Innehållsförteckning för Issue 2 - 2021 från Audio Esoterica

Legendary US high-end manufacturer Audio Research has released the first product in an all-new series. The new Audio Research I/50 integrated amplifier, with its high-current, 50-watt-per-channel output stage, is functionally simple, visually engaging, and musically sublime and, according to Philip Sawyer, of Synergy Audio Visual, which distributes Audio Research in Australia, “takes music listening to a whole new experience.” Hand-crafted in Minnesota, every I/50 is auditioned by Audio Research’s sonic designer, Warren Gehl, before being shipped. The design is deliberately modular, so you can order it as a classic hybrid integrated amplifier or add one or both of two modules — a phono stage and a DAC. A headphone amplifier is already built in, and there are three single-ended inputs and one XLR input. Unique ‘LexieTube’ displays provide information about…

Hey wait! Don’t turn the page! I’m guessing that all the stereo hi-fi-loving readers of Audio Esoterica are wondering what the heck an AV receiver is doing slap bang in the middle of the magazine. For sure it’s a top-of-the-line integrated model from a company with a long heritage in stereo as well as multichannel equipment. And of course AV receivers are built to play music as well as movie soundtracks. It’s just unlikely that many of you Audio Esoterica readers will be doing so, I’d guess. But here’s the thing. We’ve been listening in two-channel stereo since, what, 1958? Yet we’ve had quadraphonic sound for nearly 50 years; Pink Floyd released ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ in quad in 1973 (on LP, cassette and 8-track indeed). Some of…

There are only three things required to build superb loudspeakers. A team of talented and experienced speaker designers, unlimited research and development resources, and state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities. That’s why there are so few superb loudspeakers! Revel ticks all three boxes. The design team is a veritable ‘dream team’ that includes three of the world’s most famous loudspeaker designers: Dr Sean Olive (who started his audio career working with Dr Floyd E. Toole at Canada’s National Research Council), Kevin Voecks (who helped found Mirage before becoming chief engineer at Snell), and Mark Glazer (Jumetite Labs and Infinity Systems, where he worked with Arnie Nudell). It really doesn’t get any better than that! As for ticking the second box Revel is owned by Harman International, which has the best acoustic laboratories and…

Such a titanic combination did the Gryphon Essence Preamplifier and Stereo power amplifier present when they first appeared in the pages of Audio Esoterica that we are paying a return visit to their wonders now, in celebration of the advance information — classified at the time of publication, indeed, and to be divulged only to you, dear readers — that the Gryphon pre-power amplifier is being awarded the top-level Sound+Image Award for Pre-Power combinations in the upcoming 2022 Awards. The reasons for this recognition will be self-evident if you have read the original review. The stereo power amplifier is a very, very unusual audio amplifier. Which, if you know anything at all about this proudly Danish high-end audio specialist or its recently-retired founder, Flemming E. Rasmussen, should not come as…

Linn has released the latest iteration of its flagship turntable, the Klimax LP12. This latest version of a literally timeless classic vinyl-spinner features ‘Radikal’—a new, hyper-accurate speed management technology, along with a new whisper-quiet power supply and a state-of-the-art motor. The new LP12 can also be the home for Linn’s new flagship cartridge, the Ekstatik. “This marks the conquest of a new summit of performance, at the top of the industry-leading Sondek LP12 range,” said Nigel Ng, of Advance Audio, which distributes Linn in Australia. “With new Klimax LP12, listeners will experience their favourite albums — both cherished classics and those freshly unwrapped — as if it were for the first time. The new Klimax LP12 sustains rotation closer to 33.333 rpm than any turntable ever before and thus produces…

Mark Levinson (the man) is widely credited as being the founder of the highend audio business. He was a talented multi-instrumentalist who, immediately prior to starting-up his eponymously named company, was the bassist for the famous Canadian jazz pianist Paul Bley. Levinson decided to build audio equipment in his spare time because, in his own words, “I heard that the sound we played as musicians did not sound like what came out of speakers, and decided to narrow the gap. That led to decades of involvement in audio recording and equipment design and manufacturing.” You certainly could not doubt Levinson’s credentials for entering the audio business, because his great uncle was none other than Heinrich Hertz, the physicist who first demonstrated the electro-magnetic wave! Levinson’s first commercial product was a…

