Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2017 i Stereophile

THIS ISSUE: High-performance audio products are getting increasingly expensive. Last July and September I made two loudspeakerrelated road trips: first to Rockport Technologies, in Maine, to audition their new Lyra; and then to high-end dealer-distributor GTT Audio, in deepest, darkest New Jersey, to audition YG Acoustics’ new Sonja XV. Both speakers offer innovative, proprietary drive-units and heroic audio engineering, especially regarding their enclosures, which are constructed from aluminum. Both experiences took place in superbly well-designed and optimized listening rooms with front-end and amplification components that were beyond reproach. The sound quality offered by the Rockport and YGA speakers was simply superb, both stepping entirely out of the way to offer maximum communion with the music. But . . . Rockport’s enclosure-within-an-enclosure Avior costs $149,500/pair, and YGA’s four-enclosure Sonja XV costs…

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, January 22, 1–4pm: The Los Angeles & Orange County Audio Society will hold its monthly meeting, presented by San Diego’s Alma Music and Audio in the beautiful Penthouse Ballroom of the Holiday Inn Buena Park (7000 Beach Boulevard). The acoustics are excellent, and there will be seating for all. Our host, Fabio Storelli of Alma Music and Audio, will demonstrate examples of top-of-theline equipment, including: speakers…

LOUDSPEAKER “ Dammit!” No sooner had I praised small loudspeakers while dismissing large speakers as potentially having “large problems,” in my review of the Crystal Arabesque Minissimo Diamond in the October issue,1 than I had to eat my words. Only days after that issue had gone to press, Magico’s VP for Global Sales & Marketing, Peter Mackay, and CTO Yair Tammam, arrived at my place to set up a pair of the Bay Area company’s floorstanding—and very large— S5 Mk.II loudspeakers. The S5 Mk.II Like the original S5, the S5 Mk.II is a three-way, floorstanding design, 4' tall. The twin, sealed-box–loaded, 10" aluminum-cone woofers with substantial rubber roll surrounds, 6" midrange unit with a graphene-coated Nano-Tec cone, and 1.1" diamond-coated, beryllium-dome tweeter are mounted vertically in line on its black…

Iused DRA Labs’ MLSSA system and a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone to measure the NEAT Acoustics Iota Alpha’s frequency response in the farfield, and an Earthworks QTC-40 for the nearfield responses. The first challenge I faced was deciding on which axis I should place my microphone for the farfield measurements. Sitting on its spikes, the Iota Alpha is 19” high, and its tweeter is just 17” from the floor. However, the section of the front baffle on which the tweeter and midrange unit are mounted is canted back at 30°, which aims those units directly at the ears of a listener seated a reasonable distance away. I therefore chose to make my primary response measurements on an axis perpendicular to the baffle, with the microphone pointed at the tweeter. As…

Because of the Boulder 2150’s bulk and weight—319 lbs in its shipping crate—I wouldn’t have been able to get it down the stairs to my test lab, much less back up those stairs. So I packed up my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 “As We See It,” www.stereophile.com/content/measurements-maps-precision) and the PC I use to control it, along with analog and digital oscilloscopes, test loads, and all the cables I would need, and drove to Michael Fremer’s lair, in deepest, darkest New Jersey. There, I had a couple of problems. Usually, before doing any testing of a power amplifier, I precondition it by running it at one-third power into 8 ohms for an hour. (With an amplifier having a class-B or -AB output stage, this power level results…

In his report, in the November 2016 issue, 3 on the Torreys firmware upgrade for PS Audio’s DirectStream D/A processor,4 Robert Deutsch wrote that he had noticed “an increase in resolution”— and at that, my ears pricked up. I had purchased our original review sample of this processor following Art Dudley’s favorable review in September 2014,5 and I had upgraded it, in the summer of 2015, to the Yale operating system, which I prefer to the earlier Pikes Peak and v.1.2.1 versions. As much as I enjoy the sound of the Di rectStream, I had always been bothered by the fact that its ultimate resolution was limited by its analog noise floor. According to PS Audio, not only does the Torreys upgrade enable DirectStream DACs with the optional Bridge II…

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. Erratum Our apologies to readers: The “Contents” page of the December 2016 issue listed Herb Reichert’s Follow-Up reports on Audeze’s LCD-X and LCD-4 headphones and Pass Labs’ HPA-1 headphone amplifier as appearing on pp.119 and 143, respectively. In fact, Herb’s comments on these products were included in his “Gramophone Dreams,” which begins on p.41 of that issue. —John Atkinson John Bedini Editor: John Bedini died suddenly on Saturday, November 5, 2016: see www.energeticforum.com/renewable-energy/20629-endera.html. Thought you’d want to know. —Jefferson Kolle kolle1@comcast.net Sad news. As well as making…

