Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2015 i Stereophile

THERE ARE AS MANY OPINIONS AS THERE ARE EXPERTS THIS ISSUE: Why Pono’s gem of a portable player was given a thumbs down by the mainstream media. I write this in a Seattle coffee bar—my fight home to New York has been canceled due to a snowstorm. As I try to put down these thoughts, I’m listening to the high-resolution masters of the April issue’s “Recording of the Month,” Sasha Matson’s jazz opera Cooperstown, on my Pono player using Ultimate Ears UE18 in-ear monitors. I was in Seattle for Music Matters 10, held by retailer Definitive Audio, and this was my first road trip with the Pono since I reviewed it for the April issue. (Bruce Botnick and Charles Hansen comment on that review elsewhere in this issue.) I realize…

ATTENTION ALL AUDIO SOCIETIES: We have a page on the Stereophile website devoted 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 Saturday, May 2, 5–8pm: The Los Angeles & Orange County Audio Society will hold its monthly meeting at Brooks Berdan Ltd. (110 W. Olive Avenue, Monrovia). Sheila Berdan, her colleagues, and industry representatives will feature select premier audio components, as well as many audiophile records. Eastwind Import will be on hand to offer extraordinary CDs for sale. Enjoy the Ninth Annual Greatest Software Raffle Ever! Win LPs, CDs, and…

LOVING MUSIC TO BITS THIS ISSUE: Michael Lavorgna takes Sony’s newest Walkman for a stroll. Back in the day, I owned a Sony Walkman cassette player. I loved it. I took it everywhere I went, listening to Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Neil Young (with and without Crosby, Stills & Nash), Miles, Coltrane, and more. Having music move around with me seemed a giant step into a more perfect future in which we could color our experiences with sound. The Walkman adapted over time to play CDs delivering Perfect Sound Forever—until developments in technology and psychoacoustics taught us that what we heard was true: early CD-quality playback was not perfect. You can argue the theoretical merits of CD till you’re blue in the face; the fact is, early CD playback sucked.…

I find small humans more beguiling than big people. My favorites are the twofooters— those little twoyear-old boys with a kind of wobbly, bent-kneed stride that dips like a blues song every fourth step as they stagger ahead of their watchful parents. I like three-footers too—sprightly three-year-old girls who dress better than their moms and never need a lifestyle consultation. Whenever we see one of these cheerful, bouncing young’uns coming toward us on the sidewalk, I smile and my dog’s tail wags. Their bright faces and excited voices make me think, You go, little sprouts! These miniature humans’ special beauty is that they still possess their full force de vie. But perhaps you haven’t heard—another beguiling little Sprout is bouncing about. This one was crowdfunded by Kickstarter and developed by…

If you look at it from a distance and squint a little, Luxman’s Classic CL-38u preamplifer ($4200) could almost be mistaken for that most classic of all classic hi-f products, the Marantz Model 7C control center. The aluminum front panels of both models have, at their centers, a row of four distinctive toggle switches, flanked on each side by four control knobs. Even more noticeable are the stylish wood enclosures—standard on the Luxman, optional on the Marantz—which make both preamps appear ready for duty at the Playboy Mansion, ca 1963, or perhaps an appearance in a Life photo essay titled “At Home with Steve McQueen.” That two heritage products share a design aesthetic comes as no surprise, especially considering that their manufacturers began making upscale consumer-audio products at more or…

Google Bricasti and all that comes up are sites relating to Bricasti Design products. The name must be fanciful—it sounds Italian, but cofounders Brian Zolner and Casey Dowdell most likely are not, and the company’s headquarters are not in Milan or Turin but in Massachusetts. While its name might be whimsical, nothing else about Bricasti is. As John Marks reported in his review of Bricasti’s M1 DAC in the August 2011 issue,1 both founders previously worked at Lexicon: Dowdell as a DSP-software engineer, Zolner as international sales manager. Bricasti develops its products in conjunction with Aeyee Labs, formed by a group of ex-employees of Madrigal Audio Laboratories and based in New Haven, Connecticut. The storied Madrigal Labs was founded by the late Sandy Berlin, who purchased the assets of Mark…

Symphonies 57, 67, 68 Nicholas McGegan, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra Philharmonia Baroque PBP-08 (CD). 2014. David v.R. Bowles, prod., eng.; DDD. TT: 78:29 Haydn’s symphonies are invariably formal in structure; that doesn’t mean they don’t include surprises galore. Symphony 57 opens with a slow stutter of creepy grace notes; the graceful, understated Adagio starts gently with low pizzicato strings, then presents a series of four variations of a melody; the low pizzicatos return when least expected. Symphony 67 begins quickly with a jumpy theme that seems not only simple but simple-minded; its development has all the jolliness of a tally-ho experience—in the movement’s last 10 seconds, hunting horns ring out. The Adagio is a quiet, start-stop start affair, at the end of which Haydn has the strings play with the backs…

