Innehållsförteckning för March 2023 från Stereophile

THIS ISSUE: Is this the future of hi-fi reviewing? There has been much discussion lately about ChatGPT, the machine-learning–based chatbot from OpenAI. Some experts say it will soon make human writers obsolete. Will that include human hi-fi reviewers? I decided to engage ChatGPT in an exploratory conversation; think of it as a sort of job interview. What follows has been intensively edited; many words have been removed, but none have been altered. I’m including my own comments in italics. CHATGPT: Hi-fi, or high-fidelity, refers to audio equipment and systems that are designed to reproduce sound as accurately and faithfully as possible. This typically involves using high-quality components and minimizing distortion, noise, and other artifacts. JCA: Some people prefer “analog” sources—vinyl records and reel-to-reel tape—while others prefer digital technologies, including high-resolution…

“Roberta Flack has Lou Gehrig’s disease and can no longer sing,” Béla, my visiting friend, yelled from the guest bedroom. The news rekindled in me the same mixture of sadness and foreboding I get every time I read about the decline or death of an iconic musician who rose to fame during my aeonian youth. The next day, Béla announced he was about to use my Audeze LCD-X headphones and AudioQuest DragonFly Cobalt to play Flack’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” which he’d ripped to his laptop. “Honey,” I replied, “forget about your computer. Let’s listen to this in the music room. I’ve seldom heard that song since the early ’70s, when I played it through crappy components.” Soon we were seated in front of a system…

Luxman occupies an unusual place in the hi-fi world. While many of the brands chasing ultimate performance will battle it out in the bleeding-edge design stakes, Luxman makes what I like to call luxury equipment. Everything they produce is beautiful, not just to the ear, but also to the eye and hand. Their design aesthetic keeps one foot firmly planted in the style of classic audio equipment from decades past—for example, many of their amplifiers have tone controls and big power meters, features reminiscent of topflight gear from 40 years ago—while the other foot is up to date with the latest technology. Because of this focus on luxury, the typical Luxman buyer is someone who likes to consider the complete ownership experience when making equipment choices. Merely sounding fantastic isn’t…

THIS ISSUE: Technical Editor John Atkinson listens to the Benchmark DAC3 B and measures the Rotel DT-6000 CD Player. BENCHMARK DAC3 B D/A PROCESSOR After I read John Marks’s review of Benchmark Media Systems’ DAC1 D/A processor/headphone amplifier in the July 2003 issue of Stereophile, I bought a rack-mounted version to use for my on-location recording projects. I subsequently wrote, in a follow-up review,1 that the diminutive Benchmark “punched way above its weight. Its grain-free presentation was accompanied by stable, well-defined soundstaging, and low frequencies that, if not as weighty as [that of my reference, the 18×-the-price Mark Levinson No.30.6], were still full-balanced.” Benchmark updated the DAC1 by adding a USB 1.1 port that could handle data with sample rates up to 96kHz and bit depths up to 24,2 but…

THIS ISSUE: That moment in the early 1970s when Donald Byrd flew in a new direction, documented by a vinyl issue from Blue Note. At this point in the vinyl revival, it’s hard to believe there are many undiscovered masterpieces left that are worth discovering. Record Store Day (RSD), a much-ballyhooed source of unique and unreleased music on vinyl, has been a major spur in the drive to plumb the vaults, but even though it has an excellent reputation, most RSD unearthings have turned out to be less than essential. The increasingly rare exceptions are to be celebrated. Here’s one. Just before the year turned to 2023, on what would have been Donald Byrd’s 90th birthday, a smoldering, untapped artifact surfaced after 50 years in the can. Released on reasonably…

Chris Abrahams, piano, organ; Tony Buck, drums; Lloyd Swanton, bass Northern Spy NS158 (CD; also available on LP, download). 2023. Tim Whitten, prod., eng. The Necks are an acoustic product of the digital age. The longstanding Australian piano trio has worked, with rare exception, in hour-long spans of gradual development that would make Miles Davis and Gil Evans green with envy. On stage or in studio, they execute their warm yet machine-like repetitions with great precision. In 2017, they broke with formula to meet the demands of the vinyl revival, limiting their group improvisations to roughly 20-minute chunks for the double LP Unfold. That exercise became a regular practice during the pandemic, resulting in Travel, another 80 minutes of relatively bite-size pieces. The last two records make clear how well…

