Innehållsförteckning för Nov-17 från Stereophile

The Reed 3P tonearm, which I reviewed in my April 2016 column, was an impressive piece of imaginative engineering and manufacturing prowess. I’m hoping that, by the time you read this, that review will be posted online at AnalogPlanet.com. I asked Reed’s importer, Axiss Audio, if I could hold on to the 3P—I was already planning to review Reed’s Muse 3C turntable. I’m glad I did—the 3P ($5000) and 3C ($15,000) make an outstanding combination. (When the only complaint you have about a turntable is that the cable from its power jack to the power supply isn’t long enough to reach the floor, you can be sure you’re going to write a very positive review.) Reed, based in Lithuania, has been designing and manufacturing analog products for almost a decade.…

Various Artists 17th Annual Blues Masters at the Crossroads Joe Beard, George Brock, Sonny Green, Marquise Knox Band, Lazy Lester, Mighty Sam McClain, Moreland & Arbuckle, Rip Lee Pryor APO Records XBMC2014FULL (multichannel or stereo DSD64, stereo 24/176 FLAC). 2015. DDDTT: 10:47:49 Downloads: http://store.acousticsounds.com/d/103764/Various_Artists-17th_Annual_Blues_Masters_at_the_Crossroads_6_Performance_Collection-DSD_Multichannel_28MHz64fs_Download Chad Kassem of Acoustic Sounds has long been a supporter of the blues, and over the years has promoted the tradition by releasing new and remastered older recordings. Acoustic Sounds has also provided support for live concerts, in Salina, Kansas, and elsewhere. I’ve had the pleasure of hearing Kassem’s artists in the intimate settings of hotel rooms at audio shows. This blockbuster set was recorded at Kassem’s Blue Heaven Studios—a former church more than a century old—over two days in October 2014, and released on Acoustic Sounds…

Like the Hegel Music Systems Mohican and Bryston BCD-3, which we reviewed in the May and August issues, the Naim CX5 XS has no digital inputs of any kind. This limited my measurement of its technical behavior to using 16-bit test files burned to a CD-R. I tested the Naim with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 “As We See It,” http://tinyurl.com/4ffpve4). The Naim’s error correction was adequate—no interruptions were apparent in the player’s output until the single gaps in the data spiral on the Pierre Verany Digital Test CD reached 0.5mm in length, when there were occasional glitches. (The Compact Disc standard, the so-called “Red Book,” requires that a player cope with gaps of up to 0.2mm.) The CD5 XS had problems playing some of my…

Every day in my bunker, I use one of a few high-quality headphone amplifiers to double as a line-level preamplifier-controller and operate as the quality-assurance reference for my ongoing audio experiments. I must choose this component carefully, because it determines the upper limit of my system’s ability to reveal any subtle differences among components under review. The Rogue Audio RH-5 is an important new high-value product. A mediocre line stage will bring my system down: it will harden, cloud, or dull the music, making it sound canned. A superior line stage will raise my system up, allowing recordings to display their raw textures, natural colors, and subtle dynamic expressions. A superior line stage always sounds lively and transparent. “Music grew like a grapevine that was never pruned.” I had listened…

I measured one of the the Margules U280-SC Blacks (S/N B-50003960517) using my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 “As We See It,” http://tinyurl.com/4ffpve4, and www.ap.com). With two modes of output stage—Triode and Ultralinear—three choices of output-transformer tap, and the option of having its two channels strapped for mono operation, the Margules U280-SC is actually 14 different amplifiers in one enclosure. Although Jason Victor Serinus exclusively used the amplifiers as a pair of monoblocks, I performed a complete set of measurements for all 14 mono and stereo modes of operation, to comprehensively characterize its behavior. (The gain control for each channel was set to its maximum for all testing.) After the amplifier was turned on, it took a few minutes for the autobiasing to function, after which the…

“Do any women read this magazine?” It’s a question that occasionally comes up at Stereophile. The answer is of course we have some female readers though that’s more instinct talking than any hard facts. I do know that we have two very vital and talented women on staff—our new Editorial Coordinator and videographer, Jana Dagdagan, and the linchpin of the entire operation, Sales Coordinator Rosemarie Torcivia. The subject of women and Stereophile came up when a very dear friend, Carol, began leafing through some recent issues at my house. After she asked the above question, our conversation shifted from the demographics of Stereophile’s readership to what most women don’t like that most guys are passionate about. Jimi Hendrix, the Three Stooges, and too much football all qualified. When I mentioned…

Dear Reader, Not long ago, I lost patience with coffee. Before that, I’d never quite made it to coffee-nerd status, but I had all four wheels on the onramp. A few years ago I got rid of my cheap coffeemaker and switched to a French press, because it was more hands-on. I started buying whole beans instead of ground coffee, and grinding them in the store’s grinder, on its coarsest setting. When that wouldn’t do, I bought an inexpensive electric coffee grinder. When that wouldn’t do, I bought a manual grinder. There was only one brand of bean I liked, and I had to drive 45 minutes to get to the store that sold it. I bought a scale for weighing the beans before I ground them (because measuring spoons…