Citizen Zombie Freaks R Us Freak9 (CD). 2015. Paul Epworth, prod.; Matt Wiggins, eng. AAD? TT: 39:58 If you were even a casual fan of UK post-punk ca 1979–80, you were aware of Bristol’s Pop Group, a part combo, part collective into dub, funk, free jazz, and punk. Their phenomenal debut 45, “She Is Beyond Good and Evil” (1979), wedded existential poetry and nihilistic theory to agitprop politics and doused it all in a thick, dubby, experimental rock stew that landed on numerous Greatest Singles of All Time lists and notched kudos from the likes of Nick Cave and the Minutemen’s Mike Watt. Yet the group lasted for only two proper studio albums before surrendering to its own volatility, its members going on to Pigbag, the Slits, Rip Rig +…

Morphoses Nate Radley, guitars; Loren Stillman, saxophones; Matt Pavolka, bass; Ted Poor, drums Fresh Sound New Talent FSNT 452 (CD). 2014. Nate Radley, prod.; John Davis, eng. DDD? TT: 60:35 Nate Radley is one of the significant guitarists to enter jazz in the last five years, not because of his technical expertise (guitar chops are cheap these days) but because of his concept. His first two albums, The Big Eyes (Stereophile, April 2012) and Carillon, were deep in fresh, challenging ideas. With his new recording, his concept has expanded. Radley’s street-wise New York jazz has gone country. Radley has said that he “never really dug country” until recently, when he began to appreciate guitarists like Roy Nichols, Danny Gatton, and Albert Lee, and began to supplement his Gibson 335 with…

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. Paul Rosenberg Editor: I wanted to pass on some sad news to the Stereophile community. Mondial Designs’ co-founder Paul Rosenberg passed away March 1, 2015. Paul brought joy, exuberance, and a lighthearted spirit to the audiophile community he loved. Paul is survived by his high-school sweetheart and wife, Lynda, and his three children, Reed, Zack, and Jenna. —Rafael Nevares rafaelnevares@gmail.com Sam, Wes, & Herb Editor: Crestfallen and gasping at pp.11 and 19 of your March 2015 issue—the losses of Sam Tellig and Wes Phillips—only to be resuscitated…

INSIDER VIEWS ON EVERYTHING VINYL THIS ISSUE: Listening impressions of Ortofon’s MC A95 cartridge and Brinkmann’s Spyder turntable. It’s difficult to believe that more than five years have passed since Ortofon introduced its ground-breaking MC A90 moving-coil cartridge ($4200 when last available). The limited-edition MC A90, with its radically shaped body made of powdered stainless steel Selective Laser Melting (SLM), celebrated Ortofon’s 90th year in business. The MC A95 ($6500), celebrating their 95th year, retains the A90’s seductive shape, but the new body is built of powdered titanium, and thus is even more effectively self-damped. At High End Mässan 2015, an audio show held in Stockholm in early February, Ortofon designer Leif Johannson dropped onto a table, from the same height, two balls made of different rubbery materials. One bounced…

Though no larger than a paperback book, the PS Audio Sprout is a complex product, with USB, S/PDIF, and Bluetooth digital, analog line-level, and analog phono inputs, and speaker outputs, a headphone output, and a line-level output. Testing the Sprout was therefore more complicated than with a typical integrated amplifier. I measured the Sprout using my recalibrated 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 the Sprout is a class-D amplifier—it uses an output module sourced from the Scandinavian Elan/Abletec company— it produces ultrasonic noise that would overload the Audio Precision’s input circuitry. I therefore performed most of the tests using, ahead of the analyzer, an Audio Precision AUX-0025 passive low-pass filter (see http://ap.com/products/accessories/aux0100), which eliminates noise above 200kHz. (Without the…

I measured the Luxman Classic CL-38u’s electrical performance with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see www.ap.com and the January 2008 “As We See It,” http://tinyurl.com/4ffpve4). Looking first at the phono stage, I examined the output at the Rec Out jacks, to ensure that I was not including the performance of the line stage in the measured results. The three settings of this input offered voltage gains (into 100k ohms) of 41.2dB (MM), 57.6dB (MC High), and 67.5dB (MC Low). The latter two gains were affected somewhat by the 20 ohm output impedance of the AP generator, but all three are appropriate for the type of phono cartridge used. As Art Dudley suspected, the MM setting preserved absolute polarity (ie, was non-inverting), but the two MC settings did invert polarity. The…

