Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2018 i Stereophile

Viginti is Latin for twenty. It’s also the name of a new loudspeaker from EgglestonWorks, to be produced in a limited edition of 250 pairs in celebration of the launch, 20 years ago, of the company’s original Andra, on which the Viginti is based. The Viginti is a shapely and eye-pleasing 4' 2" tall, and weighs 255 lb—kind of heavy for its size. A great thing about the Internet is that, in a print publication with limited space, there’s no need to spend precious column inches recounting an otherwise necessary history of EgglestonWorks, which is based in Memphis, Tennessee. You can read all about it in the late Wes Phillips’s review of the original Andra, in the October 1997 Stereophile—that issue’s cover story.1 Three months later, in the December 1997…

I measured the Bryston BP-173’s performance with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 “As We See It,” http://tinyurl.com/4ffpve4). The maximum gain for both the balanced and unbalanced inputs to the balanced outputs, and from the headphone output, was 17.5dB. The maximum gain from unbalanced input to unbalanced output was 11.6dB; ie, an input of 1V results in an output of 3.785V. The BP-173’s input impedance from 20Hz to 20kHz was 6800 ohms unbalanced and 10k ohms balanced, both impedances very slightly higher than specified. The preamplifier preserved absolute polarity (ie, was non-inverting) with both balanced and unbalanced inputs and from all outputs. Its XLR jacks are wired with pin 2 hot, the AES convention. The preamplifier’s unbalanced output impedance was a relatively low 690 ohms from 20Hz…

At the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show, when John Atkinson and I entered the room shared by Lamm Industries, Aqua Acoustic Quality, and Kharma, we were looking for two things: good sound, and digital products for me to review. When we spied AAQ’s Formula xHD digital-to-analog converter, the possibility of evaluating a potentially excellent DAC made by someone other than the usual suspects felt like a golden opportunity. There were two mitigating factors. First, I usually don’t use a preamplifier with either of my reference DACs, dCS’s Rossini ($23,999) and Vivaldi ($35,999). Instead, I try to keep things simple, and use the dCS DACs’ onboard volume controls, rather than add to the system a preamp. (Did I just describe as “simple” an expensive digital front end that, together with the dCS…

The Händel Album Arias from Amadigi di Gaula, Ezio, Flavio, Giustino, Imeneo, Radamisto, Riccardo Primo, Serse, Siroe, Tolomeo Philippe Jaroussky, countertenor; Artaserse Erato 0190295759667 (CD). 2017. Alain Lanceron, prod.; Michel Pierre, eng. DDD. TT: 71:28 PERFORMANCE SONICS The sheer loveliness of Philippe Jaroussky’s voice can occasionally hypnotize the listener into thinking he’s not thinking. His artistry is so perfect, his tone so peculiarly beautiful, that it’s easy to miss the depth of his interpretations. He’s one of those artists one can listen to casually and merely bathe in the sound; a closer listen reveals much more. Here, in this CD of 14 arias from Handel operas composed for castrato, he offers grief, resignation, rage. The dazzling vengeance aria “Rompo i lacci,” from Flavio, contains the usual staggering runs, roulades, and…

The Ice Queen Stony Plain SPCD 1398 (CD). 2018. Mike Flanigin, prod.; Chris Bell, eng. {SPARS?} TT: 53:24 PERFORMANCE SONICS The Ice Queen is Sue Foley’s 15th album as a leader, and for my money it’s her best ever. The Ottawa-born Foley turns 50 this year, at the top of her game, having recently been part of the hottest project out of Austin, Texas, the Jungle Show. Foley was a child prodigy who immediately took to the blues from rock’n’roll sources, but had the sense to move to Austin to find out what it was really about. After paying her dues playing at Antone’s and other local jukes, and learning the trade watching Jimmie Vaughan, Charlie Sexton, George Rains, and the Texas Horns, Foley made her first four very good…

