Indholdsfortegnelse for March 2025 i Stereophile

The first album I ever bought with my own money—cash earned mowing neighbors’ lawns—was a British plum-label pressing of Led Zeppelin II. It was 1971. I rode my prized Raleigh Chopper bike from our home on the coast of Denmark down the road a couple of miles to the local record store in a small town called Hørsholm. Fifty-four years ago, this kind of unsupervised activity was considered pretty normal for a 9-year-old kid in Denmark, even with no cellphones or other tethers that allowed your parents to keep tabs on you. It was also a time when smaller record stores would let you listen to records over headphones before buying them. A few days earlier, I had heard a few tantalizing snippets from LZ-2 courtesy of a friend’s older…

Among the many reasons to be grateful for audio shows,1 one stands out: They allow me to set reasonable expectations of what components and whole audio systems can or cannot achieve. They have helped me set standards. Name your component:2 I’ve heard enough of them in every price range to know what’s cutting edge, what’s good, and what’s barely (if at all) living up to its marketing promises. Although these days I mainly cover the higher priced spread, when I encounter a component that costs considerably less yet delivers most or all that I’ve come to expect from high five- and six-figure equipment, I know it’s worth cheering about. More than five years have passed since I evaluated the original, Canada-made DV2 D/A converter ($30,000 in 2019) from EMM Labs.3…

MOON 891 STREAMING PREAMPLIFIER The main focus of this Follow-Up will be the phono preamplifier on the Simaudio Moon 891 ($25,000). In his January 2025 review,1 JVS did not review the phono stage because he doesn’t play vinyl. JA did examine the 891’s phono section, declaring it of a piece with the preamp’s overall “state of the art” measured performance. While I had the unit in-house, I also spent some time with the Moon MiND app, the 891’s front-panel user interface, and streaming music through it with and without Roon. Once I’d wrestled the fall-apart packaging to ground and gently removed the Moon 891, it was no problem to get it quickly up and running in my office. I removed the three travel bolts (which lock down the internal isolation…

In less than 11 years, guitarist Emily Remler went from rising star to shooting star, from her first major exposure—an invitation from Herb Ellis to perform as part of “Guitar Explosion” at the Concord Jazz Festival on July 21, 1978—to her final concert on May 3, 1990, at the Hotel Richmond in Adelaide, Australia, where she was found dead from a heart attack the next day. She was 32 years old. Her documentation on record was even shorter, from her April 1981 Concord debut Firefly to This Is Me, her seventh and final album, released in 1990. She has fewer than a dozen credits as a sideperson. Today, women who play jazz guitar are plentiful and respected, but when Remler attended Berklee College of Music, their ranks were slim; Mary…

I am a lucky person. I’ve been writing monthly audio columns since 1992, and the chief benefit of that privilege has been that each month my mind is free to visit distant shores searching for exotic artifacts that readers might never encounter at their local audio emporium. This month, my raft drifted again onto Japan’s metaphorical shores. I was cordially greeted by an international cohort: Victor Kung (VK Music in Canada), Yoshi Segoshi (the American distributor for 47 Labs), Junji Kimura (47 Labs’ founder and chief engineer), and Kazutoshi Tsukahara, formerly associated with 47 Labs (in Japan) and now founder and chief engineer of Sparkler Audio, which is also based in Japan. Sparkler Audio makes modestly priced components including the model S515t “ballade II” CD transport, which I am about…

What if there was a character in Stanley Kubrick’s classic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey who was an audiophile? Aboard the Discovery One interplanetary space ship, what would his system look like? He’d probably have a pair of ultramodern speakers that could pluck sound out of the ether. He’d control the system with something like a present-day smartphone or tablet, commanding the HAL 9000 computer to play his favorite songs. The speakers would stand unobtrusively in a white room with 1970s modern-minimalist furniture, no rack of components to drive them, no wires connecting them, no shelves of physical media to play. And they would fill the room with music. I am sitting earthbound in my living room almost a quarter-century beyond the year 2001, living a similar scenario with the…

Audiophiles are often misunderstood as mere hobbyists; in fact they hold a profound reverence for sound. Japanese jazz kissas, where vintage vinyl, turntables, tube amplifiers, and horn speakers have drawn audiences since the 1950s, exemplify this passion. Western audiophiles share a similar fervor, though our pursuit of sonic perfection often manifests in a more discreet, almost monastic, lifestyle.1 Shinobu Karaki, a 65-year-old electronics designer, is the founder and chief designer of Japan’s Aurorasound. A music lover first, an audiophile second, and an aspiring jazz and classical guitarist, Karaki crafts phono stages, step-up transformers, preamplifiers, power amplifiers, and integrated amplifiers for his Yokohamabased audio company. Prior to founding Aurorasound in 2010, Karaki held the position of Digital Audio Group Business Director at Texas Instruments Japan, where he amassed nearly three decades…

Ed Meitner’s MDAT code has evolved over the last two decades from a 44.1kHz/SACD-centric platform to one that services both 44.1kHz and 48kHz base sample rates. This latest MDAT algorithm still employs a series of FIR digital filters whose characteristics are adapted by the transient conditions of the signal on a sample-by-sample basis, but this now operates at a much higher rate. MDAT2’s upsampling takes all input sample rates (including DSD) to 256×; base 44.1/48kHz inputs begin with a 2× stage, followed by 8× then 16× (totaling 256×) to deliver the final 11.2896/12.288MHz data rate. Similarly, 176.4/192kHz inputs are upsampled by 4× and 16×, and 352.8kHz/384kHz by 2× and 16×. The 24-bit data is truncated to a 1-bit bitstream en route, delivering a mere 6dB dynamic range across what is…

