Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2015 i Stereophile

THERE ARE AS MANY OPINIONS AS THERE ARE EXPERTS THIS ISSUE: A new generation of music lovers is discovering high-end audio. I began working as a salesman of high-end audio gear in 1978. I was 29, and, as I recall, a healthy percentage of my customers were about my age. Most of the top high-end designers and entrepreneurs, too, were young: John Curl, Dan D’Agostino, Jon Dahlquist, Ray Kimber, Mark Levinson, Bill Low, Mike Moffat, Nelson Pass, Peter Snell, Bob Stuart, Jim Thiel, Ivor Tiefenbrun, A.J. van den Hul, Richard Vandersteen, Harry Weisfeld, David Wilson. The fact is, high-end audio’s Golden Age—the late 1970s to the mid-1980s—was largely fueled by the under-40 set, and most high-end journalists were fellow baby boomers. Now we’re all oldsters, with just a smattering of…

ATTENTION ALL AUDIO SOCIETIES: We have a page on the Stereophile website dedicated solely to you: www.stereophile.com/audiophilesocieties. If you’d like to have your audio-society information posted on the site, e-mail Chris Vogel at info@XLinkAudio.com. Please note that it is inappropriate for a retailer to promote a new product line in “Calendar” unless this is associated with a seminar or similar event. CALIFORNIA Sunday, September 27, 2–5pm: For the first time, the Los Angeles & Orange County Audio Society will hold its monthly meeting at Shelley’s Stereo & Video’s new showroom, in Woodland Hills (22102 Clarendon Street). Our hosts, Alon Moscovitch and Wesley Katzir, will demonstrate the latest speakers and electronics for this showcase of planar-magnetic technology. Representatives from Audeze, Magnepan, Shunyata Research, and Simaudio Moon will address the Society. Eastwind…

Playing the blues can get old fast. Since this most fundamental American popular music stopped being the African-American party music of choice, and became a traditional music, celebrated as the precursor of rock’n’roll, blues players face a stark choice: change, or be content with playing small clubs and bars. Perhaps the best example is Robert Cray, who, after a brief moment in the sun in 1986, when his album Strong Persuader was released, has been searching for new momentum and a new direction ever since. A more recent example, from Austin, TX, is Black Joe Lewis. Once signed to now-defunct Lost Highways Records, Lewis was the quintessential young blues star who was “going to break through.” He’s since fallen off the radar, as evidenced by his bitterly titled Electric Slave,…

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING you can do with a thermionic valve is to hold it in your hand and study it with your eyes. More than you might think, what you see is what you get. High-energy electrons are boiled off the heater or cathode, pass through the wire control grid, and collide forcefully with that big black, gray, or silver thing—the anode, or “plate”—that occupies most of the space inside the bottle. What that anode structure looks like is probably what your midrange will sound like—ie, if the anode looks smooth and big and richly textured, those same qualities are likely to apply to the sound of the midrange. Study the texture, shape, and color of any tube’s anode, then use it play to some Frank Sinatra or Ella…

Harmonia Mundi 807650 (SACD/CD). 2015. Robina G. Young, Brad Michel, engs. DDD. TT: 72:41 It’s Stile Antico’s 10th anniversary, and each of the group’s 12 singers has chosen his or her favorite piece from their catalog of recordings for this “favorites” compilation. The wonderfully varied results show off their supreme gifts. The difficult, 12-voice “O praise the Lord,” by Thomas Tomkins, opens the CD, its busy polyphony impeccably tuned and so expressively sung that it’s easy to follow, and it’s followed by Clemens non Papa’s smooth-flowing, rock-solid, easily harmonized “Ego flos campi”—a perfect example of how well-thought-out this program is. There are treats galore: Thomas Tallis’s brief “In pace in idipsum” varies plainchant, sung by the sopranos, with rich, complex polyphony from the nine men’s voices offering the peaceful text…

