Indholdsfortegnelse for July 2024 i Stereophile

I measured a different sample of the Octave Audio MRE 220 SE to that auditioned by JVS. Mine had the serial number 412182330. JVS had told me that he performed his critical auditioning with the balanced input, the Power switch set to High, the damping factor set to DF Low, the Ground Lift switch in the Connected position, and with the amplifier connected to the Super Black Box external supply. I performed a full set of measurements in that condition, then repeated some of the tests with the single-ended input, then with the damping set to DF High, and finally without the Super Black Box.1 The four KT150 output tubes were not marked, but I followed the guide in their box to install them correctly. I let the amplifier warm up…

A few summers ago, I briefly got it in my head that I could become a wine connoisseur. This was due to a very generous and unexpected gift. A local acquaintance had passed away, and his wife wanted to rid her basement of his small wine collection. I don’t know why I was chosen as the lucky recipient, but after stammering half a dozen thank-yous, I suddenly owned about 150 fine wines. A few carried four-figure price tags. Reliably telling a Pinot Grigio from a Chardonnay isn’t part of my skill set. Grape varieties, terroir, vintages? You might as well ask a toddler to become conversant in quantum mechanics. Still, I was intrigued by the bottles and amused by the ridiculousness of the situation. Me, an oenophile? I supposed I…

After carefully installing the Triode Lab 2A3 EVO’s tubes, I performed a complete set of tests of the amplifier with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system1 using the Electro-Harmonix 2A3 Gold output tubes, then repeated the testing with the KR 2A3 tubes that KM told me he preferred. As usual, I waited for an hour after powering up the amplifier before starting the testing. The 2A3 EVO inverted polarity from both the 4 ohm and 8 ohm output transformer taps. The input impedance was a usefully high 61k ohms at 20Hz and 1kHz, 41k ohms at 20kHz. The source impedance from the 8 ohm output transformer taps with the KR tubes was relatively low, at 1 ohm from 20Hz to 20kHz. From the 4 ohm taps, the source impedance was 0.66…

SINCE DISBANDING DIRE STRAITS, WHICH HE LED FROM 1977 to 1992, Knopfler has evolved from headband-sporting guitar hero to acclaimed observational songwriter. Commencing with his 1996 solo debut Golden Heart (Warner Bros.) and continuing through One Deep River, his just-released 10th solo studio album, on the jazz-centric Blue Note label, Knopfler tells character-focused stories in arrangements that might cause listeners to think he’s from Nashville, not Northumber-land. Post-Straits songs like “Sailing to Philadelphia” (the Charles Mason/Jeremiah Dixon exploratory history-lesson duet with James Taylor), “Boom, Like That” (a chronicle of America’s mid–20th century fast-food explosion), and “Tunnel 13” (a new track, from One Deep River, about a 1923 train robbery in the Siskiyou Mountains of northern California) have extended the narrative thread laid down in vintage Dire Straits songs like “Romeo…

Most of the 1950s Contemporary Records catalog is the bullseye of “West Coast Jazz,” a smoother, more laid-back flavor than the hard bop and soul jazz styles percolating back east. Set in that context, tenor saxman Harold Land’s The Fox stands out for its aggressive speed and punch. Its style would seem more at home on Blue Note or Prestige. Read the back notes on the beautifully packaged new reissue from Craft Recordings and Acoustic Sounds and clarity emerges. The Fox wasn’t born in Contemporary’s studio/shipping room. Instead, it was laid to tape at Radio Recorders, Studio B, Los Angeles, in August 1959. It was the first record produced by David Axelrod, who would become a fixture at Capitol Records. It was released by short-lived label Hifijazz.1 Contemporary reissued it…

It’s a truism in business—or if it isn’t strictly true, it’s at least a cliché—that you can’t please everyone. But Mark Mawhinney sees everyone as a potential customer. He does his best to cover all customer bases, from old-school audiophiles to newcomers, from Boomers to Gen Z. “As long as they have two legs and two ears, they can be our customers,” he told Stereophile in a recent phone interview. Mawhinney owns and runs three businesses: Spin-Clean, the longstanding, inexpensive record-cleaning system; Northern Audio, a high-end audio dealership; and Music To My Ear, a record store that also sells some entry-level to midtier hi-fi equipment. The three businesses occupy the same building in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Business, he says, is strong. Not many people can claim 50 years of industry experience—especially…

Tubes, tubes, tubes—how we love to bask in their glow, roll them, and take their second-order harmonic distortion into our hearts as if it were a child or a pet. Some may put out so much heat that we have no choice but to open a window, turn on the air conditioning, or listen in the garb of Adam and Eve before that fatal first bite. As they and you age, you can never be sure who’s at their best. Tubes, at least, can be replaced, albeit at significant expense. The special sound of tubes, which flows like water and sometimes shines like the golden sun you hopefully shielded your eyes from during the recent eclipse, makes it all worth it—if the design and implementation are good and you can’t…