I performed a full set of measurements on the M28 (serial number 1006) using my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see www.ap.com and the January 2008 “As We See It,” www.stereophile.com/content/measurements-maps-precision). As the Bricasti amplifier is specified as having a maximum output power of 200W into 8 ohms, I preconditioned it before the measurements by running it at one-third that power, 67W, into 8 ohms for an hour, following which the top panel was warm, at 99.3°F (37.4°C), and the side panel covering the internal heatsink was only slightly hotter, at 106.7°F (41.5°C). The THD+noise percentage at this power level was 0.0017% with the amplifier cold, 0.002% with it fully warm. The voltage gain at 1kHz into 8 ohms was 26.9dB with a balanced input signal, 26.65dB with an unbalanced signal,…

I measured the Simaudio Moon Evolution 740P’s electrical performance with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see www.ap.com and the January 2008 “As We See It,” http://tinyurl.com/4ffpve4). The volume control operated in accurate 0.1dB steps, the 740P preserved absolute polarity (ie, was non-inverting) for both fully balanced and fully unbalanced operation, and pin 2 of its XLR jacks was wired hot. The maximum gain was 6.2dB for the balanced and unbalanced inputs and outputs, rather than the specified 9dB. The input impedance is specified at 22k ohms; for the unbalanced inputs I measured 21.4k ohms at 20Hz and 1kHz, and 11.2k ohms at 20kHz; for the balanced inputs, 35.2k ohms at 20Hz and 1kHz, and 24.8k ohms at 20kHz. The unbalanced output impedance was very low at all audio frequencies, at…

As Stephen Mejias wrote in our November 2013 issue, NAD’s original 3020, introduced in 1978, was one of the best-selling integrated amplifiers of all time, with over a million units sold worldwide. The 3020 was modest looking and modestly powered (20Wpc), but, as retailer Robert Saglio summed it up for SM, “it was understated and under-specced and it over-performed.” So when NAD revived the model number with the D 3020, a book-sized integrated amplifer designed to stand on end and priced at $499,3 they were, in effect, making major claims about its performance. Unlike its ancestor, the D 3020 offers a complete suite of digital inputs—electrical and optical S/PDIF, USB, Bluetooth—as well as line-level analog, but dispenses with a phono stage. Fortunately, both SM and Sam Tellig were impressed by…

Orchestral Music Symphony 48, “Vision of Andromeda”; Prelude and Quadruple Fugue; Soprano Saxophone Concerto Greg Banaszak, soprano saxophone; Eastern Music Festival Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz Naxos 8.559755 (CD). 2014. Evan Richey, prod., eng.; Gerard Schwarz, prod. DDD. TT: 55:48 It’s a pity that the music of Alan Hovhaness (1911–2000) is so beautiful and so accessible; it makes people underestimate it. For years, I accused it of being music to accompany travelogues or worse. That’s not to mention his amazing productivity: 67 symphonies and over 350 other works. Listening carefully, one is first enchanted, then more and more impressed by his refusal to compose anything dissonant, by his remarkable orchestrations, his love of nature and the universe, and, indeed, his craft. The seven-minute Prelude and Quadruple Fugue that opens this CD is…

Wallflower Verve B0020989-02 (CD). 2015. David Foster, prod.; Jochem van der Saag, Jorge Vivo, engs. AAD? TT: 45:20 What was Diana Krall thinking? Sure, she’s known for her sultry, sensuous voice and smooth-as-silk piano, but here, delving into a wide-ranging batch of mostly overplayed pop chestnuts, she rarely adds anything new. And her piano work is sparse (producer and MOR journeyman David Foster tickles ivories on most tracks). Rather than adding new dimension to these songs, à la Annie Lennox, Krall makes them tired. “California Dreamin’” is dreary. Do we ever need to hear “Desperado” or “I Can’t Tell You Why” again? And “Alone Again (Naturally),” a soulless duet with Michael Bublé, is a more powerful sleep inducer than Lorazepam. Krall chooses the G-rated version of “Superstar,” and it’s lighter…