Slang SR010 (CD). 2015 Andrew “Goat” Gilchrist, prod., eng. DDD? TT: 55:32 Over the course of 21 albums, Andy J. Forest has proven to be a shrewd bandleader and one of the top harmonica players in the Crescent City. The gangly, deep-voiced frontman moonlighted as the harp-wielding sidekick to Chaz Leary in the Washboard Chaz Blues Band. But Forest’s secret weapon has always been his writing. It’s tough to be a blues singer without original material, and Forest is one of the great observers of and commenters on life in New Orleans, with its mysterious and miraculous ups and downs. A couple years back, Forest had a solo gig at the Spotted Cat, where twice weekly he worked on new material, and played guitar in public for the first time.…

Columbia/Legacy 88875120842 (3 CDs). 1956/2015. George Avakian, orig. prod.; Jim Meagher, Will Thornbury, orig. engs.; Geri Allen, Jimmy Lyons, Steve Rosenthal, reissue prods.; Jamie Howarth, Jessica Thompson, mastering. AAD? TT: 2:38:52 The worldly elegance and dignity that Duke Ellington and fellow jazz pianist and composer Erroll Garner brought to concert stages and recordings in the mid-to late 1950s were strangely at odds with the bland postwar conservativism of the day. Dwight D. Eisenhower hadn’t yet been reelected on that beautiful September day in 1955 when Garner and his brilliantly understated rhythm section of bassist Eddie Calhoun and drummer Denzil DaCosta Best came to Carmel, California, to play the acoustically excellent Sunset Auditorium, a former church. It turned out to be a performance for the ages. Long heralded for documenting Garner’s…

TAKE HEED! Unless marked otherwise, all letters to the magazine and its writers are assumed to be for possible publication. In the spirit of vigorous debate implied by the First Amendment, and unless we are requested not to, we publish correspondents’ e-mail addresses. Stan Ricker has passed away Editor: Truly sad news, as Stan was a beloved friend and former work colleague at Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab. According to his wife, Moni, Stan passed away on July 14, 2015, at 2:30am due to an infarct stroke. —Bob Henry highendaudiophile@gmail.com I, too, was saddened to hear of the death of Stan Ricker, who was just shy of his 80th birthday. I first interviewed Stan for Hi-Fi News magazine in 1980, when Stan was cutting Mobile Fidelity’s half-speed–mastered LPs and had engineered…

INSIDER VIEWS ON EVERYTHING VINYL THIS ISSUE: Mikey considers vinyl-resurgence deniers and two expensive cartridges. Add to the deniers of the Holocaust and Climate Change those who say that the vinyl resurgence isn’t happening. Seriously, the pushback was bound to happen, and the bigger this so-called “hipster fad” gets, the more the scoffers sweat. In 2014, according to my sources—representatives of the world’s largest pressing plants—more than 73,985,000 LPs were pressed.1 That’s correct: almost 74 million LPs. Taking into consideration such things as multi-LP boxed sets like The Beatles in Mono (which might be counted as a single record in terms of sales), defective discs rejected by consumers or retailers, and unsold records, of which there surely are many in the pipeline, we could cut the number in half—and still…

When I began writing for Stereophile, I heard people whispering: “Herb is one of those triode-horn guys.” Wrong. Most of my life, I’ve favored solid-state integrated amplifiers driving small, British-made speakers. “I’m sure he hates digital.” Wrong again. I sold all my LPs some 12 years ago, and since then I’ve been filling my days with CDs and highresolution downloads. (However, I am starting to collect vinyl again, because my vintage DNA still remembers how to worship at the Altar of Black Discs.) “Reichert? He’s a mono guy. He’s not into imaging.” Way beyond wrong! In my view, hearing the tangible verity of a recording venue, and the precise locations in it of microphones and performers, are essential to any full comprehension of recorded music. Of course, I am not…

I measured the Leema Acoustics Essentials phono preamplifier (serial number ES140704B) using my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see www.ap.com, and the January 2008 “As We See It” at www.stereophile.com/content/measurements-maps-precision). As always with phono stages, I experimented with the grounding between the Essentials and the Audio Precision system to get the lowest level of noise. The voltage gain at 1kHz was 35.7dB with the Leema set to MM (movingmagnet), and 61.2dB when set to MC (moving-coil). Both values are very close to their specifications, and the preamp preserved absolute polarity (ie, was non-inverting) at both settings. The input impedances for both the MM and MC settings were also very close to spec. The MM impedance was 46k ohms at 20Hz and 1kHz, dropping inconsequentially to 40k ohms at 20kHz; the MC…