Lackner, piano; Mathias Eick, trumpet; Jérôme Regard, bass; Manu Katché, drums ECM 2736 (CD, available as download, LP). 2022. Manfred Eicher, prod.; Gérard de Haro, eng. One of Manfred Eicher’s skills as a producer is to find the right new voices for his ECM label. Pianist Benjamin Lackner is not new to the international scene (he has 14 albums in his discography), but Last Decade is his ECM debut. Many ECM adherents deny that there is an “ECM sound.” They are wrong. While the label’s vast output over half a century is diverse, its overarching identity encompasses distilled lyricism and an atmosphere of inwardness. What is note-worthy about Lackner is how his iteration of the ECM aesthetic sounds so natural and instinctive. His eight compositions here all feel like bare…

Curtis Symphony Orchestra/Osmo Vänskä Curtis Studio (24/96 WAV download). Drew Schlegel, prod. and eng. The best American conservatory players can match fully fledged professionals in musicality and polish, so it’s no surprise that the Curtis Institute has launched its own label. Kicking off with a showpiece like Scheherazade might have been a gamble, but not with Osmo Vänskä, recently of the Minnesota Orchestra, at the helm. Once past the self-conscious opening gestures, the conductor limns an unusually pictorial first movement: The easy, rocking rhythm evokes the sea; the horn evokes a call from afar. Despite a slightly opaque climax—tuttis overall are less distinctive than everything else—I was startled to find my longstanding allegiance to Ansermet (Decca) challenged. Vänskä, logically, moves attacca into the next movement; I’m surprised no one’s tried…

Phantasm Linn CDK708. CD (reviewed as 24/96 WAV). 2022. Philip Hobbs, prod. & eng. For the third and final release in its marvelous series The Well-Tempered Consort, England’s Phantasm, a consort of five viols led by treble viol player Laurence Dreyfus, presents 27 chamber arrangements of Bach works originally intended for keyboard and organ. By conveying polyphonic complexity through five clearly delineated string lines, Phantasm enhances the emotional impact of Bach’s harmonic relationships. If your system can present five differently pitched viol lines with clarity and warmth, you will find yourself relishing the wealth of beauty and invention that Bach compacted into short works, many of which last less than two minutes. Phantasm skillfully weaves excerpts from Bach’s Inventions and Sinfonias, Organ Book III, and The Well-Tempered Clavier Books 1…

THIS ISSUE: Phil Brett remembers Terry Hall of the Specials. A few weeks before Christmas—the time of year when all public spaces are required by law to play Mariah Carey on an endless loop—this writer was pushing a trolley idly around a London supermarket. I was over by the fresh veg when the distinctive, Hammond-driven intro of the Specials’ “Ghost Town” was piped through. Heads nodded. Some shoppers started to sing along. Weeks later, I heard Specials front-man Terry Hall had died, of pancreatic cancer. Memories came flooding back. One was of that moment in the supermarket, which encapsulated what made The Specials special: Their music was joyous and positive—and also ironic, Hall’s deadpan delivery contrasting lyrics about far-from-happy places and events. A popular choice at parties, “Ghost Town” deals…

TAKE HEED! Unless marked otherwise, all letters to the magazine and its writers are assumed to be for possible publication. Please include your name and physical address. We reserve the right to edit for length and content. The Kiddie Chorus Regarding Roger Skoff’s “The Music Problem” in the October 2022 issue:1 I was a professional opera and choral singer for nearly 50 years, a member of both the Chicago Symphony and Lyric Opera of Chicago choruses. I did numerous operatic roles and numberless gigs as a ringer in church and synagogue choirs. Outside my listening room, I’ve heard a great deal more unamplified than amplified music and would like to share some observations. There has been a gradual decline of the “legitimate” singing and speaking voices in plays and musical…

THIS ISSUE: Herb listens to the new SUTZ transimpedance headamp from Sutherland Engineering and two cartridges from Dynavector. As an upstart journalist-flâneur, my basic urge is to step on the gas and let my ’54 Buick careen down the freeway, crashing into guardrails on both sides. Old Buicks were built for that, and I would love to take readers on one of those kinds of rides. But when I write this monthly column, I find myself aiming for a different feel, more like driving cross-country in a ’70s Ford station wagon, documenting motels and gas stations. A trip where it’s fun to roll easy, take in the views, and stop at every car museum, snake farm, and stalactite cave. This month, I’m going to put some miles on the Ford’s…