The Great Lakes Suites Wadada Leo Smith, trumpet; Henry Threadgill, alto saxophone, fute, bass fute; John Lindberg, bass; Jack DeJohnette, drums TUM 041-2 (2 CDs). 2014. Petri Haussila, prod.; Robert Musso, Akihiro Nishimura, engs. DDD. TT: 90:21 Following the gravitas of his Ten Freedom Summers (Cuneiform 2012), trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith’s four-disc largeensemble homage to the civil-rights struggle, The Great Lakes Suites feels almost like a breather. The sole focus is quartet, but one very different from Smith’s Golden Quartet, which always features piano. Here, with just two horn players and rhythm, Smith evokes the vast beauty and awe-inspiring history of the Great Lakes, devoting a suite to each—including Lake St. Clair, northeast of Detroit. The six suites are spread across two discs, and the sound is powerful, clear, matter-of-fact.…

SUBMISSIONS: Those promoting audio-related seminars, shows, and meetings should e-mail the when, where, and who to JAtkinson@enthusiastnetwork.com at least eight weeks before the month of the event. The deadline for the July 2015 issue is April 20, 2015. UK: CHISWICK, WEST LONDON Paul Messenger Metropolis Studios, housed on several floors of a huge converted tram garage in Chiswick, West London, have become a popular location for hi-f– related events. I’ve written of my experiences there several times in the past few years; my latest visit was to attend the first actual hi-f show at Metropolis. Although Metropolis Studios lack enough demonstration rooms to run a traditional hi-f show, that restriction doesn’t apply to headphone demos. Prominent Southwest London dealer Unilet and partner Custom Cable (which incorporates a “headphones direct” operation)…

IN SEARCH OF THE EXCEPTIONAL THIS ISSUE: Desktop audio from Eclipse and 300B tube power from Raven Audio. At home, I have two different ways of listening to music—just as I have two different ways of cooking and washing the car and making coffee and getting dressed to go out. My first approach to listening is the one that takes the most time: It requires forethought and effort and, consciously or not, a certain amount of ritual—yet those things are enjoyable in and of themselves, and the end results are often more than merely satisfying. My other approach is the one I take when there’s a piece of music I’m intent on hearing right away, and I have a limited amount of time and no inclination toward effort. My record…

Analog Sources Pioneer PLX-1000, Thorens TD-124, VPI Traveler turntables; SME 3009 II tonearm; Grado Mono, Ortofon 2M Black, Soundsmith Carmen, Zu Audio DL-103 cartridges. Digital Sources Puresound A-8000 CD player; Halide HD, Line Magnetic LM 502 CA DACs. Preamplifcation Blue Horizon BN:09-11-009, Schiit Mani, Soundsmith MMP3 phono stages. Integrated Amplifiers Line Magnetic LM518 IA, Rogue Audio Sphinx, Simaudio Moon Neo 340i. Loudspeakers KEF LS50, Tekton Enzo XL, Totem Model 1 Signature. Headphone amplifier Schiit Asgard. Headphones Audio-Technica ATH-M50x. Cables Interconnect: AudioQuest Big Sur & Cinnamon & Golden Gate, Kimber Kable Silver Streak. Speaker: Auditorium 23, Kimber Kable 8TC. Accessories Sound Anchor stands.—Herb Reichert…

Analog Sources Garrard 301 turntable; EMT 997, Thomas Schick tonearms; Ortofon CG25i, Miyajima Premium BE Mono II, EMT OFD 15 & TSD 15 pickup heads. Digital Sources Halide Designs DAC HD USB D/A converter; Apple iMac G5 computer running Audirvana Plus 1.5.12 playback software; Sony SCD-777ES SACD/CD player. Preamplifcation Hommage T2 step-up transformer, Shindo Masseto preamplifer. Power Amplifers Shindo Corton-Charlemagne (monoblocks) & Haut-Brion. Loudspeakers Altec Valencia, DeVore Fidelity Orangutan O/96. Cables USB: WireWorld Revelation 2.0. Interconnect: Audio Note AN-Vx, Nordost Blue Heaven, Shindo Silver. Speaker: Auditorium 23. AC: manufacturers’ own. Accessories Box Furniture Company D3S rack (source & amplifcation components).…