Many Audio Esoterica readers will know Norway’s 2L record label, founded in 2001 by sound engineer and music producer Morten Lindberg, and immediately thereafter garnering a reputation for audiophile-quality recordings, including a focus on high-resolution audio. So dedicated is 2L to proselytising the joys of high-res, indeed, that it hosts one of the most useful selections of high-res test files in PCM and DSD, free to download from the ‘Hi-res Test Bench’ section of its website www.2l.no for playback on your system — in some cases to see whether your system can play them at all, and in others whether you can hear the difference between them. 2L has recorded in surround as well as high-res since near its beginnings, and more recently has been releasing recordings in not only…

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. We know that Leonardo da Vinci (whose words those were) was a visionary, but even we were amazed that he’d already imagined a product such as the Aurender A30. In an age where state-of-the-art high fidelity reproduction requires you to carefully choose and buy multiple components, work out how best you should connect them, and then work out how to operate everything, Aurender’s A30 is a breath of fresh air. It is just so simple to operate, despite its complexity and the fact that it’s the Swiss Army knife of music playback devices. The Aurender A30 will simplify your music playback experience. Put one in your system and you won’t need your CD player, you won’t need your computer, you won’t need your NAS drive,…

Mark Levinson has released only the second turntable it has ever built, and the great news is that the new No. 5105 is around $30,000 less than the company’s flagship No. 519 turntable. The No. 5105 features 25mm thick, bead-blasted, black-anodized, solid aluminium front panels that are machined and contoured to flow seamlessly into the sleek tinted glass display that’s recessed into them. It has a 50mm-thick solid aluminium plinth machined from a single billet that is suspended on three adjustable aluminium feet, each with a mixed-material internal suspension system. Spinning over the top of the plinth on an oil-free bearing made of a mix of composite material with integrated lubrication and a maintenance-free sintered brass bushing is a solid aluminium belt-driven 6.3kg platter topped with a carbon-fibre slip-mat. A…

The 11 channels of power from the Aventage RX-A8A will fully serve a 7.1.4 speaker layout, with seven channels on the floor, and four for height (or as Yamaha would prefer, ‘presence’). If you run a smaller system, you can divert the unused power to run extra zones and other options. If you have two subwoofers, the RX-A8A can deliver genuinely differentiated bass signals to these as either left/right or front/back, making a true 7.2.4 system. More to the point, this is no lowly receiver built around a set of Class-D amplifier chips with inflated power ratings. The amplification here is proper Class-AB, quoted at 150W per channel into 8 ohms full-range with two channels driven and 0.06% THD. Yamaha also makes much of a doubling of the slew rate…

You can tell that designer Daniel Weiss has spent his life at the creative end of audio engineering, in the control room of a studio, because the Weiss DAC 502 isn’t so much a DAC as a creative tool that allows you to modify what’s going through it to best suit your system, your hearing and your preferences in music. And this is not entirely surprising. It’s quite likely many of the CDs in your collection, many of the downloads and streams you listen to, were mastered using equipment made by Weiss. In 2021 he was the winner of a Technical Grammy, awarded to him for Special Merit (Technical), at which presentation Harvey Mason for the Recording Academy said that “Daniel Weiss is one of the true pioneers of digital…

Nick Papas is relieved. As he spoke to us, Audio Solutions, the destination hi-fistore on Botany Road in Mascot, NSW, had just had its first week back open for business after the long Sydney lockdown. But in fact, through the last 18 months of the pandemic, the Audio Solutions store, which Nick has run with co-owner Tony Stantzos for more than 20 years, never closed its doors entirely. “We’ve been open right through — minimal staff sometimes just me and Tony doing click and collect, but a lot of people were driving in through the back lane with full Covid cover, picking up stuff and getting on with their lives.” Audio Esoterica: You’re also renowned for doing detailed phone advice as well. Nick Papas: Correct — well, because they couldn’t demo…