I became interested in hi-fi well before the stereo era, at a time when DIY was a significant part of the hobby. In store catalogs of the time, as much or more space was devoted to raw speaker drivers and enclosures than to complete speaker systems. Those of us who wanted or needed to save some money built our own speaker enclosures from kits or plans or from articles in magazines like Radio-Electronics, Audiocraft, and Audio. In those early days, the popular choices were corner horns and bass reflex speakers, but everyone was welcome to put drivers into any box they would fit in. Then, in 1956, came Ed Villchur’s patent1 for acoustic-suspension loudspeaker systems, marketed under the brand name Acoustic Research, and then, in 1961, the groundbreaking study by…

Last year, on the hunt for high-quality espresso beans, I visited some specialty coffee websites. On one forum, I came across this description of a particular roast: “I tasted mild acidity and bitters with hazelnut, bourbon, and a hint of dark cherry. As it began to cool, there was a hint of black raspberry syrup or cordial. Then a dominant note emerged of nuts with mild distillates, walnut bitters, cacao nib and something between 82% dark chocolate and baker’s chocolate.… Further cooling offered the surprise of dark piecrust and a bitter cherry liqueur. The piecrust then rounded to a slightly sweet dark rye. There was a lingering aftertaste of single malt scotch that eventually faded to baker’s chocolate with a hint of ashiness.” A hint of ashiness? More like 15…

Herb Reichert reviewed the DT-6000 DAC Transport—fundamentally a CD player with digital inputs—in his February 2023 Gramophone Dreams column, where he described it as a “well-built, great-sounding, reasonably priced CD player.” He had so much fun using the Rotel—“rediscovering the Joy of CDs: one-box simple, stress-free, plug’n’play, and something physical to touch, scrutinize, and collect”—that he suggested I examine its measured performance. I tested Herb’s sample of the Rotel DT-6000, serial number 272-2221004, using my Audio Precision SYS2722 system5 and signals I burned on a CD-R, as well as by feeding serial data to the S/PDIF and USB inputs. For the latter, I used both my MacBook Pro’s USB port, with the laptop running on battery power, and the USB port on my Roon Nucleus+ server. The Roon 2.0…

THIS ISSUE: It may not be pure analog, but it’s damn good anyway. Decades after their deaths, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday loom large over the American music landscape, inspiring every jazz vocalist, especially the women. Fitzgerald and Holiday’s contributions are vast, their work timeless, their joys and sorrows expressed in songs both thrilling and crushing. Jazz as a form of popular song has largely faded from America’s music culture, but Fitzgerald and Holiday’s brilliance lives on, a beacon to their artistic excellence. Much evidence for that excellence can be heard in two new vinyl sets, both produced by Ken Druker. Neither of these sets is pure analog. Ella’s was prepared from Ellen Fitton’s 2003 digital transfers, which were used for Jukebox Ella: The Complete Verve Singles, Vol.1, which documented…

Andersen, bass; Marius Neset, tenor saxophone; Helge Lien, piano; Håkon Mjåset Johansen, drums ECM 2763 (CD, available as download). 2022. Manfred Eicher, exec. prod.; Martin Abrahamsen, eng. Jazz musicians sometimes assume that, since improvisation is good, albums that are totally improvised must be best of all. But it is not that simple. Improvisations are departures whose deepest revelations are usually achieved in relation to what they depart from. Painting outside the lines requires lines. Affirmation arrives with great promise. Arild Andersen’s previous ensemble, a trio with Tommy Smith on tenor saxophone, was one of the great bands of Europe. His new quartet has an even more acclaimed tenor player, rising star Marius Neset, and a poetic pianist, Helge Lien. Andersen remains that rare phenomenon, a bassist in whose hands the…