I used DRA Labs’ MLSSA system, a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone, and an Earthworks microphone preamplifier to measure the quasi-anechoic frequency- and time-domain behavior of one of the McIntosh ML1 Mk IIs—serial number BBB1256—in the farfield. The manual doesn’t mention the preferred listening axis. However, although the tweeter is a low 31.75" from the floor with the loudspeaker sitting on its stand, the stand’s slight tiltback will aim the tweeter at the ears of a typical seated listener. I therefore performed the farfield measurements on the tweeter axis. I used an Earthworks QTC-40 microphone, which has a ¼” capsule, for the nearfield responses, examined the loudspeaker’s impedance with Dayton Audio’s DATS V2 system, and investigated the enclosure’s resonant modes with a plastic-tape accelerometer. McIntosh specifies the sensitivity of the ML1 Mk…

For 16 years, I bled jazz. Countless hours alone in my practice shed, honing technique, recording myself for brutal self-analysis, dissecting and transcribing master drummers’ solos note for note. My dream was to transcend technique, to exist in a state of pure reaction among musicians in perfect communion, where improvisation flows as effortlessly as thought. The years melted away—George Lawrence Stone’s sticking variations, Benjamin Podemski’s concert drum solos, dog-eared “Real Book” charts, college big band concerts, smoky jam sessions, a basement practice routine that nearly deafened Mom. Once I was in NYC, there were classes at Drummer’s Collective. With intense application, playing became rote. But in rare moments of surrender, it wasn’t me playing the music anymore. The music played me—ideas transmitted effortlessly, without thought, guided by some unseen force:…

I performed a complete set of measurements on the WiiM Amp with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system.1 Before I did so, I installed the WiiM Home app on my iPad mini and connected the amplifier to my network with a CAT-5 Ethernet cable. The app (version 2.9.5.24041612) recognized the Amp, and I performed a factory reset. Because the amplifier has a class-D output stage, I inserted an Audio Precision AUX-0025 passive low-pass filter between the test load and the analyzer. This filter mitigates noise above 80kHz and eliminates noise above 200kHz that would otherwise drive the SYS2722’s input circuitry into slew-rate limiting. Without the filter, 470mV of ultrasonic noise with a center frequency of 460kHz was present at the amplifier’s output terminals. I used the Audio Precision filter for all the…

THERE’S ONLY TWO KINDS OF MUSIC: THE BLUES AND ZIPPETY DOO-DAH.—TOWNES VAN ZANDT It’s no secret that the musical history of New Orleans is rich and varied. From Buddy Bolden to a young Louis Armstrong being consigned to the Colored Waif’s Home for shooting off his stepfather’s pistol on New Year’s Eve, to the many pianists who accompanied the irresistible allure of Storyville, musicians and their music have forever been a key ingredient in NOLA’s flamboyant DNA. Most elemental of all—did he facilitate the birth of rock’n’roll?—are those honeyed days at Cosimo Matassa’s humble but groundbreaking studio J&M Recording on Rampart Street (1947–1956). There, his infallible ears and uncanny skill placing microphones somehow imparted a raw and very real sound to early recordings of Roy Brown, Little Richard, Fats Domino,…

Seventy years ago this summer, a young pianist from Tryon, North Carolina—a town of fewer than 2000 residents—made her professional debut in Atlantic City. This was not the culmination of a dream but rather an economic choice born of the racial circumstances of the era. It was a letdown. The venue was the Midtown Bar. If they’d known what she was doing, her parents would have objected and her musical peers would have sneered, so Eunice Waymon performed under a pseudonym: Nina Simone. Adding to the indignity for this classically trained pianist, playing wasn’t enough; she was also expected to sing. Simone would continue in Atlantic City for almost two years, then do similar work in Philadelphia, where her family had relocated in 1951 in expectation of her being accepted…

Voxativ Ampeggio 2024 We at Voxativ in Berlin are deeply grateful to Ken and JA for their perceptive review of our reborn Ampeggio in Stereophile (Vol.47 No.6). Their meticulous exploration and nuanced portrayal of the listening experience encapsulate the essence of our ongoing 15-year endeavor. Would we be here today if it weren’t for Art Dudley’s first review? Ken’s tribute to Art beautifully links the heritage of our original design to the innovations in the new Ampeggio, highlighting the evolution of our philosophy. His remarks on the speaker’s pitch certainty, dynamic range, and emotional impact echo our mission to create handcrafted designs that can convey the pure emotional essence of the music. The review’s focus on the technical enhancements of the new Ampeggio—including the optimized cabinet, redesigned support system, and…

