Indholdsfortegnelse for May 2025 i Stereophile

EXPLORING THE ANALOG ADVENTURE The story goes that starting in 1962, Malcolm Jones was KEF’s “first employee,” where he “did most of the design and development of the legendary KEF drive units—the B139, B200, B110, T15, T27—and the systems in which they were incorporated. Malcolm left KEF in 1974, having just completed the Reference Series 104 system and work on an active professional monitor to work full time at Falcon Acoustics Ltd.”1 Fast-forward a few years. I bought my first BBC LS3/5a in 1980. It was a Falcon Acoustics kit I saw advertised in the back of Speaker Builder magazine. Fingers crossed, I sent a postal money order in a thin Air Mail envelope to what I imagined was a garden shed in England. But of course it wasn’t. According…

For the past decade or so, I haven’t been using a preamplifier. The D/A processors I have been using all have volume controls, so I have been feeding their outputs directly to the power amplifiers. It would seem logical that having nothing in the signal path would have less of a degrading effect than a preamp’s input and output sockets, switches, volume control, printed circuit-board traces, and active and passive parts, not to mention an additional pair of interconnects. However, with some of the preamplifiers I have auditioned in my system, there was no doubt that the sound quality improved compared with the direct connection from the digital processor. The most recent of these preamps was the MBL N11 that Jason Victor Serinus reviewed in July 2021,1 which was preceded…

ASK THE AVERAGE JAZZ-LOVING AUDIOPHILE TO LIST HIS FAVORITE RECORDING ENGINEERS, AND SUCH ICONS AS RUDY VAN GELDER, ROY DUNANN, AND FRED PLAUT WOULD TOP THEIR LISTS. BUT IF YOU ASKED A HANDFUL OF CURRENT AND RECENT NEW YORK CITY JAZZ MUSICIANS TO CITE THEIR FAVORITES, ONE NAME WOULD LEAP TO THE FRONT OF THE PACK: JAMES ALLEN FARBER. Farber’s engineering and mixing credits span nearly 1000 albums, dating from the mid-1970s to the present day. He has won five Grammy Awards, in the Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album (three times), and Best World Music Album categories. The New Jersey native has worked with jazz artists as diverse as Michael Brecker, Melissa Aldana, Paul Motian, Bill Frisell, Brad Mehldau, Joshua Redman, Ravi Coltrane, Jerome Sabbagh, John…

The essence of jazz is supposed to be the free-flowing exploration of ideas and expressions. Yet hardcore fans of the music have the unnerving habit of supporting and denigrating the work of the same player from record to record. Artistic growth is often seen as a negative. Even devoted fans might not follow an artist who veers off into a stylistic direction they abhor. The classic example is Miles Davis, who went through several artistic reinventions during his long career. Many of those who love Kind of Blue recoil from Dark Magus, On the Corner, or You’re Under Arrest. So-called fusion—adding influences from rock and/or funk—is most often the villain in these judgments. After starting out as a hard-bop devotee in the early 1960s, with such classic Blue Note sessions…

PEERING INTO HI-FI’S BACK ALLEYS AND DUSTY NOOKS Some years ago, I visited the home of a well-known American author who happened to be an audiophile. His cramped, dimly lit listening room contained a tube amp, a DAC, and a pair of inexpensive floorstanding speakers surrounded by what looked like a museum of audio tweaks. I recall a scarecrow-like contraption with swiveling wood-and-metal arms that rearranged magnetic fields, assorted boxes and panels that promoted “quantum proton alignment,” mysterious dots covering the walls like a rash, and nearly a dozen things dangling from the speakers’ binding posts that were supposed to do something I can’t remember. The author had an almost mystical belief in the power of these objects to bend the laws of physics and told me that he’d spent…

Celebrated for its contributions to cuisine, music, and art, Italy boasts a rich cultural heritage and a history of profound significance to the world. From the 1088 establishment of the University of Bologna, the oldest university in the Western world, to the invention of the radio by Guglielmo Marconi in the mid-1890s, Italy has been at the forefront of innovation and artistic pursuit. Modern Italy stands as a testament to its vibrant past. “The Italian Renaissance, which began in Florence in the 1380s, marks the first moment when Europeans stepped away from the traditional and medieval pious Christian view of man to embrace values and attitudes they had discovered through studying the culture of the ancient world,” wrote William (“Bill”) Adams, a former professor of Italian history, in an email.…