Simona Premazzi, piano PRE 1174 (CD, available as download). 2023. Premazzi, prod.; Chris Allen, eng. It is surprising that Simona Premazzi is not better known. She is the real deal on piano and has now made six albums. Wave in Gravity, her first solo recording, is a highly individual and creative response to the challenges of playing jazz piano without accompaniment, or rather, while serving as one’s own accompanist. The first track is, unmistakably, “In the Still of the Night,” but it is broken in strange places. With the need to supply her own bass line and rhythm, Premazzi’s hands become notably independent. Her dynamism and impulsiveness are exhilarating. She releases the song in intermittent eruptions. It is startling when the fragments coalesce and Cole Porter’s melody rings out resoundingly.…

Christian Tetzlaff, violin; Tanja Tetzlaff, cello; Lars Vogt, piano Ondine 1394 (reviewed as 24/96 WAV). 2023. Christoph Franke, prod. and ed. No recording of Franz Schubert’s chamber music has moved me as much as this one. First, there’s the consummate artistry of three superb musicians who bend tempos and plumb dynamic extremes with uncommon freedom in service of great music written in the last five of Schubert’s 31 years. Listen, for example, to the tender and heartbreaking second movement of Piano Trio No.1 as it weeps sweetly and the delights of its final movement. This is the last chamber music recording that pianist Lars Vogt made with his frequent trio partners before succumbing to cancer of the throat and liver. Vogt was already experiencing terrible abdominal pain during the first…

THIS ISSUE: The secondary market for hi-fi gear is good for customers. Is it good for dealers and manufacturers, too? Those of us who aren’t wealthy must often sell something before we can buy a new piece of hi-fi gear, and it’s usually another piece of hi-fi gear. Selling in order to buy makes a great deal of sense because, after all, you only need one of everything (or two in the case of speakers) at a time in a two-channel system. Another secondary-marketplace incentive: As I pointed out a couple of Re-Tales columns ago,1 the higher prices rise on new equipment, the more appealing preowned gear becomes. Hi-fi dealers know this, and they’ve known it for a long time. “Typically, the onus is on the dealer to facilitate trades,…

SUBMISSIONS: Those promoting audio-related seminars, shows, and meetings should email the when, where, and who to stletters@stereophile.com at least eight weeks before the month of the event. The deadline for the June 2023 issue is March 20, 2023. PARASOUND IS UNDER NEW OWNERSHIP Jason Victor Serinus Parasound, which is known for moderately priced audio components, especially those designed by John Curl, is under new owner-ship. The new owner is David Sheriff, an entrepreneur who specializes in product growth and supply chain management. Sheriff has pledged to maintain Para-sound’s reputation for excellence while shepherding the company to “take the next step.” In a conversation with Stereophile, Sheriff, previous Parasound owner Richard Schram, and Richard’s life partner Jeanie Schram discussed the reasons for the change and Sheriff’s plans for the company. “At…

THIS ISSUE: The confounding glories of lossy Spotify, plus the Lejonklou streamer. The Amtrak Empire service snakes north along the Hudson River before reaching Albany, where it pitches sharply to the west, eventually winding up in Niagara Falls. In November I rode it—the Amtrak Empire service, not Niagara Falls—from New York City to the town of Hudson, New York. On my left, the sun beat down on the river’s expanse while an occasional sailboat flashed by. Above the water, the undulating domes of the Catskills, with their fading yellow and red streaks, looked like the work of an unsuccessful colorist at a busy hair salon. I was traveling upstate to visit Rob Kalin, a founder and former CEO of the online craft marketplace Etsy and proprietor of a newish speaker…

Like many other industries, audio has its power couples: behind-the-scenes mover-sand-shakers who shape the trajectory of the industry and who also happen to be, well, together. Angela Cardas and Josh Meredith of Cardas Audio come to mind, as do Dave and Carol Clark of Positive Feedback, Eli and Ofra Gershman of Gershman Acoustics, Luke Manley and Bea Lam of VTL, Carl and Marilyn Marchisotto of Nola Speakers, Edwin and Gabi van der Kley-Rynveld of Siltech and Crystal Cable. George and Carolyn Counnas of Zesto Audio are a hi-fi power couple I’m especially fond of; I’m always happy to see them at shows, catch up with them on the phone, or exchange emails with them. Their sweet demeanor and good vibrations always lift my spirits. George designs Zesto’s preamplifiers, power amplifiers,…