REMEMBERING ANDREW SINGER Michael Trei Andrew N. Singer, founder and owner of New York City high-end audio retailer Sound By Singer, died Sunday, April 21, 2024, following a lengthy illness. He was 73 years old. Born and raised in New York City by a Jewish father and a French mother, Andy did what any good Jewish kid would do to please his parents: got a law degree and went to work for a prestigious New York City law firm. All went well at first, but after about three years he came to realize that the legal profession bored him to tears. Switching gears, he decided to follow his real passions—music, audio equipment, and building audio systems—and established Sound By Singer in 1978 in the living room of his parents’ Manhattan…

Country is a music of diverse pleasures: the bel canto balladry of George Jones and Tammy Wynette, the psychologically acute portraiture of Tom T. Hall, the politically rousing storytelling of Loretta Lynn, the self-deprecating myth-making of Billy Joe Shaver, the bone-chilling spirituality of Ralph Stanley. It’s also full of contradictions: Maligned by some as hackneyed and simplistic, its lyrics can attain a sophistication rarely encountered in other music. Dismissed for reactionary politics, it has consistently offered up fierce critiques of inequality, bigotry, and injustice (see Johnny Cash’s Bitter Tears, below). And if during certain periods the country charts seem swamped with work of almost unimaginable ickiness and bathos, there are usually flashes of musical sublimity glimmering through. For years, a certain kind of listener has turned up their nose at…

I measured a different sample of the Eversolo DMP-A8 from that auditioned by RvB. The serial number was 800A805CC764, and my sample was fitted with the v1.2.80 firmware. Looking first at the line-input performance with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system,1 the DMP-A8 preserved absolute polarity (ie, was noninverting) with both balanced and unbalanced inputs and outputs. With the volume control set to “0dB,” the gain was –0.06dB from the balanced inputs to balanced outputs and from the unbalanced inputs to the unbalanced outputs. Setting the volume control to the maximum of “+10.0dB” increased the gain by 9.9dB. The control operated in accurate 0.5dB steps. The Eversolo’s unbalanced input impedance was a relatively low 5k ohms at 20Hz and 1kHz and 3.5k ohms at 20kHz. The balanced input impedance was higher, at…

Life is not for Goldilocks. “Just right” is elusive. Every day, we face countless situations where our choices are either too many to navigate or too few to find satisfaction. Behavioral scientists call those dissatisfying alternatives “choice overload” and “choice deprivation,” respectively.1 I think choice overload may scare some audiophiles away from the glorious world of streaming, where the bulk and finite scope of a physical music-media collection can be traded for (or augmented by) many more listening choices. If you’re willing to explore and choose, you can hear as deep and wide as most musical rabbit holes are likely to go, and then return to your favorite songs with a couple of finger-pecks on your phone. For some people, all that choice is intimidating, paralyzing, overwhelming, highly stressful. That’s…

PS AUDIO PERFECTWAVE DIRECTSTREAM MK2 D/A PROCESSOR When I reviewed the new version of PS Audio’s classic D/A processor1 in the June 2023 issue,2 I enjoyed its sound quality, but some aspects of its measured performance concerned me. The impulse and frequency responses, the behavior of the reconstruction filter, the channel separation, the low intermodulation distortion, and the balanced and singleended output impedances were all beyond reproach, and though harmonic distortion was higher in level than I was expecting, it was still sufficiently low. However, the level of ultrasonic noise was higher than I had found with PS Audio’s original DirectStream processor running the “Windom” FPGA firmware: The MK2 processor running the v2.3.6 firmware had 210mV of ultrasonic noise in its balanced outputs, with a center frequency of 370kHz, compared…

Of all the albums in the Grateful Dead catalog, American Beauty is the one with the widest appeal. Its proto-Americana tunes are neither antique nor modern; instead, they are timeless. The album’s sound is clean and lean, up to modern snuff even more than a half-century after its original release in November 1970. The tunes seem to roll like a Sunday drive on a country road, in and out of dark hollows and up and down hills.1 Three of its 10 songs have become folk-rock standards: “Friend of the Devil,” “Sugar Magnolia,” and “Truckin’.” As you’d expect, the album has been reissued many times since its release; Discogs lists 116 vinyl versions,2 though there may be some redundancy on the list. In recent times, Rhino Records has put out two…

For those who care about sonics, the current wave of expensive 45rpm vinyl reissues has made one question urgently relevant: Does convenience trump better sound? Put differently, does the ease of not getting up every 10 minutes to turn over or replace the record offset improved sound quality? It’s settled science that a higher rotational speed can result in a better frequency range, better stereo imaging, less frequency fluctuation, and increased low-end response—if a record is well-pressed. Vinyl cut at 45rpm has a 36% higher groove velocity. The inner tracks in particular on a 12", 45rpm cut should sound noticeably better. The downside is that the amount of recorded time is now also reduced by 36%, which means the records must be flipped sooner and more frequently, breaking up the…