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No. 70
$4.99
ISSN 0847-1851
Canadian Publication Sales
Product Agreement
No. 40065638
BEYOND THE CD: How SACD won the war.
We review two SACD players and adopt
one of them. And we dare to pit SACD
against analog!
OTHER REVIEWS: Loudspeakers from
Equation, Reference 3a, Wilson Benesch
and muRata. Plus a limited edition amp
from Simaudio.
AS WELL AS: Using an iPod as a fullfidelity music source, the video screens of
tomorrow, and Montréal 2004.
RETURN LABELS ONLY
OF UNDELIVERED COPIES TO:
Box 65085, Place Longueuil,
Longueuil, Qué., Canada J4K 5J4
Printed in Canada
Castle
QED
Target
Vandersteen
Audioprism
McCormack
Roksan Kandy MkIII
Winner WHAT HI-FI SUPERTEST October 2003
Bel Canto
Rega
WBT
Gamut
Apollo
GutWire
ASW Speakers
Goldring
Milty
Perfect Sound
Nitty Gritty
Radiant Speakers
Roksan Radius 5
Justice Audio
9251-8 Yonge St., Suite 218
Richmond Hill, ON L4C 9T3
Tel. : (905) 780-0079 • Fax : (905) 780-0443
www.justiceaudio.com
[email protected]
LAST record care
WATTGate
Audiophile CDs
Audiophile LPs
DVD and SACD
The Listening Room
Linn Unidisk 1.1
31
Is this the source component audiophiles have been
waiting for all this time? It looks that way!
Issue No. 70
Cover story: The ultimate SACD (and everything else)
player, the Linn Unidisk 1.1. Behind it is the very
bright Rho Ophiuchi star (the blue one), and the M4
global cluster (purplish, at lower right).
Cinema
Future screens
Can you buy the perfect video screen? Perhaps
not yet, but UHF looks at what’s here…and what’s
coming.
19
36
Equation 25 Speakers
They’re good enough to have been contenders as
a reference, and you know what? They very nearly
made it.
39
Reference 3a Royal Virtuoso
A renewed version of an old favorite. And we do
mean favorite!
42
Wilson Benesch Curve
Diamonds are made from carbon. So are humans
if you add water. And so are the cabinets of these
speakers.
45
muRata Super Tweeters
Speakers that take up where your ears leave off
49
Simaudio Moon W-5LE Power Amp
Specially built for you and 249 other lucky people
50
Goldring GR1 Turntable
It’s hard to find a good phono cartridge at this
price. This one comes with a turntable and arm.
52
Apple iPod
Can it also be a poor man’s music server?
54
Software
Features
How SACD Won the War
22
Or, to put it another way, how DVD-Audio blew it
big time
Montreal 2004
by Gerard Rejskind
UHF exhibits, and we take a look around too
Shanling SCD-T200
It plays SACDs. It plays CDs too. It could even be
the player you’ve saved up for.
26
Touring with Witnesses
28
by Albert Simon
Albert plays sherpa to a couple of audiophiles at this
biggest of electronics shows for consumers
Gershwin Forever!
56
by Reine Lessard
Life is short, art is long. Gershwin’s life and legacy
are the proof
Record Reviews
by Reine Lessard and Gerard Rejskind
62
Departments
Editorial
Feedback
Free Advice
Classified Ads
Gossip & News
State of the Art
2
5
7
66
69
72
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine
1
UHF Magazine No. 70 was published in July, 2004. All
contents are copyright 2004 by Broadcast Canada. They
may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form, or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system,
without written permission from the publisher.
EDITORIAL & SUBSCRIPTION OFFICE:
Broadcast Canada
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Tel.: (450) 651-5720 FAX: (450) 651-3383
E-mail: [email protected]
World Wide Web: http://www.uhfmag.com
PUBLISHER & EDITOR: Gerard Rejskind
ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Reine Lessard
EDITORIAL: Paul Bergman, Reine Lessard, Albert Simon
PHOTOGRAPHY: Albert Simon
ADVERTISING SALES:
Québec: Reine Lessard (450) 651-5720
Alberta & BC: Derek Coates (604) 522-6168
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Ultra High Fidelity Magazine invites contributions. Though
all reasonable care will be taken of materials submitted, we
cannot be responsible for their damage or loss, however
caused. Materials will be returned only if a stamped selfaddressed envelope is provided. Because our needs are
specialized, it is advisable to query before submitting.
Ultra High Fidelity Magazine is completely independent of
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2
Editorial
Changes to the reference systems
I suppose every magazine talks about “reference systems,” though in many
cases the role of such a system is a mystery, since it isn’t really used for most
reviews. In our case, all reviews are done using one of the reference systems.
And we change them as little as we can get away with, because a reference
that changes all the time is scarcely a reference at all.
As of this issue we have several changes, more than we had had for a long
time, and indeed more than we had intended.
First, we have finally selected a new reference loudspeaker for our Alpha
system. The decision was a long time coming, yet the final choice was swift and
unanimous. The new reference is the Living Voice Avatar OBX-R, which we
had reviewed in issue No. 67. It has the ingredients we had sought: reasonable
size, very extended and clean response, very high resolution, high efficiency,
and electrical characteristics that won't assassinate small amplifiers. It will be
an excellent working tool, and incidentally it will be a lot of fun to listen to.
We knew the speaker change was coming, but the reviews in our last issue
pretty much mandated another change. The Audiomat Phono-1.5 is so good
that we decided to acquire it. We still use vinyl for a number of our reviews, and
the superb resolution of the Phono-1.5 will enable us to do our job better.
There is more. For a number of months we have been telling readers that
the war between DVD-Audio and SACD is headed for a final conclusion, with
SACD the almost certain winner (see How SACD Won the War in this issue).
Didn’t that mean we would finally need an SACD player ourselves? Sure, but
the acquisitions budget was a little lean, and we wondered whether we could
economize a bit. Perhaps we could say that whatever we bought was an interim
reference, with a definitive one to come later as the state of the art advances.
We had done that nearly two decades ago with Compact Disc (a Teac was our
first purchase, with a Spectral player arriving later).
Hah! Linn’s Unidisk 1.1 player was scheduled for this issue, and just over 24
hours after we unpacked our sample, we knew we could make no other choice.
Some manufacturers will say we were wrong not to wait, and we should have
bought their player. They will have their chance to demonstrate what chumps
we are, because we now have a great point of comparison.
And there’s one more change. We have long used a Simaudio Moon W-5
amplifier in our Omega system. We’ve heard for ourselves the improvements
Simaudio has made to its flagship amp, and we were thinking that possibly
we should get one of the new ones, perhaps not right away, but…
Then came an opportunity. Simaudio announced the W-5LE, a premium
“limited edition” version numbered from 001 to 250. We will be using number
016 in all future tests. It’s reviewed in this issue.
By the way, our colleague Albert has long used a W-5 that was among the
first ones made. He now listens through number 024.
Finally…a price rise
I may as well let you know in advance. A single issue of UHF has cost $4.99
for a long time (and for years before that it was $4.95…don’t ask!). In early
2005, the price will rise.
That means the price of a subscription will go up too. But with the cost of
both paper and postage rising soi sharply, there’s no choice.
All I can promise you is value. I hope you’ll agree.
DOG-EARS ARE FOR DOGS!
Some audiophiles snap up every single issue of UHF, yet they hesitate to subscribe.
Why? They’re afraid of getting copies that are dog-eared
and torn.
So here’s a strange fact: dog-eared copies may
be awaiting them at the local newsstand.
It makes sense if you think about it. Where do copies
sit around unprotected? On the newsstand. Where
do other people leaf through them before you arrive?
At the newsstand. Where do they stick on little labels
you can’t even peel off? Surprise!
At a lot of newsstands, they do exactly that!
What you want is a perfect copy. And the perfect copy is the one in your
mailbox. No tears or bends, because each issue is protected by a sealed plastic
envelope. With the address label on the envelope, not on the magazine.
Of course, you’ll have to make a certain sacrifice.
Are you willing to pay, oh, maybe 23% less for the privilege of having a perfect
copy? And be protected (for a while) against the coming price rise?
And are you willing to qualify for a discount on one or both of our original books
on hi-fi (see the offer on the other side of this page)?
You are? Then perhaps the time has come.
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a r l y 2 00
5!
The books that explain…
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It’s a practical manual for the discovery and exploration
How they work, how to choose, what to expect. The history of hiof high fidelity, which will make reading other
fi. How to compare equipment that’s not in the same store. What
books easier. Includes in-depth coverage of how
accessories work, and which ones are scams. How to tell a good
the hardware works, including tubes, “alternative”
connector from a rotten one. How to set up a home theatre system
loudspeakers, subwoofers, crossover networks,
that will also play music (hint: don’t do any of the things the other
biamplification. It explains why, not just how. It has full
instructions for aligning a tone arm, and a gauge is
magazines advise). How to plan for your dream system even if your
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indispensable. And it costs as little as $9.95 in the US
of essential information for the beginning or advanced audiophile!
and Canada (see the coupon).
Five dollars off each of these two books if you subscribe or renew at the same time
The UHF Guide costs $14.95 (Canada) plus 7% GST (15% in NB, NS, NF), US$19.95 (USA) CAN$25 (elsewhere).
The World of High Fidelity costs $21.95 (Canada) plus 7% GST (15%HST in NB, NS, NF), US$21.95 (USA) or CAN$30 (elsewhere).
See ordering information on the previous page.
A $5 discount applies on either book, or each, when the order is placed at the same time as a subscription, a subscription renewal, or a subscription
extension (if you subscribe, use the form on the other side of this page. No need to fill in the information a second time).
PLUS:
Finally, all of Gerard Rejskind’s State
of the Art columns from the first 60
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to each column, 258 pages in all. Check
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Feedback
Longueuil, Québec, Canada J4K 5J4
[email protected]
I have been an avid subscriber to
UHF since 1993 (the issue had a review
of the Castle Chester and Totem Model
One), and I have enjoyed every bit of
your magazine.
Now that you have a home theatre
setup, why not review more home theatre speakers, specifically those offered
by Axiom Audio? Your readers might
benefit from such a review of this Canadian speaker company for two reasons:
1) They are a Canadian company, eh!
2) Being mail order, if the sound of these
speakers are any good, readers who have
limited budget but would like to go home
theatre can get there without breaking
the bank.
Renante Barroga
ST-LAURENT, QC
Apple lent us an iPod for only one month,
and it was shipped back two days before Apple
announced its lossless compression. That
would double the iPod’s capacity.
I just bought an iPod and have been
extremely impressed by its ease of operation and versatility. I haven’t assessed its
overall sound quality yet, and I will be
very interested in your coming review
from that perspective.
The one thing that really infuriates
me, though, is that we Canadians can’t
download from the iTunes music store.
Can you address in your article
when (if?) we will ever be able to use
the iTunes download facility? Are there
other alternatives, with a broad sampling
of artists, that are legal in Canada?
The CRTC has no jurisdiction in this,
Craig. The problem seems to be getting the
many worldwide divisions of the big record
companies, many of which appear to have a
pathological death wish, on side. We would
add that we have trouble getting excited over
the possibility of paying a buck for a single
song with nine tenths of the information
missing. We would like to see Apple offering
the alternative of full-resolution downloading. One record company, Magnatunes
(www.magnatunes.com) already does.
I eagerly await your review of the
Apple iPod. I have been looking in
various stores for a chance to audition
one myself, but only computer stores
seem to carry them. They escort you to
their iPod display and allow you to listen
to their MP3 files through powered
computer speakers — no thanks! I need
to listen to WAV files that are well done
through a good audio system.
I produce a lot of WAV fi les from
LPs and tapes, which I usually edit with
small amount of EQ, band extrapolation
and/or normalizing before burning
them to CD. Rather than run 40 feet of
interconnect from my computer to the
main listening room for auditioning,
I have been burning “trial and error”
CDs in order to come up with my final
mix. I know for certain that over the
last two years I have scrapped over 50
Well, you can check our findings in this
issue, Lloyd. The quality of what you hear
will depend not only on the iPod but also on
the quality of the A/D converter in your
computer. In some cases it can be surprisingly good.
I have been reading your magazine
for about two years now, and have yet
to see a better one. I live in the US, and
sadly there is no stereo magazine here
(or even in the UK, for I do read some
of them) that can even come close to
yours.
1) In UHF No. 68, you wrote an article on testing several different speaker
cables, and I think you mentioned
something like the Nordost Valhalla is
close to the Wireworld Eclipse. Is this
correct? This cable costs around five
times the price of the Eclipse, but on the
other hand I believe in your judgement.
Does this mean Nordost spend too much
on advertising?
2) Have you, or will you ever, review
the following components: Simaudio
Moon I-5 Limited Edition, JMLab
Micro Utopia BE, YBA Intégré Passion,
Naim CDS3, and NAIT5i/CD5i?
3) Will you ever compile all the technical articles (like the ones about power,
acoustics, stereo sound, etc), and also
all the music articles by Reine? These
would be an excellent addition to your
collection of highly valuable books you
have published so far.
Ernes Ho
SAN JOSE, CA
5
Feedback
I was hoping, and I am sure many
readers are as well, that when you test the
iPod in the next issue, that you will also
try out the new “lossless compression”
offered by iTunes version 4.5. Sounds
interesting. Just a thought.
Paul Hirvinen
THUNDER BAY, ON
If not, perhaps you could provide
a CRTC contact address so we can all
send letters asking why Americans can
download songs from Canadian artists,
who permit their music to be downloaded, but we cannot. I just can’t believe
the CRTC can be so pig-headed about
universal access to music. (Perhaps
you could offer advice on the best way
to secure a US credit card and mailing
address!)
Craig McDougall
CALGARY, AB
such CDs. The iPod seems to be a good
alternative to this wasteful method, and
even though it may not pay for itself in
saved CD blanks it should be a lot more
convenient. But like you, I need to know
what it sounds like before I decide.
Feeding the analog signal through a
mini jack is one of my concerns. Another
is the quality of its analog playback
circuit. I imagine that it is just fine for
background music, but most of my music
from LPs will be for dedicated listening
and I want to make sure I get it right.
The iPod has to give me the same quality
I get from my main CD playback system.
Perhaps I am expecting too much.
Lloyd Marshall
EDSON, AB
Note that our evaluation was based on
Wireworld’s own Comparator Disc, not on
a side-by-side comparison. The YBA Intégré
Passion was on the cover of issue No. 64.
As for the books, Reine says she appreciates the request!
Even if I hadn’t been trying to make
myself useful in the Charisma room
much of the time this year, I would still
have missed a lot of the Montreal show.
You filled it in for me. Thanks a million
for the terrific online report.
Bravo for doing it in the first place,
bravo for posting PDQ, bravo for the
great pics, bravo for making it all readable and accessible even for relative audio
novices. Another triumph.
Toby Earp
MONTRÉAL, QC
A f ter read i ng t he Mont rea l
Show report, I would like to clarify
informat ion concerning Sy nt hesis
products (page http://www.uhfmag.
com/Montreal2004/day3.html ) I believe
it’s an Italian company rather than a
German one.
Jacek Rymut
Poland
Feedback
Quite right. Glad you’re keeping an eye
on us!
waiting is sometimes just as rewarding
as the getting.
Regular monthly publishing would
remove some of that quirkiness and
hence, some of the fun of your magazine.
And isn’t it supposed to be fun?
Keith Ferguson
VICTORIA, BC
I don’t understand your frequency
response graphs for speakers. They seem
very strange to me in that the fluctuations are tremendous. For example the
Reference 3A De Capo-i: according to
your plot, there is a 5 dB dip around
70 Hz and another 5 dB dip at approximately. 5000 Hz. These plots do not
at all correspond to what I am used to
seeing in other publications.
I am assuming that your test conditions differ form other testers. However,
the results plotted on your frequency
response graphs are so “jagged” that I do
not see how one could learn much about
the speaker’s quality.
I should point out that my technical
knowledge of audio phenomena and electronics is very limited. I am stating this
from the strict point of view of an audio
consumer (definition of an audiophile?)
who is accustomed to looking at graphs
without understanding the underlying
concepts.
André Nickell
BEACONSFIELD, QC
better than that of most 35-year olds)
I had better speak up before it is too
late!
Reine, your contributions to UHF
add a touch of class and humanity to a
fine technical (though at times occult)
periodical. I particularly enjoy your
articles on various humanistic subjects.
The Music Critics (UHF No. 69) brought
to mind a couple of my favorite critical
jibes.
Referring to a rather heavy-duty
M im i, Shaw remarked t hat M im i
appeared to suffer not so much from
consumption as from overconsumption. After the first performance of the
brahms Fourth, a critic (his name escapes
me) remarked, “It is certainly no joke
that this dead tired symphony should
have to run the gauntlet of four movements.”
I wonder why I tend to associate
Brahms — is it his distinctively close
string harmony? — with Victorian
drawing rooms cloaked in heavy, deep
brown velvet drapes, aspidistras and
mantelpieces edged with hanging (again,
brown velvet) bobbles. Maybe I once saw
a picture of him in such a setting.
Tell the boys I can explain electrical
phenomena, but I never had much faith
in the occult. Keep them earthbound.
Roy A. Woodland
BARRIE, ON
P.S. You will note that this comes to you
by e-mail (envelope mail, that is).
Please fi nd my renewal cheque for
13 more issues. While other magazines
are interesting in their own particular
We have some misgivings about them
ways, yours is the one that never ceases too, André. At one time we stuck to text
Some 15 years after giving them up,
to entertain. Even my wife (who loves her descriptions of frequency response. Later, we I recently renewed my subscription to
music too) is getting into it: “Anything began using graphed versions of the results, Car and Driver. To my amazement, I
you drives now include a very
from those guys in Montreal today?” is and just recently we have been using actual found
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use the word quirky, but there’s some- speakers in their best light. That’s not what
Them. We have yet to borrow an idea
thing to be said for a little…all right, we do, but we have perhaps gone too far the from another audio magazine, but we do
unpredictable quirkiness. The anticipa- other way.
steal regularly from other magazines past
tion of an upcoming issue’s arrival is
and present that we consider outstanding
similar in some ways to the search for a
After years of reading UHF, and in their respective fields. Car and Driver
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Free Advice
Longueuil, Québec, Canada J4K 5J4
[email protected]
I am having a hard time getting an
unbiased and straight answer and hope you
can help.
I am searching for a new CD player,
and I am still on the fence about SACD.
Currently I have the MSB Link III DAC
and will be getting the upsampling board.
What will I get by spending more money on
a CD player that the DAC does not correct
or improve?
The rest of my system is the Jolida 502a
integrated amp and Triangle Titus 202
speakers. So you can tell I am on a budget and
would really like to save on the CD player.
Jerry Kottom
GARVIN, MN
I realize I have written to you guys
recently, but I don’t know who else can
We rush to the rescue, Perry!
The Benz Micro may be a good
choice, though as you note it doesn’t
have a line contact stylus. Certainly your
Supex is old enough to tell stories of days
gone by to its grandchildren. However
the symptoms you’ve noted — insufficient bass and shrill, dry top end — are
the typical result of an arm that is
adjusted too high, so that the vertical
tracking angle of the cartridge is exces-
I am new to high end hi-fi and would like
to buy a tube amplifier. I have listened to the
Jadis Orchestra Reference integrated tube
amplifier with Jadis Orchestra speakers. I
would like to receive your advice for matching
speakers to the Jadis Orchestra Reference,
and if you have any comments on the Jadis
speakers also.
Please also comment about the tone
controls in the amplifier. As you may
know, now they have the Lux version of the
same amplifier in Canada without the tone
controls. Which one would you suggest?
Semih Alsaid
ISTANBUL, Turkey
We are not fond of tone controls.
We all have recordings that can use a
little tonal adjustment, but the chances
that the “correction” from tone controls
will exactly compensate for a recording
problem are remote indeed. What’s
more, tone controls take away from
performance even when they are set to
neutral. An amplifier without them is to
be preferred.
Jadis loudspeakers are not distributed
in North America, and we have never
heard them. The Jadis amplifier, which
we reviewed in UHF No. 58, will work
well with most loudspeakers of reasonable sensitivity, say 89 dB or more. We
don’t know what speakers are available
in Istanbul, of course. Among possible
brands you could listen to are Epos,
Linn, Spendor, Naim, Ruark, Thiel,
Vandersteen, Piega, Epos and Totem.
Those are only a start.
7
Free Advice
It sounds to us as though you’ll really
want to plan ahead, Jerry. We’ve also
been on the fence about SACD, because
the war of standards reminded us and
everyone else of the battle between Beta
and VHS. But we now think SACD is the
“VHS” of the new drama, and if that’s
so you’ll want an SACD player sooner
or later. We can say right off that we
are not sold on upsampling, which can’t
truly add to the resolution of a recording, though it can easily muck up what
is already there. You didn’t mention
what transport you are using with your
MSB converter, but if the combination is
working quite well you may want to take
the money for the upsampling card and
put it into an SACD fund.
There are SACD players that can do
wonders with conventional CDs as well
(see our review of the Shanling player in
this issue), but they are not legion, and
they are not cheap. Our advice on this
may yet change (and we hope it does),
but it’s possible that you’ll want to make
room for your CD player even after the
new super player arrives.
answer my question reliably.
My system consists of a Linn Sondek/
Syrinx/Supex 900 Super and an Alchemist
Nexus (brought to my attention thanks to
your review) into a Rotel 980BX preamplifier. My amplifier is by a local manufacturer,
an EL34-based amp I consider to be a good
value at $1300. My speakers are heavilymodified Mission 770’s.
The places I feel my system is lacking are
bass extension (it bothers me but I live in a
basement apartment, so I can’t go nuts),
imaging ( I believe my room is at fault, as
I’ve heard these speakers throw up a nice
image in a different room and system),
and, most troubling, the fact that while
most music sounds satisfying, massed violins
sound shrill and “dry,” especially from the
turntable.
I suspect the main culprits to be the
cartridge and preamplifier, so I’ve purchased
a Benz Micro MC Gold, but haven’t yet
installed it. (I am thinking of reselling it to
buy something with a line contact stylus.)
1) Do you think the Benz Micro is a step
in the right direction? 2) Where should my
next thousand bucks go?
These problems are quite troubling for
me, and have usurped my signifi cant other
as my primary focus in life. Please help me
with my troubles and let me go back to being
the happy-go-lucky gent milady was so taken
with all those years ago!!
Perry Howell
THORNHILL, ON
sive. That means the cartridge is canted
forward too much. It should be canted
forward slightly, because most LPs are
cut at an angle of 20 to 22 degrees, not
the 15 degrees they’re supposed to be cut
at. Too small an angle makes the bass
loose and tubby, and the treble murky.
An error in either direction mucks up
the focus, too.
We recommend setting this up by
ear, using a pure stereo audiophile LP,
such as those of Opus 3 or Proprius. Go
for best focus on one of these, and you’ll
have a good average setting for all LPs.
Your other problems will be solved at the
same time.
Our compliments to milady. May
your castle be filled with good music.
intended to tide us over the sometimes
painful age of CD by maximizing the
medium, and in the former case sneaking extra information past the medium’s
limited resolution. We like them both,
and we are especially fond of HDCD.
However that technology now belongs
to Microsoft, not traditionally known as
a high end audio champion. The future
is spelled S-A-C-D.
Free Advice
Here is one that I am sure you’ve been
asked before: the lifespan of a laser. We know
that a cartridge’s stylus can last for a very
long time if it is properly aligned and kept
free of debris. The trouble with cartridges
is that the metal ( forgot the term) where
the stylus is mounted can become weak with
time. I need to know the approximate lifespan of a laser on a good quality machine like a
Karrik. In the past we kept hearing numbers
like typically 1000 hours, but shouldn’t the
same principle from cartridges apply to lasers
as well?
Nick Lakoumentas
MONTRÉAL, QC
From your experience with CDs, is
there a particular label (FIM, Audioquest,
Chesky, etc.) or CD format ( X RCD,
XRCD2, HDCD, SACD, Hybrid SACD,
DVD-A) that excels from the Red Book CD
or LP records?
Do CDs recorded in digital (DDD)
sound better than those recorded in analog
(ADD or AAD), or are these a matter of
quality in the mastering process? If a disc has
been transferred to SACD from an analog
recording, how is this superior to an LP?
Jerome Chionglo
MARKHAM, ON
SACD is defi nitely more than a marketing tool, Jerome. Or at least it is when
the original recording was made with
something more than 16 bits and 44,100
samples per second. We mention this
because some mainstream labels have
re-released Red Book CDs as SACDs
by the simple expedient of upsampling…
making up new data and charging you
extra for it. And we thought Enron and
Worldcom were isolated instances!
Though DVD-A is also way superior
8
to Red Book CD, we believe that SACD
has won the war. Pretty much all recent
SACDs are hybrid, with a Red Book layer
readable by conventional CD players.
The presence of that layer doesn’t seem
to harm anything. Any SACD player will
let you hear the increased dynamics and
“liveliness” of well-recorded discs, but
getting full musical satisfaction means
picking your player carefully…and, alas,
paying way more than the minimum
cost.
It is a (fairly) well kept secret that
a lot of music producers long ago
returned to analog recording for their
masters, believing that analog, at the
very least, wouldn’t leave them with a
pounding headache after a long day’s
work. An SACD made from an analog
original can sound better than the LP
because it won’t have the well-known
(and acknowledged) defects inherent
in cutting and playing back an analog
record.