Faces Heloísa Fernandes, Fazioli F228 piano Heloísa Fernandes AA0001000 (import CD). 2017. H. Fernandes, prod.; André Magalhães, prod., eng., mix; Victor Lejeune, eng.; Homero Lotito, mastering. DDD. TT: 47:21 PERFORMANCE SONICS Faces is Brazilian pianist Heloísa Fernandes’s third album and first solo release. Evident everywhere is her classical training: full commitment to each exquisitely chosen note, absolute precision of articulation and rhythmic rigor. Some tracks are through-composed, others improvised on set themes, others entirely improvised, but with no hint of blues or swing. Not jazz, this is uncategorizable contemporary music created in the moment, à la Keith Jarrett’s early solo albums improvised in the studio, played with equally assured virtuosity. The freshly festive Colheita e Caicó, a fantasia on Brazilian folk tunes, roams far. The Three Graces embodies in sound…

Miyajima Laboratory Saboten L Editor: What can I say? For people who know me, being speechless is rare!!! Art gets it spot on. This is a special cartridge that approaches the heady heights of the $7500 Madake Snakewood Limited Edition. Like all Miyajima cartridges, it is available for audition in your own system with a seven-day, full-money-back trial. (Who does that?) Thank you, Art, and thank you, Stereophile, champions of the analog beacon! Robin Wyatt Robyatt Audio Kuzma 4Point 9 Editor: All of us at Kuzma would like to thank Michael Fremer for his review of our 4Point 9 tonearm. We are pleased that he heard details on the John Wesley Harding record that he had never heard before. We are also happy that he compares it to a much…

Why am I once again falling down the rabbit hole of alternating current? A while back, I committed to listening to SMc Audio’s AC Nexus power conditioner, designed by SMc founder Steve McCormack and distributed by dealer Hi Fi One. If his name sounds familiar, in the early 1980s Steve McCormack, while at the helm of his first audio company, The Mod Squad, invented the Tiptoe. As far as I know, the Tiptoe was the first conical aftermarket footer for audio components. Everyone else since then has copied it. In an interview in this magazine, McCormack admitted, “To this day no one has really demonstrated how they operate or has graphs, charts, measurements, spectral analyses, etc., to show literally what is going on with Tiptoes.”1 Nonetheless, he and most of…

The right thing at the wrong time is the wrong thing.—Joshua Harris The sampling theory formulated by Claude Shannon in the late 1940s had a key requirement: The signal to be sampled must be band-limited—that is, it must have an absolute upper-frequency limit. With that single constraint, Shannon’s work yields a remarkable result: If you sample at twice that rate—two samples per period for the highest frequency the signal contains—you can reproduce that signal perfectly. Perfectly. That result set the foundation for digital audio, right up to the present. Cue the music. However, in the 69 years since Shannon published “Communication in the Presence of Noise” in the Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers,1 sampling theory has moved on. The new work began almost immediately, carried out by mathematicians…

Notoriously opinionated and obstinate Steve Albini, a guy ever vigilant and vocal about the wicked ways of the music business, showing up in Austin, Texas, at the annual South by Southwest festival? This I had to see. After a near-miss at his Austin hotel, we spoke the next morning on the phone. “It was unspeakable on all levels, as bad as I imagined, and in some ways worse.” Any notion that he’d somehow softened, somehow accepted the music biz as it— Wait. What the hell am I thinking? “Bear in mind that I come from a punk-rock background where capitalism is sort of an awkward associate, and South by Southwest was always about naked exploitation. People who desperately want to make it, and then people who want to sell the…

Like the Naim CD5 XS, which Art Dudley reviewed in the November 2017 issue, the Rega Apollo has no digital inputs of any kind. That limited my measurement of its technical behavior to using 16-bit test files burned to a CD-R. I tested the Rega with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 “As We See It,” https://tinyurl.com/4ffpve4). The Rega’s error correction was good—no interruptions were apparent in the player’s output until the single gaps in the data spiral on the Pierre Verany Digital Test CD reached 1.5mm in length, when there were occasional glitches. (The Compact Disc standard, the so-called “Red Book,” requires that a player cope with gaps of up to 0.2mm.) The maximum output level from the Apollo’s unbalanced output was 2.18V, which is 0.8dB…