I have a love-hate relationship with subwoofers. They tend to bring out my tweaky alter ego. Perhaps one of these sorry personae lives within you too: the perennially neurotic Mr. Hyde to your more obliging Dr. Jekyll. Hyde is the tense, never-satisfied fault-sniffer who zeroes in on sonic details that are perhaps slightly off, even when other people in the room are enjoying themselves. With subwoofers, he’s at his worst. Did you hear that?, he’ll exclaim when he worries that a low bass note received too much emphasis. He nags and niggles that perhaps the integration between the main speakers and the subwoofer leaves a crater somewhere in the low-frequency band. He harps, not always believably, that he can hear where the subwoofer is, even though deep bass is supposed to…

“THAT’S PRETTY ODIOUS,” ANDY SUMMERS SAYS TO ME. “AN ODIOUS COMPARISON.” HIS BLUEISH EYES DARKEN. ROUGHLY AN HOUR INTO OUR 90-MINUTE FACE-TO-FACE INTERVIEW, I’D ASKED IF IT BOTHERS HIM THAT IN TERMS OF REACH AND STAYING POWER, HIS SOLO OEUVRE WILL NEVER MATCH HIS WORK WITH THE POLICE. To me, the observation seemed factual and uncontroversial, like saying that the sun rises in the east. The Police sold more than 75 million records and played some of the largest venues in the world. The night before our interview, I’d watched Summers perform a show in a 400-seat theater in rural Waldoboro, Maine. But my conversation partner feels I’ve belittled him and impugned his post-Police career. He looks irascibly out the plate-glass window into the rain-splashed courtyard of his hotel in…

Focal Diva Utopia With the Naim Dynamic Loudness Control Technology, it should be able to provide a nicer experience even at low volume. It ensures the very same tonal balance to be perceived without being SPL dependent. Included in the Focal & Naim App (for Diva only), it will step-by-step decrease from low to high SPL and automatically when reaching 50% of the volume control. Rejean Bedel, Group Marketing Manager Focal Aurorasound HFSA-01 I am delighted about the review and introduction of our HFSA-01 integrated amplifier to Stereophile’s readers. While the HFSA-01 isn’t positioned in the ultrahighend segment, it represents a versatile, reference-grade integrated amplifier designed to excel across all listening scenarios. Rather than following the traditional all-tube or all–solid state approach, we’ve developed a sophisticated hybrid architecture that harmoniously…

DYNAUDIO AT INNOVATIVE AUDIO Ken Micallef On Thursday, December 12, New York City’s Innovative Audio presented the North American debut of four Dynaudio loudspeakers. The event, held at the store’s Midtown location, featured presentations by Dynaudio executives John Quick and Michael Manousselis. Attendees had the opportunity to experience the sound quality and design of these new models. Of the four Dynaudio speakers showcased, only two are entirely new, the Contour 20 Black Edition and the Confidence 20A Active two-way monitors. The other speakers presented were the flagship Confidence 50 floorstanders and the Contour Legacy. The first to catch my eye as I stepped off the elevator into Innovative Audio’s beautifully appointed space were the new Dynaudio Contour 20 Black Edition speakers ($8000/pair), supported by Dynaudio Stand 20 stands ($598/pair) and…

One of my favorite things about this pastime is the modesty of its aims. Despite the sometimes-astronomical sums spent on gear, and the small handful of drama queens who populate various corners of this hobby, all we’re doing is trying to enjoy recorded music at home. No one here is reversing planetary warming or solving the Riemann hypothesis. The sole purpose of the pursuit we write about in these pages is to please, enlighten, and entertain. I like that about it. This means that aesthetics matter. During a recent trip to Japan, I found myself marveling at the many vintage audio components used in both public listening spaces and people’s homes, and the high prices these meticulously restored devices command. I found many of them lovely, the patina of age…

Although King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band was indubitably led by Joe Oliver himself, this deluxe box set, marking the centennial of the band’s recorded debut, focuses on its second cornetist, Louis Armstrong, who was making his own debut. These landmark jazz recordings, nearly the first by a black band from New Orleans, had a profound impact on the jazz that came afterward. They were recorded acoustically, without the use of electricity, and previous reissues have suffered from terminal murk, to the point that individual horn lines could hardly be discerned. Richard Martin and the Archeophone label have done an outstanding job of restoration, rendering the instrumental parts with remarkable clarity. Not content with that, the label presents the complete 1923 King Oliver sessions in the order of their original release…

When I recollect the soundtrack to my acid-tinged summer of 1967, several LPs stand out: The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s you-know-what, The Rolling Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties, Richie Havens’s Mixed Bag, a nd Dennis Brain’s equally famed recording of the Mozart Horn Concertos, with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Herbert von Karajan. Though all of them sounded potent and execrable, in equal parts, through our starving–ex-student record players, neither the Mozart’s monophonic provenance nor the too-distant sound of Brain’s horn could diminish the joy it brought me. That summer, the only thing that could carry me away from the joyfest of the Horn Concertos was the acid. I recall a particularly memorable heat-of-summer trip in Carbondale, Illinois, at the start of which, after everyone else in the house had drifted into…