Which leaves the question of what
we call “transitional technologies,”
such as HDCD and XRCD. Both were
Yes, we’ve been asked that before,
Nick, but it was a long time ago, and the
answer has changed.
In the early days of digital, the estimate was that a laser pickup might have
a life of 2000 hours, which meant an
expensive repair after playing less than a
couple of thousand discs. In slightly later
mass market machines it could mean a
new player, since pickup were often glued
in place permanently. We don’t know
whether that was a good estimate, since
in many a player the mechanism will
fail before the laser does. We’ve seen
estimates of as much as 20,000 hours,
which we presume is a guess (though
it sounds more convincing than saying
“really, really, really long”).
In practice, the lifespan may depend
in part on how “hot” the laser is run.
The laser in a car player may run quite
hot, since it must perform under difficult
conditions, whereas a high end player
may have its pickup set up for longer
life.
Phono pickups also used to be rated
at an estimated lifespan of 2000 hours,
meaning that it would take that much
play to cause perceptible wear of the
diamond stylus. Modern stylii have a
much longer life. The resilient mount of
the cantilever, which may be rubber or
some synthetic material, can harden with
age, however. Metal fatigue (the word
you were searching for) can cause the
cantilever to break, too, but in practice
most stylii are wiped out by accidents
long before they can wear out.
Theoretically at least, he could
be held legally responsible for having
bypassed an “anti-piracy” measure. We
use quotation marks, because, though
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Free Advice
As you know computers can record music
on “data” CDs, though in my experience
even recent high-quality burners don’t give
good results, and their copies are very easy to
distinguish from the originals. That’s why
an audiophile friend and I have acquired
audio recorders. Mine is a simple one-drawer
Pioneer that works only with special “music”
CDs, but my friend has an Alexis Masterlink with hard disc, which can also use data
CDs. We’ve been looking for CD blanks that
can give superior sound, and the results were
a surprise.
First, the quality differences among
brands is huge. Any computer experts
who can explain this are welcome! But the
greatest surprise is that data CDs in general
give better results than music CDs on either
recorder (the single exception is the Pioneer
high end music CD). Can you explain why?
We’ll accept paying more for music CDs
because sonic quality is important for us, but
what we get is inferior quality. If the music
industry is faced with piracy, I’m starting
to think it’s not entirely undeserved.
I was also surprised to discover that, on
my Pioneer, the only way I can make a truly
identical copy is to copy it…in the analog
domain!!! I attribute this anomaly to the
fact that the digital coaxial link between my
Audio Research transport and my Pioneer
recorder must introduce some audible jitter.
The quality of my tube DAC may also be
a factor, and it seems to indicate that the
Pioneer’s analog-to-digital converter must
be of good quality.
Could you give me some advice on the way
to improve domestic production of Compact
Discs? My Pioneer was purchased used, and
the dealer refuses to deactivate the protection
against data CDs.
Jean-Pierre Létourneau
QUEBEC CITY, QC
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the law on this matter is clear in such
countries as the United States, it isn’t in
Canada. The Canadian government has
signed the international treaty on intellectual property, but it has not ratified
it, much less changed its copyright laws
accordingly.
Unfortunately we don’t have a definitive conclusion to offer. Our experiences
with our own computers (three Macs: a
G4, a G5 and an iBook) yielded excellent results, with copies we could not
distinguish from the originals even on
our reference systems. However some
of our readers have reported much less
happy results with Windows PCs, as
did another reader with a Macintosh
G4 substantially identical to one of our
machines.
Jitter is certainly a factor, as is probably your digital cable, but there is more.
The characteristics of different CD-R
brands can affect jitter. Specifically, with
certain discs the data “pits” burned into
the substrate won’t be precise, which
means the player will have difficulty
9
lies somewhere within (my system, not my
head).
I have continuously read in your magazine that this ideal is definitely possible, but
so far the experience has eluded me. I listen to
the electronic signals, and they sound reasonably detailed, semi-rhythmic, and somewhat
dynamic, but, unfortunately, not believable.
I’m at a loss!
Please tell me the most logical way to
determine what the problem is. I thought
that, with this caliber of equipment, I would
be able to recreate a reasonably good facsimile
of real instruments and voice. I close my eyes,
listen, wish really hard, but all I get is major
disappointment and more spam. Do you sell
anti-depressants and/or ghetto blasters at the
Audiophile Store? Both are becoming more
and more attractive alternatives.
Clay Palfenier
BURNABY, BC
determining the exact start of the pit.
Some players, indeed, may do better than
others. Some players can’t read CD-Rs
at all, and it is easy to suppose that some
others will do so less than perfectly.
Free Advice
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10
We ourselves had had excellent results
with both TDK and Maxell discs. The
worst are CD-RWs.
If it’s any consolation, commercial
pressing of CDs is not problem-free
either. Ask any music producer whether
the CD he gets back from the plant
sounds exactly like the original master
tape. He’ll laugh. Or perhaps not.
I have loved music since I can remember.
I have subscribed to UHF almost since its
inception, and I am trying to put together a
music system.
My modest budget and gear currently
consists of: SOTA Sapphire turntable, Syrinx
PU3 tone arm (with upgraded wiring),
Clearaudio Virtuoso Wood MM cartridge,
Rega EOS phono stage, Vecteur Club 10
amp, Totem Tabu speakers, Wireworld
Atlantis speaker cable and Eclipse 3 interconnects, Inouye powerline conditioner, and a
Gutwire cord for the phono stage.
I listen to a lot of live music at work,
and I have spent quite a bit of time trying
to put together a system which will let me
enjoy this kind of faithful reproduction at
home. I purchased the amp, speakers, and
phono stage used without hearing them,
trusting to favorable reviews by you. Don’t
get me wrong, I have all the faith in the
world in your opinions; after all, believable
music reproduction is what you’ve always
been about. I believe the fault obviously
Oh, we think we can suggest considerably better than either boomboxes or
Prozac, Clay, which doesn’t necessarily
mean we can give you a quick answer
on something obvious you may have
overlooked.
Our first observation is that at least
you’re working from the right point of
comparison: live music. That’s better
than any “reference system,” but the
down side is that you’re difficult to
please, and you won’t easily settle for a
poor imitation. We suggest first looking
at the source, not because your source is
poor, but because you have only a single
one. If you also had a quality CD player
or a good tuner, we would ask whether
alternative sources also fail to please.
What we would do first, then, is
double-check every possible turntablerelated setting: suspension tuning (a
little time-consuming on the SOTA),
lubrication, belt condition, leveling,
lateral cartridge alignment, correct arm
height (this is often way wrong) and antiskating setting. We ourselves go down
this check list once a year…more often
if we hear anything we don’t like. Some
of this sounds like spring cleaning, and
in fact some years ago we published an
article on spring cleaning for music systems. It included cleaning and tightening
all of the connections, and straightening
out the rat’s nest that the back of a system
can quickly become.
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might require it. For one thing, nearfield
listening is not quite natural, more like
listening through headphones. It will,
however, allow you to hear what your
system sounds like when the room is not
serving as the principal intermediary. If
a serious system-based problem remains,
you’ll actually hear it more clearly than
ever, and you can then go about solving
it. If you find yourself wishing the system
sounded like that all the time, you will
then have a point of comparison as you
search for a definitive placement, or
you make other changes to the room
acoustics.
My present system consists of the Marantz
CD17KIS, Krell KAV400xi amplifier and
the Thiel CS1.5 speakers. I think the weakest link is the CD player, which I intend to
replace sometime soon. I find that the soundstage images it projects are not palpable and
precise enough. I am looking in the direction
of the new Meridian G08 or G07.
I have also read that a good CD player
with a rich tonality gives more palpable
imaging. Any advice or suggestions would
be appreciated.
John Tiong
SIBU, SARAWAK, Malaysia
You’re absolutely right that you can
get better imaging with a superior CD
player, John, and you can get a lot more
besides. If you choose right, you’ll also
get smoother highs, more solid lows,
better transparency (in the sense that
you can hear soft sounds even when
louder ones are playing), and a better
rendition of both rhythm and melody.
Those last two surprise many people,
who assume that rhythm and melody
are so basic that any player can get them
right. We wish that were true.
There are a number of relatively
affordable players today which can
deliver what you’re looking for. One of
the Meridians may be the right choice.
The G07 and G08, neither of which
we have heard, appear to be substantially identical except that the G08
has the ability to “upsample” CDs to
24 bit/96 kHz resolution. We wouldn’t
pay a lot extra for that feature.
11
Free Advice
We would then attack the other end.
No, not the speakers but the acoustics.
Most rooms are nowhere near optimized
for music, of course, and that’s a major
barrier to the enjoyment of what should
sound like live music. What we usually
suggest is to start with different speaker
placements, remembering that even
small changes can make surprisingly
large sonic differences.
To this we will add a tip we may never
have given before. You can minimize the
influence of the room boundaries on the
sound of your system by sitting close to
the speakers. Of course that will mean
doing more than merely sliding your
chair forward. You’ll need to place the
speakers closer together, toed-in slightly,
as far as possible from any room boundaries, and sit close. Sound engineers
call this “nearfield” listening, and even
studio control rooms with supposedly
optimized acoustics mostly have a pair
of small speakers placed right on the
mixing console for exactly that reason.
We don’t mean to suggest that this
is how you should run your system from
now on, though really toxic acoustics
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Free Advice
I am new to hi-fi , and some help in
choosing an integrated amp will be helpful.
I’m planning on purchasing a pair of Totem
Forest speakers, but I don’t know what amp
will go well with them. I can only spend about
$4500, and I’m willing to buy a used amp.
Paul Brookbanks
BOWMANVILLE, ON
Paul, the Forests are not as efficient as
many speakers of recent vintage, because
Totem doesn’t follow marketing trends
much, but nor are they difficult to drive.
A well-designed amplifier with at least
50 watts per channel can handle them
just fine. On the other hand the Totems
are revealing, and you’ll want an amp
that doesn’t make you cringe on difficult
passages.
We’ve reviewed a number of quality
integrated amplifiers in your price range
in the last while. You might want to listen
to the Vecteur I-6.2, the Simaudio Moon
I-3, the Roksan Caspian and the YBA
Intégré DT, to mention only a few. You
may want to check out tube amps too.
I am ready to start upgrading my system,
and I will be starting at the source (that
12
but it’s there in the main because that’s
the size chip the big manufacturers are
making now. And if you had one in a
player you built, you wouldn’t be shy
about saying so, would you? Nor would
we.
Now to specific advice, or at least as
specific as we can get under the circumstances. We haven’t seen or heard the
Shanling you mention, though we have
heard more expensive Shanlings. Nor
have we heard the Azur player, which
comes from Cambridge’s new series,
though we’ve had a look inside one. It
looks promising, and we hope to get our
hands on one soon. Perhaps you can ask
a dealer to let you hear one alongside the
D500. Pick some recordings you know
and love, take notes, and be sure to listen
to the music and not just the sound.
They may be upsampling to 24 bits
and 96 kHz, Tim, and a number of
new players offer such upsampling as a
feature. It is just that — a feature, not a
promise of better quality.
The presence of a 24-bit chip makes
such upsampling possible, of course,
With my Bryston 3BSST/BP-25P and
B&W Nautilus 803 system, I am using:
an Oracle Delphi MkIV with MkV Record
Clamp and MkV Turbo Power Supply with
Cardas Golden Reference cord; Alphason
Xenon MCS arm with Ortofon 540.
I want to upgrade arm/cartridge to
something more wholesome, but accurate,
nothing strident. I was considering a new
Rega RB700 (maybe an RB1000, but that’s
overkill) with a Clearaudio Virtuoso Wood
MM cartridge. What do you think?
David Chirko
SUDBURY, ON
We would hesitate to change the arm,
David, unless we were going for…well,
perhaps overkill is the right word. The
Alphason Xenon was a somewhat simplified version of the celebrated HR-100S
we still use in one of our reference
systems.
On the other hand, replacing the
Ortofon is certainly a good plan. Is the
Clearaudio the right choice? Though we
admire what Clearaudio does in its top
products, including its MC pickups, its
moving magnet pickups have very high
inductance if we go by the spec sheet.
We would look elsewhere: Shure, Benz
Micro, Grado, etc.
I have put together a pretty good sounding
system using material from your magazine
as reference. I was wondering if you would
13
Free Advice
much I know). I would like to spend no more
than C$1000 on a CD player. I know you
recommend the Cambridge D500 player as
the best low-cost unit, followed by Rotels and
Regas higher up the price scale.
My short list includes the Cambridge
D500SE and the Azur 640C, the Rotel
RCD-02 and the new RCD-1072. I am also
interested in the Shanling CD-S100 MkII.
The Rega Planet 2000 is a possibility, but I
believe it is out of my price range.
I like the fact that both the Rotels have
HDCD decoding, but since most of my
discs are not HDCD-encoded, would an
upsampling player be more benefi cial? Some
of the above players tote a 24 bit Delta-Sigma
DAC. Does this mean that they upsample to
96/192 kHz?
Tim Leeney
GEORGETOWN, ON
Your
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Free Advice
Beyerdynamic, Creek, Cyrus, DNM, Eichmann
Epos, Isoblue, Ringmat, Soundcare, Visonik
www.europroducts-canada.com
be doing another affordable phono stage (in
the <$200-$1000CDN range).
I currently have a Rega Fono, which
sounded great in my system. I’ve had it for
three years now and noticed a few months
ago that the left channel was dropping off
in volume intermittently. One day I was
listening to some music and the whole thing
went dead. I checked and noticed the power
light on my YBA Intégré DT amplifier was
off. I had blown a fuse. I replaced the fuse,
and when I turned it back on I initially got
a bit of a loud hum, but after about two
14
seconds everything seemed fine. I played a
couple of CDs and then decided to play LPs.
As soon as I switched the selector to phono,
the fuse went again. I replaced the fuse and
then turned on the amp (phono stage was
on), and got a loud hum and the fuse went
again. I unplugged the phono stage and the
fuse on the amp went again.
Darn, I’ve inflicted permanent damage
on the amp. I’ve sent in the amp for
repairs.
I have a choice now, to fi x the Rega Fono
or replace it. My confi dence in the long-term
reliability of the Fono has been shattered. I
noticed Antique Sound Labs has come out
with a new phono stage called the Mini
Phono. As the Rega is going to cost me some
money to fi x, as it is past warranty, I was
wondering if maybe I should consider a tube
phono preamp.
Ken So,
DELTA, BC
Ken, if your Rega Fono is the same as
the current version, we would get it fixed.
We haven’t heard the Antique Sound
Lab phono stage, but we are not aware
of any phono preamp anywhere near the
price of the Fono that can match it for
sheer musicality. Of course, you mention
a budget that goes up to $1000, well
beyond the price of the Fono, so there
may be some possibilities there.
We presume that, when your Fono
went, it fed a large amount of direct current to your amplifier. That can happen,
and it’s the reason product warranties
include that obscure clause disclaiming responsibility for “consequential
damage.” (Translation: if we lay waste to
your system, your house or your car to
the tune of $100,000, deal with it.) Over
the years, we’ve had one preamp and one
power amplifier fail. In both cases they
took out speakers. Ouch!
In reading over back issues of UHF, I
have found nothing that addresses what size
of subwoofer I should consider for my system.
For example, companies offer 10, 12 and 15
inch subwoofers that appear to be the same
except for size. My room is 22’ long and 11’
wide with a 7’ high ceiling. Which size do I
need to consider?
Estes Moustacalis
OAKVILLE, ON
There’s no simple answer to that,
Estes. Subwoofer designers can make
tradeoffs among: 1) size, 2) dynamic
capacity, and 3) low-end extension. Efficiency used to be an important factor,
but since nearly all modern subwoofers
are self-powered, nobody worries much
about it.
Read more in our print issue, or online
at www.uhfmag.com/FreeAdvice.html.
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Ovation Audio, Aurora, ON (905) 727-2004
Filtronique, Montréal (514) 389-1377
Response
D25
Free Advice
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16
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17
Free Advice
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Free Advice
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18
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Future
Screens
H
The CRT: still alive?
It’s a vacuum tube, of course, one of
the very last ones to survive in massmarket consumer products. It still works
very well because it is a mature technology. The CRT has been refi ned to the
point where it has been able to fend off
a number of competitors. And first in its
list of advantages is price.
Price is important, because TV sets
have become a commodity. What we
mean is that the choice is dictated far
more by price and (to a lesser extent)
features than by great technological
advantages. However, the CRT has more
than mere low cost to offer.
The most important of these
is the range of brightness it can
offer. If it were an audio component, we would call it dynamic
range. A CRT can be very bright,
but it must get very bright before
it overloads and treats all brightness
values the same. Of course the
tube itself is not the only factor
determining the range of
tones, but at its best it can
make more expens i v e d i s pl a y s
look washed
out.
A long
with the wide brightness range comes a
vast range of colors, and it’s easy to see
why. If a display doesn’t wash out in the
bright scenes and doesn’t get murky in
dark scenes, it can present a wider gamut
of colors. That means a CRT-equipped
TV set has less need to “translate” a
color it can’t reproduce into one within
its range. We don’t want to overstate
this point, because no display can come
close to matching the range of colors
visible to the human eye…or even to
photographic film.
If the CRT is so good, why would we
want to replace it?
Unfortunately the CRT also has
a long list of drawbacks. The tube is
large, and especially deep, it is fragile,
it is heavy, and — like other vacuum
tubes — it eats up energy. It is ill-suited
to TV sets bigger than 36 inches (measured diagonally, about 91 cm). It is also
Can you buy the
perfect video screen?
Perhaps not yet…
The illustration shows an early CRT,
with a neck much longer than the width
of the screen. Those early CRTs were
round, to avoid light falloff in the corners, and even many modern CRTs have
rather rounded corners. As manufacturers began making larger screens (a 21”
tube used to be the “big screen” norm),
they were reluctant to increase the tube
depth in proportion. The short-neck
tube was born, and as tubes got even
wider, the necks got proportionately
shorter yet. The modern CRT is likely
to be something like this.
Cinema
as the cathode ray
tube fi nally earned
the right to a comfy
retirement? In the
world of computers the answer
is pretty much yes. Except for
economy machines, or high
end machines for graphics
artists, new computers mostly
come with liquid crystal displays. As the
price of LCDs
drops, its
victory is
l i k e l y to be complete.
But video is another matter. Though
most computer users favor brightness and (apparent) sharpness over all
else, owners of home theatre systems
are looking for much more. And new
technologies — some already here and
others on the horizon — will make the
home theatre experience much more like
watching a “real” movie.
The cathode ray tube is a difficult act
to follow, though.
ill-suited to the widescreen sets that are
now the norm in home theatre. Let’s see
why.
A CRT is a big glass bottle, with an
emitter of electrons in the “neck” at the
rear. The face is coated with colored
phosphor dots which glow when an electron beam strikes them. A complex set
of magnetic control devices sweeps the
electron beam across the face, making
the appropriate dots glow to make up
the image.
Notice that the electron beam going
to the extreme edge of the screen is
traveling a lot farther than the one
19
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TO A NEW
LARGER LOCATION!
But, for
Creek
Cyrus
Eichmann
Epos
Visonik
in Winnipeg,
it still has to be
Cinema
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956 PORTAGE AVENUE
WINNIPEG, MB, R3G 0R1
TEL: 204-256-0462
www.boyzonawire.com
going dead centre. Worse, it strikes the
screen surface at a angle, projecting an
oval onto the screen surface rather than
a circle. That means poor focus at the
edges, worse in the corners. That’s why
most TV screens have rounded surfaces.
Expensive flat screens use electronic
compensation to minimize problems.
Even so, the CRT has a practical size
limit. Its size was once adequate even
for large rooms, because scanning lines
looked crude on a bigger screen. As line
doublers and sophisticated video processors became common, screens grew.
Not that the CRT has vanished from
home theatre. Most rear projection sets
still use a CRT…three of them in fact,
one for each of the colors used for the
image. Those tubes are turned up very
bright, and projected onto the screen.
They work well, though an RPTV needs
careful alignment to make the three
images converge exactly on the screen.
Even so, they may not stay converged.
Plasma…the imperfect miracle
Huge flat screens that could be hung
on the wall were a staple of science fiction
20
years before they appeared. You may
recall the wall TV sets in Fahrenheit 451,
based on the Ray Bradbury novel. The
plasma screen appeared to be the realization of that long-predicted technology.
Indeed, its futurist look drew a lot of
early adopters, at least ones with deep
pockets. Prices have dropped dramatically, but they are still not cheap. Nor
are they perfect.
The plasma display is inherently
flat, because there is no scanning, as
there is with CRTs. Each tiny module
of the unit contains an inert gas trapped
between two glass plates. At the rear is
an electromagnetic exciter, which heats
the gas so it emits ultraviolet energy.
A phosphor coating on the front plate
glows in the appropriate color. A plasma
screen throws off a lot of light, and it is
an eye magnet in high end stores.
The drawbacks? There’s more than
just the price. The gas takes a short but
fi nite time to heat enough to glow, and
some screens have difficulty following
movement, which is why demos are
mostly done with landscapes. Contrast
ratios are poor, making for punchy
images but little nuance. The screen
may be thin, but it is heavy, fragile and
energy-hungry, and hot…
And, oh yes, it has a fi nite life. So
do CRTs, but they don’t cost as much.
Tossing out a burned out plasma screen
can make you cry, and you may replace
it long before it goes dark, because it is
prone to burn-in: the pixels most used
will darken first. Ouch!
Liquid crystals
The fi rst LCDs showed up over a
quarter century ago in pocket calculators. An LCD is a diode with an intriguing property: apply a voltage to it, and it
will darken. That’s how LCD elements
can form the digits on your calculator or
your watch.
On a video or computer screen
they are used differently. Tiny LCDs
are placed behind a colored filter, and
depending on its voltage state it will be
transparent, letting light through, or
opaque. A large fluorescent bulb and
diffuser behind the LCD lattice light
up the resulting image.
LCD screens are turning up on a lot
of computers, as already noted, but also
on TV sets. They are costly, but they are
light and they use little energy, which
is perfect for laptop computers. They
require no convergence adjustments
There is no burn-in effect, and changing
a bulb is potentially cheap, though some
displays have bulbs that are astoundingly
expensive. Check before buying.
You should know that LCDs have
their own problems. You can pay $700
for a display not much larger than a
magazine cover. Like plasmas they
can be slow to react. They can suffer
from “stuck” pixels, jammed either on
or off, and that may not be covered by
the warranty unless there are lots of
them. Colors shift as you move off axis.
LCD images can look crude at close or
medium quarters, because the individual
crystals are clearly visible.
And the LCD panel has one other
drawback seldom mentioned: the range
of colors is narrow. The color gamut
chart is misleading, even so, because the
fluorescent bulb used as backlighting
does not emit a continuous spectrum.
Use a prism to see the fluorescent spectrum, and you’ll see a series of discrete
lines rather than a full rainbow. Add to
that the fact that LCDs have trouble
with deep blacks.
Note that some manufacturers,
notably Sony, now make rear projection
TVs using LCDs rather than CRTs.
Our judgement stands.
Digital Light Processing
The DLP is an invention of Texas
Instruments, a one-time electronics
powerhouse that hadn’t done anything
this original in years.
The heart of the DLP is a tiny mirror
controlled electronically so it either
reflects light toward the lens, or else into
a “light sink,” a black absorbent surface.
Early DLP projectors had blacks that
were closer to grey, but the rest of the
spectrum was superb, with bright,natural
colors, no burn-in, and a long lifespan.
Replacement bulbs are inexpensive and
are user-installable. Perfection?
As with plasma, the cost was something of an obstacle, running into the
tens of thousands of dollars. The tiny
DLP modules would surely come down
in cost, but in the meantime there was
a trick that could drop the cost by two-
thirds: use one module for all three
colors. This is done by placing a colored
wheel in front of the light source, with
movements perfectly synchronized with
the electronic circuits. As the wheel
rotates, it projects a red image, then a
green image, then a blue image. Thanks
to the eye’s persistence of vision — the
same phenomenon that lets us see a 24
frame per second film as a continuous
moving picture — the three colored
images blend into a single color image.
But not for everyone. Some people
have poor persistence of vision (it is they
who gave movies their British nickname,
“fl icks”), and indeed we all have poor
persistence of vision near the outer edges
of the retina. Fortunately, the DLP has
been improving. The colored wheel now
turns much faster than it once did, as fast
as 9000 rpm. And the color chips are
repeated twice, thus doubling the rate of
change. The eliminates the color fl icker
for nearly everyone, though you should
check for yourself before buying.
Early DLPs were found in front
projectors, the first to be compact and
lightweight, except for the crude LCD
projectors. The DLP has now found its
way into rear projection sets. They are
already excellent, and there is reason to
hope this still-young technology will
continue to evolve.
Organic Light Emitting Diodes
It’s no secret that Kodak is finding the
21st Century rough, as more consumers
and even pros shelve fi lm cameras in
favor of digital. Kodak didn’t see that
coming and came late to the party,
but the company showed lack of vision
another way.
It was in 1979 that Kodak engineers
discovered a tiny but interesting semiconductor that emitted an extraordinarily bright light when an electrical
voltage was applied to it. Unlike the
familiar LED used as a power indicator
on nearly all electronic equipment, the
OLED is not a crystal, and therefore it
can be made both small and inexpensive.