Each equipment report in Stereophile focuses on a single audio component. When listening to a component for review, I leave unchanged all other components in my audio system. Other Stereophile reviewers experiment with different interconnects, speaker cables, power cords, or stands. As I found while reviewing Bryston’s BP-173 (Cubed) preamplifier, being flexible has its rewards. Description My first lesson in flexibility was learning what Bryston means by “Cubed.”1 Jim Tanner, Bryston’s VP of sales and marketing, explained that all their Cubed models employ an array of 12 active devices for the first 6dB of gain. Developed by the late Dr. Ioan Alexandru Salomie, this array acts as “a super-linear” input buffer to filter out audio- and radio-frequency noise, particularly anomalies that originate in the power line, reducing the overall noise…

I measured the Rogers High Fidelity 65V-1 with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 “As We See It,” http://tinyurl.com/4ffpve4). The maximum gain at 1kHz into 8 ohms varied with operating mode and output tube and was mostly lower than specified, ranging from 18.7dB (KT88s, triode mode) and 21.3dB (EL34s, triode) to 23.8dB (KT88s, Ultralinear mode) and 25.85dB (EL34s, Ultralinear)—all lower than the norm for an integrated amplifier. The maximum gain at the headphone jack measured 25dB. Both the speaker and headphone outputs preserved absolute polarity (ie, were non-inverting) in all modes and with both types of output tube. I controlled the 65V-1 with the Bluetooth-connected iPad app. As downloaded, the meter on the iPad app wasn’t calibrated: a measured level of 0.33W into 8 ohms was displayed…

AYRE ACOUSTICS KX-5 TWENTY PREAMPLIFIER & PS AUDIO BHK SIGNATURE PREAMPLIFIER In the March 2018 issue, Art Dudley admired the sound quality of Ayre Acoustics’ KX-5 Twenty preamplifier, but didn’t love some of its operational aspects.1 I’ve staged this Follow-Up as a putative face-off between the Ayre and my current reference preamplifier, the PS Audio BHK Signature, which I reviewed in the June 2017 issue.2 Although the PS Audio BHK Signature and Ayre KX-5 Twenty preamplifiers have some things in common—eg, both are fully balanced and have both XLR and RCA outputs, not to mention the fact that both products are made in Boulder, Colorado—their prices were arrived at from opposite directions. At $5995, the BHK Signature isn’t just PS Audio’s current flagship preamp: it’s one of the most expensive…

Freedom Sacred Bones SBR-195 (LP/CD/WAV). 2018. Damon McMahon, prod.; Chris Coady, Panoram, prods., engs. DDA/DDD? TT: 46:10 PERFORMANCE SONICS Amen Dunes’s music has always been difficult to pin down, perhaps in part because the band’s one constant is its founder, Damon McMahon, whose varied musical interests lean toward the bizarre. Since DIA (2009), which matched Royal Trux’s lo-fi irreverence with Syd Barrett’s psychedelic folk, McMahon’s studio releases have grown at once grander and more approachable. For Freedom, recorded at Electric Lady Studios and produced by Chris Coady (Beach House, Yeah Yeah Yeahs), McMahon enlisted studio musicians Steve Marion (guitars), Jordi Wheeler (keys), Gus Seyffert (bass), and Parker Kindred (drums) to create his most accessible work yet. The brief opening, “Intro,” calls to mind sentiments recently expressed by the Times Up…

One Year Tom Arthurs, trumpet; Richard Fairhurst, piano; Markku Ounaskari, drums, percussion Ozella OZ077CD (CD). 2018. Tom Arthurs, prod.; Miles Perkin, eng. DDD. TT: 48:24 PERFORMANCE SONICS Like so many important European jazz musicians, Tom Arthurs hit US radar screens only when he appeared on an ECM album: Julia Hülsmann’s In Full View (2013), on which Arthurs was stunning. He is more stunning on his own records. One Year is the fifth, all on small European labels. It is a strange, elusive, challenging work. Arthurs reports that he composed it in fragments during a quiet month of an otherwise hectic year, 2014. Later, he juxtaposed the fragments to make six tracks. In “Verklöstert,” a bare form evaporates into cryptic drum stirrings and returns with notes missing, leaving only five, repeated…