Analog Sources Continuum Audio Labs Caliburn turntable & Cobra tonearm & Castellon stand; Brinkmann Spyder turntable & 12.1 tonearm; George Warren turntable; Kuzma 4Point, Mørch DP-8 tonearms; Lyra Atlas & Etna, Ortofon MC A90 & MC A95, Ikeda Kai, Miyajima Labs Zero (mono) cartridges. Digital Sources Simaudio Moon Evolution 650D DACtransport & Moon Evolution 820S power supply; Ayre Acoustics QA-9 A/D converter; Lynx Hilo A/D–D/A converter; Meridian Digital Media System; Pure Vinyl & Vinyl Studio playback software. Preamplifcation Ypsilon MC-10L & MC-16L step-up transformers; Luminous Audio Arion, Pure Audio, Ypsilon VPS-100 phono preamplifiers; darTZeel NHB-18NS preamplifier. Power Amplifers darTZeel NHB-458 monoblocks. Loudspeakers Wilson Audio Specialties Alexandria XLF. Cables Interconnect: Snake River Audio Boomslang (S/PDIF), Stealth Sakra & Indra, TARA Labs Zero Evolution & Zero (XLR), Teresonic Clarison Gold, Wireworld Platinum…

Analog Sources VPI Classic turntable & JMW tonearm, Ortofon Cadenza Blue cartridge. Digital Sources Krell Cipher SACD/CD player. Preamplifcation Nagra BPS battery-powered phono preamplifer, Pass Labs XP-30 line preamplifer. Power Amplifer Simaudio Moon Evolution 860A. Integrated Amplifer Simaudio Moon Evolution 700i. Loudspeakers Revel Ultima Studio2. Cables Interconnect, Speaker: Nirvana Audio; AC, manufacturer’s own. Accessories Bybee Technologies Signature power conditioner (not for power amp, sometimes for other components), Audiodesksysteme Vinyl Cleaner, AC power from dedicated 20A circuits.…

CLASSICAL ROCK / POP JAZZ This performance of Bruckner’s greatest, most generous work, his Symphony 8, took place last August in the basilica of St. Florian, the Austrian monastery where Bruckner was schooled and served as organist. It was taped before an audience, directly above the crypt in which Bruckner is buried. The band was the Upper Austrian Youth Symphony Orchestra: 130 players, average age 17, conducted by Remy Ballot, a student of the late Sergiu Celibidache. Serge Ioan Celibidache paraphrased his father: “the more notes . . . the more time needed for them to develop and to be ‘digested’ acoustically. Thus, the richer the music, the slower the tempo.” This is some of the richest music ever composed. Add St. Florian’s reverberation time of six seconds, and this…

The Sound of Light Excerpts from Castor et Pollux, Les Boréades, Les Indes galantes, Naïs, Platée, Zoroastre, others Teodor Currentzis, MusicAeterna Sony Classical 88875 01450 2 (CD). 2014. Nicolas Bartholomée, prod. DDD. TT: 67:00 At the first sounds of the droning hurdy-gurdy and dark strings that open this CD, devout Ramellians will run as if from a burning house—until, perhaps, they listen for a second or third time. The startlingly pretentious and sure-of-himself conductor (who says such things as “Rameau is the driver of Apollo’s chariot”), Teodor Currentzis, has been given—artistically, at least—the city of Perm, in Siberia. His band and chorus, MusicaAeterna, is his invention and, possibly, cult—they all live together and work around the clock, sometimes in 14-hour sessions. I describe their working and living conditions because they…

Conception Ai Murakami, drums; Zaid Nasser, alto saxophone; Tardo Hammer, piano; Hassan Shakur, bass Gut String GSR 018 (CD). 2014. Ai Murakami, prod.; Saul Rubin, eng. DDD. TT: 53:47 Jazz today is global, diverse, and seething with creativity. Committed young players keep expanding the art form. Ai Murakami is one, but unlike most of her peers, she operates inside the tradition. She was born in Japan but has been based in New York since 1998. The music she hears in her head is bebop, but in a version on the leading edge of now. Murakami plays venerated texts from the middle of the previous century—Tadd Dameron’s “On a Misty Night,” George Shearing’s “Conception”— with exuberant irreverence. Her interpretations prove once again two things about bebop: Its complex energy is unique…

ANY CLOD CAN HAVE THE FACTS; HAVING OPINIONS IS AN ART THIS ISSUE: Pono, Ayre Acoustics, PS Audio, and Bricasti comment on our reviews of their products. Pono Player Editor: Way back in 1979, when I was a staff producer for Columbia Records, I was asked to produce Jerry Goldsmith’s seminal music score for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I started looking around for something futuristic that would be compatible with the movie’s ethos, and while I was at the Audio Engineering Society (AES) convention in downtown Los Angeles, at the Biltmore Hotel, I happened to stumble on a small exhibit in a Sony demo room. They were showing a PCM-1600 digital recording system that processed sound at 16-bit/44.1kHz, as well as a hand-wired prototype digital editor. Don Ellis, the…