It wasn’t until eight years later that
Kodak fi nally patented the device, and
a dozen years after that it realized this
might have an application.
The OLED has a long list of advantages. It is simple to implement, because
the driver circuit is built right into each
diode. Despite the brightness, the screen
draws little current, making it a natural
for digital cameras (Kodak already
offers one), mobile phones and laptop or
handheld computers. The diode reacts
extremely quickly, making it suitable for
following action. Viewing angle is wide.
The color range is excellent.
Could it work for a video display?
Though it is now used to make very
tiny screens, Kodak has given us a
demonstration of a film on a prototype
15-inch screen. The quality was extraordinary. It will be a couple of years before
screens like the one we saw appear on the
market, and longer yet before TV-sized
panels are made commercially. Both
Sanyo and Sony are working on these
products, however.
Between now and then, Kodak will
need to get caught up on its research.
Like the LCD, the OLED does not have
the blackest of blacks. Worse, the screen
life may be adequate for a camera, but
possibly not for a video screen. We’ve
seen widely contradictory reports on
this, we should add.
The OLED is exciting enough to
have triggered some blue-sky speculation. Because these organic diodes can
be laid down onto any sort of substrate,
including metal foil or textile, it may be
possible to have a big-screen TV that
rolls up, like a projection screen. Or a
tee shirt with a video display right on
the sleeve.
Let’s hope the possibilities compensate the company for declining sales of
Kodacolor!
21
Nuts&Bolts
D-ILA
This largely unfamiliar acronym
stands for Digital Direct Drive Image
Light Amplifier. This is JVC’s variant on
LCOS, which stands for Liquid Crystal
on Silicon.
You may already have seen such a
display, because D-ILA is used in giant
high-res screens at such venues as sports
stadiums. That gives you a clue as to its
major drawback: only Major League
Baseball can afford one.
The “silicon” referred to is the material used for the substrates of transistors
and diodes. Each LCOS module — the
size of a single pixel — has its own driver
circuitry behind it, where it is out of the
way. It is then possible to bounce the
light off the crystal instead of through
it. LCOS pixels have extremely high
reflectivity, and the brightness of the
screen is then dependent on the size
of the bulb. Powerful xenon bulbs can
throw a lot of light even into a stadium,
a large convention centre, or a Vegas
casino sign.
Brightness is not the whole advantage, we should add. We’ve mentioned
that conventional LCD screens have
pixels that are all too visible. An LCOS
screen has a much finer grid, and looks to
the human eye like a continuous seamless filmlike image. The D-ILA response
curve is not truly linear, but its natural
shape makes it possible to get blacks that
are very dark.
You cannot for the moment buy an
LCOS for your home theatre system,
JVC will shortly release home-sized
D-ILA screens We rather expect that
they will be expensive enough that Bill
Gates and Warren Buffett will be the
major customers, but there is reason to
think prices will drop quickly.
How SACD Won the War
Nuts&Bolts
D
on’t you love technology bat- “V” stood initially for “video.” Still, a members of the consortium tested diftles? Should you buy a Palm storage medium was a storage medium. ferent film sound systems on human
handheld or a PocketPC? The new disc would have nearly seven subjects, they became convinced that
Should you pick a PC or a times the storage space of a conventional one of the eventual winners, Dolby DigiMac? Should you go for Beta or VHS? CD, more than enough for a superior tal (then called AC-3) was to all intents
In the latter case, of course, even digital music system. Doubling the sam- and purposes perfect. Then why not
technophobes know the answer. We pling rate to 96 kHz* would of course use a similar system for DVD-Audio?
also know the outcome of the cassette take twice the data space, and bumping Even though the DVD had huge storvs 8-track rivalry, not that it matters the 16 bits up to 24 bits would increase age capacity, it wasn’t quite enough. If
so much anymore. And we know that size by another 50%. That would be we wanted to add surround sound, with
consumers who guessed wrong got little easy to handle, and in fact we could 5.1 channels, we would need to increase
space by another 275%, taking us to nine
sympathy from the merchandisers of
times
the CD’s storage space. Too much.
failed standards.
Compression
was inevitable.
Of course, there have always been
For
some
time it looked as though
alternatives to the clear knockout of
the
new
medium
would be crippled
the Beta/VHS battle. Half a cenby
the
same
compromises
that
tury ago, when RCA launched its
affected
DVD-Video,
and
there
45 rpm discs against Columbia’s
were letter-writing campaigns
microgroove LP, both standards
by audiophiles, arguing for a
won, and they stayed around
lossless
system. Finally, one
for decades. On the other hand,
was
proposed,
Meridian’s MLP
when Philips’ DCC digital cas(Meridian
Lossless
Pack ing)
sette went up against Sony’s
compressed
the
signal
by
as much
MiniDisc, there were two ways you
as
half
but
could
reconstitute
the
could lose.
original
signal
bit
for
bit.
With
its
adopSo what about DVD-Audio versus
tion in late 1998, DVD-A seemed to be
SACD?
on its way. There were more than 160
Despite claims by numerous audio
member companies,
mavens, including a
many of them eagerly
majority of specialty
wait ing to release
magazines, we have
DVD-A
discs…or so
long known that the
even
double
the
sampling
rate
again
to
we
were
told.
CD Red Book standard of 16 bits and
In the meantime, there was action
a 44.1 kHz sampling rate wasn’t even 192 kHz. Perfect sound would fi nally
arrive.
elsewhere.
giving us what the LP had offered,
But of course movies was where the
never mind the “perfect sound” that
money
was, and it was on movies that The “other” superdisc
digital promised. Over the years crack
The original CD standard had been
the
DVD
Consortium (later renamed
designers have found ways to optimize
developed
by Sony and Philips, which
the
DVD
Forum)
concentrated.
There
the imperfect standard: better fi lters,
had
made
a good deal of money over
was
plenty
to
concentrate
on,
because
the
mapping systems that minimized (or at
DVD
was
an
amalgam
of
two
incompatleast optimized) mathematical rounding
errors in the digital bitstream, and even ible technologies, and the consortium
he
96
t whaist tmore than double
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done
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and
The emergence of the DVD gave
ussubscript ion in
88.2 kHz, which would downsample nicely
t he
hope. The new medium was conceived
for CD. That rate was adopted as a DVD-A
option, though it is seldom used.
primarily for movies, to be sure — the
mats
r
o
f
new
e
h
t
t
bou
a
h
t
u
T he t r
Or, to put it another
way, how DVD-Audio
blew it big time.
22
of SACD players came down, slowly at
first, and then much faster. What’s more,
second generation players had surround
sound, just as DVD-A did.
The rivalry
dunt ipit, quisi.
si.
wisi.
doloreriure tat.
autat.
DVD-Audio stumbles
dunt ipit, quisi.
si.
wisi.
23
Nuts&Bolts
the years by receiving a small royalty
on every CD made. If a new proprietary
standard could replace the CD, the revenue stream would continue. It seemed
unimaginable that just two companies
could be successful against a consortium
of well over a hundred competitors, but
these were no ordinary companies.
And it so happened that one of them,
Sony, had a high-resolution standard
waiting in the wings. For some time,
Sony Music had been recording its
masters with a system known as Direct
Stream Digital. UHF discussed the
system extensively in issue No. 55. DSD,
unlike the DVD-A and CD standards,
does not use the familiar pulse code
modulation, and does not store actual
signal values. Rather it uses what is
known as Delta Sigma modulation to
track changes in the signal.
It works this way. The initial signal
value is stored in a temporary memory
register (but not in the recording) for
reference. If the next sample is higher
than the stored value, DSD records a
one, and if it is lower it records a zero.
During silence the signal doesn’t change,
and so DSD records alternating ones
and zeroes. Sony says that the density
of bits is analog-like, and indeed that if
you run the bitstream through a simple
filter, you will actually hear the signal.
DSD is inherently rather noisy, and
noise-shaping is used to shift the noise
into upper frequencies where it cannot
be heard.
A DSD channel takes up exactly four
times the space of a CD channel. A 5.1
channel version would be too big for a
DVD, but then Sony and Philips are not
using the DVD as a storage medium.
Interestingly enough, the DV D
Forum included DSD as one of the
standards of DVD-A, but that did not
prevent Sony and Philips from launching
its own disc, known as the Super Audio
Compact Disc. It looks just like a DVD,
and like a CD too for that matter. SACD
was actually launched before DVDAudio, in late 2000. The very expensive
(C$8000) Sony SCD-1 player sounded
excellent, but the DVD-A crowd was
optimistic: unlike DVD-Audio, the
SCD-1 was strictly a t wo-channel
player.
That was a temporary victory. Prices
Feature
doloreriure tat.
autat.
at aliquatuero.
Getting the standard wrong
It was only thanks to Meridian that
dunt ipit, quisi.
si.
wisi.
nosto coreet lor sustrud duissismod tate24
tummy nulla facin etum verosto odignis
doloreriure tat.
autat.
at aliquatuero.
What now for SACD?
dunt ipit, quisi.
si.
wisi.
doloreriure tat.
autat.
at aliquatuero.
doloreriure tat.
Back Issues
THE ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION:
Issues No.7-19 (except 11, 15, 17 and 18, out of
print): nine issues available for the price of five
(see below). A piece of audio history. Available
separately at the regular price.
No.69: Tube Electronics: Audiomat Opéra ,
Connoisseur SE-2 and Copland CSA29 integrated amps, and Shanling SP-80 monoblocks.
Also: Audiomat's Phono-1.5, Creek CD50, as
well as a great new remote control, GutWire's
NotePad antivibration device, and a musicrelated computer game that had us laughing
out loud. And there’s more: Paul Bergman on
the return of the vacuum tube, the Vegas 2004
report, and the story of how music critics did
their best to kill the world’s greatest music.
No.68: Loudspeakers: Thiel CS2.4, Focus
Audio FS688, Iliad B1. Electronics:Vecteur
I-6.2 and Audiomat Arpège integrated amplifiers, Copland 306 multichannel tube preamp,
Rega Fono MC. Also: Audio Note and Copland
CD players, GutWire MaxCon power filter. And
there’s more: all about power supplies, what’s
coming beyond DVD, and a chat with YBA’s
Yves-Bernard André.
No.67: Loudspeakers: A new, improved
Reference 3a MM de Capo, and the awesome
Living Voice Avatar OBX-R. Centre speakers
for surround from Castle, JMLab, ProAc, Thiel,
Totem and Vandersteen. One of them joins
our Kappa system. Two multichannel amps
from Copland and Vecteur. Plus: plans for a
DIY platform for placing a centre speaker atop
any TV set, Paul Bergman on the elements of
acoustics, and women in country music.
No.66: Reviews: the Jadis DA-30 amplifier, the
Copland 305 tube preamp and 520 solid state
amp. Plus: the amazing Shanling CD player,
Castle Stirling speakers, and a remote control
that tells you what to watch. Also: Bergman on
biwiring and biamplification, singer Janis Ian’s
alternative take on music downloading, and a
chat with Opus 3’s Jan-Eric Persson.
No.65: Back to Vinyl: setting up an analog
system, reviews of Rega P9 turntable, and
phono preamps from Rega, Musical Fidelity
and Lehmann. The Kappa reference system
for home theatre: how we selected our HDTV
monitor, plus a review of the Moon Stellar DVD
player. Anti-vibration: Atacama, Symposium,
Golden Sound, Solid-Tech, Audioprism,
Tenderfeet. Plus an interview with Rega’s
turntable designer, and a look back at what
UHF was like 20 years ago.
No.64: Speakers: Totem M1 Signature and
Hawk, Visonik E352. YBA Passion Intégré
amp, Cambridge IsoMagic (followup), better
batteries for audio-to-go. Plus: the truth about
upsampling, an improvement to our LP cleaning machine, an interview with Ray Kimber.
.
No.63: Tube amps: ASL Leyla & Passion
A11. Vecteur Espace speakers, 2 interconnects (Harmonic Technology Eichmann),
5 speaker cables (Pierre Gabriel, vdH ,
Harmonic Technology, Eichmann), 4 power
cords (Wireworld, Harmonic Technology,
Eichmann, ESP). Plus: Paul Bergman on
soundproofing, how to compare components
in the store, big-screen TV’s to stay away
from, a look back at the Beatles revolution.
No.62: Amplifiers: Vecteur I- 4, Musical
Fidelity Nu-Vista M3, Antique Sound Lab
MG-S11DT. Passive preamps from Creek and
Antique Sound Lab. Vecteur L-4 CD player.
Interconnects: VdH Integration and Wireworld
Soltice. Plus: the right to copy music, and how
it may be vanishing. Choosing a DVD player by
ce
NOTE : Pri
No.61: Digital: Audiomat Tempo and Cambridge
Isomagic DACs, Vecteur D-2 transport.
Speakers: Osborn Mini Tower and Mirage OM9. Soundcare Superspikes. And: new surround
formats, dezoning DVD players.
No.49: Power amps: Simaudio Moon, Bryston
3B ST, N.E.W. DCA-33, plus the Alchemist
Forseti amp and preamp, and the McCormack
Micro components. Also: our new Reference
3a Suprema II reference speakers, and a
followup on the Copland 277 CD player. Plus:
how HDCD really works.
No.60: Speakers: Monitor Audio Silver 9,
Reference 3a MM De Capo, Klipsch RB-5,
Coincident Triumph Signature. Plus: a Mirage
subwoofer and the Audiomat Solfège amp. Paul
Bergman on reproducing extreme lows.
No.48: Loudspeakers: JMLabs Daline 3.1,
Vandersteen 3a, Totem Tabù, Royd Minstrel.
CD: Cambridge CD4, Copland CDA-277. Also:
An interview with the founder of a Canadian
audiophile record label.
No.59: CD players: Moon Eclipse, Linn Ikemi
and Genki, Rega Jupiter/Io, Cambridge D500.
Plus: Oskar Kithara speaker, with Heil tweeter.
And: transferring LP to CD, the truth on digital
radio, digital cinema vs MaxiVision 48.
No.47: FM tuners: Magnum Dynalab MD-108,
Audiolab 8000T, Fanfare FT-1. Speaker cables:
QED Qudos, Wireworld Equinox and Eclipse,
MIT MH-750. Parasound C/BD-2000 transport
and D/AC-2000 converter. And: Upgrading
your system for next to nothing.
features. And all about music for the movies.
No.58: Amplifiers: ASL AQ1003, Passion I10
& I11, Rogue 88, Jadis Orchestra Reference,
Linar 250. Headphone amps: Creek, Antique
Sound Lab, NVA, Audio Valve. Plus: Foundation
Research LC-2 line filter, Gutwire power cord,
Pierre Gabriel ML-1 2000 cable. And: building
your own machine to clean LP’s.
No.57: Speakers: Dynaudio Contour 1.3,
Gershman X-1/SW-1, Coincident Super
Triumph Signature, Castle Inversion 15,
Oskar Aulos. PLUS: KR 18 tube amp. Music
Revolution: the next 5 years. Give your Hi-Fi
a Fall Tune-Up.
No.56: Integrated amps: Simaudio I-3, Roksan
Caspian, Myryad MI120, Vecteur Club 10, NVA
AP10 Also: Cambridge T500 tuner, Totem
Forest. Phono stages: Creek, Lehmann,
Audiomat. Interconnects: Actinote, Van den
Hul, Pierre Gabriel. Plus: Paul Bergman on
power and current…why you need both
No.55: CD players: Linn CD12, Copland
CDA-289, Roksan Caspian, AMC CD8a. Other
reviews: Enigma Oremus speaker, Magenta
ADE-24 black box. Plus: the DSD challenge for
the next audio disc, pirate music on the Net, the
explosion of off-air video choices.
No.54: Electronics: Creek A52se, Simaudio
W-3 and W-5 amps. Copland CSA-303, Sima
P-400 and F.T. Audio preamps (the latter two
passive). Musical Fidelity X-DAC revisited,
Ergo AMT phones, 4 line filters, 2 interconnects. Plus: Making your own CD’s.
No.53: Loudspeakers:Reference 3a Intégrale,
Energy Veritas v2.8, Epos ES30, Totem
Shaman, Mirage 390is, Castle Eden. Plus: Paul
Bergman on understanding biamping, biwiring,
balanced lines, and more.
No.52: CD players: Alchemist Nexus,
Cambridge CD6, YBA Intégré, Musical Fidelity
X-DAC, Assemblage DAC-2. Subwoofers:
Energy ES-8 and NHT PS-8. Plus: Paul
Bergman on reproducing deep bass, Vegas
report, and the story behind digital television.
No.51: Integrated amps: YBA Intégré DT,
Alchemist Forseti, Primare A-20, NVA AP50
Cambridge A1. CD players: Adcom GCD-750,
Rega Planet. An economy system to recommend to friends, ATI 1505 5-channel amp,
Bergman on impedance, why connectors
matter, making your own power bars.
No.50: CD: Cambridge DiscMagic/DACMagic,
Primare D-20, Dynaco CDV Pro. Analog: Rega
Planar 9 , the Linn LP12 after 25 years. Also:
Moon preamp, Linn Linto phono stage, Ergo
and Grado headphones. Speaker cables: Linn
K-400, Sheffield, MIT 750 Also: a look back at
15 years of UHF.
No.46: Electronics: Simaudio 4070SE amp &
P-4002 preamp, Copland CTA-301 & CTA-505,
N.E.W. P-3 preamp. Digital cables: Wireworld,
Audiostream, MIT, XLO, Audioprism, and
Wireworld’s box for comparing interconnects.
Also: YBA CD-1 and Spécial CD players. YvesBernard André talks about about his blue diode
CD improvement.
No.45: Integrated amps: Copland CTA-401,
Simaudio 4070i, Sugden Optima 140. CD:
Adcom GDA-700 HDCD DAC, Sonic Frontiers
SFD-1 MkII. Interconnects: Straight Wire
Maestro, 3 versions of Wireworld Equinox.
Plus: Yamamura Q15 CD oil, and “Hi-Fi for the
Financially Challenged”.
No.4 4: CD players: Rotel RCD970BX,
Counterpoint DA-10A DAC. Speakers:
Apogee Ribbon Monitor, Totem Mite, more
on the Gershman Avant Garde. Also: LaserLink cable, “The Solution” CD treatment,
AudioQuest sorbothane feet, Tenderfeet,
Isobearings. Plus: Inside Subwoofers, and
the castrati, the singers who gave their all
for music.
No.43: The first HDCD converter: the EAD
DSP-1000 MkII. Speakers: Gershman Avant
Garde, Totem Mani-2 and Rokk, Quad ESL63 with Gradient subwoofer. Plus: Keith O.
Johnson explains the road to HDCD, and our
editor joins those of other magazines to discuss
what’s hot in audio.
No.42: Electronics: Spectral DMC-12 and
Celeste P-4001 preamplifiers, amps and
preamps from Duson. Also: Sonic Frontiers
SFD-1 converter, power line filters from
Audioprism, Chang, and YBA. Plus: Inside
the preamplifier, and how the tango became
the first “dirty” dance.
No.41: Digital: Roksan DA-2, EAD DSP-7000,
McCormack DAC-1, QED Ref. Digit. Cables:
Straight Wire LSI Encore & Virtuoso, Wireworld
Equinox, van den Hul The 2nd & Revelation,
Cardas Cross & Hexlink Golden, Transparent
Music-Link Super & Music-Wave Super. Plus:
Bergman on recording stereo.
No.40: Integrated amps: YBA Intégré, Rotel
960, Sugden A-25B, Sima PW-3000, Linn
Majik, Naim NAIT 3, AMC CVT3030, Duson
PA-75. Stereo: what it is, how it works, why
it’s disappearing from records.
rising in
early 20
05!
Micromega Model “T”. Plus: How the record
industry will wipe out hi-fi, and why women
have been erased from music history.
No.37: Electronics: Celeste 4070 and McIntosh
7150 amps, Linn Kairn and Klout. Plus:
RoomTunes acoustic treatment, why all
amps don’t sound alike, and how Pro Logic
really works.
No.36: CD players: YBA CD-2, Linn Karik/
Numerik, Sugden SDT-1, Mission DAD5 and
DAC5, Audiolab 8000DAC, QED Digit, Nitty
Gritty LP cleaner, Plus: an interview with
Linn’s Ivor Tiefenbrun, and part 7 of Bergman
on acoustics: building your own acoustical
panels.
No.35: Speakers: Castle Chester, Mirage M7si, Totem Model 1, Tannoy 6.1, NHT 2.3, 3a
Micro Monitor, Rogers LS2a/2. Plus: Tests of
high end video recorders, hi-fi stereo recordings of piano performances of 75 years ago.
Acoustics part 6: Conceiving the room.
No.34: Cables: MIT ZapChord & PC2, Monster
PowerLine 2+, M1, M2 Sigma, Reference 2,
Interlink 400 & MSK2, Straight Wire Maestro,
Isoda HA- 08 -PSR, Audioquest Ruby &
Emerald, AudioStream Twinax, FMS Gold
& Black, NBS Mini Serpent. Acoustics 5:
Diffusing sound. “The Plot to Kill Hi-Fi,” the
much-reprinted article on audio retailing.
No.33: CD players: Spectral SDR-1000SL,
Esoteric P-2/D-2, Micromega Duo.BS, Proceed
PDT2/PDP2 and PCD2, MSB Silver, Esoteric
CD-Z5000, Carver SD/A-490t. The future of
audio, according to Linn’s Ivor Tiefenbrun.
Acoustics part 4: Absorbing low frequencies.
No.32: The Audio Dream Book: Our 152-page
guide to what’s out there. Acoustics part 3:
Taming reverberation.
No.31: Amplifiers: Counterpoint SA-100 and
SA-1000, Audio Research Classic 30, QED
C300 and P300, Sugden Au-41, Audiolab
8000P, Carver C-19, Arcam Delta 110 and 120.
Why balanced lines? Buying audio by mail.
Acoustics part 2: Predicting standing waves.
No.30: Speakers: Castle Winchester, Energy
22.2, P-E Léon Trilogue,NHT 1.3, Celef CF1,
Polk RM3000, Response II by Clements.
Acoustics part 1: Room size and acoustics.
No.29: Turntables: Linn Basik & LP12 with
Lingo. Oracle Delphi MkIV, Oracle Paris.
Pickups: Goldring Excel, 1022 & 1042,
Revolver Bullet, Talisman Virtuoso DTi, Sumiko
Blue Point, Roksan Shiraz. Test CD’s. Dorian’s
Craig Dory.
No.28: Integrated amps: Linn Intek, Naim
NAIT 2, Arcam Alpha II, Audio Innovations
500 II, Mission Cyrus Two, Creek 4141, Sugden
A-21. Plus: an Aiwa cassette deck, and a guide
to distortion.
No.27: Cables: Prisma SC-9 and Cable 10,
MIT MH-750, MH-750 CVT MI-330SG, and
MI-330SG CVT, Supershield. Cassettes: We
compare Maxell, Fuji, Sony, etc.. The Esoteric
V9000 cassette deck. Choosing a VCR.
No. 39: Speakers: KEF Q50, Martin-Logan
Aerius, Castle Howard, NEAR 40M, Klipsch
Kg4.2. Plus: QED passive preamps, followup
on the Linn Mimik CD player.
No.26: CD players: Spectral SDR-1000,
Kinergetics KCD-40, Micromega CDF 1, Arcam
Delta 70 and Black Box, Mission PCM II, Quad
66. A panel compares CD and LP, and Keith
Johnson talks about rethinking audio.Paul
Bergman on amplifier design.
No. 38: CD players: Roksan Attessa, Naim
CDS, Linn Mimik, Quad 67, Rotel 945,
To see a list of older issues:
http://www.uhfmag.com/Individualissue.html
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line at www.uhfmag.com
Montreal 2004
T
Feature
his is no small show. See the
crowd in the picture above?
No, those aren’t the visitors
to the Festival du Son et de
l’Image, Montreal’s immensely successful
annual show. Those are the exhibitors,
milling about at the official cocktail
party at the end of Day 2.
Of course we were exhibiting as well
as fi nding a few minutes to run about
and cover the rest of the show. On the
page across is our own system over in
Delta 317. It was composed of our new
Linn Unidisk player, Van den Hul Array
preamplifier and monoblocks borrowed
from our Audiophile Boutique (audiophileboutique.com), and the Reference
26
3a Royal Virtuoso speakers reviewed in
this issue, sitting on Foundation stands.
At right you can see Reine, faithfully
taking orders for books, magazines,
recordings and accessories.
Despite the usual dense crowds in
our own room, I did take advantage of
some breaks in the flow to check out
other rooms at the Delta, and also the
larger halls in the Four Points across the
street.
W hat you see below left is the
dramatically-styled Chord CD player,
though I should add that its innovation doesn’t stop at its looks.
Notice the two loops of cable
at the rear? The Chord Blue
transport act ually passes
on an incredible 64 bits of
data…which means 32 bits
per cable! With a pair of
Chord 500 watt monoblocks
and large Neat MF7 speakers,
it sounded superb.
I made a note to ask for
the long-awaited McCormack
UDP-1 universal player. It
sou nded ver y good w it h
SACD when I heard it, and it
was no slouch with conventional CD either. I listened
to it with McCormack electronics (of
by Gerard Rejskind
course), and a pair of speakers that
were new to me: ASW, which stands for
“Accurate Sound Wave.”
