Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2014 i Stereophile

Start Making Sense Record-business profits peaked 20 years ago, just before Napster and other file-sharing sites turned their world upside down. There have been occasional surges, but the future of the Compact Disc looks bleak, and while income from downloaded fles is still climbing, the shift of profitability from à la carte music sales to unlimited streaming on demand seems inevitable. The realignment is already underway—the vast majority of today’s music listeners, young and old, haven’t bought a CD, fle, or LP in years. It pains me to admit it, but after hearing, at the 2014 Midem music exhibition, a presentation by Marc Geiger, of William Morris Endeavors, I was convinced that music-streaming companies are poised to reboot the industry. If Geiger’s predictions are accurate, the music business will be…

In 1920, Irving Berlin wrote lyrics and music to a song you may have heard in the first season of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire: “After You Get What You Want (You Don’t Want It).” Kathy Brier sings it, backed by Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks, at www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZEDM96cXtQ. You can hear Van and Schenck’s original recording on YouTube, too: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sUe28J921U. There’s a fine version by the Nat Cole Trio that appears on more than a dozen Cole compilations. Marilyn Monroe sang it. Berlin could put some real bite into his lyrics. Listen before you get married. Or before you get involved in hi-fi. I’ve been married to LFD Audio’s LE integrated amplifier, on and off, in different iterations, for nearly 20 years. I’ve got it. I still want it. This diminutive, 65Wpc…

A Perfect Storm It seems more and more that I’m reviewing equalization products in this column, and that such components are less often dealt with in the magazine’s formal equipment reports. But it’s not as if the problems created by room acoustics affect only multichannel systems. Stereophile has not ignored the topic—see the many reviews of physical and electronic room-treatment products posted on www.stereophile.com—but months can pass without publication of a review of such a component. Meanwhile, multichannel devotees such as I seem to talk about almost nothing else—and here’s why. First, in listening to multichannel music, the soundfield surrounds us, just as it does in real life. In anything less than a room with very bad acoustics—eg, a tiled bathroom—the ear/brain can distinguish the frontal soundstage from the reverberant…

LOUDSPEAKER The year: 1999. The city: Minneapolis. While taking a break from partying with Prince like it was, well . . . that year, I wandered into a local audio emporium to see what new and exciting goodies were on display. Set up in a large listening room, attached to the latest Mark Levinson gear, were Revel’s original Ultima Studio loudspeakers. I sat down, gave them a listen, and heard the best sound I had yet heard. For the first time, it seemed to me that I was listening to an audio system that played with low distortion and little coloration. Also, the system’s wide dispersion threw a huge soundstage, engrossing me in the music in ways other speakers couldn’t. I was hooked. I asked the clerk how much they…

CLASSICAL ROCK / POP JAZZ He was the shining star the blues world had always dreamed of: the rare performer who could break through to the musical mainstream. Alas, he flashed across the musical heavens and was gone far too soon, dying in a helicopter crash in August 1990, at the age of 35. That Stevie Ray Vaughan’s reign as blues-guitar hero was brief but incendiary is driven home yet again by this spectacular new boxed set from Epic/Legacy and Chad Kassem’s Analogue Productions label. Available in three formats. 331.3rpm or 45rpm vinyl and SACD/CD (the last also contains the bonus tracks previously available on Epic/Legacy’s CD reissues), Texas Hurricane collects the four studio albums released during Vaughan’s lifetime. Texas Flood, Couldn’t Stand the Weather, Soul to Soul, and In…

FEEDBACK TO THE EDITOR Of music & musicians Editor: It is a pleasure reading Robert Baird’s columns in Stereophile. His latest, on Nirvana, Kurt Cobain, and In Utero (April, p.186), made me think of the sheer number of classic albums celebrating their anniversaries replete with commemorative DVDs, boxed sets, and never-before-released materials: alternate takes, outtakes, et al. Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road celebrates its 40th with four CDs of the original tracks, different versions, covers by other artists, and live performances (“Aural Robert,” June, p.122). All of this stokes our curiosity, but what does it say about today’s music, as the music industry celebrates, markets, and rehashes its reliable back catalog to generate revenue? I am a transplanted New Yorker living in London. I go out regularly for live…

With a parts list that includes 18 new-old-stock Black Cat capacitors, 16 vintage-style Cosmos potentiometers, two Tango chokes, one Tango power transformer, and some of the loveliest steel casework I’ve seen on a contemporary product, no one could accuse Noriyuki Miyajima of skimping on the build quality of his company’s only power amplifier, the Miyajima Laboratory Model 2010 ($9995). Then again, because the 2010 is an output-transformerless (OTL) tube amplifier, Miyajima-san spent considerably less on iron than would otherwise be the case. Think of the money he saved! I recently had the pleasure of hosting not one but two samples of the Miyajima 2010: This 7Wpc stereo amplifier can be strapped for mono with a flick of a rear-mounted toggle, to offer a healthy 16Wpc—a whole watt more than the…

MAYBE IT’S TODAY’S AFFINITY FOR all things vampiric—a side effect of the Twilight generation. Then again, maybe it’s just the money. Either way, the rock bands of the late 1980s and early ’90s have become this century’s undead. Not that this rock Nosferatutitude is all bad, mind you. Back in 2004, the Pixies’ first reunion shows were glorious. Last summer’s handful of shows by the Replacements were universally praised. And the Afghan Whigs’ 2012 tour was satisfying. While there were a lot of great rock bands from that era—Pixies, Replacements, Garbage, Posies, Guided by Voices, Nirvana—none was as publicly maniacal or as astonishingly personal and poisonous as the Afghan Whigs. Led by afflicted singer and gleeful provocateur Greg Dulli, there was an almost reptilian slither to the Cincinnati quintet’s often…