Songwriters live to tell stories, and few can tell them as well as John Prine. And yet it’s been 15 years since Prine released a record of fresh original material. In the meantime, he’s toured relentlessly, fought off cancer twice, had both knees and a hip replaced, and an elbow fixed. While that daunting journey might have discouraged lesser beings, or at least convinced them to curtail their live appearances, the road and the adulation he receives on it is clearly Prine’s animating passion these days—that and his new record, The Tree of Forgiveness, which, he says, has reawakened his interest in making studio albums. Recorded in Nashville, where the longtime Chicagoan now lives, the new album is playful Prine at his yarn-spinning best. In “When I Get to Heaven,”…

UK/US John Atkinson On Thursday, March 22, the news broke that AVTech Media Ltd (UK) had purchased the Home Tech Network from TEN: The Enthusiast Network. The Home Tech Network’s six brands—Stereophile, Sound & Vision, Shutterbug, AnalogPlanet, AudioStream, and InnerFidelity—will join AVTech Media’s Hi-Fi News, Hi-Fi Choice, Home Cinema Choice, and the Hi-Fi Show Live. According to the press release, the new company “creates a global powerhouse delivering the largest single specialized A/V group of publications on the planet, reaching more than three million enthusiasts and consumer-electronics consumers through print, digital, social, video, and events.” “The synergy between these iconic magazines and websites from both the UK and USA is clear, as are the distinctive brand propositions and target markets of each property. With an ambition to leverage these unique…

In “Into the Fold,” my article on MQA in the February 2018 Stereophile,1 I presented measurements of a particular MQA file (2L 2L-078) showing that MQA encoding caused the MQA file to differ radically from the unencoded DXD (24/352.8) version, adding significant noise even within the audioband—although, as I noted, I found that difference inaudible. In his “Manufacturer’s Comment” in that issue, Bob Stuart said that the file in question “was one of the first to be encoded to MQA (in December 2015),” and “one of a dozen albums that used the early Sphynx2 converters; many of these were scheduled to be remastered this winter, and should be available from 2L by the time this issue is available.” After confirming with 2L’s Morten Lindberg that the re-encoding had been done…

I used DRA Labs’ MLSSA system and a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone to measure the EgglestonWorks Viginti’s frequency response in the farfield, and an Earthworks QTC-40 for the nearfield and in-room responses. Because of the Viginti’s bulk and weight, I took my measurement gear to Michael Fremer’s place in New Jersey, where I performed the quasi-anechoic measurements on the speaker in his driveway. (It was one of the few days in March that was not cold, the sun was shining, and there was no wind!) Mikey and I lacked the strength to lift the 255-lb speaker off the ground, so the reflections of the drive-units’ outputs from the ground between the speaker and the microphone occurred earlier than is usually the case with my measurements. The frequency resolution of the…

“Okay, all you high-rolling audiophile know-it-alls—what is the argument against amplifiers that operate in high-bias, class-A, single-ended mode, with the lowest possible parts count? Is there a better strategy for beauty, rhythm, color, texture, and easy-flowing musical verity? I think not. And please explain: Why has mainstream audio gone to such ridiculous and expensive lengths to avoid building and selling precisely these sorts of amps?” It was I, your humble prattler, who in October 2016 posed that rhetorical question, in my review1 of the First Watt J2, a 25Wpc power amplifier designed by Nelson Pass. Now I’m reporting on another class-A, single-ended amplifier, this one really low-powered. The 65V-1 integrated amplifier ($4000) uses EL34 or KT88 pentode tubes—at the time of purchase, the user specifies his or her preference—and is…