Among other large speakers I heard
and appreciated was the Focus Audio
FS 888 (shown below), much larger than
the (also excellent) FS 688 that was on
the cover of UHF No. 68. Then there
was the Rega R9, dramatically styled (not
unusual with Rega) but well-engineered
as well. And over at Pierre Gabriel, I got
to hear the new Master Series speaker,
which I had seen in prototype form, but
not heard until now.
Also large was the Verity Audio
Lohengrin, a four-way speaker of most
impressive performance. The Lohengrin
consists of a three-way module which
includes a ribbon tweeter, plus a tall base
that contains a potent 38 cm polypropylene woofer. Now here’s the amazing
part: the woofer and enclosure together
speakers. An SACD version of one of
the familiar Patricia Barber recordings
sounded sumptuous.
The small Newfoundland company
Aurum was back, with a more mature
version of its unusual system: four singleended tube amps for the midrange and
tweeter, Bryston solid state modules for
the bass, and electronic crossovers all
around. Very nice. For good measure,
Aurum had brought its own Integris
CD player. I wouldn’t be surprised if we
heard more from Aurum.
A lot of turntables were playing at the
show, including ones from Clearaudio,
DPS, Roksan, and Pro-Ject, among
others. Is vinyl dead? Sure…like tubes
are dead!
Want more about the show? You’ll
find plenty of text and pictures on our
site: www.uhfmag.com/Montreal2004.
By any standard, this was a superb
show. Will we be back next year? Just try
to keep us away!
Feature
have a resonance of 19 Hz. This is of
more than casual interest, because the
resonant frequency is also the frequency
below which response drops like a stone.
Indeed, Verity claims response down to
15 Hz. It couldn’t do that in a hotel room
(nor in most rooms), to be sure, but I can
testify it doesn’t get timid as the music
reaches for the lower octaves!
The oddest speaker display was
that of Totem, which had used lights,
cloth, and silhouettes to create a forest.
Hidden behind one of the cloths was a
pair of…Forest speakers. A small video
setup was at one end. You can see it on
page 30. Five stars for imagination, but
just half a star for catering to visitors
curious about Totem’s new products.
Over at the Cyrus room, I had a
good look at the new Cyruslink system,
meant to store all your music and make it
available throughout the house. Its heart
is the C$9500 Linkserver, which looks
like a CD player, but contains a huge
hard disc (up to 250 Gb).
I was surprised to see Bösendorfer
exhibiting at the Festival for the fi rst
time. Yes, the legendary piano maker. It’s
not so well known that the company also
makes loudspeakers. The demonstration
was done with a video system, using the
D-VHS high definition system. Both the
video and the audio rather disappointed
me, though that may reflect more on
the people who had set up the room
than on the actual performance of the
Bösendorfer speakers.
I didn’t have time to brave the long
lineups for the demo of the Sensio 3-D
video system, whose latest incarnation
I had seen in Vegas. But the Montreal
demo included one more key product:
D-Box’s Odyssée motion simulator
chairs. Albert did get to see (and feel!)
it, and reports that the combination was
a memorable one.
I got to hear an exceptional demonstration of the Linn Unidisk player…not
that I needed one, since by the time
the Festival opened UHF had its own
Unidisk. Past Linn rooms were rather
reverberant, with too much surface and
not enough furnishings. This time wraparound curtains tamed the nasties. The
Unidisk fed a Klimax Kontrol preamp,
three Klimax amps (two monoblocks
and a stereo amp, driving Akurate 242
27
Feature
I
Touring With Witnesses
n the words of psychologist Dennis
Waitley, “It’s not what you are that
holds you back, it’s what you think
that you are not.” I was reminded
of that statement when I heard Gaetan’s
first comments as we
started on our tour.
“I don’t think my
e a r s a r e t r a i ne d
enough for t h is,”
he said, sounding
almost apologetic.
And yet, Gaetan is,
among many other
things, a guitarist
who remembers carrying his instrument
along as reference,
when he bought his
first pair of speakers (and what did he
settle for, you may
ask? Magnepans!).
“But that was a long
time ago,” he adds.
Strange, how many
people underestimate
their ability to simply
appreciate music when faced with an
array of sophisticated equipment. I don’t
know much about this, some would say,
dismissing the idea altogether, or I’m
not an expert. Yet they go to concerts,
they talk about what they heard, and
they know what they enjoyed and what
they didn’t.
This year I toured the Montreal
show twice with two very different
companions, and I thought I’d share
their impressions with you as if you
were here with us. I let them guide me
Illustrations:
Above: the unusual Wilson Benesch Discovery speaker, with its external woofer.
Lower right: Musicians from a local high
school playing live in the Delta lobby
(perhaps to show us all up). On the next
page: two turntables. At top, the affordable Pro-Ject RPM9 with carbon fibre
arm and electronic speed control. Below,
the eye-catching Clearaudio Master
Reference.
28
by Albert Simon
through the different rooms (well, okay,
I also suggested a few I thought should
be on our list), and I often asked them
to go in first and let me know if I should
come in too. Interesting.
This won’t be an actual review, just
impressions, comments, a lot of nods,
raised eyebrows and silent wows.
“Look at this, a Thorens turntable, I
didn’t know they still made them,” said
Gaetan as we listened to a clear rendition of Muddy Waters playing through a
Unico integrated amp and Opera speakers, handcrafted in Italy. He didn’t say
much else, but I liked the presence and
the immediacy of the music. He didn’t
say much in the next room either, and yet
we were both impressed by the sound of
the blue and silver Shanling equipment,
glowing quietly. We took the time to
listen to Jheena Lodwick singing Getting to Know You through a pair of ALI
Acoustics speakers.
We had an interesting experience
in another room, where a Krell SACD
player was hooked to professional-looking Nagra amplifiers playing through a
pair of Parsifal speakers by Verity Audio.
A track of Fidelio’s SACD Via Crucis
by Liszt was on: beautiful choral voices
rose airily, firmly supported by low
organ notes. And then the same track
was repeated in multichannel, using
an additional pair of similar speakers
behind us. We looked at each other with
raised eyebrows, the music filling the air
and seeming to transport us. As we left,
the same procedure was repeated with
Nicolas Major on solo guitar. Gaetan had
doubts written on his face. “My ears are
not yet accustomed to surround sound,”
he explained.
He smiled broadly as we entered the
next room, staring at the pair of B&W
805 Signature speakers, “I should be
able to recognize their sound, I have a
small pair of B&W speakers at home.”
Their music was finely produced by an
all-Classé system with the CAP-2100
integrated amp and CDP-100 player.
Later, as we listened to the Naim and
Spendor combination in another setting, Gaetan pulled out one of his CDs
and asked to listen to it. It was a Frank
Martin composition played by guitarist
Jürgen Ruck. “Remarkable neutrality,”
he exclaimed. “There, that’s what a
guitar sounds like,” he added, looking at
the Naim CD5 player, NAC 112 preamp,
NAP 150 power amp and the Spendor
Classic SP3/1P speakers. As we were
leaving, I glanced at the Nottingham
Horizon turntable. “They’re back,” I
said. I don’t think he believed me.
Gaetan was now leading the way,
from one room to the next; his doubts
about his discerning ability had diminished, and when we had listened for a bit
in some rooms, and he shrugged with an
apologetic smile, and I knew it was time
to explore some more.
Facing the large Martin-Logan
Ascent speakers he became very still,
totally concentrated, and asked to listen
to the same Frank Martin guitar piece.
The Wadia (Series 3) 302 player played
it through the Blue Circle BC3 Galactica
MKII (a dual mono linestage preamp)
and the BC28 hybrid power amp. Gaetan
didn’t say a word. He slowly sat down
and asked to listen to another of his
CDs, featuring the Hilliard Ensemble
of male voices. “Voices are the ultimate
test for me,” he whispered. He left the
room reluctantly, lost in his thoughts.
(He would often refer to this moving
experience after the end of his tour.)
Another memorable experience he
had was with the Living Voice Avatar
OBX speakers with Conrad-Johnson
amplification (ACT2 preamp and Premier 140 power amp), with Chord’s
BLU transport and DAC 64 converter.
“You can even hear the guitar’s woody
resonance,” he exclaimed, “and the low
notes are superb.” When the Hilliard
Ensemble sang, he noticed the definition
in the voices and the clear separation,
and he smiled broadly. “I never knew
the tenor was that good.”
Gaetan seemed transformed now,
walking confidently toward each new
I smiled because I also witnessed hadn’t noticed before,” he said, after we
experience, his remaining doubts disquite
a change in Gaetan’s attitude, from emerged from the Jadis room. Then,
solving in a newfound assertiveness.
an
uncertain
and unsure initial approach emerging from the Gryphon room, he
“This system is defi nitely one of the
to
the
seasoned
and confident apprecia- seemed surprised. “I heard other sounds
top four,” he stated unequivocally in
tion
of
music
that
all audiophiles reach in this room, some instruments appeared
the Linn room. The Unidisk 1.1 was
once
they
stop
thinking
and talking more clearly.” (Welcome to the club, I
matched to a Klimax Kontrol preamp,
about
specs,
and
discover
beauty.
thought to myself.)
a set of three power amps (one Klimax
“This is therapy,” Michael said with
Solo mono amp and two Klimax Twin***
a
longing
sigh, and Jimmy nodded. We
stereo amps) feeding a pair of Akurate
The next day, I welcomed Michael, a
were
listening
to Georgia On My Mind by
242 speakers. “The brass sound great,” young and enthusiastic new audiophile
said Gaetan, after listening to Blood, who had thoroughly enjoyed the Mon- Mari Nakamoto, followed by Sunflower
Sweat and Tears’ Spinning Wheel. Then treal Sound Festival last year for the on the Three Blind Mice label. The CD
he became fascinated with the com- first time. He had already been around was played by Audio Aero, amplified by
ell) onamplifier and came out of
parison done with a different source, the this year’s with his friend Jimmy, a more haoTenor
w as wAudio
s
s
a
g
t he Ve of a pair of Lamhorn speakers. In the Linn
Kivor server, containing multiple CD experienced audiophile
and
nd reader
l show (a
a
e
r
t
n
o
selections stored without compression. UHF
Magazine.
They were both eager room, we arrived just in time to hear
eM
about t h
ts more to share
An interesting comparison
Gaetan
the
tour
with me and, pulling the spectacular soundtrack of Don Juan
lo
.
d
m
a
o
e
r
mag.c
u can Gabriel
YoPierre
w.uhfout
wsysdid was with the two
his
notepad,
Michael
said “Naim”.
de Marco by composer Michael Kamen.
w
:
e
it
s
eb
our W
We went straight to the entrance “It’s quite something,” said Michael,
tems. He asked to listen
to Charles Ives’
Piano Sonata No. 2 played by Marc-André level all-Naim room — and I mean all looking for words. “The soundfield is so
Hamelin (a fellow music student of his, Naim. “Why leave it to chance?” said vast,” he decided. “And it’s so airy,” added
at the U of M), first with the Gryphon the representative, a touch of humour Jimmy. As we then listened to Neville
Mikado player, Callisto integrated in his eyes, pointing to the Naim cables. Marriner conducting Rossini’s overture
amp and the Master speakers by Pierre A CD5 player was linked to the NAIT to The Barber of Seville, Jimmy noted
Gabriel…and then, in the other room, 5i integrated amp, featuring DIN and that we were sitting right in front of the
with a Jadis JD3 player, DA60 integrated RCA connectors (and an optional silveramp and the impressive Master Refer- colored front adapter plate, for those who
ence speakers. He seemed to like both might tire of an all-black system). The
versions but then added with a puzzled speakers were the two-and-a-half-way
look “They’re completely different.”
Ariva. Michael remarked on the
And we concluded our tour with sound of the trumpet, and found
the Quad ESL speakers, playing the great clarity in the percussion.
same piano piece with an Arcam CD 33
From entry level to
player and Conrad Johnson’s Premier dreamland. Michael
17 LS preamp and MV60 power amp. wanted to hear one
“The sound is crystalline, so clear in of his CDs in the
the highs,” he noted. “There are more two Pierre Gabriel
harmonics,” he added, and when he rooms. It was t he
listened to the Hilliard Ensemble he final track of the
pointed to the stage and said “I can see Gladiator score by
exactly where the singers are standing”. Hans Zimmer, We
I smiled because I knew exactly what Live Forever, sung
he meant and I agreed with all that he by Lisa Gerrard.
heard, here and in all the other rooms. “I heard sounds I
way…
e
h
t
y
B
29
Feature
Feature
orchestra. “The sound is dynamic, but
without fatigue,” he explained.
We entered another large room
featuring the Y BA CD player and
amplifiers, and massive JMLab speakers.
“I don’t hear the speakers,” whispered
Michael. I was startled. “It’s as if the
music is right there, as if the speakers
have disappeared”. I got it.
We played the final song on the
Gladiator soundtrack with the Living
Voice OBX speakers, the Chord front
end, amplified by Conrad-Johnson, and
the music suddenly filled the large room.
“These speakers are not too big,” he said,
“Yet they create a very wide image.”
We spent a long time listening to
different selections through the newlyintroduced Aurum Acoustics Integris
300B active speaker system (including a
stereo tube triamplifier with six-channel
output), with an Integris CDP playerpreamplifier. Michael asked to listen to
Sirens, a track on another of his CDs,
called Mythos. Both Jimmy and Michael
were impressed with the abundance of
detail, the extended dynamic range and
Illustrations:
Above: The Totem “forest,” hiding an
actual pair of Forest speakers. At right:
The gorgeous Song Audio display,
including the SA-1 line level preamp
and the SA-300 MB single-ended tube
monoblocks.
30
the rock-solid impact. Jimmy was then
particularly drawn to another room
where the Creek CD player reached
us through Epos speakers. “One of the
best systems for the price,” he asserted.
We listened to the haunting music
of The Sea, the first track on the Trio
Morcheeba’s Big Calm CD. Both were
speechless at the end. “We’ll
wait here,” said Michael.
Another one of his favorites was the Chord array of
sculptured components, from
the DAC 64 to the 500 watts
monoblocs a nd h igh f requency power supplies, playing through Neat speakers. As
Lisa Gerrard’s mournful voice
rose in the quiet background, I
could tell Michael was moved.
“You can just close your eyes
and…” He didn’t finish.
We t hen had a superb
example of quality LP reproduction with the Clearaudio
turntable, playing Funkjazztical
Tricknology through an Accustic Arts integrated amp and
the stunning Acapella speakers. “Wow, that sounds great,
we’re right here with them,”
said both of my companions.
“Turntables are back,” I said
to them, echoing what I had
suggested to Gaetan earlier.
They looked around the room at the
numerous turntable creations, including
the sophisticated Clearaudio Master
Reference.
As though to confirm that, we ended
the audio tour with Austria’s Pro-Ject
Audio Systems turntables for all budgets.
Eric Clapton Unplugged was on and we sat
quietly, facing the large Magneplanars
1.6 QR panels. The sound was natural
yet not spectacular, and my companions
said nothing. The source was a Pro-Ject
RPM9 turntable with its own carbon
fibre arm and an acrylic platter. Added to
it, for precision, was a Pro-ject Speed Box
SE (a high precision, quartz-generated
electronic speed regulator), a Pro-Ject
Tube Box (phono stage and voltage
regulator) and Exposure preamp and
power amp. “You know who are our
best customers in Europe?” asked the
representative as we prepared to leave.
“They're 16-year olds.”
As I’ve said, there was nothing in the
sound that shouted “Here I am, look at
what I can do, aren’t you impressed?”
Nothing, except the music.
A nd the fact that we could just
reach out and touch Eric Clapton if we
wanted.
Linn Unidisk 1.1
I
able SACD player. But what was almost
instantly clear was that never, but never,
had we heard any source component
sound like this one.
Does that include turntables? Let’s
not get ahead of ourselves.
Though the Unidisk is about the
size of the CD12, it doesn’t look as
massive, and it is surprisingly light,
especially for a product costing over
C$16,000. Like the CD12 (and the Ikemi
player as well), it is built around Linn’s
proprietary transport. On its denselypacked surface-mount circuit board are
distinct electronic sections for all of the
Unidisk’s functions: SACD, CD, DVD,
and DVD-A. The machine plays ’em all,
right down to Kodak Picture CDs.
When we first got our test machine
(with a clear warning that the distributor would need it back in time for the
Montreal show in early April), we first
tried it with our collection of SACDs,
and specifically Eric Bibb’s Needed Time,
familiar to us from countless listening
sessions. Reine was stunned. “The last
time I felt a shock like that,” she said,
“was many years ago, when I first logged
on to a server with my computer, and it
greeted me by name!”
The next day we put on some conventional CDs, and that tipped us over the
edge. We had known that we couldn’t
go on using other people’s SACD play-
Is this the source
component
audiophiles have
been waiting for?
31
Listening Room
f there’s one philosophical point
that Scotland’s Linn Products is
associated with, it is the importance of the source in a music
reproduction system. Linn’s original
product, still made after three decades,
was the Linn LP12 turntable. Though it
had precursors, Linn did the opposite of
what nearly all its competitors were then
doing. Today, Linn’s new flagship is also
a source component, and it may be every
bit as revolutionary as the LP12.
Linn has had ot her top source
components in the intervening years.
Its astonishing CD12 player was on
the cover of UHF No. 56, in which we
praised it as the very best CD player
known to us. The same player was heard
by the people at Sony Corporation, who
came to the obvious conclusion: not even
the vaunted Sony engineers could have
built such a machine.
The realization led to an unexpected
collaboration. Sony invited the (comparatively tiny) Linn Products to collaborate on the development of a new player.
It would have to play SACD, but also
DVD-Audio, in order to end the format
war. It would have to be a DVD video
player as well, and of course it would
have to be an exceptional CD player
besides. Sony gave Linn full access to
its proprietary technology. In return, it
reserved the right to license the resulting
technology to other companies.
The collaboration was successful. We
usually reserve our conclusions for the
end of a review, but this is no ordinary
product. Listening to it came as a shock,
and less than 48 hours after it arrived
we purchased it. Yes, it’s expensive. Yes,
we had hoped to adopt a more afford-
ers, and that we needed to get our own,
but which one? It didn’t take much to
convince us: our choice couldn’t possibly
be any player but this one. We called the
distributor, and asked for extra quick
shipment, so that we ourselves could use
a Unidisk at the Montreal show.
This is an expensive product, of
course, but Linn has two other Unidisk
“play everything” models. The Unidisk
2.1, around C$10K (US$7500), is optimized for movies, and the even cheaper
Unidisk SC includes what amounts to a
multichannel preamplifier.
Though the player is not outlandishly
sized, Linn has found a way to squeeze
in a lot of jacks. There are several video
outputs: composite, S-video, SCART
(used in Europe), interlaced component,
progressive component, and the new
HDMI as well. The six audio outputs are
phono jacks (of doubtful quality, alas),
and the two main channels are available
balanced as well.
The transport is mechanically slick,
the drawer sliding in and out with a
velvety purr that reminds you this isn’t
some rebadged mass-market player.
However we wish the drawer were
deeper. It’s all too easy to put in the
disc slightly askew, which results in an
“unknown disc” warning on the screen,
or an actual jam. On two occasions we
had to free a stuck disc by gently prying
the drawer open with a paper clip…a
sweat-inducing operation when one
recalls what this device costs!
Because the Unidisk has separate
sections for different formats, it take
the player more than a few seconds to
determine what sort of disc you’ve put
in, and therefore what circuits it should
fire up. That gets old real fast.
There are other operational oddities
too. Fast forwarding doesn’t work the
way you expect. Instead of just whizzing forward, the Linn advances by
six-second segments, pausing between
each. Pushing the “previous selection”
button really takes you to the start of
the selection before, not to the start of
the current one, as in other players. Push
“play” to go to the start of the current
track.
It’s well-known that it’s impossible to
play most DVD-A discs unless you have
a video display connected to the player.
Listening Room
That is of
course the case
with the Unidisk,
but setting up initial preferences also
requires a video display. Our solution:
a tiny monochrome TV with a video
input, C$14.97 at Wal-Mart. Visitors
look quizzically at the tiny set, and we
tell them they’re looking at our new
home theatre setup. Long silences!
Because the Unidisk is so many players in one, the test turned, inevitably,
into several tests.
The Unidisk as CD player
We began with a disc that is new to
us, a collection of wind band music by
contemporary composer Norman Dello
Joio (Klavier K11138), specifically his
Fantasia on a Theme of Haydn. It opens
with considerable percussive action,
which shook the Alpha room when we
heard it with our reference player. With
the Linn, to our surprise, it was even
more solid and powerful. “That tympani sure gets the job done!” remarked
Albert.
But there’s much more to this fascinating music than percussion, and the
Linn made it all glow. The woodwinds
were smooth and realistic, the bassoons
particularly enthralling. The brass was
bright in the right way, without a trace
of annoying shrillness. All of the instruments were easier to identify within a
space that seemed to acquire an extra
dimension.
Our favorite choral recording, Now the
Green Blade Riseth, can sound superb, but
we have heard certain players — not to
mention some amplifiers and speakers —
32
turn it into an
ear-shattering mess.
Of course we k new the
Unidisk wouldn’t do that, but
it delivered rather more than we had
expected. The challenge in reproducing
choral voices is to keep them separately
identifiable, and at the same time to
meld them together into a whole as the
conductor intends. The Linn handled
the voices perfectly, and the music was so
well served that we didn’t find ourselves
writing much. This is how the piece
should sound.
We continued with a Gospel blues
piece, Ain’t No Grave f rom Doug
McLeod’s Come to Find (Audioquest
AQCD1027). Before McLeod begins
to sing, there is an introduction by his
guitar and various percussion instruments, and we were surprised to discover
how much more we could hear with the
Linn player. This wasn’t a matter of
hearing some of the percussion more
clearly, but of hearing it at all. “Come
to fi nd” indeed!
The rest of the song? It seemed to
go by rather quickly, an impression
we’d had with the previous two pieces
as well. “McLeod’s voice seemed a little
hoarse with our old player,” commented
Gerard, “but not with the Unidisk.” The
voices of the choral backup singers were
clear but nicely velvety.
We wound up this part of the test
with Margie Gibson singing Soft Lights
and Sweet Music, from her Irving Berlin
album Say It With Music (Sheffield
CD-36). The song exudes such magic
you’d think no player could possibly get
it wrong, but we have enough experience
to know better. The Linn Unidisk made
it sound better than we had ever heard
it before, and indeed this had been the
CD that had convinced us to clear all the
other candidates off our shopping list.
What adjectives to use? Magical?
Sensuous? Voluptuous? “Listening to it
made me wish I were a man,” said Reine,
“if it would mean being sung to by a
woman like that.” If Gibson’s voice was
perfect, with no trace of the hardness
it sometimes acquires, we were equally
impressed with the eerily realistic sound
of the piano, cello and double bass that
accompany her.
Is this the world’s best CD player?
In any case, it can do much, much more
than whatever is in second place.
SACD takes on the CD
We live in an age of conspiracy theories. Not only are there dark theories
about the JFK assassination and the
Apollo moon landings, but there is a
current belief that companies making
hybrid SACDs deliberately sabotage the
CD Red Book layer to make the SACD
layer sound better by comparison. Fortunately, it’s possible to compare an SACD
with the same release on a conventional
Compact Disc.
And that was how we began our comparison. One of our favorite test pieces
is Eric Bibb’s Needed Time Gospel song,
found on his Spirit and the Blues album.
We played the CD version (Opus 3
CD19401) and then the SACD version
(CD19411). The CD sounds excellent, as
we have long known. What could SACD
add?
Lots, it turned out. The guitar licks
in the opening filled a three-dimensional
space most effectively. Bibb’s voice had
a certain softness, and even a sweetness, that it lacked on the CD version,
but the player certainly didn’t hide
anything from us. The harmonica solo
was gorgeous, and the second guitar, a
bottleneck, was downright spectacular.
“Musicians work so hard to give us these
pleasing effects,” said Reine, “and I’ll
bet they don’t suspect that it’s actually
possible for us to hear them.”
The Unidisk can be set to play the
Red Book layer of an SACD, as can some
other players. We pulled out Opus 3’s
Showcase SACD (CD21000), and ran a
comparison on the jazz number Comes
Love. We should mention that this piece
is also available on conventional CD, but
that CD is processed in HDCD; unlike
si.
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wisi.
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at aliquatuero.
si.
33
Listening Room
most other Linn players, the Unidisk has
no HDCD decoder.
Indeed, because we are used to
hearing the properly-decoded HDCD
version, we thought the CD layer of
the hybrid disc sounded a touch flat,
and Reine found the usually humorous sousaphone raspy and incoherent.
Changing to the SACD layer brought
a spectacular improvement, with the
instruments moving apart in space.
Despite the separation, the counterpoints — especially that between the
clarinet and the saxophone — were
considerably enhanced. The sound was
warm, lyrical and detailed, and indeed
the piece sounded better than we had
ever heard it before.
We continued with a classical recording, Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme
of Paganini (Pentatone 5186 114). This
1974 Philips recording was copied
directly from one of the original analog
recorders into the Digital Sound Stream
encoder. Even the CD layer was excellent, with none of the all-too-frequent
Compact Disc nasties.