LOUDSPEAKER Phase Technology, a speaker-making division of MSE Audio based in Jacksonville, Florida, celebrated their 30th anniversary last September, at the 2013 CEDIA Expo, by reissuing of one of their first products, the PC-60 bookshelf loudspeaker, now updated with new drivers and crossovers. Dick Olsher reviewed the PC-60 in Stereophile in 1984,1 and three decades later, John Atkinson thought it time to revisit this classic design, especially as the company’s founder, the late Bill Hecht, was the inventor, in 1967, of the soft-dome tweeter. The PC60 CA (the CA stands for Classic Audiophile) intrigued me as well—despite having reviewed audio gear for 30 years and attended audio shows for even longer, I’d never heard a Phase Technology speaker. And with the PC60 CA costing $1400/pair—currently the hottest price point for…

Miyajima Laboratory 2010 Editor: Thank you, Art [Dudley], for such an insightful review of Miyajima-san’s personal amplifier, which has been made available for the public to listen to and buy. I use mine on Quad 57s, and can tell you they never fail to let me be drawn further into the music while relaxing into whatever performance I am playing. A concert in my own home every night! Art’s realization that, in this case, two is better than one is well founded, with an increase in all the stunning qualities of a single 2010! Robin Wyatt Robyatt Audio miniDSP nanoAVR 8x8 Editor: With regards to the quirks on his? Ethernet network, we’re sorry to see that Kalman [Rubinson] experienced these issues. Following his feedback, our firmware and software development team…

UK: ESSEX Paul Messenger Ruark Acoustics was founded by the late Brian O’Rourke as a loudspeaker manufacturer, but soon after O’Rourke’s son, Alan, took over, in 2000, he adopted a much more “lifestyle”-oriented approach. Renamed Ruark Audio (www.ruarkaudio.com), the company began by distributing in the UK the “tabletop” audio components made by US firm Tivoli Audio, but saw as a disadvantage the Tivoli models’ lack of the DAB digital radio standard, which is widespread throughout Europe. Ruark decided to develop their own broadly equivalent range of high-quality tabletop models, at first marketed under the subbrand Vita Audio but now badged Ruark—perhaps a reflection of the fact that the company no longer makes traditional hi-fi stereo loudspeakers. I won’t repeat here my detailed descriptions of the various models that appeared in…

Welcome to the Ecosystem I’m the editor of AudioStream.com, a Source Interlink Media website devoted to computer audio. We review all manner of hardware, software, and music related to file-based playback, and offer helpful (we hope) “How To” articles as well as interviews with industry people—all designed to ease your journey to and through the world of computer audio. I envision my new Stereophile column, “Audio Streams,” as an extension of this mission—and the addition of that trailing, plural s gives me some leeway to explore a wider range of hi-fi topics. One of the main benefits of computer audio is that performance no longer must be traded for storage. The data capacity of the Compact Disc no longer applies, and increases in bandwidth and hard-disk storage have made moot…

LOUDSPEAKER For exhibitors, showing off their products at audio shows is a crap shoot. The vagaries of arbitrarily assigned hotel rooms with unpredictable acoustics can play havoc with the sound of even the best-sounding systems. But over the years I’ve been attending shows, Joseph Audio’s dems have always impressed me with how Jeff Joseph manages to set up his speakers so that they work with instead of against a hotel room’s acoustics. Yes, Joseph’s setup skills, going back to his days in audio retail, play an important role here. But his speakers, too, need to be of sufficiently high quality to benefit from those skills. And if they can be made to sing in a hotel room, they will also stand a better-than-usual chance of doing so in audiophiles’ homes.…

D/A PROCESSOR In the summer of 1999, Sony held a press event in New York City to mark the introduction of the Super Audio Compact Disc, then the sole domestic embodiment of the Direct Stream Digital (DSD) technology, jointly developed by Sony and Philips. The new format was hailed, in prepared remarks, by an impressive list of audio and music dignitaries: Nobuyuki Idei, then president of Sony Corporation; Steven Epstein, senior executive producer for Sony Classical; Yo-Yo Ma, appearing in a video created for the event; and Wynton Marsalis, appearing in person. All of the speeches—every single one of them—flattered SACD by likening its sound to that of the analog LP. That was a long time ago. I’m sure that, by now, we can all forgive Sony for using the…

Heard It On The Q What’s in a name? Apparently, when it comes to certain bands, the answer is everything. Back in 2004, in Northampton, Massachusetts, I attended a fabulous, weekend-long, mini–Last Waltz celebrating the career of one of America’s most beloved bands, NRBQ. A few months later, after a Halloweennight finale in Milwaukee, the Q were no more. Happily, though, the story did not end there. Although the band’s famed personnel—which over the years had included guitarists Steve Ferguson, Al Anderson, and Johnny Spampinato, drummers Tom Staley and Tom Ardolino, and bassist Joey Spampinato—was gone, founding pianist Terry Adams refused to give up. After five solo albums under own name, including one each with Sun Ra saxophonist Marshall Allen and original Q guitarist Steve Ferguson, Adams recruited a new…