Psyouthern Media 002 (CD). 2015. Tony Daigle, Dege Legg, prods., engs. ADD? TT: 41:00 Dege Legg surfaced in the mid-1990s, fronting swampadelic southern rockers Santería, who lasted about a decade until Legg went solo, sometimes touring as a member of fellow Louisianan C.C. Adcock’s band. In 2010 Legg remade himself as Brother Dege, and by the release of the critically acclaimed How to Kill a Horse (2013) he was regularly notching comparisons to Chris Whitley, J.J. Grey & Mofro, and Rainer Ptacek for his atmospheric yet earthy style of resonator guitar, and to classic bluesmen for the way his haunted howl and sensual croon could convey an impressive range of emotions. Originally a digital-only collection of demos and field recordings, Scorched Earth Policy is now a Deluxe Edition, Dege having…

Provogue PRO74602US (CD). 2015. Robert Mercurio, Ben Ellman, prods., engs. DDD. TT: 42:52 No band has done a better job of moving New Orleans music into the 21st century than Galactic. Through the addition of numerous new voices, the band’s core sound has evolved into one of the most progressive dancemusic strategies, an evolution that has taken Galactic from old-school funk through the jam-band ethos, an experiment with hip-hop, and, finally, its current phase of electronic music. This is one of the few bands that could command a crowd with equal authority at a jamfest or an EDM marathon. Into the Deep manifests these identities while retaining a vital center. The vision can be traced to the album’s brilliant in-house producers, saxophonist Ben Ellman and bassist Robert Mercurio. Everything turns…

ANY CLOD CAN HAVE THE FACTS; HAVING OPINIONS IS AN ART The Bespoke Audio Company Editor: We are extremely grateful to Art Dudley and to Stereophile for taking the time to audition our preamplifier. We are proud and humbled that, even though ours isn’t the kind of product he usually enjoys, Art still took so much care in understanding our approach and wrote so kindly about us. Of course, we knew Art’s preferences didn’t match with ours, but if everyone liked the same things, life wouldn’t be nearly as much fun! Harry O’Sullivan The Bespoke Audio Company Schiit Audio Mani Editor: I would like to extend gratitude and appreciation for Herb Reichert’s time and effort requisite to the review. The Mani was a delight for me to design, as well…

COMPONENTS LISTED HERE have been formally reviewed in Stereophile and have been found to be among the best available in each of four or five quality classes. Whether a component is listed in Class A or Class E, we highly recommend its purchase. Each listing—in alphabetical order within classes—is followed by a brief description of the product’s sonic characteristics and a code indicating the Stereophile Volume and Issue in which that product’s report appeared. Thus the May 2014 issue is indicated as “Vol.37 No.5.” Some products listed have not yet been reported on; these are marked (NR), for “Not Reviewed.” We recommend that you read any product’s entire review before seriously contemplating a purchase (products without reviews should therefore be treated with more caution)—many salient characteristics, peculiarities, and caveats appear…

I measured the Line Magnetic LM-518IA using my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see ap.com, and the January 2008 “As We See It” at www.stereophile.com/content/measurements-mapsprecision). Before starting the testing, I followed the instructions in the manual and left the amplifier turned on for 15 minutes; then, without any signal, I adjusted the bias of each 845 output tube to the correct value. (Very little adjustment was necessary.) Next, I short-circuited the inputs and, with the volume control at its maximum, adjusted the hum-balancer potentiometers to give the lowest measured noise for each channel. I performed a full set of measurements from each output-transformer tap. The LM-518IA preserved absolute polarity from each output tap (ie, it was non-inverting), and its input impedance was very high, ranging from 59k ohms at 2kHz to…