The SACD layer, on the other hand,
was…
Well, here we go lapsing into impenetrable Latin again. But the entire report
is available in the print issue.
Listening Room
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wisi.
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34
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odolupt atetuer si.
Summing it up…
Brand/model: Linn Unidisk 1.1
Price: C$16,750/US$10,995
Dimensions: 38 x 36 x 8 cm
Most liked: Awesome performance
with any disc that will fit
Least liked: Slow reflexes, some
operational rough edges
Verdict: The Linn Sondek of the
digital age
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si.
wisi.
doloreriure tat.
autat.
at aliquatuero.
at aliquatuero.
On the test bench
At the moment we have no appropriate tools for testing SACD players, and
so we had to settle for some measurements on the CD section of the Unidisk.
The results were decent, certainly, but
they did not even hint at the player’s
remarkable sound.
The 100 square wave on the previous
page is far from the best we’ve seen, with
considerable undamped ringing. The
tilted top could suggest a misbehaving anti-aliasing filter. We say “could”
because the way the music comes out
contradicts the reading. Who we gonna
believe?
The low-level (-60 dB) sine wave,
shown on this page, is pretty much
perfect.
Jitter was low, though we could see
a bit of extremely low frequency noise
of the sort we associate with tube gear. It
was in no way audible,
fortunately. The transport did not take well
to CDs that were not
perfect. It could play
track 31 on our Pierre
Verany test CD, t he
one with a 1 mm slice
through it. The next
track (1.25 mm) triggered intermittent
muting. Unlike the bulletproof CD-12,
the Unidisk is sensitive to vibration, and
striking it even gently causes the laser to
mistrack.
Well over a quarter of a century ago,
Linn earned fame and a permanent niche
in the audiophile pantheon with the
Linn Sondek turntable. It was expensive
by the standards of that day, and yet it
didn’t look expensive, with a plain wood
plinth and a rather wobbly suspension.
It had but one speed at a time many
turntables boasted four. Its arm didn’t
even have a detachable headshell. What
it could do, however, was play music in a
more emotionally satisfying fashion than
any turntable had done before. There is
not a quality turntable made today whose
designer does not owe thanks to Linn
and the Linn Sondek.
But we are in the digital age today.
Amazingly enough, the little Scottish
company that revolutionized the record
player three decades ago has just done
the same thing with digital.
CROSSTALK
nidisk
U
n
n
i
L
u t t he
o
b
a
h
t
The tru
35
Listening Room
What is high fidelity? What is the shall look no further, I’m calling off the
I was thinking about the days when I
was experimenting with my very first hi-fi meaning of those two words juxtaposed? It search, I’m just going to settle down and
system. I would make a major upgrade — or should mean fidelity to the highest level…or, if enjoy the music”? Well, I felt like saying
that after the listening session with the
as major as one could make on a teenager’s you prefer, truth.
allowance — and I’d want to listen to every
In our tireless efforts to find that longed- Linn Unidisk 1.1.
one of my records over again.
The constant improvement in players
for fidelity, that truth, we go through nuOf course it's been a long time since I've merous hours of listening to components I’ve witnessed over the years has brought
owned so few recordings this could possi- for quality systems. Oh, there are plenty of us to levels I could scarcely have imagined
bly be an option, but listening to the Linn impressive products out there, CD players, when those first CD players offered a silent
Unidisk reminded me of that era. For the turntables, and all the other parts that make backgroundwebut steely-sounding strings. I
But
rdly. expected
r? Hanever
first time in memory, I can pick any CD up a serious audiophile’s music system,
” playebut
g
u such transparency and sheer
in
th
y
ll
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w , yosuch
“ev apart.
of…
ewtotally
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in my collection, and I feel excited about this one
sets
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presence,
immediate contact with the
o
is
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ble
on
rmati
iew availaSo
info
reisvthat
fe
musicians,
I’ve
felt here. Barriers I never
hearing it again. The Linn
Unidisk
here
I
am,
once
again
forced
to
as
li
ly
ln
a
o
re
e
th
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Is this
at it offers
between me and the music. A
good.
search for new words, adjectives I haven’t suspected fell
th
k
in
th
u
er, yo
dare to
playlifted
Of course, SACD is another
where no haze had been — and
matter en- yet used to express my sentiments
ey on ahaze
onpremas
h
c
u
isk as
m
now who.
n
is
k
U
e wasidjust
ing th
of th
ppLoquacious,
t
tirely. With the best ones, I can finally for- cisely asg possible.
sensitive
and
that
with CDs!
h
ro
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d
u
f
o
o
th
e
v ie
ink in
a moSACDs,
t what Iwshouldn’t
ounature,
dby
e even themotional
urse asWith
o
’r
in
words falter, impressions
reproducas
IFam
be
get that I’m listening to a digital
c
u
f
o
.
o
y
n
a
d
n
c
e
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a
h
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yer,
ice yo
A nd w
plapretty
D-AI’ve
Vthat
best advsurprised
D
e
tion. Producing this astonishing
are
to
find
well
exhard
to
render.
What sounded so rich
machine
a
th
s
t
a
e
g
r,
e
D play
want to
n SAChausted
s aonce
really does propel Linn back
where
it
the list.
became…well, richer, fuller with even more
a
r,
e
y
la
p
H F.
a CD
in Uand
sweet refinement. The sound
was: making the source component
that can
There is but one adjective I m
had
detail
he tr uth
? Tnever
e
st
sy
player.
g
e analo
d
light the way for everyone else.
didn’t appear to come just from the speakyet dared
to
use:
perfect!
ra
-g
p
to
na
it take oThere
Incidentally, Linn claims
it is. Unless and until someone ers, it enveloped them and filled the air efd canthe
nthat
Oh yes…a
Unidisk does not sound as good with CDs shows me a player superior to this one, the fortlessly. You haven’t heard what I heard,
as its CD12 player does. I’ve looked over my Unidisk 1.1 is perfect. It is, I believe, the but you know how that feels with live munotes from our issue No. 56 listening ses- quintessence of high fidelity.
sic.
—Reine Lessard
With a player like the Unidisk, one
sion with the CD12, and you know what?
could live happily ever after. (Or, until…)
I’m not sure Linn is right.
—Albert Simon
When can you really say “This is it, I
—Gerard Rejskind
Listening Room
I
Shanling SCD-T200
t can hardly help looking familiar.
It is a near lookalike of the Shanling CD-T100 that turned heads on
our issue No. 66 cover. We figured
you could have bought it for looks alone,
though in fact there were other reasons
to consider it.
The SCD-T200 is of course an
SACD player as well as a CD deck. That
extra functionality aside, the similarities
are striking. The analog gain stage also
uses four tubes, though with directoutput jacks allowing you to bypass the
tubes if you want them just for show.
The headphone jack is still there, and
the build quality is still of a level that
must give the competition nightmares.
An electronic volume control is still
included, allowing direct connection
to a power amplifier. This player still
comes with an upscale power cord which
includes a Schurter IEC connector and
a Hubbell hospital-grade AC plug.
Oh yes…and the jacks are still
marked “made in USA.” We love the
irony!
There are some styling differences
if you look closely. The rings around
the tubes are now acrylic rather than
resonance-prone sheet metal, and there
36
are only two of them per tube, making
them more easily removable for tube
swaps. Though the metal finish of our
player recalled that of the CD player, the
distributor tells us more recent production models have an all-stainless finish,
without those warm copper and brass
accents.
Shanling has recycled some aging
Sony technology, including the transport Sony used in its original C$8000
SACD player. Anything wrong with
that? Just one thing: the Shanling is
strictly a two-channel machine. Forget
surround sound.
When you read that, one of two
things probably happened: either your
turned the page, or you shrugged. For
our part, we’re with the shruggers. The
SACD standard, like the DVD-A standard for that matter, has made surround
sound extraordinarily inaccessible. The
It plays SACD. It plays
CD too. It could even
be the player you’ve
been waiting for.
digital output will feed you a Red Book
data stream, but it will not give you access
to the SACD info, which means you
can’t have surround sound unless you
own a preamplifier, integrated amplifier
or receiver with at least one six-channel
input. Yes, they make such things now,
and some of them are even quite good.
A lot of audiophiles, however, have been
known to express the view that if God
had mean us to have 5.1 channels, He
would have given us more ears. Forgive
us if we choose to avoid getting into
theological arguments.
By the way, the demo disc included
with the Shanling does have several
multichannel tracks. Go figure.
The SCD-T200 has several options
besides the ones already mentioned. It
can upsample CD sound into SACD territory, for one thing. The older machine
also did that, and we disagreed as to the
value, if any, added by such juggling. And
it has buttons on both the top panel and
the remote that allow you to play the CD
layer on a hybrid SACD. Unfortunately,
on some discs the Shanling went right
to the CD layer instead of the higher
resolution layer. There are front panel
lights showing which layer is being
was Soft Lights and Sweet Music from
Margie Gibson’s Say It With Music disc.
The song opens with an introduction
by the piano, which sounded very good,
if not quite as subtle and refined as
with the Linn. Gibson’s voice still gave
us goosebumps as she slid among the
notes. She was very much present in
the room with us. Most players give her
“S” sounds a little too much emphasis,
and the Shanling did that too. Still, we
were pleased with what we heard. “It’s
honorable,” suggested Gerard, smiling,
and we all laughed.
So far so good. Now for its talents as
an SACD player.
Sorry, but here comes the Latin
again. Check out the complete print
issue, which can be ordered on line.
Gerard was a little less pleased,
findi
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si.
dunt ipit, quisi.
37
Listening Room
played, and we wished they weren’t the
same color. By the way, you can’t change
between CD and SACD on the fly. The
player has to stop, get its bearings, and
relaunch the track. This is true of all
SACD players.
Our machine was brand new, and we
gave it about 100 hours of run-in time
before installing it in our Alpha system,
alongside our reference, the much more
expensive Linn Unidisk 1.1 also reviewed
in this issue. We then began the session
with a set of regular Red Book CDs. The
reason: we think most audiophiles will
be reluctant to spend the money for this
player unless it can do itself credit with
the discs that make up the bulk of their
collections. So how good a CD player is
it?
The first selection was Norman
Dello Joio’s Fantasy on a Theme of Haydn
(Klavier K11138), an unusually wellrecorded CD with impressive brass
and percussive effects. The opening
tympani salvo didn’t quite push us back
in our chairs the way it did on the Linn
player, but it had plenty of power all the
same. Everything was a bit reduced,
with the woodwinds less realistic, and
notably with less energy in the lower
midrange. On the other hand we heard
neither shrillness nor confusion. “This
wouldn’t be too different from what our
old reference player would have done,”
said Gerard.
We continued with an old favorite,
Now the Green Blade Riseth (Proprius
PRCD9093), an exceptional choral
recording that can turn nasty in the
wrong hands. It didn’t. It began well,
with the solo flute especially attractive.
The female choral voices were smooth
and attractive as well, with the single
exception of rather prominent (but
happily undistorted) “S” sounds. We
had some doubts about the bottom end.
Certainly it wasn’t thin, as it often is with
inadequate CD players, but male voices
had somewhat less body. Both the string
bass and the organ in the fi nale suffered
somewhat as well.
Despite that, we were willing to give
the Shanling good marks, aware as we
were that our Linn player is a tough act
to follow. “It’s an honorable result” said
Albert.
Our third and fi nal CD selection
Listening Room
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doloreet nos ea adio ea aut ilis elit, sed iusto consenisl dunt ullandre tat prat,
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nosto coreet lor sustrud duissismod tateSumming it up…
at aliquatuero.
Brand/model: Shanling SCD-T200
Mincillandre vel ipismod min eugiam Price: C$3499/US$2695
volestis nos nim esto dit laor sim ad Dimensions: 43 x 30 x14.5 cm
tat, cor in ut irit adit in vulla feummod Most liked: Very good performance
olorem aut at. Putat nis augiat. Ugait nos on both kinds of discs
augait velestie faciduis nummy nonsed Least liked: No provision for
del il enisisi sciduipsum alit atumsandit multichannel
nosto coreet lor sustrud duissismod tatevullaor eratummy nim volessectet num Verdict: Take away the SACD
el ut dolorero conullaore diatum iurem capability, and it’s still a contender
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tions.
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—Albert Simon
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PDF ), a
next few years, you might as well scratch have a grasp on the future, that you
cannend you ca Comparing this player to our reference,
n order
on linesome imperfections, but
this unit off your list right now. And if you joy your CD collection with a marked im- I certainly noted
Lookin
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CD? Ne
ed adv
ice?
CROSSTALK
also need to have it play movies, this is not
the player for you either.
But there’s another possibility. Perhaps
you’re looking for a reasonably good modern player for your (possibly) vast CD collection, and yet you’re thinking that you
want to be ready for any future deluge of
Super Audio recordings. Here’s a player
that will do justice to those superior discs,
and will possibly play CDs better than your
present player can.
As if that weren’t enough, it can look
38
provement over previous generation players, while already nibbling at the edges of
the coming SACD harvest.
You can probably find other CD players
with that special definition and excellent
rendition of voices, with bass as solid and
midrange as sweet, but with this one you
can just replace your CD that just played
with an SACD, and without a blink this
player will leap forward in quality and let
you hear the wonderful sound of things to
come.
they are slight enough not to affect musicality. There is a bit of restraint in the lower
frequencies, and also a touch of sibilance in
vocal passages.
On the other hand, I can talk about a
good image, interesting depth, and an excellent dynamic range. What I think makes
it especially appealing is its ability to reproduce a multitude of details and the remarkable energy with all music. It got me totally
involved.
—Reine Lessard
S
mall speakers are often better
than big speakers, but what
you should know about this
tall loudspeaker from the Belgian company Equation is that this is
its small speaker. Actually, there is a
slightly smaller one (the model 7) but
even it’s tall. Want a mini-monitor? See
somebody else.
However the imposing cabinet can’t
hide the fact that it is not one of those
huge speakers that could fi ll a meeting hall. It is a two-way speaker, with
an 18 cm woofer cone, not enough to
give you bragging rights in the locker
room. The cone’s grey color suggests
polyethylene, though in fact it is an alloy
of magnesium and titanium. The highs
are provided by a German-made ceramic
A contender for one
of our reference
systems, and you
know what? It nearly
made it.
39
Listening Room
Equation 25 MkII
tweeter. The series crossover requires
only a single pair of binding posts, which
are from WBT.
If the components suggest luxury,
so does the cabinetry. No lightweight
stuff here. Each speaker weighs close to
50 kg, though it is considerably lighter
once you remove the grille unit (the
speakers is designed to sound best with
it in place, however). The remarkable
finish on ours was what is described as
“pinched maple,” whose distinctive dots
are the result of an insect parasite.
The Equations arrived at a propitious
time: we were searching for a speaker
to replace our long-time Alpha reference, the 3a MS5. The sheer size of the
speakers gave us pause, but even a casual
listen revealed that there was magic
coming from those big boxes. We knew
what we wanted from our new reference
speakers, and we knew we were hearing
it. Perhaps…
But a lot of listening was needed
before we could arrive at what would
have to be an anonymous decision.
We had been warned that the ceramic
tweeter would require a lot of breakin
time. We interpreted that to mean some
200 hours, and then we proceeded to our
first listening session.
We started with the LP version of
Façade, William Walton’s remarkable
tone poem, which has so many solo
instruments that it could serve as a test
all by itself. We listened eagerly for the
piccolo in the opening tableau, since it
sounds shrill on all but a very few speakers, and it is very shrill on our reference.
Alas, it was sharper than it should be
on the Equations too, with the soloist
seeming to take five giant steps toward
us as he moved up the scale.
But there was good news to report
as well. After its solo trills, the piccolo
continues to play behind the clarinet,
where it is completely hidden on nearly
all speakers. Not on the Equations.
“There’s more of the piccolo," said
Reine, “There’s more of the bassoon
too.”
Indeed, nearly all of the instruments
were admirably rendered, but it was the
interplay of them all that was especially
thrilling. This highly accessible but
modern musical suite is full of surprising
dissonances, complex counterpoints and
Listening Room
ironic twists. The Equations seemed to
understand it all.
The music was helped by the fi ne
detail emerging from the Equations.
We could hear way, way back to the
rear of the hall, and the fi nesse of the
reproduction also gave plausibility to the
instrumental timbres. “Even the snare
drum manages to sound lyrical,” said
Gerard.
We continued with Gossamer from
Amanda McBroom’s West of Oz directcut album. “It’s just as you said about
the snare drum,” said Albert. “Even
the percussion is musical” As for the
singer, she was like a spectre emerging
from the shadows and walking toward
us. Eerie…and wonderful at the same
time.
Another of our recordings demonstrates dramatically how much raw
acoustic energy can be produced by a
single grand piano. Chopin’s Scherzo
No. 2 (on an RCA Japan direct-cut LP)
can sound startlingly realistic, and that’s
how the Equations made it sound. “You
can follow all those tiny little notes in
among the powerful chords,” said Reine,
who plays Chopin herself and knows
this piece well. “If he were here in the
room, this is exactly what you’d hear.”
The others two nodded in agreement.
We know that what most people identify
as “clarity” can actually be an artificial
hardness, but that wasn’t the case here.
Can the Equations rock?
In a room like the one our Alpha
system is in, they sure can. We slipped
the original pressing of Pink Floyd’s Dark
Side of the Moon onto our Audiomeca J-1
turntable, to determine how the speakers
handle power.
You may recall that using this recording has in the past shown up limitations
in our previous reference speakers, the
3a MS5’s. Though the 3a’s are matchless
in reproducing deep bass and impact,
they are less convincing in the midrange,
where the top layer of music hides the
40
other layers…and Lord knows there are
lots of layers on that famous recording!
We had heard how the Living Voice
speakers could “peel back” the layers
so we could hear what was underneath.
The Equations are good at this too. A
lot happens back there, and not much of
it remained a mystery.
This recording also contains plenty
of powerful bass, some (though not all)
of it from synthetizers. It’s easy for that
stuff to take on an artificial “hi-fi” character, or even to boom like an empty beer
barrel. The percussion did not have the
sheet impact it had with the 3a speakers,
but it certainly wasn’t thin, nor was it
anemic. The sound was spacious, full,
and even vast, seeming to extend way
beyond the room’s physical boundaries.
Reine appreciated the voice effects
for their clarity. Gerard found the voices
a little too bright, and even surprisingly
sibilant, but the overall effect was…well,
impressive!
Switching from the turntable to
our CD player, we listened to the celebrated Stravinsky Firebird on Reference
Recordings. We figured the Equations
would handle the finale all right, including that now legendary bass drum, but
what we wondered was whether it could
render the ethereal magic of the soft
passages.
It could, and it did. We held our
Summing it up…
Brand/model: Equation 25 MkII
Price: C$9790/US$7390
Sensitivity: 89 dB
Impedance: 7.2 ohms
Most liked: Clarity and magic
Least liked: Dynamic limits greater
than the size would suggest
Verdict: Give it the right-sized room,
and expect great things
breaths during the sequence that sees
the Firebird rise up from its ashes. “You
can see the bird,” said Reine.
We ended the session with Karina
Gauvin’s astonishing Alleluia from
her Analekta CD of Vivaldi motets
(FL 2 3099). There wasn’t much to say,
beyond the long-known fact that Gauvin
has an awesome voice (in the true sense
of that overused word). The Tafelmusik
orchestra sounded majestic. A lbert
thought that the height of the speakers
helped Gauvin sound as though she were
in the room rather than shut into a little
box.
By now you know that finally we did
not select the Equations as a new reference. They are, finally, too large for our
room. What’s more, this is a room with
a dormer window, which means the top
part of the outer wall is canted. The
ceramic tweeter in the tall Equation
was rather close to that canted wall.
Indeed, the height of the speakers kept
us from placing them the way we would
have liked. We brought back the Living
Voice speakers, and we were unanimous:
the Equations are very good, but they
weren’t quite right for the room.
But how would they do in a larger
room? “You know,” said Albert, “if we
hadn’t been considering them as a possible Alpha reference, we never would
have brought them into this room.
We really need to listen to them in the
Omega room. They’ll be more at ease
there.”
Not quite, as it turned out. If the
A lpha room is small for them, the
Omega room is a little on the large side
(about 4.9 x 10 meters, with 3 m ceiling).
For the fi nal session we pulled out
three SACDs, which we ran through our
Linn Unidisk player. The first selection
was Needed Time from Eric Bibb’s Spirit
and the Blues (Opus 3 CD19411). The
Equations did well, though with a bit
less bottom end than our Reference 3a
Suprema speakers. “These are tough
speakers to beat,” mused Reine. Still,
the Equations, at about half the price,
did not disgrace themselves.
They did less well with Beethoven’s
Symphony No. 5 (Pentatone 5186 102).
Through our own speakers this disc
came awesomely close to yielding the
impression we had bought expensive
seats in a good hall. We were surprised
to hear the Equations straining to fill the
space. Yet the reason was clear: despite
their generous cabinet size, these are
two-way speakers, better suited to rooms
perhaps half the size of ours. Or perhaps
to more reasonable levels. Or perhaps to
sources with less energy.
We ended with a jazz piece, Comes
Love, from the SACD version of Opus 3’s
Showcase (CD21000). This is a number
that stops conversations whenever we
play it for visitors. How would the Equations handle it?
Not perfectly in fact. Once again we
could hear that the speakers would have
preferred a smaller room. What’s more,
the clarinet in the left channel didn’t
sound like the real thing. “Is there a
phase error?” Gerard wondered. “Let’s
get a look at the results of the technical
tests.”
Sure enough, the 100 Hz square
wave (shown in the middle graph on the
previous page) didn’t look quite right,
with a doubling of the vertical riser that
suggests that the signals from the woofer
and tweeter are not arriving together.
But if that’s the case, why did we not hear
the effect in the Alpha room? Could it be
that the superior resolution of our SACD
player (which we had not used in the
earlier test) was showing up artifacts that
had not been evident before? Yet, the
earlier test had been done in part with
LPs, not exactly a slam dunk either.
The Equations did well on the other
tests. The trace at the extreme left shows
a 37 Hz sine wave, looking much cleaner
than we are used to seeing at this very
low frequency. Overall response (shown
at right) is generally excellent, with only
two notable dips, one at 600 Hz, and the
other an octave up at 1200 Hz.
Clearly, these speakers are made by
people who don’t follow the usual rules.
Speakers this big, the rules say, have to
be able to play loud enough to fi ll an
amphitheatre. They need more drivers.
They need to accommodate biwiring.
They have to be made to sound best
with the grilles off. That’s not the way
the Equation designers see things.
To tell you the truth, we never cared
much for those rules either. But what we
heard from these unusual speakers was
very good at worst, thrilling at best.
Though they didn’t make it into our
reference system, it would be easy to rate
them as reference quality.
CROSSTALK
can form an opinion, and with your music
too. The key words, in this case, are: you’ll
have to hear them. They do possess a unique
personality worth discovering.
—Albert Simon
Before me is a pair of tall, svelte, elegant
speakers. Impressive, in short.
The first sounds to reach my ears charm
me by their exemplary clarity, the way sound
spreads out in every dimension. But my pleasure doesn’t stop there. I feel as though the
musicians and singers are right there, before
me. On every recording, impact is striking,
and rhythm is flawless. A thousand modulations and inflections take me by surprise, as
does a bevy of other, subtle, effects that lesser
speakers could never reproduce.
On human voice, to select an example,
you don’t just divine a musician’s sensitivity,
you can actually feel it. Timbres are so gorgeous they make your spine tingle. Percussion is incisive, and that is especially true of
the snare drum, which came and touched me
with a power that is all too rare.
I must also praise the exceptional midrange. These advantages help compensate a
hint of brightness on a violin or a piccolo that
has wandered into the upper registers. Too
bad for them! I must admit my ear is rather
sensitive to those high notes, but it isn’t on
all recordings that the problem even exists.
I’d have to add that, following the sessions in two different rooms, it seems evident
that they would be at their peak performance
in an average-sized room.
—Reine Lessard
I suppose I need hardly mention that
these speakers are not for everyone, or rather
not for every room. Small rooms will make
them sound overly bright. Very big rooms
will make them work harder than they really
want to.
But oh, the way they could sound in
those in-between rooms, the sort most
people have! The bottom end is clean and
full, drawing maximum advantage of that
large cabinet. The top end can be sweet and
limpid, and the midrange can delight you
with its transparency.
Lots of speakers can do that, of course.
What makes a great speaker is what appears
to be magic: music that somehow seems
greater than the sonic elements that make
it up. In the right room, the Equations have
it.
—Gerard Rejskind
41
Listening Room
The first time I heard music through
these speakers, one word came to my mind:
refinement. I think it was the wealth of
details that appeared, or it could have been
the delicate treatment each sound seemed
to receive — including the numerous nonmusical sounds which helped locate the
performers in space. There was depth well
beyond what I had expected.
I have since discovered they are finicky
too. Expecting the best, I was surprised
to hear them treat some voices and large
orchestral textures with a certain amount
of hardness, especially when they reached
a higher pitch. And then, unexpectedly,
the next piece sounded just fine, and I was
impressed again with their ability to reveal
the finest details, creating a firm image and
uncovering the depth of the stage on which
the recording took place. Their height is a
definite advantage, especially if you prefer
to hear singers and musicians standing tall
and proud.