I measured the Aqua Formula xHD DAC with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 “As We See It,” http://tinyurl.com/4ffpve4), using both the Audio Precision’s coaxial and AES/EBU digital outputs, and USB data sourced from my MacBook Pro running on battery power with Pure Music 3.0 playing WAV and AIFF test-tone files. Apple’s USB Prober utility identified the Formula xHD as “aqua XHD” from “aqua,” its serial number as “0 (none),” and confirmed that its USB port operated in the optimal isochronous asynchronous mode. Apple’s AudioMIDI utility revealed that, via USB, the Formula xHD accepted 24-bit integer data sampled at all rates up to 768kHz. Its coaxial and AES/EBU inputs accepted PCM datastreams with sample rates up to 192kHz. The Formula xHD’s maximum output level at 1kHz in…

That American jazz pianist Brad Mehldau has made a recording of J.S. Bach’s music should come as no great surprise to anyone who’s followed his extraordinarily varied career. In many ways, it seems a natural progression. Having become one of the most important jazz pianists of this century, and dabbled in classical-flavored music, film scores, and even performances of popular music (by Oasis Soundgarden and Nick Drake, to name just a few of the artists he’s covered), Mehldau has finally gotten around to recording this album of five pieces by one of the greatest keyboard improvisers in history. Mehldau’s method here is to play a more or less straight version of a Bach prelude or fugue from The Well-Tempered Clavier, BWV 846–893, followed by his own “After Bach” reimagining of…

The Thread That Keeps Us City Slang SLANG50138LTD (2 LPs). 2018. Craig Schumacher, prod., eng.; Joey Burns, John Convertino, prods.; Tom Hagerman, Sergio Mendoza, Chris Schultz, Thomas Small, Martin Wenk, engs. ADA? TT: 67:31 PERFORMANCE SONICS I’ve long marveled at Calexico’s musical evolution from folkish desert-rock duo with occasional Latin influences to bona fide Southwestern ambassador deftly integrating folk, rock, pedal-steel–powered country, reggae, psychedelia, and Mexican pop. The Thread That Keeps Us maintains this sense of place, particularly in gorgeous, windswept numbers like the Morricone-esque cinematic psych of “Voices in the Field” and the Spanish-language mariachi rock of “Flores y Tamales.” Calexico has also perfected the art of the anthem—fittingly enough, as this album is overtly political in places, its lyrics detailing and decrying the “age of extremes” we’re living…

Whispers and Cries Noah Preminger, tenor saxophone; Frank Carlberg, piano Red Piano RPR-14599-4431 (CD). 2018. Frank Carlberg, Noah Preminger, prods.; Jimmy Katz, eng. DDD. TT: 67:31 PERFORMANCE SONICS Since 2015, tenor saxophonist Noah Preminger has released five albums recorded by the great engineer Jimmy Katz (who is also the famous jazz photographer Jimmy Katz). Musically and sonically, they constitute one of the most compelling bodies of work in new-millennium jazz. The latest is Whispers and Cries, a duo project with pianist Frank Carlberg. Katz recorded it in Jordan Hall, an extraordinary acoustic environment of 1000 seats at the New England Conservatory, in Boston. The hall was empty. We are the live audience. The sound puts us there. In a program of standards, Preminger and Carlberg seize on each old song…

The Complete Prestige 10-Inch LP Collection Craft CR00031 (5 LPs). 1952–54/2017. Bob Weinstock, Ira Gitler, Teacho Wiltshire, orig. prods.; Rudy Van Gelder, Doug Hawkins, Irv Green, Les Cahan, orig. engs.; Nick Phillips, reissue prod.; Joe Tarantino, reissue eng. AAA? TT: 112:27 PERFORMANCE SONICS Released concurrently with Monk’s centennial, this handsome boxed set reproduces all five of the 10" Monk LPs released by Prestige in the early 1950s—including one issued under Sonny Rollins’s name—complete with jackets and labels, plus additional liner notes by Monk biographer Robin D.G. Kelley. While not as consequential as the preceding Monk releases on Blue Note, they amply display Monk’s genius as a composer and pianist. The only problem is the bass-heavy sound of these pressings, which so exaggerates the warmth and brightness of the original vinyl…