THERE’S ONLY TWO KINDS OF MUSIC: THE BLUES AND ZIPPETY DOO-DAH.—TOWNES VAN ZANDT Staying up on what’s new in music ain’t easy these days, in a world short on new record stores and long on websites, social media blather, and celebrity. Asked what he listens to when he’s not writing music, fast-talking septuagenarian Ray Mason exudes a teenager’s eager urgency. “I keep my ears open. I’ve been listening to new stuff by people I have been following for years like Nick Lowe and The Straitjackets, Rodney Crowell, Kathleen Edwards, and Lucinda Williams. And then Craig Finn. I don’t own any Hold Steady albums, but I love his last two solo albums. He has a new one coming out that [Adam] Granduciel from War on Drugs produced. And The Beths of…

BOWERS & WILKINS BECOMES OFFICIAL AUDIO PARTNER TO MCLAREN F1 Mark Henninger Bowers & Wilkins has expanded its decade-long partnership with McLaren, becoming the official audio partner of the McLaren Formula 1 Team. Previously focused on in-car audio for McLaren’s road vehicles, the collaboration now includes cobranded products inspired by McLaren’s 2024 Constructors’ Championship win. The partnership extends beyond automotive audio, with Bowers & Wilkins products integrated into the F1 team’s travel and prerace preparations. New products build on past releases, for example the Px8 McLaren Edition headphone and Zeppelin McLaren Edition speaker. Joint marketing efforts will highlight their shared commitment to performance and innovation. The proximity of Bowers & Wilkins’ facility to McLaren’s Technology Centre in Surrey, England, supports technical collaboration—including refining systems for the new McLaren W1 supercar.…

WE COME SPINNING OUT OF NOTHINGNESS, SCATTERING STARS LIKE DUST.—RUMI It doesn’t happen very often, but every once in a while a new turntable comes to my attention that I have no prior knowledge of. The last new turntable company that was a complete blank slate was J.Sikora, which I first encountered about six years ago courtesy of importer Jeff Fox of Notable Audio. Now I find myself in that position again, with UK-based Connected-Fidelity and their turntable the TT Hub. Until I read the press release last December, sent to me by Mike Fajen of importer/distributor Sierra Sound, I was completely in the dark about the TT Hub, its manufacturer Connected-Fidelity, and that company’s owner and head designer Michael Osborn. Connected-Fidelity is the manufacturing arm of Air Audio Distribution,…

The Innuos ZENith Next-Gen ($20,700 as equipped) does what streamer-servers do: store music files, read them into memory, and send them on to a D/A converter to make music. In Innuos’s complex (yet logical) lineup of streamers and streamer-servers, the ZENith Next-Gen sits just below the flagship Statement and above the ZENith Mk.3.1 The ZENith Mk.3 remains in the Innuos lineup for now but will be replaced at AXPONA shortly after this issue hits mailboxes and newsstands. Though similar in many respects, with a very similar appearance, these two products—the ZENith Next-Gen and the ZENith Mk.3—are very different beasts. There is one rather obvious difference: a CD slot on the Mk.3 (with, of course, a CD drive inside), which makes it easy to rip CDs to the server’s internal memory.…

ANY CLOD CAN HAVE THE FACTS; HAVING OPINIONS IS AN ART Acoustic Revive RR-888 I would like to thank Alex for taking the time to evaluate the Acoustic Revive RR-888 Ultra Low Frequency Pulse generator and Stereophile for publishing his observations. Valid studies have been conducted that point to an inverse correlation between the intensity of the Schumann resonance and the blood pressure of subjects. Similar devices have been placed in milking stations for cows, and reports show an increase in yield (happy cows!). In the case of system performance, it is easier to conclude that these devices have more of an impact on the listener than any direct influence on the signal itself. In the many years we have been distributing the RR-888 and its predecessors, Alex is the…