My feeling is that they seem to be
extremely sensitive to the rest of the audio
components they are linked to. They have
the potential to be truly great speakers but
you’ll have to hear them with audio equipment that closely matches yours before you
Listening Room
Reference 3a Royal Virtuoso
W
e just look at this speaker,
and already it seems
familiar. Our Omega
reference system uses
Reference 3a’s Suprema speakers. This
new model looks for all the world like the
top part of the Suprema, lacking only the
subwoofer base.
On the other hand, it also looks like
the company’s MM De Capo (see UHF
No, 67), which costs about half the price.
The natural question for a wary shopper
to ask is whether the extra money is just
for the fancy Corian fi nish, and possibly
for the chromed road cases the speakers
come in?
The answer to that question, we may
as well tell you right off, is no. Despite
the evident similarities, this is a different
speaker, and its performance is pretty
much in line with its price. But let’s begin
at the beginning.
The first version of this speaker was
developed some 15 years ago in France
by Daniel Dehay for a then-inexpensive
42
model known as the MM (which stood
for Mini Monitor). Simplicity was its
hallmark. The cabinet was small —
though not as small as it looked in
pictures — and could therefore be made
rigid. The front was canted forward,
partly to reduce the formation of internal
standing waves, and partly to compensate for time differences between the
two drivers. The woofer was relatively
large and therefore robust, but its cone
was made from light materials (namely
carbon fibre) so that it could move and
stop fast. The crossover network was
reduced to the absolute basics: a single
series capacitor (split into two capacitors
in the modern version) to keep low-frequency signals from blowing the tweeter.
The woofer was direct-coupled to the
A renewed version of
an old favorite. And
we do mean favorite!
amplifier, with nothing in between but
cable.
The original MM had astonishing
performance, with dynamic and even
explosive performance, and bottomend flowthrough that actually caused
some show visitors to accuse Dehay of
having concealed a subwoofer behind a
curtain.
Years passed. Dehay’s company was
sold to Spanish interests, which didn’t
make a go of it. He started his new company (actually his third), Reference 3a, in
Switzerland. It was there he designed the
Suprema speaker we use in our Omega
system. The top part of the Suprema
looked rather like the MM, though its
performance was in a totally different
category. Looks ain’t everything.
When Dehay retired, the company
became Canadian. It relaunched the
Mini Monitor as the MM De Capo. And
now the Royal Virtuoso appears to be
a resurrection of the Suprema…less its
subwoofer base.
The Royal Virtuosos…well, we’d like
to tell you how they did, and if you check
out our print issue we will.
We now return to our regular Latin
text!
si.
dunt ipit, quisi.
si.
wisi.
43
Listening Room
W hat determines the price of a
speaker? The two major factors are the
materials and the labor. The Reference 3a’s distinctive (and once unique)
carbon woofer is hand-built. The central
“phase plug” (which reduces cancellation
of signals from different sides of the
cone) is also hand-crafted. The tweeter is
individually matched to the woofer after
each has had 72 hours of burn-in. The
cabinet is even more rigid than the original, with Dupont’s synthetic marble-like
Corian all around (our Supremas had
Corian sides). The internals have been
further braced, with a damper called a
Vibra-Puck behind the woofer. Internal
wiring is from Van den Hul.
The Cardas connectors work well
only if your cables have spades. The
instruction manual refers to “binding
posts,” and the company’s Web site
shows the speaker with what resemble
WBT posts. Because our cables have
bananas, we used a set of Prisma goldplated spades as adapters. Not ideal.
The company recommends not
toeing in the speakers. In a departure
from common practice, the Royal Virtuosos are meant to be placed with the
tweeters displaced toward the outside,
rather than the inside as one would
assume.
Despite the claim of 72 hours of burnin at the factory, we gave our speakers as
much time again, before placing them
on our Foundation stands and listening to them in our Alpha system. The
61 cm (24") height of the stands is about
right for the Royal Virtuosos, which are
slanted up toward the listener.
We opened the session with some
LPs, starting with a frequent favorite,
William Walton’s Façade (RR-16). Not
only do its shifting tableaux include
a lot of different solo instruments,
but its explosive introduction, which
includes a cymbal, snare drum and piccolo, is enough to make most speakers
stumble.
doloreriure tat.
autat.
at aliquatuero.
autat.
Summing it up…
Brand/model: Reference 3a Royal
Virtuoso
Price: C$5600/US$4000
Sensitivity: 92 dB
Impedance: 8 ohms
Most liked: Borem zzriuscipsum
dionsenim zzriliq uamconulla consed
dolor sendreros nostrud tet alis
augiam dolummy nostrud mod modo
exerius cillut vel duismod ming eros
nullupt.
at aliquatuero.
autat.
at aliquatuero.
duismod ming eros.
Listening Room
CROSSTALK
Faccum eugiat, voloborero eugue veliqui tet, sim velendreet loborem dolortis
dunt laor inis digna feugiat. Em ad molore
dolorem velit wisl dolese do exeriustrud eros
ea commodit ip eugait luptat nibh endre do
conullaore estie magniat. Adio od tem del
dio dit ad eu faciduipit adiamet dolesequat
lor sit ad dolorpe rostie mod dio odiamet
umsandre tem dolorer susci blandrem iril
utet et velenim nonsectet, verit laor sustrud
dolorero duis accumsan vel utat, venit landips ustrud eu feuisci blan ulput velit luptatet
aute del ea feum vel utpat. Ut lore commy
nulla faciduisi.
Patue euismolorem ad te consequat
lumsan vulla at lor se feum il etum iusci
blaore modolenim dolor ad dolutpat, commodolorem quatum zzrit wis nim at alit at
adiamco nulluptat. Ut lore do enisl exeros
del esto ex ea core tisit vel dolese faciliquate
veliquisci tion ea cor autatem dipit aute
feum aut ad tincipit utat luptat illuptat, qui
te tatinci psummy nulputatio ex et iriurero
core velisse quiscidunt am quipit vulla facilit
landre consed magna augue molor il ero del
utpat utpat la feugait lutet niamet wisi.
44
Wis eu feu faccum zzrillaore do dolent
aciduipit lobore commolut augue magnismod modolen.
—Reine Lessard
ad tincipit utat luptat illuptat, qui te tatinci
psummy nulputatio ex et iriurero core velisse
quiscidunt am quipit vulla facilit.
—Albert Simon
Faccum eugiat, voloborero eugue veliqui tet, sim velendreet loborem dolortis
dunt laor inis digna feugiat. Em ad molore
dolorem velit wisl dolese do exeriustrud eros
ea commodit ip eugait luptat nibh endre do
conullaore estie magniat. Adio od tem del
dio dit ad eu faciduipit adiamet dolesequat
lor sit ad dolorpe rostie mod dio odiamet
umsandre tem dolorer susci blandrem iril
utet et velenim nonsectet, verit laor sustrud
dolorero duis accumsan vel utat, venit landips ustrud eu feuisci blan ulput velit luptatet
aute del ea feum vel utpat. Ut lore commy
nulla faciduisi.
Patue euismolorem ad te consequat
lumsan vulla at lor se feum il etum iusci
blaore modolenim dolor ad dolutpat, commodolorem quatum zzrit wis nim at alit at
adiamco nulluptat. Ut lore do enisl exeros del
esto ex ea core tisit vel dolese faciliquate veliquisci tion ea cor autatem dipit aute feum aut
Wis eu feu faccum zzrillaore do dolent
aciduipit lobore commolut augue magnismod modolen iamconsed eniatumsan
hendreet nulla feummod dolorer sit in utpat
lum dolessed te tat, sequat lortis dolorper
in hendrem nos at vulputpatem alit lutatie
magnisl dolore te do eum volestin hendipi
smolutatum veliquisl ullamet volore tis et
nulla faccum venis adit, sequipis at, sim
volorer augiam.
Erillam, velenit nim eugiat, con eraesse
te conummy nosto et, qui tat prat ip el el do
do doloborem zzrilis dolobore vel il ullumsan
eu facil enisi.
Aliquam etuerit ulla faccumsan elestrud
minci blandre miniamconse vulla adit at irit
acilit diam ipis dit, consequ ismolobortio
consequipit vero commy nullamet pratie
volore feu feugait. non henibh etuero consed
dionse
—Gerard Rejskind
Wilson Benesch Curve
and it is self-damping (it will not store
energy for a long period, nor release it
at audible frequencies).
And carbon fibre is finding its way
into a lot of modern products. Race cars
use carbon fibre parts, as do some road
cars, notably the Jaguar XKR. Motorcycle panels and entire bicycle frames
can be made of carbon. So are photo
tripods, fishing rods, sailing masts,
flutes, violin bows, pens and battery
plates. The tail of the Airbus A380 is
made from carbon fibre, and there is a
radar-proof carbon stealth yacht on the
drawing boards. Rumors have it Apple
will make the next Mac PowerBook from
Diamonds are made
from carbon. So are
these loudspeakers.
45
Listening Room
W
e recall hearing a pair of
Wilson Benesch speakers some years ago at the
Montreal show, and it
was the sort of experience that one talks
about after: “Have you heard the…”
This British company was originally
known for turntables, not speakers. One
aspect of its turntables that had grabbed
everyone’s attention was the tone arm.
It wasn’t steel, or aluminum, or even
titanium, it was made from carbon fibre.
Truth to tell, Wilson Benesch was not
alone in having figured out the advantages of carbon.
Carbon is of course the building
block of terrestrial life. It can also take
on other forms, from coal to diamonds.
It offers a rich portfolio of attractive
qualities. It is light (in the sense that for
a given volume it has low mass), it can
be made very rigid despite its low mass,
the stuff. Architect Peter Testa even
wants to build an entire skyscraper from
carbon fibre.
Of course the material has been
incorporated into high end audio products too. Tone arms aside, a number
of manufacturers use woofer cones of
woven carbon fibres, including another
speaker reviewed in this issue. And you’ll
recall that Van den Hul brought out an
entire line or audio cables using carbon
fibre instead of metal.
The Wilson Benesch Curve uses
this miracle material in two ways. Both
its midrange driver and its woofer have
cones made of woven carbon fibre. The
two drivers are the same diameter,
17 mm, but the weave is coarser on the
woofer than on the midrange. And then
the cabinet’s structure is shaped from a
carbon fibre matrix imbedded in epoxy.
In this composite form, it is five times
stronger than steel, weight for weight.
The Curve’s tweeter uses a silk dome,
with a 2nd order crossover between it
and the midrange. A gentler first-order
crossover separates woofer and midrange. Crossover frequencies are not
stated. The crossover uses polypropylene
capacitors, and air-core inductors that
are not prone to saturation.
The speaker is certainly handsome.
It might be easy to tip over were it not
for the cast aluminum base which is permanently fastened to the speaker body.
The spikes themselves are gorgeously
machined, with knurled knobs to make
them easy to adjust from the top. The
locking nuts can then be tightened with
the supplied wrench.
Because the Curves are of manageable size, it seemed possible to try them
within the reduced confines of our Alpha
room, and that’s what we did first.
We began with one of our favorite
test LPs, William Walton’s Façade, and
we wondered whether we might have
made a mistake bringing the Curves
here. The piccolo in the introduction
was shrill, but we’ve learned to tolerate
that, at least if what follows is worth
waiting for. And it was…to an extent.
The amount of detail the Curves dug out
was impressive, and Walton’s intricate
counterpoints came out beautifully. So
why weren’t we happy? “The impression
it leaves me,” said Albert, “was that they
have a certain liveliness, but a total lack one thing, they have the dynamic capaof warmth.”
bility even for this very large room, and
We moved to a second LP, with a at no time did we hear the Curves sound
female voice, Mary Black’s No Frontiers. as though they were straining. They
Something still wasn’t right. The rich- had clean and nearly endless punch.
ness of detail was breathtaking, and the They still didn’t sound right when we
song’s message came through well, but positioned them the way we run our
Black’s voice was hard and cold. Yes, Suprema reference speaker, but a little
e s so the bongos and the other percussion experimentation allowed us to findgsthe
and acc
n
i
d
r
o pulled
instruments were gratifyingly lifelike, sweet spot, nearerfthe
wall.
We then returned to the Façade
g recWe
o ferin
s
e
r
o
t
s
t
but there had to be more. Should we out some
LPs
and
other
recordings,
and
recording
that had largely disappointed
s
o
m
l i ke
estthe smaller Alpha room. It was still
r bin
change the speaker placement?U H F, and u n
listened again.
us
u
o
o
t
gest it
ice of
We began with The
Song
We tried, but
e.
ser vdimensions
n’t sofugBernadette brighter than we would have liked, but
ld
encand
r
u
e
o
It’s athe
f
f
w
i
d
e
ha s a
Jennifer
shape of the room
ed. If wWarnes’ celebrated LP both Reine and Gerard found positive
ries, itdon’t give us a lot ecfrom
mmend
o
r
s
e
of possibilities, and nothing we
tried of Leonard Cohen songs, Famous Blue aspects. The counterpoint between the
n it com est it to you.
ing idecided
hand
t
g Raincoat. This wonderful recording can flute and the clarinet was breathtaking,
helped. We gave
up,
y
r
ugto
e
s
v
’t
E
won
e
w
,
s
schedule another
with the easily turn shrill, and that was what it and the recording’s sly humor came
d
f riensession
Curves…in the much larger Omega did. Warnes’ voice was hard, the highs through unimpeded. “I got right into
rather too prominent. One good mark the music,” said Reine. Albert was less
room this time.
And we quickly concluded that this came from Reine, who preferred the way happy. “It’s like reading a book in which
was where these speakers belonged. For that the Curves reproduced the piano.
somebody has underlined all the interesting passages.”
We turned to our SACD player, and
slipped on the second last movement of
Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 (Pentatone 5186 107). We quickly realized we
had been wrong to suppose, after the
brief session in the Alpha room, that
the Curve might be weak in the extreme
bass. On the contrary, the lower strings
and the tympany were startlingly realistic even at very loud level. There was not
a trace of the annoying low-end “bloom”
we often hear, the result of cabinets
storing energy and smearing what comes
after. One result was that the rhythm of
this agitated symphonic movement was
quick and unimpeded. Nor were we able
to venture anywhere near the speakers’
dynamic limits, short of risking structural damage to the building.
Yet the lower midrange remained too
discreet, we judged, robbing the music of
its warmth. The brass was impressive in
its power, though with some sharp edges.
We would have liked more substantial
lower midrange, if we could have had it
without also getting the opaque muck
that speakers with lesser enclosures
contribute.
We were nervous about trying our
Listening Room
ore
t
S
e
l
iophi
d
u
A
T he
y
b
p
Dro
46
INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED
AUSTRALIA
•
AUSTRIA
•
BELGIUM
•
CANADA
•
CHINA
•
CROATIA
•
FRANCE
•
GREECE • HOLLAND • HONG KONG • ITALY • INDONESIA • LATVIA • LUXEMBOURG • NORWAY
SWEDEN
•
SWITZERLAND
•
TAIWAN
•
THAILAND
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UNITED
KINGDOM
GERMANY
• RUSSIA
•
USA
choral recording, Now the Green Blade was little sign of distortion. Individual despite the quick and deep bottom end.
Riseth (Proprius PRCD9093), but we sounds were pure and gorgeous. “It was The bottleneck guitar sounded changed,
need not have been. The flute in the worth listening this far,” commented as well, but there was nothing going on
opening passage was somewhat shriller Reine.
that escaped our ears!
than with our reference speakers, but the
We ended the session by returning to
Then it was off to the lab. We wonfemale and male voices were a revelation. our SACD player, and Eric Bibb’s Needed dered whether the frequency response
We have heard this fi ne recording turn Time (Opus 3 CD19411). We were happy curve, measured in our Alpha room,
to annoying mush with some surpris- with what we heard. The high resolution would show an imbalance. It didn’t,
ingly expensive systems (“I’m going to version of this recording is loaded with though curiously Wilson Benesch’s
start taking it with me to shows,” said fi ne details, and the Curves reproduced own graph (the blue one below ours)
Gerard), probably because so many them meticulously. The clarity made the does show lower midrange rather below
speakers and amplifiers can’t handle its song’s text all but telepathic.
the top end. On the other hand, we did
quick dynamic peaks. Once again, the
Of course, the recording didn’t confirm that the speaker can handle
Curves showed that powerful signals really sound the way it did with our lows with little effort. The photo at left
are no challenge at all. We had little reference speakers. Bibb’s voice was a on page 46, shows a 40 Hz tone at our
difficulty distinguishing the individual little brighter, and a little thinner too, reference level!
Then again, the second photo on the
voices, always a good sign. Only the final
same page shows a 220 Hz tone. The
crescendo was…well, hard. It often is, to
Summing it up…
roughness, which was intermittent, is
be fair.
probably caused by a problem with an
Back to the turntable for The Secret of
the Andes, whose dazzling succession of Brand/model: Wilson Benesch Curve internal connection.
exotic percussion instruments is a tough Price: C$11,000
The square wave (the third photo) is
test of the rigidity of a speaker enclosure. Dimensions: 91 x 23 x 37 cm
not bad, though the phase doesn’t look
Would the Curves pass the test?
Sensitivity: 88 dB
quite spot on.
Well of course they would, but we Impedance: 6 ohms, 4 ohms miniWilson Benesch has gone to a good
were pleasantly surprised to note that mum
deal of trouble and expense to slay the
their competence extended to far more Most liked: Brilliant design, brilliant
age-old dragon of cabinet resonance. It
than just the percussion. Everything at results
has been successful, too, and we were
the very bottom end, including the left Least liked: Perhaps a tad too brilliant left with the feeling that a little more
hand piano chords, was superb, with Verdict: A potential giant-killer, still
tweaking would have brought up some
e ways. in training
cept ional
power, control andLquickness.
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such searing
other less desirable traits.S“It’s
ca highs? The spectral without going all the way over to constio oua matter of through
tors as well, be
dist ribubalance
and about
rs me,
taste,” an audiophile once tu
said
is imperiled, with a lower midrange pated, as with some other speakers I could
reto
fer en t
f
i
d
e
r
a
s
e v iew
Why UHF r
Listening Room
CROSSTALK
some other speakers. I don’t think so. Check
what your system needs, not your taste.
—Albert Simon
I found some excellent qualities in these
elegant speakers. The image is good, the
lateral space generous, the depth excellent.
The bottom end is at once solid and ample.
48
that seems nearly absent. It’s really too
bad, and I’m convinced the designer could
fix this. That would be enough to tip the
Curves from their nearly perfect score to
outright perfection.
—Reine Lessard
I’m perplexed by these speakers. I lis-
name. The detail is superb. Only I always
had the feeling the speakers were never
quite placed right, or that they weren’t suited to the room.
We tried. Perhaps they’ll deliver their
exciting promise in your room. We couldn’t
get what we wanted in either of ours.
—Gerard Rejskind
muRata Super Tweeters
D
our Omega system and dug out some
SACDs.
What we heard left us with our
mouths agape!
We began with a selection we had
used several times in the current tests,
Needed Time from Eric Bibb’s Spirit and
the Blues (Opus 3 CD19411). At first all
three of us wondered whether we were
letting our imaginations run away with
us…had we really heard more things with
the muRatas connected? We listened
again, without and with. No, there really
was a change, and it was neither noise nor
distortion.
So what was it? “A little something
extra,” was all Gerard could come up
with. Reine and Albert pointed to extra
little guitar notes and percussive effects
that were all but hidden until we connected the tweeters. We’re not talking
major transformation, but perhaps a
pleasant addition to an already outstanding system.
We continued with another piece
we had heard several times lately, Comes
Love from Opus 3’s Showcase SACD
(CD21000). All three of us noted — still
Speakers that take
up where your ears
leave off.
49
Listening Room
oes f requenc y response
matter, even if we’re talking
about response above and
beyond where your ears
leave off? That question has been discussed a lot. It was back in the 50’s that
a study was done with subjects unable
to hear above 18 kHz, seeming to show
that they could sense if frequencies above
20 kHz were filtered out. Of course, we
know filters are never inaudible, so…
But interestingly enough, CD players
do filter out everything beyond 20 kHz.
Of course, SACD and DVD-A players
don’t (and neither do turntables for that
matter). Is there something up there to
reproduce?
The muRata company thinks the
answer is yes. These gorgeous ES103
piezoelectric ceramic super tweeters,
which look as though they’ve just been
unbolted from the wing of a jumbo jet,
are meant to start where many an ear
leaves off, namely at 15 kHz. No crossover network needed, just plug them
across the regular speakers, and go.
We had some serious doubts about
this. For one thing, how can you build
such a tweeter without knowing the
efficiency of the main speakers? Aren’t
add-on tweeters bound to add noise or
distortion? Well, it wouldn’t hurt to
give them a few minutes, would it? We
put them atop our Suprema speakers in
with some surprise — the enhancement
of several instruments. The clarinet,
already beautifully reproduced had
superior articulation. The piano, notably, no longer sounded quite the same,
and detached itself more clearly from
the foundation laid down by the sax, the
banjo and the sousaphone.
Yes, the effect was subtle, not the
sort of thing you would notice in a noisy
setting such as an audio show (where we
had heard the muRatas more than once).
What’s more, we hadn’t yet spotted any
down side to using these tweeters.
“But I want to hear them with a
female voice,” said Albert. “If it adds any
screechiness or unnatural sibilance, that’s
where we’ll hear it.” Well, we did have a
sealed copy on hand of FIM’s SACD version of Cantate Domino (PRSACD7762).
We selected the Christmas Song (aka
O Holy Night), with its wonderful solo
by soprano Marianne Mellnäs. By the
way, we had actually never heard the CD,
contenting ourselves with the LP. The
SACD transfer compared well.
No, the tweeters added no harshness or noise. Indeed, Albert and Reine
thought they added little to this recording. Gerard disagreed. He thought
Mellnäs’ voice had more of a sheen to it,
though by no means an unpleasant one,
and a superior articulation of the smaller
(and higher) pipes of the organ.
Our conclusion is that we were wrong
to be so offhanded about this product,
relegating it to a brief and final listening
session. But we had no more time before
we put the magazine to bed, and no more
space for a longer report if we had chosen
to prepare one.
Which means the muRata super
tweeters will return in our next issue,
this time with a full-fledged report.
We will try them with a wider variety
of SACDs, and in both of our reference
systems. We will try them with analog
as well, since our high performance
moving coil pickups can easily extend to
65 kHz or more. And we will make some
measurements. We will need to revert
to analog instruments, since our digital
instrument suite stops dead at 20 kHz.
For most systems, this add-on makes
no sense at all. But if your system already
works outstanding well, what then?
More to come…
Listening Room
T
Moon W-5LE
he “LE” designation stands
for Limited Edition, an indication that, after the 250 units
have been built, there won’t
be any more. You might wonder why
we’d bother reviewing an amplifier that
will be built in such small numbers. The
truth is that a lot of high end products
are built in tiny quantities…even if that’s
not the company’s hope. For some high
end manufacturers, making 250 of an
expensive product would indicate nothing less than dangerous overoptimism.
Simaudio, on the other hand, probably
will sell that many.
We are fully familiar with the W-5,
since we have been using one in our
Omega reference system since 1998
(it was reviewed in UHF No. 49). We
have long considered it to be among the
world’s very best high-powered solid
state amplifiers. Still, we knew that
Simaudio had made a lot of upgrades to
it, and we had been thinking it as time
we listened to a newer one. When this
Limited Edition came out, we jumped at
the chance to hear for ourselves what the
Simaudio gang could do with its original
flagship technology.
It looks not unlike our original. It’s
the same size, with the same framelike
handles, though there are no longer
dimples atop to allow stacking. The front
panel is actually thinner, but still solid.
50
The rear panel is identical to that of the
original, but for one welcome change:
the “on” button has been moved around
to the front.
The numbered name plate aside,
the LE version uses some exotic (read:
more expensive) parts, with one effect
being that the claimed power output
now reaches 200 watts per channel. Even
the power cord is better than the usual
molded cord set. Simaudio supplies a
Cardas cord. Curiously, it’s a 16 gauge
cord, one that Cardas itself recommends
for low-current gear, not power amps.
Our amplifier was fresh from the
assembly bench, and though we would
give it plenty of burn-in time before the
review, we couldn’t resist a quick listen. It
sounded superb, with only a minor etching of high end sounds. Within 15 hours,
even that was gone. We pushed on to an
estimated 100 hours before reinstalling
our own W-5 so we could compare. We
pulled out three SACDs, plus an LP.
The fi rst selection was Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (Pentatone
5186 114). We weren’t quite happy with
its sound using the older W-5. The piano
was somewhat less than natural, especially in the powerful left-hand chords
Built for you and 249
lucky others.
at the beginning. The strings had an
attractive sheen, but they didn’t sound
the way they would in a real concert
hall. But that couldn’t be the fault of the
amplifier, could it?
Well…it could, and it was. The new
amplifier lifted a veil from the music, one
we hadn’t really been aware of, we should
stress. The piano took on a far more
natural tone, and it no longer got lost
even during busier orchestral passages.
Not only were the piano chords clearer,
but a number of quick notes from the
right hand emerged for the first time.
The sheen on the strings? Gone.
That much was enough to surprise us,
though we suspect that the differences
would be less dramatic on lesser systems
than our Omega reference.