I performed a full set of measurements on the Krell Solo 575 (serial no. 30315060125) using my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see www.ap.com and the January 2008 “As We See It,” www.stereophile.com/content/measurements-mapsprecision). Before measuring it, I preconditioned the amplifier by running it at one-third the specified power, 190W, into 8 ohms for 30 minutes. (I usually run an amplifier for an hour, but my test load was getting uncomfortably hot after half that time.) The amplifier’s cooling fans turned on immediately at this power level and were noisier than I was anticipating. At the end of 30 minutes, the top panel was warm; only the slotted area where the fans vent was hot, at 137.4°F (58.6°C). The percentage of THD+noise at this power level was 0.009% with the amplifier cold,…

RECORDING OF THE MONTH MAHAN ESFAHANI Time Present and Time Past C.P.E. Bach: 12 Variations on “Les Folies d’Espagne.” J.S. Bach: Harpsichord Concerto in d, BWV 1052. Geminiani: Concerto Grosso in d (after Corelli). Górecki: Harpsichord Concerto. Reich: Piano Phase for Two Pianos (harpsichord version: Esfahani). A. Scarlatti: Variations on “La Folia.” Mahan Esfahani, harpsichord; Concerto Köln Archiv Produktion 4794481 (CD). 2015. Christoph Classen, prod.; Michael Morawietz, eng. DDD. TT: 73:45r This razzle-dazzle release is remarkable on several levels, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it converted harpsichord haters to harpsichord hipsters. Iranian-American harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani, stealing a quote from T.S. Eliot about the relevance—or irrelevance—of time and (while he’s at it) the harpsichord, here presents the instrument in works written for it in the 17th and 18th centuries, interspersed…

Alive Naturalsound ALIVE0172 (CD). 2015. Datura4, prods.; Dom Monteleone, Laurie Sinagra, Kenny Watt, engs. AAD? TT: 52:22 You’d be forgiven for presuming that a summit meeting of Australia’s Dom Mariani and Greg Hitchcock should yield pop nirvana. The former’s work with power-pop mavens the Stems, Someloves, and DM3, and the latter’s tenure with melodic alterna-rock mainstays You Am I, would signpost exactly that—tuneful, hook-soaked, harmony-strewn nuggets. Check those preconceptions—better yet, chuck ’em! Mariani and Hitchcock are here to make sure you reach for all your old Thin Lizzy, Grand Funk, ZZ Top, and Brownsville Station (!) LPs right after spinning their long-playing debut. Looking for some straight-up Texas boogie? Get your motor runnin’ with the full-tilt title track. Fancy tastes of wah-wah, fuzz, and distortion? “Out with the Tide” serves…

Numero 062 (LP). 1960s/2015. Rob Sevier, Ken Shipley, prods.; R. Sevier, Blake Rhein, Rae Cabello, Chris Varelas, research, compilation; Jeff Lipton, Maria Rice, mastering. AAD? TT: 76:23 Reissue is too weak a word for the high-art compilations of obscure music continuing to appear from the Chicago-based Numero Group. Amid terrific new compilations focusing on the crank-phone-call comedy of WFMU’s Scharpling and Wurster, the acid folk of Midwest band White Eyes, and the singles of soulster Syl Johnson, comes English Oldies, a term given to 1960s Anglo pop music played by Spanish-language stations in the Southwest US. The journey documented here is that of the Royal Jesters, a San Antonio Chicano rock/doo-wop/soul band. Though they began in the early ’60s as a suave vocal-harmony group with horns, nailing such numbers as…

THERE’S ONLY TWO KINDS OF MUSIC: THE BLUES AND ZIPPETY DOO-DAH. —TOWNES VAN ZANDT In recent years, there’s been a rush among documentary filmmakers to chronicle America’s great house bands. While Standing in the Shadows of Motown, the story of the Funk Brothers, remains far and away the best of the genre, the latest band to be immortalized on film is part of the funky universe of Muscle Shoals, Alabama. While most of the Muscle Shoals notables, including Fame Studios owner Rick Hall, appear in Muscle Shoals (2013), there were several obvious absences, none more glaring than that of Donnie Fritts, who’s just released Oh My Goodness, recorded and produced by John Paul White, formerly of The Civil Wars. It’s only the fourth full-length album to bear Fritts’s name in…