freshly remastered,1 comprise this welcome 8-LP (or 7-CD) box-set addition to the…

IN MEMORIAM: HIDEAKI NISHIKAWA Julie Mullins Celebrated audio designer and mechanical engineer Hideaki Nishikawa, best known for designing TechDAS Air Force turntables, has passed away at age 81. Stereophile received the news in a statement from Zephyrn Inc., the high-end audio equipment company he started in 2001, under which he launched TechDAS as a house brand in 2010. According to prior information from Zephyrn Inc. (as reported in Industry Update in the November 2022 issue), Nishikawa remained active as an adviser at Stella Group after retiring from his CEO role in August 2022. He continued to lead design projects. A (slightly edited) portion of the statement follows: It is with great sadness that Stella Inc. and Zephyrn Inc. announce that our mentor, colleague, and former CEO Hideaki Nishikawa passed away…

I performed the measurements of the Audio Research I/50 with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system,1 concentrating on the behavior of the balanced inputs and the 4 ohm output transformer tap, as that is what I mostly used in my auditioning. The I/50’s maximum voltage gain at 1kHz from the 8 ohm output transformer tap into 8 ohms was 19.6dB for the balanced input and 25.6dB for all three single-ended inputs. (The phono module, which is used with the SE1 input, was not installed.) The voltage gains from the 4 ohm tap were 3.2dB lower than from the 8 ohm tap, with both input types. Measured at the headphone jack, the maximum gain was unity for the singleended inputs, –6dB for the balanced input. Although the balanced input is specified as…

STREAMER/SERVER/DAC The concept of streaming digital music files over distances great (as with internet-streaming services like Spotify, Qobuz, Tidal, etc.) and small (from a home-PC hard drive, NAS, or networked music server) became mainstream only recently. But it was already brewing during the late 20th century, with people illegally downloading low-bitrate MP3 files made from CD rips and coming close to killing the recordedmusic industry. That wasn’t streaming exactly, or not in the current sense, because the files needed to be downloaded, stored locally, then either played out of a computer or loaded onto a portable player, but from that point forward it was a steady march to the streaming-dominated present. Never mind Napster—the first subscription audio “streaming” service was one you probably wouldn’t think of: Audible, the audio book…

I used DRA Labs’ MLSSA system with a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone to measure the Harbeth Super HL5plus XD’s behavior in the farfield and an Earthworks QTC-40 mike for the nearfield responses. I measured the speaker without the aluminum-frame grille and performed the primary response measurements on the super-tweeter axis. I measured the speaker’s impedance magnitude and phase with Dayton Audio’s DATS V2 system, but for consistency with Stereophile’s presentation of impedance graphs, I plotted the impedance measurement with the Audio Precision System One software. My B-weighted estimate of the Super HL5plus’s sensitivity was 85.7dB/2.83V/m, which is within experimental error of the specified 86dB. The Super HL5plus’s nominal impedance is specified as “6 ohms, easy to drive.” The speaker’s impedance magnitude (solid trace) is higher than 6 ohms for almost all…

THIS ISSUE: Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs delivers a great-sounding 45rpm reissue of Warren Zevon’s best album. The Werewolf If music reflects the life of the person who created it—if, for example, we can hear Mozart’s inner turmoil in his operas—then Warren Zevon’s song catalog is uncommonly revealing. Headless mercenaries, killer rapists, and yes, impeccably dressed werewolves with a taste for pina coladas are all part of the colorful world of WZ’s twisted imagination and especially of his masterpiece, 1978’s Excitable Boy. As with all things Zevon, it’s not quite that simple. Averse to doctors, Zevon, who famously admitted on the Late Show with David Letterman, “I might have made a tactical error not going to a physician for 20 years,” was diagnosed with advanced mesothelioma in 2002. It’s been theorized that…

At 79, Pulitzer Prize winner and NEA Jazz Master Henry Threadgill is one of the last men standing among the founding fathers of the jazz avant-garde. Because his output of recordings is not voluminous, every new Threadgill release is an event. The Other One is more of an event than most because of its ambition (it is an album-length suite) and its scale: It introduces a new 12-piece ensemble. Threadgill is one of the true originals in American art. His music is its own universe, with proprietary organizational principles and unique aesthetic assumptions. Over the years, he has assembled a coterie of undaunted artists who have learned to play his music. Several are in the new band: tuba player Jose Davila, cellist Christopher Hoffman, drummer Craig Weinrib, pianist David Virelles.…

THIS ISSUE: Music reviewer Phil Brett confronts his past and future in the window of a London second-hand store. Nostalgia for an age to come I was surprised to see, in the window of my local charity shop in a corner of north London, a display of 1980s Melody Maker magazines featuring some of my favorite bands. Nestled alongside second-hand frocks and pieces of crockery were The Redskins, Scritti Politti, Johnny Marr, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. The Redskins produced one rather fine album, which attempted to marry left-wing politics with northern soul. Frankie was seen as outrageous in its day; “Relax” was banned on several radio shows, and some record shops refused to stock it. Now both appeared proudly in the window of a second-hand shop that raises money for…