The W-5LE is very much of a muscle
amplifier, more so than the usual toprated audiophile amplifiers. Organ
music, if it is well recorded, is a challenge
for a power amplifier, and especially for
the capacity of its power supply. We
turned next to Bach’s most famous organ
work, the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor,
found on Opus 3’s Organ Treasures
(CD22031).
The older W-5 rendered this exceptional recording with clarity and brio, but
it was simply outmatched by its younger
descendent. The very low-pitched notes
from the big pipes seemed even deeper,
and leaner too, but it was the higher
notes that surprised us. “With the older
amplifier you could distinguish the different small pipe sets by their position
in the sound field,” said Gerard, “but
with this one you hear all the harmonic
differences among the different sets. And
they’re very melodic even in those top
octave passages.”
Actually, we judged that all aspects of
the music were superior. The increased
clarity let us hear “the notes between the
notes,” as Reine put it. We could also
hear more clearly the space in which this
excellent recording was made.
We wanted to hear a human voice,
and we selected Eric Bibb’s Gospel Blues
song Needed Time (from Spirit and the
Blues, CD19411). The SACD version of
this favorite is eerily natural, but with
the W-5LE it is even more so. It made
the old amplifier sound electronic, and
quite honestly we didn’t think that was
possible. Our W-5 was, after all, one of
the world’s great amplifiers. Yet we could
hear more detail, without the addition
of any unnatural brightness. The lowest
guitar notes were well filled out, which
didn’t slow the rhythm any. Although a
good image can be pretty much taken
for granted in any Opus 3 recording,
the W-5LE added both breadth and
depth to what was before us. “It sounds
almost like a tube amplifier,” commented
Albert.
Our fourth and fi nal recording was
an LP: the Chorus Line suite from the
Dallas Wind Symphony’s impressive
Beachcomber double album (Reference
Recordings RR-62). This is a busy recording, with an endless profusion of brass,
woodwinds, and heavy-duty percussion.
It sounded wonderful with our W-5, and
with the W-5LE, it was…
“It’s as though the clouds have
parted and the sun has come out,” said
Albert. “Listen to the way the brass
shines.” Once again, though, the shine
did not come at the expense of naturalness. Smaller woodwind instruments,
which can easily be buried under the
rest, emerged intact, a testament to the
amplifier’s true transparency. “It doesn’t
leave anything trailing in its wake,” said
Reine. The tympany solo was breathtaking, with the tubular bells especially
impressive.
We then put the W-5LE through
our technical evaluation, and discovered
Summing it up…
Brand/model: Simaudio Moon
W-5LE
Price: C$7800/US$6000
Dimensions: 49 x 48 x 16.5 cm
Power: 200 W/channel into 8 ohms
Most liked: Astonishing clarity, no
“solid state” character
Least liked: Is the “better” power
cord superior enough?
Verdict: In every sense a reference
that you can blow the amplifier’s easilyaccessible 6 ampere fuse…if you make a
wrong move with the volume control. It
isn’t easy, though, and we can’t imagine
doing it in a real-life listening situation.
There’s no spare fuse packed with the
amplifier, though you can fi nd a fuse
that size nearly anywhere, including
garages. An electronic protection circuit
shuts down the amplifier if there is direct
current at the input.
Though the W-5LE can easily be
driven to 200 watts and beyond, ours
clipped around 187 watts over much of
the range. At very low level, where some
gear does nasty stuff, the Simaudio
behaved flawlessly, which made us suspect the limit is the driver stage, not the
output. An occasional noise spike came
from our own test setup. With just the
spectral analyzer connected, the amp’s
noise was down where the trolls live.
The W-5 was an astonishing product
when its trek began. As for W-5LE
amplifier No. 16, it has taken the place of
the original W-5 in our Omega system.
Which leaves you another 249 chances
to get your own. We’d hurry if we were
you.
CROSSTALK
I never thought a power amplifier could
make such a difference in such unexpect-
ed areas. I knew this amp was better than
our reference, and I expected more of the
same quality I have been used to, with some
subtle improvements here and there. More
of an appreciation of refinement, say.
I was not prepared for this level of life
and presence. It seemed as if I had moved
to much better seats in a much better hall.
No loss of trailing sounds, no vagueness, no
blur whatsoever. Everything was precise,
clearly defined in width, height and depth.
It reminded me more of the differences
I’ve noticed with excellent preamps than
with power amps. There was a natural feel
to the music that is hard to describe, where
I found myself thinking less about amplification and more about the beauty of the
music itself.
How do you explain hearing better contrast? I don’t know, but I did. And I don’t
know how I could have heard more sunshine, but it was there.
—Albert Simon
I have no choice but to acknowledge
that Simaudio’s “Renaissance” circuit was
a brilliant innovation. What’s significant is
not just that it produced a wonderful first
amplifier (the W4070, originally reviewed
in UHF No. 37 a dozen years ago), but that
it continues to be used in what may be the
world’s best high-powered solid state amplifier in 2004.
What’s truly significant about the
W-5LE is this. In the case of nearly all solid
state amplifier lines, the small amps sound
better than the big ones. Cascading extra
transistors means making the sound opaque
and a little heavy, not quite natural. That is
not true of the Moon amps, and it never has
been. The W-5 has always sounded superior to the smaller W-3.
Even the first W-5 was one of the world’s
best big amps. That Simaudio has found
this much room to improve it is nothing
short of astonishing.
—Gerard Rejskind
51
Listening Room
Compare the second-generation Moon
W-5 to its latest incarnation? Some challenge!
Well, I was stunned by the differences
in performance. With the new version,
everything is cleaner and clearer. An abundance of detail emerges, and at the risk of
repeating myself I can say that I heard elements I had never noticed before. I can’t say
I had been missing anything, since I hadn’t
known those sounds were there, but after
comparing this amplifier to its ancestor I
can’t settle for less.
It’s at moments like this I realize how
our hearing can refine itself with time,
making us more demanding, to make us
seek ever greater joys.
To add another word would be redundant.
—Reine Lessard
Goldring GR1 Turntable
Listening Room
W
e k now bet ter t ha n
to dismiss what this
British company does.
Years ago, we tested
Goldring’s top phono cartridge, and we
liked it so much we bought it. Today we
own two of them, the now-discontinued
Goldring Excel. Still, building a turntable is a long way from just making a
cartridge.
The turntable looks oddly familiar,
too. Change a few minor details, and it
could be a Rega P2. There’s a reason for
it. Both the table and the arm really are
made by Rega. That makes the eye-popping price seem even more astonishing.
To put it into perspective, last time we
looked the P2 cost some $200 more…and
it comes without a pickup.
The GR1’s plinth is different from
that of the P2, though it is also a solid
block, with rubber feet. Rega’s approach
is not to keep vibration out of the plinth,
but to make the plinth rigid yet too light
to store energy for long. The mount
under the arm, which looks like a Rega
RB250, is also different, made of some
sort of composite rather than steel. The
motor is the same single-speed synchronous model used in the P2 (you play 45’s
by moving the belt to a different pulley
step). The subplatter appears to be fiberglass, while the platter is machined high
density fiberboard covered by a black felt
52
mat. Tap it, and you don’t hear much of
anything.
The hinged polystyrene cover is not
shown, because we removed it before listening, and we suggest you do the same.
No one needs a hunk of vibrating plastic
feeding energy right into the plinth.
The Elektra pickup supplied with the
GR1 is from Goldring’s own lineup. It
is of course a moving magnet cartridge,
equipped with an elliptical stylus. You
can’t get a line contact stylus at anywhere
close to this price.
The one really cheap detail is the
ratty output cable, a dead ringer for
the free wires you get with Asian-made
mini-component systems. The connectors are dreadful, and the shielding
(loosely-wrapped spiral strands, if we are
right about which wire this is) isn’t very
effective either, and unless we placed it
very carefully we got a nasty buzz. The
cable is captive, though anyone who can
It’s hard to find a
good phono cartridge
at this price. This
one comes with a
turntable and tone
arm thrown in
solder and owns a set of screwdrivers
could no doubt swap this glorified string
for something better.
Setting up the GR1 is not a major
job. Remove the cardboard wedge from
under the subplatter, cut off the tape that
holds the tone arm in place for shipping,
and adjust the stylus pressure (which can
be done with no gauge, though we did
use our gauge…which by the way bears
the Goldring name).
We began the listening session
with the Moorside Suite from one of
the Dallas Wind Symphony’s LPs of
music by Gustav Holst (RR-39). This
is a high-energy recording with more
than generous bass, and we expected it
to be both thinner and lower key with
the Goldring. To some extent we were
right, but a lot of the energy remained,
and that included power at the bottom
end. “This is a surprise,” said Albert.
“Sure, there’s some loss of richness
and depth, but listen to the textures of
those brass instruments!” Reine was less
enthusiastic, disappointed by the loss of
presence and especially impact.
We continued with a well known
segment from Act One of the original
cast version of The Phantom of the Opera,
the one in which Christine takes over
Carlotta’s role. Now this is definitely not
an audiophile recording. Indeed, with
our reference turntable an occasional
sibilant would sound more like a police
whistle. The piece has great dramatic
impact, however, and we wondered how
much of it would survive.
Quite a lot of it, in fact, and sibilance
was even improved somewhat, as was
Christine’s voice in general. Dynamics were less impressive, of course, and
surface noise was increased. This is to
be expected with a cartridge with no
line-contact stylus.
Reine found the piano rather displeasing too. That would put us on the
track of a quick improvement we could
make before the session was over.
The GR1 did a surprisingly good job
with Limehouse Blues from the celebrated
Jazz at the Pawnshop LP. The ambient
sound field was well recreated, though
Reine complained that some distant
sounds, such as that of the cash register,
were buried. The clarinet solo was especially excellent, as was the vibraphone.
The percussion was altered , with a rather
hollow sound (“pots and pans," sniffed
Reine), and the snare drum was not quite
natural. But the ensemble sound was very
good, and even the applause was natural,
something we might not expect with a
low-cost turntable.
We ended with another audiophile
classic LP, Amanda McBroom’s Gossamer
from West of Oz. Once again the piano
sounded way wrong. We liked Amanda’s
voice, though. But for an occasional
wayward sibilant, it was quite natural.
But what about that piano? “I’ll bet I
know why it’s not right,” said Gerard.
He got out a product we use on our
own turntables, and which we now stock
on the shelves of our Audiophile Store. It’s
a treatment for rubber surfaces called
Rubber Renue. Unlike those sticky fluids
that can be used to resurrect a dying belt,
this one is a cleaner, removing oil and
oxidized rubber. It was disconcerting to
see how much black gunk came off the
Goldring’s little belt. We let it dry for
30 seconds and then reinstalled it and
listened to Gossamer again.
It worked. The piano tones at the start
of the song were now dead steady, and
McBroom’s voice was even more natural.
The piano at the start of Phantom was
vastly improved too. The veiling we had
noted vanished along with the wavering.
The GR1’s rating rose by several points!
Indeed, Reine, who had been ready to
warn you off this turntable, changed her
mind completely.
The Elektra pickup appears to be well
matched to the Rega arm. On the Shure
Obstacle Course disc, we had difficulty
judging the resonant point: it may have
been around 11 Hz, which would be
a good indication, but it was so well
damped we weren’t sure. The GR1 did
surprisingly well on our M&K recording
of very low end material. The signal was
clean and full, and the cartridge even
tracked the organ track, which includes
a 16 Hz continuo pipe. Some expensive
cartridges will click or even derail on this
track, but not this one. We did note some
warbling of the midtones, the result of
modulation by the big pipe, but that
actually came from our speakers, not the
turntable. It vanished when we turned
the volume down a few decibels.
There are a lot of reasons to like this
Goldring, even aside from its eye-catching price of C$499 (about US$375 at
current exchange rate). It sounds musical
in a way that mass-market turntables
cannot. It is as close as a turntable can
get to plug’n’play.
And — heads up CD fans — the
bazaars are fi lled with great LPs that
are barely more expensive than Internet
downloads. It’s a no-brainer.
alog
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CROSSTALK
intain two
o other eq
we st ill ma
we often d
turntable and saw no reason to change. We
listened to an entire LP by a then-popular
singer. When we were through, I plugged
her old turntable back in and played the LP
at the same volume. And she realized she
could no longer understand the words!
What this Rega-built Goldring can do
is let you understand the words, and also
the other elements that make up music. In
short, it can do what most of those $5 turntables in the garage sales cannot hope to
do.
The cartridge surprised me too, because it doesn’t massacre the highs, as too
many economy pickups can and do.
The bargain price is an important element, because it can convince some younger audiophiles who have never known vinyl
—Gerard Rejskind
for that “special” version. Yet all of that, including the turntable, might cost less than
what you might spend for a pair of interconnects (which you’ll end up doing anyway).
—Albert Simon
What a refreshing surprise!
I’ve now found a way to recommend
LPs to many audiophiles who bypassed that
stage altogether. Get them to discover some
of the hidden treasures recorded in the 60’s
and 70’s while listening to them on a better turntable than the average table available during those years. Not everything
was good within those grooves, of course,
but some remain masterpieces of skilful recording techniques and — with this turntable — you’ll be able to experience the best
and the worst, and hear the difference.
You might end up doing what you never
imagined, ordering brand new LPs, or foraging through countless piles of used ones
It’s a real tour de force to expect a piece
of equipment to compete with a reference
component whose price tag is in four digits
if not five. That said, I expected to find this
inexpensive turntable pretty shabby.
In fact, despite a less than solid bottom
end and impact that was less striking, I was
struck by the multitude of details it could
dig out. The human voice is well reproduced, without hardness, sibilance is natural, and indeed varied sounds are pleasant
to listen to. Reason enough to consider this
turntable by an audiophile on a budget.
It goes to show that it’s not nice to have
prejudices.
—Reine Lessard
53
Listening Room
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Some years ago, I brought a Revolverr tuthat
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Well
Listening Room
A
pple’s ubiquitous iPod
s c a r c e l y ne e d s a n
introduction. There
used to be a million
portable music players out there.
Now there’s the iPod, with some
35% of the market (Apple is only
getting used to this), and…oh,
a few others you probably can’t
name.
Because we’re audiophiles
we don’t usually go around with
headphones welded to our ears.
Apple wasn’t thinking of us — or
you possibly — in coming up
with either the iPod or its now
famous music store. Like all
other online stores, Apple sells
music in compressed form. True,
it uses Dolby’s AAC (Advanced
Audio Codec) instead of MP3,
but a quick comparison confirms
what we expected. Neither is
meant for music lovers.
Fortunately there’s more to
the iPod.
Unlike most such players, the
iPod is format agnostic. For all it
cares you
can load
it up w it h
your photos, your
address book or your
doctoral thesis. You can also load it with
uncompressed music, in either WAV
or AIFF formats, which are the audio
formats of Windows and Macintosh
respectively. What’s more, it has gotten
big! The top model now has a whopping 40 gigabytes of space, with 60 Gb
rumored to be on the way. The average
CD contains about 600 Mb of data,
which means about 67 of them can be
loaded onto a 40 Gb iPod. Better yet, in
late April Apple announced a new lossless
codec, possibly based on the open source
FLAC format. That doubles the capacity
again. Not bad for a battery-operated
unit that weighs under 200 grams.
The software is as important as
the hardware, though. The iPod was
originally made to operate with iTunes,
a program that comes free with the Mac’s
OS X operating system. A Windows version also exists, and can be downloaded
from the Apple Web site. Both work the
54
iPod:
a Poor
Man’s
Server?
same way. You import music from CD
to iTunes, organizing it among folders
as you see fit. A preference window lets
you pick a compression method…or no
compression at all. You can then arrange
your music into playlists, and ask iTunes
to play the pieces you’ve chosen either in
sequence or randomly.
Note that this is enough to turn
your computer into a digital jukebox.
You don’t need to own an iPod
to use iTunes, though if you
do things get interesting. Each
time you plug the iPod into your
computer (with FireWire on a
Mac, FireWire or USB on a PC),
iTunes synchronizes the iPod
with your computer. Imagine
having 67 CDs in your pocket.
Imagine hearing them through
headphones, or (with the little
Griffin FM transmitter) through
your car radio.
And now imagine this. Some
people are spending thousands
of dollars, or even tens of thousands, on music servers that
can stock music from hundreds
of discs and produce them on
demand. Can the iPod serve
some 70 discs on demand…for
well under a thousand? The
answer is yes. What we set out to
discover is whether it can do that
with what an audiophile would
consider adequate quality.
The pict ure, by t he way,
was supplied by Apple.
O u r i Pod had
b e e n t h r ou g h
the hands (and
perhaps the claws) of
several reviewers, of which
the National Post was the
latest, and was too scratched to
photograph.
For this test we loaded three selections
into iTunes running on a Macintosh
iBook:
1) Bist du bein mir, from The Little Notebook of Anna Magdalena Bach (Analekta
FL 2 3064). Properly reproduced, this is
a five-goosebumps recording.
2) Now the Green Blade Riseth (Proprius
PRCD9093), a delightful or hideous
choral recording, depending on what
you play it on.
3) The Master’s Plan from Doug
McLeod's blues recording Come to Find
(Audioquest AQCD1017).
We synchronized the iPod, and then
listened to the three selections through
our Linn Unidisk reference player,
before plugging in the iPod. The player
has a standard minijack, to which we
connected an adapter, and a pair of Atlas
Navigator All-Cu interconnects.
We won’t keep you in suspense. trouble, didn’t give this player much
The choral recording, which we
From the first sounds of soprano Karina trouble either.
heard sound hideous in some rooms at
Gauvin’s voice, we knew we were on to
Oh, there were things missing, to be the Montreal show, was more than satsomething. Gauvin’s voice is naturally sure. Some of the subtle cues that reveal isfactory coming through the iPod. The
smooth and controlled, though it’s more depth and make the stereo image explicit flute solo
was attractive, though we lost
hiles, though, unless…
st to audiop
intere
It’s of noThe
t. distinct.
duc
than a lot of digital players can
handle
had
become
less
bottom
track
of
it
once the singers came in. The
pro
ic
on
ctr
ele
hot
the
Apple iPod is
Fact: the
without getting
downright unpleasant. end had diminished impact — we could plucked
bass
had considerable weight,
iew of the Apple iPod, the
e-oriented rev
iophil
audthe
s on
d thi
rea
The iPod mostly made her sound
right,
just
make
that
out
harpsichord
though
less
than
Reine would have liked.
to
nt
wa
’ll
you
w
kno
is. We
ll, unless it
We
with only an
occasional
high note
seempassages.
Rhythm
was
not
quite
as
quick.
The
high
notes
of the sopranos were a
w.
kno
rst as far as we
ver y fiThe
ing out of place.
articulation of the “But we’ve heard a lot worse than this,” little shriller and more grainy than with
German text, which gives Gauvin little said Reine.
our player, but there was nothing radi-
Yes we know…
The UHF Reference Systems
UHF maintains three reference systems.
All equipment reviews are done on at least
one of these systems, which are selected to be
working tools. Their elements are changed
only after long consideration, because a
system that changes is not a reference.
The Alpha system
Our original reference is installed
in a room with extraordinary acoustics
(originally designed as a recording studio).
The acoustics allow us to hear what we
couldn’t hear elsewhere, but there’s a down
side. Not only is the room too small for
large speakers, but it is also at the top of a
particularly unaccommodating stairwell.
I can just hear an audiophile saying just
that, someday, after pocketing an iPod and
preparing to leave his or her friend’s place.
Some day. Soon.
The Omega system
It serves for reviews of gear that cannot
easily fit into the Alpha system, with its
Summing
up…
small room.
We didn’t it
set out
to make an
“A” (best system) and a “B” (economy)
Brand/model:
Apple want
iPodto imply that
system, and we didn’t
Price:
C$699/US$499
(40 Gb better
one of the two systems is somehow
version; Canadian price includes a $25
than the other. Hence the names, which
“piracy” levy)
don’t invite comparisons. Unless you’re
Dimensions: 6.1 x 10 x 1.7 cm
Greek of course.
Mass: 176 g
Most liked: Compact, versatile,
CD player:sound
shared with the Alpha
astonishing
system
Least liked: No digital out
Turntable:
Sonata
Verdict:
SureAlphason
it’s cool, but
that’s not
Tone
arm:
Alphason
HR-100S
MCS
the half of it.
Phono preamp: Audiomat Phono-1.5
Pickup: Goldring Excel
Preamplifier: Copland CTA-305 tube
preamp
Power
Simaudio
We’ll amplifi
need toer:
adapt,
yes. ItMoon
will take
W-5getting used to, some humility too,
some
but
don’t underestimate
this trend.
Loudspeakers:
Reference
3a We’re
onSuprema
our way to
II new and amazing sources —
full
of promises. Pierre Gabriel ML-1.
Interconnects:
I kept looking at the little iPod, dwarfed
Wireworld Equinox
by its connecting cables, producing such
Loudspeaker cables: Pierre Gabriel
surprisingly good music, and I realized the
ML-1
(formerly
L3), for most of the
truth:
we’re
on our way…
range, Wireworld Polaris—Albert
for theSimon
twin
subwoofers.
Power
cords:
Aurora
I’m not
in theWireworld
habit of hiding
my feelings
I write
for you. So
I have toLC-1
tell
ACwhen
filters:
Foundation
Research
CROSSTALK
you that I wasn’t even lukewarm about reviewing this tiny portable gadget that can
fit in your palm. What, yet another gadget
that will become “essential”?
The Kappa system
This is our home theatre system. As
with the Alpha system, we had limited
space for the Kappa system, and that pretty
much ruled out huge projectors and twometer screens. We did, however, finally
come up with a system whose performance
gladdens both eye and ear, and which has
the needed resolution to serve for reviews.
HDTV monitor: Hitachi
43UWX10B CRT-based rear projector
DVD player: Simaudio Moon Stellar
with Faroudja Stingray video processor
Preamplifier/processor: Simaudio
Moon Attraction, 5.1 channel version
Power amplifiers: Simaudio Moon
W-3 (main speakers), Celeste 4070se
(centre speaker), Robertson 4010 (rear)
Main speakers: Energy Reference
Connoisseur
Centre speaker: Thiel MCS1, on
UHF’s own TV-top platform
Rear
Elipson
1400and I was
And speakers:
then I started
listening,
soSubwoofer:
charmed by 3a
theDesign
results, Acoustics
even alongside
our
reference,
that I figured
I ought Starto give
Cables:
Equinox
and Atlantis,
some
to the usefulness of this gimlightthought
video cables
mick.
Once
I had done
Power
cables
and that,
line Ificould
lters:think
Gut-of
a thousand occasions on which I’d be happy
wire cables, Inouye SPLC filter
to have one.
All three of the systems now have their
It’s an attractive object, easy to pack
own
dedicatedit’spower
lines, that
withcan
Hubbell
away because
so small,
warehospital
grade
outlets.
All
extensions
house a lot of your favorite music, to beand
lispower
used places
are alsowithout
equipped
with
tened
to bars
in public
disturbing
hospital-grade
connectors.
your
neighbors, but
also capable of throwing up a terrific musical backdrop when
you’ve got work to do.
As for its audiophile qualities, let me
just say that they deserve to be underlined.
—Reine Lessard
55
Listening Room
CD Transport: Parasound C/BD2000
(belt-driven transport designed by
CEC).
Digital-to-analog converter: Counterpoint DA-10A, with HDCD card.
Turntable: Audiomeca J-1
Tone
Thisarm:
little Audiomeca
box is good. ItSL-5
is, in fact disPhono preamp:
Audiomat
concertingly
good. Why
can itPhono-1.5
reproduce
music
this Goldring
well when Excel
so many “real” CD
Pickup:
players
sound er:
thinCopland
and screechy
and downPreamplifi
CTA-305
tube
right
boring?
It
isn’t
quite
audiophile
qualpreamp
ity, though even so it could be.
Power amplifier: YBA One HC
The iPod of course wasn’t designed to
Loudspeakers: Living Voice Avatar
be a high end component. But good design
OBX-R
doesn’t
happen by accident.
Interconnects: Pierre—Gerard
GabrielRejskind
ML-1,
Equinox/WBT
Loudspeaker
cables:
Eclipse
with
“You remember
the time
whenIIwe
listened
to bananas
music through CD players?”
WBT
Power cords: Gutwire, Stratus
AC filters: Foundation Research LC-2
(power amp), Inouye SPLC.
Software
Gershwin Forever!
A
by Reine Lessard
destiny cut short by a premature death that strikes at the
heart of the musical world,
and indeed of America itself.
His America, which he made talk, sing
and dance, and fi nally weep as he left
the dance floor too young. What was so
exceptional about this composer who,
almost 70 years after his death, remains
alive in the collective memory, his melodies still so new and so poignant?
A child in the crowd
New York is a stimulating milieu
56
in which to grow up, when George
Gershwin is born on September 26,
1898. The city already carries the seeds
of the gigantism that will soon make it a
vertical community. Its first multi-storey
constructions hint at the skyscrapers to
come.
New York is Brooklyn. It is the
Bronx. It is Harlem. It is the Bohemian
Greenwich Village. It is Manhattan,
temple of success and money. It is Broadway and its theatres and concert halls
that communicate the stuff of dreams to
the avid crowds that frequent them. For
Broadway is the meeting place for countless musicians, artists and composers
who have come to search for inspiration
and hope to find glory. It is the musical
capital of the New World. They come
from the four corners of the planet to
produce their shows, or to applaud the
most prodigious composers, artists and
musicians. For millions, New York is the
city of magic.