You won’t see many Apple products in these pages, and for good reason. As Stereophile Editor Jim Austin wrote to me recently in an email, “Apple may have the best acousticdesign facilities in the world, but its products are designed by engineers who don’t seem to respect perfectionist sound—which is appropriate for a company that aims for the vast middle of the bell curve.” Has that changed? It took Apple years to get halfway serious about music reproduction. The $2 trillion giant didn’t offer lossless files via its Apple Music streaming service until mid-2021. Its early wired earphones sounded tinny and congested, barely a step above free airplane buds. Later models were better, but not by much. Then, starting with the iPhone 7 in 2016, Apple took away the headphone…

They were elitist brainiacs. The lyrics were too obscure. Their rhythmic, irresistible pop confections resisted easy description. Yet their debut album, Can’t Buy a Thrill, was a surprise hit. The band’s response? Knowing that their sales success had bought them goodwill at ABC, their record label, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker went the integrity route. They forgot about hit singles, embraced risk, and fearlessly pushed the genre envelope in the direction of saxophone breaks, funk rhythms, and bluesy explorations. The result was Countdown to Ecstasy. Can’t Buy a Thrill had yielded hit singles (“Do It Again,” “Reeling in the Years”), as would Aja (“Deacon Blues,” “Peg”), the band’s best-selling album, four years later. Countdown to Ecstasy, though, was not a commercial success, at least not on its release. Of the…

Jazz Detective (2 LPs). 2022. Zev Feldman, Andrew Stayman, prods.; Jim Wilke, Sheldon Zaharko, engs. The often-underrated jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal is a gifted artist whose technique relies on both speed and space. Like Art Tatum, one of his heroes, he can command a keyboard, making several trips up and down the 88 keys in the time it takes mere mortals to take a breath. Few jazz musicians knew how to use space and make it such a crucial part of his playing in the ways Jamal did. Jamal also had a marvelous sense of rhythm. Here, in a 1964 performance of “Squatty Roo,” by Ellington alto legend Johnny Hodges, he displays all those gifts and adds a lyrical solo and several lightning runs up and down the keyboard before…

Loma Vista Records (16/44.1 WAV download; also available on CD, LP, cassette tape). 2023. Jonathan Wilson, Margo Price, prods.; Jonathan Wilson, Dexter Green, others, engs. Artists with ambition must grow or their vision gets stale and repetitive. They also need something new to sell streams, concert tickets, and records. One sure way to change things up is a guest list that includes Mike Campbell, Sharon Van Etten, and Lucius. Another is to put your art in the hands of a new producer, in this case Jonathan Wilson, who has released acclaimed solo albums and worked on recent projects by Angel Olsen, Benmont Tench, and Dawes. Recorded in several studios with several engineers, Strays has the pleasant, could-be-better sonics common to rock records today. The opener, “Been to the Mountain,” its…

Timothy Ridout, viola; BBC Symphony, Martyn Brabbins Harmonia Mundi HMM902618 (CD). 2023. Andrew Keener, prod.; Dave Rowell, eng. Elgar never wrote a Viola Concerto. Violist Lionel Tertis arranged this version for his own use from the Cello Concerto, with the composer’s approval. The risk, of course, is that the move to the higher-pitched instrument will sacrifice the music’s color and power. No fear: Timothy Ridout attacks the opening call to attention with an incisive authority that compensates for any reduced resonance. He’s a perceptive interpreter, finding the right searching or fervent affect as needed in the lyric phrases and minimizing vibrato in high, soft phrases. He realizes the Adagio’s cautious affirmation and the finale’s occasional plaintive inflections, sustaining tension and interest in that discursive movement. The unstable harmonies and sparer…

THIS ISSUE: Representatives of Mobile Fidelity Electronics, Zesto Audio, Luxman, and Alta Audio respond to our reviews of their products. Mobile Fidelity Electronics SourcePoint 10 I found it interesting how John Atkinson contrasted my description of what I did in this design with what the speaker achieves and what he measured. I read through with trepidation. I think I got a good grade on the test! What intrigued me most was the discussion of treble balance, how it relates to room size and acoustics, listening location, measured in-room response, and his comment that his room has a deliberately lighter-balanced room sound. There is a notion in room acoustics of “critical distance,” where the room’s rever-berant response takes dominance over the direct response. This has a profound effect upon the measurement…