Iused DRA Labs’ MLSSA system and a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone to measure the Magico S5 Mk.II’s frequency response in the farfield, and an Earthworks QTC-40 for the nearfield and in-room responses. A complication was that the 220-lb loudspeaker was too bulky for me to move it outside for the testing, or to lift it onto my computer-controlled turntable. I therefore had to do the quasi-anechoic measurements in my listening room, where the proximity of room boundaries led to more than usually aggressive windowing of the timedomain data, which in turn reduced the graphs’ resolution in the midrange. That said, my estimate of the Magico’s voltage sensitivity was approximately 87.5dB/2.83V/m, close to the specified 88dB. Fig.1 shows how the S5 Mk.II’s impedance magnitude and electrical phase angle vary with frequency.…

To clear the air, if not the sinuses, let’s dispose right now of the traveling-boogermatte controversy. If Robbie Robertson and the late Levon Helm are to be believed, in The Last Waltz, Neil Young performed “Helpless” with a very suspicious chunk of something hanging out of one nostril. When Young and his management became aware of the problem, the offending object had to be excised from the film stock using a matte laboriously inserted into every frame. At least, that’s how the juiciest legend from one of rock’s most legendary performances is usually told. EDITOR’S PICK RECORDING OF THE MONTH THE BAND The Last Waltz 40th Rhino RR 273925 (2 CDs). 1978/2016. Robbie Robertson, prod.; Ron Fraboni, John Simon, co-prods.; Terry Becker, Tim Kramer, Elliot Mazer, Wayne Neuendorf, Ed Anderson,…

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 April 2017 issue is January 20, 2017. US: SANTA MONICA John Atkinson I am sad to report that, 19 years to the day after I recorded her performing Erwin Schulhoff’s Sonata for Solo Violin for the Stereophile label, Ida Levin passed away on Friday, November 18, 2016, after a lengthy battle with leukemia. She was 53. Our condolences to her family, her fellow musicians, her students, and to all who, like me, were thrilled by her playing. At the recording session, Ida played the demanding Schulhoff Sonata with passion and fire. As the Nagra-D’s reels turned and I followed…

THIS ISSUE: Audio Origami’s UniArm unipivot tonearm and the Little Fwend tonearm lifter. My first attempt at writing this piece began with a list of the Top Ten Audio Products I Wish Were Still in Production. Unfortunately, that proved unworkable. Although some of my selections—the Audio Research SP-6C preamplifier, the Stax ELS-F81 loudspeaker—were straightforward, it turned out that most of the others were burdened with complications. Examples: It’s no longer feasible to mass-produce Bakelite headshells for a revival of the original Ortofon SPU or similar phono pickup. It’s no longer possible to obtainthe precisely correct vacuum tubes and other components required to return to production the Leak Stereo 20 amplifier. And I’m certain that a torch- and pitchfork-wielding mob would prevent the manufacture of an authentic Altec 604B drive-unit, unless…

Imeasured the EAR Acute Classic with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 “As We See It,” tinyurl.com/4ffpve4). As well as the Audio Precision’s optical and coaxial S/PDIF outputs, I used WAV and AIFF test-tone files sourced via USB from my MacBook Pro running on battery power with Pure Music 3.0. Apple’s USB Prober utility identified the EAR DAC as “xCORE USB Audio 2.0” from “XMOS” and confirmed that its USB port operated in the optimal isochro nous asynchronous mode. Apple’s AudioMIDI utility revealed that, via USB, the Acute Classic accepted 16-and 24-bit integer data sampled at all rates from 44.1 to 384kHz. The optical and coaxial S/PDIF inputs locked to datastreams with sample rates of up to 192kHz. I tested the Acute Classic’s error correction with…

ACOUSTIC RESEARCH AR-M2 PORTABLE PLAYER In April 2016, I reviewed the AR-M2 portable player1 from Acoustic Research,2 concluding that “It’s good to see the Acoustic Research brand applied to such a well-engineered product after all these years.” When I compared the AR-M2 with the Astell&Kern AK240, I found the differences between the two players small, commenting that “on balance, if I didn’t have to count pennies, I’d go for the $2500 Astell&Kern—but for $1300 less, the Acoustic Research comes very close.” A special offer price reduction from $1199 to $899 last December makes the AR-M2 even more of a good buy. At the time of my review, the Android-based player was running the AR-M2 Music Player app v1.06, which I updated to v.1.2.0 before returning the AR to its manufacturer.…

THIS ISSUE: Magico, NEAT Acoustics/High Fidelity Services, and EAR USA respond to our reviews of their products. Magico S5 Mk.II Editor All of us at Magico send our thanks and appreciation for John Atkinson’s time and thorough review of the S5 Mk.II loudspeaker. We take great pride in carefully designing our own transducers, enclosures and dividing networks with the goal of providing the closest experience to that of live music. A visit to our factory in Hayward CA is an exciting experience and unveils the entire production process, which includes CNC machining, full assembly, final testing and an incredible listening experience in our sound room. John has an open invitation to visit Magico as an honored guest. We appreciate his recognition of our work dedicated to the development of the…