After copying the necessary test tones to its internal memory, I measured the Astell&Kern A&ultima SP1000 with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 “As We See It,” http://tinyurl.com/4ffpve4). I couldn’t obtain a 2.5mm balanced connector, so all measurements were taken from the single-ended 3.5mm headphone jack, with the volume control set to its maximum of “150” unless otherwise noted. (The volume control appears to operate in 0.5dB steps.) The SP1000 was running the 1.01CM firmware when I performed the measurements. (As I was packing up the unit to ship to our cover photographer, it updated its firmware to v.1.04 via my WiFi network.) The A&ultima SP1000 preserved absolute polarity (ie, was non-inverting), and its output impedance, including 6' of interconnect, was both very low and close to…

Much has been written about the divide in high-end audio between subjectivists, who trust their ears, and objectivists, who believe that anything not scientifically proven is fake news. I respect both sides and am skeptical of both extremes, and I like to think that’s how most audiophiles feel. High-end audio is about experiencing music—that’s the whole point—but scientific and technological rigor lie behind every real advance, past and future. I regret the cynical snake-oil salesmanship, bad thinking, and clumsy engineering that pervade certain parts of our hobby. The DAC1 was a tough act to follow. So, apparently, is the DAC2. A couple of days ago, a friend invited me over to help him solve a problem with his system. He’d installed a new preamp and was getting a lot of…

I measured the Rogue RH-5 using my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 “As We See It,” www.stereophile.com/content/measurements-maps-precision). The procedure was a little more complicated than I had anticipated, due to the fact that the RH-5 has three gain options (indicated on the display, in order of increasing gain, as “1,” “2,” and “3”), balanced and unbalanced line inputs and outputs, balanced and unbalanced headphone outputs, and a phono stage. I tried, therefore, to characterize the amplifier’s behavior in all operational modes. The RH-5’s line inputs could handle high levels without overloading and the volume control operates in 0.5dB steps, and all of its outputs preserved absolute polarity (ie, were non-inverting). The balanced input impedance measured a very high 160k ohms from 20Hz to 20kHz; the unbalanced input…

While cities like New York, Detroit, and Philly all get more press for their jazz history and connections, Pittsburgh has a rich history as the birthplace of many notable swing and bebop jazz players. Bassist Ray Brown, drummers Art Blakey and Jeff “Tain” Watts, tenor saxman Stanley Turrentine, trumpeter Roy Eldridge, and the one and only Billy Strayhorn, famed collaborator of Duke Ellington and composer of “Take The ‘A’ Train,” all came from The Burgh. Perhaps it had something to do with the fiery smelting and refining of the elements used to make iron and steel—nearly all signs of which have vanished from modern Pittsburgh, in favor of universities and hospitals—but in jazz circles the city is best known for having an especially strong connection to that most central of…

For some months now, I’ve lived mostly without music. To survive the dust and grit of the renovation of our Manhattan apartment, all electronics had to be covered with heavy plastic, the speakers encapsulated in large green lawn bags, and the listening room partitioned off with a temporary wall. We could listen to music with our little 3.1-channel TV system in the den (eh) or through headphones (not!), or we could decamp to our house in Connecticut, which we did as much as possible. I felt deprived. Now that it’s all over, I’m grateful to have it back—and grateful for the improvements in the main system, some of them direct byproducts of the renovation. First, we replaced the circuit-breaker box, to increase the current and add circuits. The main rack…

By no means could I undertake a survey of candidates for Your Last Perfectionist-Quality CD player—so far, my ongoing series of reviews has focused on models from Audio Note,1 Bryston,2 EAR,3 Luxman,4 and Metronome5—without including Naim Audio. After all, it was Naim that brought to market the first really good-sounding CD player of my experience: the two-box CDS, introduced in 1991 at a then-staggering price of $6999. In doing so, they convinced me that a digital future might not be so bad after all. Four years after the CDS’s stunning debut—and three years after their introduction of an intermediate model, the CDI—Naim answered more than a few prayers by releasing the CD3, which offered a goodly chunk of the CDS’s musical prowess for a much more manageable price: $1850. I…

I measured the Benchmark DAC3 HGC with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 “As We See It,” http://tinyurl.com/4ffpve4), using both the Audio Precision’s optical and electrical digital outputs and USB data sourced from my MacBook Pro running on battery power with Pure Music 3.0 playing WAV and AIFF test-tone files. Apple’s USB Prober utility identified the DAC3 as “Benchmark DAC2 USB Audio 2.0” from “Benchmark DAC2” (sic), with the serial-number field occupied by “0000.” The USB port operated in the optimal isochronous asynchronous mode, and Apple’s AudioMIDI utility revealed that, via USB, the DAC3 accepted 24-bit integer data at all sample rates from 44.1 to 192kHz. The optical inputs accepted data sampled up to 96kHz, the coaxial inputs up to 192kHz. The Benchmark’s maximum output level at…

Prelude The setting of the Prelude to our opera, The Margules Saga, is the California Audio Show, in August 2012. There, on first hearing Margules Audio’s tube electronics, I wrote in my notebook, “great inner vitality, warm but with a welcome and appropriate bite.”1 An encounter the following January inspired me to write, of a system that included an earlier version of the company’s U280 amplifier, “The sound? Beautiful and warm. I’ve heard these electronics at two shows, and each time, I’ve left the room feeling good.”2 Margules Audio doesn’t use negative feedback. Enter Julian Margules, owner and chief designer of Margules Audio, a Mexican company that is now almost 30 years old (see below). As we speak, memories of walking the empty lobby of Mexico City’s grand Palacio de…