At the end of the 19th Century, an
unequalled wave of immigration brings
some two million Jews from eastern
Europe to the US. Moshe Gershovitz is
part of that enormous contingent electing domicile in New York, where Liberty
lighting the world holds high her torch.
Immigration authorities Americanize
his name to “Morris Gershwin.”
Both determined and courageous,
Morris easily finds work in a shoe factory
in his adopted city. As soon as he has
built a small nest egg, he proposes to a
young woman he had known in Russia,
Rose Brushkin. She bears him four
children, of which two — the eldest, Ira,
and the second, George — will become
famous.
High fashion shoes sell well in New
York, and Morris prospers. Having
overcome the language barrier, he goes
into the restaurant business, buying a
restaurant chain that is soon bankrupt.
His optimism is not affected, and he
undertakes other projects in different
fields, in which he scores uneven success.
The Gershwins move often, for Morris
always insists on living close to his current business. Never will the family be
poorly housed and fed. Rose will later
confirm that her husband made a good
living, and that his family never wanted.
The family homes, kept up by domestics,
are further confirmation.
This runs counter to the legend of
George Gershwin’s birth in poor circumstances and his miserable childhood.
If little George grows up largely in the
street, it is by choice. That is where he
is happy. He is an urchin, unruly and
undisciplined, quick with his fists, who
spends a lot of time on roller skates with
his Black friends, begging for change and
stealing an occasional candy. He cannot
guess his destiny awaits him on one of
those streets.
One day the lad of six hears a sound
sooner is the instrument delivered than
George plays with the greatest assurance popular tunes he has memorized.
Stunned by his musical aptitude, his
parents send him for piano lessons with
Miss Green, next door. George is 12. He
spends hours at the piano, improvising
and even composing. Astonished by her
pupil’s remarkable pianistic ability, she
sends him to a Hungarian pianist, who in
turn introduces him to another pianist,
Charles Hambitzer.
Now, Hambitzer is much more than
an ordinary music teacher. He learned
the piano, the violin and the cello from
his father, who owned a music store. He
taught at the University of Wisconsin
before settling in New York, where he
has become a prestigious professor. He
knows the difference between a merely
talented pupil and a prodigy.
through long hours of exercises and
scales. He initiates him into a veritable
musical culture, still unusual in early
20th Century America. Bach, Beethoven,
Chopin, Liszt, Debussy and Ravel are
on his curriculum, as are the study
of harmony and instrumentation. He
encourages George to go to concerts,
and Gershwin does not resist, especially
when the concert features a pianist. At
home he attempts to play the pieces
he has heard, transforming them with
improvised variations.
In 1913 he writes his first two songs,
Since I Found You and Ragging the Traumerei. The latter is a natural choice,
given his enthusiasm for songs, ragtime
and jazz, overheard outside that club
in Harlem. They will not be great successes, but they are already marked by
his strong personality.
Classics or jazz?
Though the first music to conquer
Gershwin was classical, he has an unconditional love of jazz, which he has heard,
also by chance, coming from a club near
which he would spend long hours. Hambitzer understands his passion for jazz,
but puts the accent on classical music.
“If there is someone who is capable
of making his mark in music,” writes
Hambitzer to his sister, “it is surely this
child. He is crazy about music, and he
can hardly wait for his next lesson. He
wants to study it all, popular music and
jazz included, but he must first learn the
principles of classical music.”
Hambitzer teaches Gershwin the
technique of the piano, putting him
At the crossroads
In his free moments George reluctantly helps his father in one of his
restaurants, but he is happier playing the
piano in hotels for small pay. His mother
has higher ambitions for her son than
that of an artist, and to please her he
enrolls at the High School of Commerce,
but he cuts classes to play the piano.
How happy he is in those days on
28th Street between Broadway and 5th
Avenue, visiting the music publishers
who have set up next to the new music
hall theatres. He passes hours listening
to “song pluggers” playing the latest
tunes on the often tinny pianos that
give the area the nickname of “Tin
Pan Alley.” So impassioned is he by all
57
Listening Room
that stops him in his tracks. Entering the
building from which the sound comes,
he finds himself before a player piano.
He listens, delighted, until the mysterious machine abruptly stops playing. He
leaves, disappointed, but he is forever
changed by what he has heard…Anton
Rubinstein’s Melody in F, as he will later
learn.
It has been written that this incident
is but a prelude to another momentous
event. One day he plays hooky, preferring playing ball to school, when his ear
is attracted by a delicious melody on the
violin, Dvorak’s Humoresque. He melts
before the beauty of the music. Having
discovered that the violinist is one of his
own schoolmates, Maxie Rosenzweig
(who will later become famous under the
name Maxie Rosen), George rushes to
the school exit, hoping to congratulate
him. Alas, Maxie has gone out the other
door. George gets his home address, but
his idol has already left. However the
Rosenzweigs are charmed by the unusual
initiative of this young boy, and they
arrange a meeting that will be decisive
for George’s future career.
The two youths become fast friends.
As often as he can, Maxie talks to George
about music, composition and musical
technique. He tells him tales of famous
composers and their masterpieces. He
introduces George to a friend whose
parents own a piano, which he is allowed
to play. The need is created. George
must have a keyboard.
It so happens that the Gershwins
have already decided to buy a piano, with
Ira in mind. Yet destiny loves irony. No
Software
he hears that his professor insists with
severity on keeping him on the track of
classical music. Hambitzer is convinced
that, without a classical base, Gershwin’s
talent cannot fully develop.
One day George, weary of lying to
his mother and dabbling in activities
he detests, whips up his courage to tell
her he is quitting school. Hambitzer
introduces George to Edward Kilenyi,
who will teach him harmony and composition. The two professors encourage
George in his musical experiments.
An agent of the Jerome H. Remick
& Company publishing house, Moses
Gumble, hears Gershwin playing and
is delighted. Especially astonished by
George’s ability to sight-read, Gumble
hires him as a song plugger. George is
only 15. The salary is meagre, but he
must accept it if he wants to succeed.
In any case he knows that both Irving
Berlin and Jerome Kern did the same
work before becoming known.
There is still no radio and no jukeboxes, and even home phonographs are
rare. To get songs noticed, publishers
must hire pianists to get them heard. It
should be added that song plugging will
continue long after more modern methods emerge. These musicians must be
able to sight read in order to accompany
singers trying a new song. George is
perfect for this work, adding to his sightreading skill the ability to transpose a
score to the key chosen by the singer. It
gives him a major advantage.
The work is not truly stimulating, but
it makes him familiar with all the new
music. It is at the Remick office that he
meets Fred Astaire and his sister Adele,
who will become faithful friends. Each
day George is in contact with music by
composers of many different styles and
origins. In the evening, he frequently
tours cabarets and theatres with Gumble
to play newly-published music and check
its popularity with artists looking for
songs. Contacts with journalists and
artists of different disciplines come naturally. Gershwin is now in a privileged
position to observe the world of music.
Despite his long hours at the keyboard, the money rolls in slowly. To get
enough money to abandon song-plugging, Gershwin agrees to record Edison
cylinders, precursors to records, for $5
58
“Music must reflect the thouhts and
aspirations of the people and the time. My
people are American. My time is today.”
George Gershwin
apiece. Perhaps wanting to make it seem
as though the cylinders were made by an
entire stable of musicians, he uses several
pseudonyms for the recordings.
The composer emerges
The more he plays the better he
becomes. Even other pianists are dazzled. “He was in a musical world totally
different from the rest of us,” will later
say Harry Ruby, who is also destined for
fame. “I think we were all a little jealous.” Ruby will remain a close friend.
Gershwin’s daily successes cannot
make him deviate from his ultimate
dream: to write songs for Broadway.
Yet he is every bit as certain that he will
someday write symphonies and even
operas. A magic fusion of jazz and classical music…such is his dream.
In 1914, at a wedding, he is astonished
to hear two songs by Jerome Kern. He
has found his model, and he will analyze
all of Kern’s songs. He will even imitate
them, as he will never deny.
George quickly becomes Remick’s
top pianist, but he wants to get his own
songs known, and Gumble turns them
down one after the other. “We’re paying
you to play, not write songs,” he says.
In 1916 he signs a contract with the
Harry von Tilzer Publishing Company.
He gets five dollars for When You Want
’em, you Can’t Get ’em, When You’ve Got
’em, You Don’t Want ’em, with words by a
friend, Murray Roth. For the first time,
George Gershwin’s name is on a published score. Doors have begun to open
for him, and they will never close.
He meets Sigmund Romberg, composer of such already famous operettas
as The Student Prince. Impressed by
Gershwin’s virtuosity, Romberg invites
him to contribute songs to some new
productions at the Winter Garden. In
fact Romberg uses only one of his songs,
and without credit even so, but what
does it matter? George has been paid a
sumptuous $7 for it, and he knows he
now has one foot in the stirrup.
All the while he pursues his lessons with Hambitzer, continuing until
Hambitzer’s death in 1918, and also
with Kilenyi, who gives him two lessons
a week. To complement his brilliant
pupil’s musical education, Kilenyi invites
a variety of orchestral musicians, that
Gershwin might learn the rudiments
of each instrument. During rare free
moments at Remick, George studies
Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier.
His popularity grows without interruption. In 1917 he meets his idol,
Jerome Kern, who hires him as rehearsal
pianist for his production Miss 1917. He
is eventually introduced to Max Dreyfus,
editor of Harms, Tin Pan Alley’s top
publisher, who has attracted numerous
hot composers to its stable. He offers
Gershwin $35 a week against the option
on all his future songs. Songs that are
actually published will earn a 3% royalty.
It is an honorable contract, and it elevates
Gershwin to the top ranks of the trade.
At the heart of the industry
This young pianist-composer will
henceforth be a force to be reckoned
with, placed as he is at the centre of
Broadway, mixing with celebrities and
the money men who control music
publishing in the United States.
Jerome Kern appreciated Gershwin’s
work as a rehearsal pianist, and hires
him again for his new show Rockabye
Baby. George doesn’t turn down work,
but he always finds time for his favorite
occupation, writing songs. In October
of 1914, at the Broadhurst Theater, the
premiere of Ladies First includes two
Gershwin songs: Some Wonderful Sort of
Someone and The Real American Folk Song.
Sung by the show’s star, Nora Bayes, the
songs are warmly received, but the public
recalls only the main composer’s name.
Disappointed, Gershwin has learned his
lesson. From now on he will write entire
shows, and the name on everyone’s lips
will be his.
The year 1919 announces a rich
period in his life. On May 26 th , the
Henry Miller Theater premieres Gershwin’s La La Lucille, with lyrics by
Irving Caesar. It’s a success, with such
memorable songs as Nobody But You and
There’s More to the Kiss Than the Sound.
Thus encouraged, Caesar and Gershwin
compose a song destined for the top of
the hit parade, Swanee. That autumn, the
59
Software
incorporate jazz in a classical
already-famous Al Jolson
recital. The audience, taken
sings it in his Capitol Revue.
aback at first, applauds warmly
The song is recorded by
at the end.
Columbia the following
year and will sell a million
Which brings us to the
copies in its first year. Its
Rhapsody in Blue.
success sweeps the planet,
It is a smash hit at its preand it is played on the
miere on February 12, 1924 in
radio, on the stage, in the
that same Aeolian Hall. The
music hall, and even in the
evening, organized by famed
living room. At any family
bandleader Paul Whiteman,
or friendly get-together,
is billed as “an experiment in
there is always someone
modern music.” In Whitewith a fi ne voice ready to
man’s mind it is the realizaimitate the popular singer:
tion of a dream to which he
the lights are turned down
is convinced Gershwin holds
low, he smears his face
the key: giving jazz the status
with bootblack, and he
of serious music. Whiteman
goes into Swanee. In the
has not only commissioned
half light you see only the
the work, but also pays Hugh
white gloves and the roll of
C. Ernst a goodly sum to write
the eyes. The effect never
a text for the program on the
misses.
necessity of proper instrumenIn his early twenties,
tation to improve American
George Gershwin earns Gershwin (at the piano) rehearsing for Rosalie, with fellow music. In the audience on
$10,000 in the first year for composer Sigmund Romberg (behind him), and performers that evening are a number of
that song alone.
sophisticated music luminaries
Jack Donahue and Marilyn Miller.
The appearance of the
and composers, such as Rachphonograph and the radio revolutionizes and he greets ladies with a cigar clenched maninov, Heifetz, Efrem Zimbalist and
the music industry in the early 20’s, as between his teeth. His social shortcom- Leopold Stokowski.
The program is long, with Gershwin’s
will the talking pictures not long after. ings are noted by one of his admirers,
Gershwin meets the dance producer, jeweler Jules Glaenzer, who undertakes piece at the very end. Before the concert
George White, known for his flair for to show George more worldly ways. is over some audience members grow
finding talent. He includes six Gershwin Gershwin takes note of the comments restless and start to leave, when the long
songs in George White’s Scandal of 1920. of this person who clearly admires him and troubling clarinet glissando literally
It is only the beginning. Two years later and considers him a friend. He is soon freezes them in their tracks.
White includes eight Gershwin songs elegant in both speech and dress.
On stage there is tension. Gershwin
in the new version of his show. Among
has not had time to complete the work,
them: I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise. Sophisticated jazz
and he has left blank the solo piano parts.
Gershwin’s muse is tireless. He turns He has simply told Whiteman that he
The song will be reused in the 1951 film
An American in Paris, where it is sung by out six songs a day “to get them out of will nod when it is time for the orchestra
my system,” as he says. In April 1923 to come in again. One can imagine the
Georges Guétary.
On the same evening as the premiere in London, he launches his musical exaltation of the composer, not to menof the 1922 show, Gershwin presents comedy The Rainbow. In November, he tion the bandleader, and to understand
a mini-opera, Blue Monday, a slice of accompanies at the piano the Canadian their relief when the piece ends and
American life set to jazz-inspired music mezzo-soprano and much admired clas- they are rewarded by an ovation. The
with a touch of ragtime. The audience is sical recitalist, Éva Gauthier. An apostle Rhapsody in Blue has been consecrated,
lukewarm, though the next day one critic of Poulenc, Milhaud, Stravinsky and and Gershwin has become legend.
calls it “the first glow of a new American Bartok, she is a friend of Ravel, to whom
It is only a few days later that he will
she introduces Gershwin. Eclectic and fill in the missing piano part on his score.
musical art form.”
The elite crowd gravitates about bold, she champions the cause of modern The following summer he will “record”
Greenwich, and the East Side beckons. music, as she will do until her death in the Rhapsody on a reproducing piano (see
There Gershwin meets Charlie Chaplin, 1958. At New York’s Aeolian Hall, she is Record Reviews in this issue).
Jascha Heifetz, Groucho Marx, the accompanied by Gershwin as she sings
It is bold and full of energy, with a
Astaires and Douglas Fairbanks. George Purcell, Bellini, Bartok and Schoenberg, blues flavor and a clear jazz influence,
seems unmannered in this tony com- to which she adds songs by Gershwin and written in a single movement for piano
pany. He boasts of frequenting brothels Kern. She is the first classical singer to and orchestra, orchestrated by Ferde
a musical dedicated to Kay Swift. In it,
Lawrence sings Maybe, Do-Do-Do, and
Someone to Watch Over Me.
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Grofé at Whiteman’s request. It will
become a cornerstone of the American
musical heritage. It will be played at
the 1984 Olympics on 84 white pianos,
to extraordinary acclaim, and in 1990
Warner will spend a small fortune to
purchase the rights to it.
By t he way…about t he famous
clarinet introduction that continues
to astound audiences, it was actually
improvised by Whiteman’s clarinetist,
Ross Gorman. It was a happy fi nd, for
no matter how many times we hear it, it
remains most impressive.
It is at about the same time that the
conductor of the New York Symphony,
Walter Damrosch, commissions a concerto from Gershwin. That same year,
George and Ira collaborate for the first
time on a musical, Lady Be Good, marking
the start of a durable partnership.
In September Gershwin leaves for
Europe. Disappointed by the tepid
success of The Rainbow, he returns to
London with Primrose, with his own
orchestration. The new show is greeted
warmly.
On December 1st of the same year
comes the New York premiere of Lady
Be Good, starring Fred and Adele Astaire,
with extraordinarily novel jazz numbers,
hailed by the critics as “the best musical
in town.” One of the original songs from
the show is dropped, judged too intimate
for a large venue. As fate would have it,
60
the song becomes a Transatlantic hit! It
is The Man I Love.
It is only the following July that he
will finally begin the concerto Damrosch
has requested.
What about the ladies?
Handsome, brilliant in sports,
wealthy, with the halo of the successful
composer, an amateur painter, a collector
of art objects, Gershwin has a retinue of
women about him. He is not ashamed
to say that he would happily maintain
a mistress if the practice were not so
expensive. Though he is not interested
in marriage, we do know he had an
affair with the ravishing Kay Swift,
herself a talented pianist and composer
for Broadway, one of the first women to
attack this hitherto masculine domain.
The affair will lead to Swift’s divorce
from composer James P. Warburg.
After Gershwin’s death, she and Ira
will flesh out some of his final sketches
to create a score for the 1947 film The
Shocking Miss Pilgrim, which will feature
Betty Grable and the warm voice of Dick
Haymes. The songs reflect Gershwin at
his best: For You, For Me, Forever More,
and Aren’t You Glad We Did.
The name of Gertrude Lawrence,
screen star and first lady of the musical comedy in both New York and
London, is inextricably linked with
that of Gershwin. She stars in Oh Kay!,
Exterior Signs of Fame
The Gershwin family has moved
into a luxurious five-storey house on
103rd Street near Riverside Drive. It has
space for his parents, and his siblings
Arthur and Frances. The great living
room serves for family meals and for
Rosie and Morris’s passion, poker. There
is a gymnasium, and a top floor that is
entirely George’s. It is his kingdom.
The period from 1925 to 1931 will
be en exceptional one for the Gershwin
brothers.
December 3, 1925 sees the Carnegie
Hall premiere of the New York Concerto,
which George has himself orchestrated.
Music lovers wait in a downpour for the
doors to open. The program includes
Glazunov’s Symphony No. 5, Henri
Rabaud’s Suite anglaise, and the New York
Concerto, later more commonly called the
Concerto in F. Gershwin has rehearsed
the concerto numerous times, even with
orchestra the week before, recording it
so he could make corrections. Yet he
struggles to conceal his nervousness.
The moment has arrived. An elegant
George Gershwin prepares to showcase his music. Barely has he touched
the keyboard that already the audience is mesmerized. The work itself is
not immediately acclaimed by critics,
perhaps put off by its very American
character. It will, however, eventually
earn praise from many of the greatest
composers of the age, and it will enter
the standard concerto repertoire. It will
even twice be reworked into ballets, in
Vienna in 1969 and at the New York City
Ballet in 1982.
At the end of 1925, the music of Tip
Toes is applauded by the critics, and it
launches the career of one of its youngest
performers, Jeanette MacDonald, who
will become a major film star. Two days
later, the 44th Street Theater sees the
premiere of Song of the Flame, considered
either an operetta or a romantic opera.
A year later, Gershwin is accompanist
at a recital at the Roosevelt Hotel in
New York, and ends with a premiere of
his Preludes for Solo Piano. He steals the
spotlight from the soloist of the evening,
over a year later. The same month, back
in New York, Of Thee I Sing opens. It
is a brilliant satire by three lyricists on
Gershwin’s superb music. The following year the show is accorded a Pulitzer
Prize. Because the Pulitzer has no category for musical comedies, the prize is
given the lyricists…who publicly deplore
the injustice.
In January 1932 in Boston he premieres his Second Rhapsody for Piano and
Orchestra, with Koussevitsky conducting
the Boston Symphony. During a short
stay in Havana, he is inspired by the
rhythm and percussion of the island, and
he writes a Cuban Overture (originally
titled Rumba). The New York Philharmonic premieres it. A month later,
Simon and Schuster publishes The George
Gershwin Song Book.
October 1933 sees the premiere of Let
’em Eat Cake, a logical successor to Of
Thee I Sing, confirming Ira Gershwin’s
taste for satire.
In 1934 Gershwin plays the solo part
in his I Got Rhythm Variations. You have
to hear these variations on a familiar
melody to appreciate fully the genius
of Gershwin. When the time came to
improvise, his prodigious imagination,
so well served by the agility of his fingers, knew no bounds.
But the Great Depression is showing
no signs of ending, and its effects on
Broadway are disastrous. The theatres
and music halls are empty. A long list
of artists must fight against despair,
for so many are without work. And yet,
on October 10, 1935, Gershwin’s opera
Porgy and Bess opens on Broadway. It
is Gershwin’s longest work, though
it is staged in abbreviated form. To
soothe music lovers not yet used to his
innovative style, Gershwin avoids the
word opera altogether. The libretto is
by DuBose Heyward, with lyrics by
Heyward and Ira Gershwin. This African-American story is set on Catfi sh
Row in Charleston, SC. Later considered
a masterpiece, Porgy and Bess is not an
immediate success, though strangely
some of its songs will become immensely
popular even among people who had
not yet seen the show. The song lineup
61
Software
Marguerite d’Alvarez.
In 1927 the premiere of Strike Up the
Band at Philadelphia’s Shubert Theater,
is but a modest success, though its title
song becomes a hit. Based on a book by
Morrie Ryskind, it is the first collaboration of George S. Kaufman with the
Gershwins. The show will be revived at
the Times Square Theater in 1930.
January of 1928 sees the premiere of
Rosalie, produced by Florenz Ziegfeld,
a huge hit. It includes seven Gershwin
songs, including How Long Has This Been
Going On?
The following March George begins
a three-month visit to Europe, accompanied by his sister Frances, a singer, his
brother Ira and his wife Leonora. They
are in the spotlight as soon as they arrive
in London, thanks to a revival of Oh
Kay! Gershwin revisits Ravel, Milhaud,
Poulenc and Prokofiev in Paris, and
Alban Berg in Vienna. The Rhapsody in
Blue is played by the Pasdeloup Orchestra, and in April a ballet based on it is
performed.
He returns from Europe with enough
material to compose an orchestral work
inspired by his stay in Paris. An American
in Paris is premiered in December in
Carnegie Hall, with Walter Damrosch
conducting the New York Philharmonic.
The gulf between the classics and jazz
has fi nally been fi lled. Gershwin will
reuse the music for a ballet scene in Show
Girl, at the Ziegfeld Theatre in 1929. It
will later be performed integrally in the
1952 film bearing the ballet’s title.
The economic crash of 1929 shakes
both Europe and America. Banks close
their doors and worldwide unemployment soars. During this dark period,
Gershwin begins composing Of Thee I
Sing.
Girl Crazy, the following year, will be
one of Gershwin’s best musicals. What
makes it memorable, despite its idiotic
script, is a series of remarkable songs
from the Gershwin brothers, including
Singin’ in the Rain, Embraceable You and
I Got Rhythm.
Like so many other artists, actors
and musicians, George Gershwin cannot
resist the allure of the West Coast,
taking Ira with him. They leave New
York in November of 1930. The fi lm
Delicious, with their songs, opens just
Software
includes the deathless lullaby, Summertime.
Much can be said about Porgy and
Bess, whose music will be reused in
a symphonic suite orchestrated by
Gershwin, and in the instrumental suite
Catfi sh Row. For a long time the opera
will be performed more frequently in
Western Europe and in Russia than in
the United States. It will be the fi rst
American opera to be staged in La Scala
in Milan. It will be made into a fi lm,
whose music will win an Oscar. It will
take 50 years for Porgy and Bess to be
staged by the Metropolitan Opera.
Hollywood calls
The Talkies have swept Hollywood.
Music is now an integral part of a film,
to the detriment of the pianists who used
to play while silent pictures rolled, but
offering new opportunities for composers. Gershwin anticipates the riches that
will surely flow for himself and for Ira
from a second trip to Hollywood.
RKO Pictures is growing rapidly, and
offers the Gershwin brothers $55,000 to
work on the film Watch Your Step, which
will be rebaptized with the name of a
Gershwin song, Shall We Dance. George
and Ira move into a Beverley Hills mansion complete with tennis court, pool
and billiard room. George writes music
worthy of Ira’s lyrics: Let’s Call the Whole
Thing Off, and They Can’t Take That Away
From Me, which gets an Oscar nomination.
Yet George is not happy. He misses
the contact with his audience, and in late
1936 he undertakes a concert tour. For
some time he has not been at his best.
He suffers from frequent headaches,
and seems to be running out of energy.
During his fi nal concert with the Los
Angeles Philharmonic, in the midst of
playing the Concerto in F he is surprised
to smell what seems to be burning
rubber, before passing out.
His doctor can fi nd nothing wrong.
Still with Ira at his side, he returns
to his writing, composing music for A
Damsel in Distress, a vehicle for his old
friend Fred Astaire, dancing this time
with Joan Fontaine. Then there is a new
film which promises to be a blockbuster
hit, the Goldwyn Follies. Gershwin calls
on the talents of the famed Russian
62
choreographer George Balanchine.
But the headaches are getting worse,
accompanied by dizziness and perception of strange odors. Consultations
with top specialists bring no defi nite
diagnosis. In June he undergoes a complete checkup: blood and urine tests,
electrocardiogram, and a neurological
exam. They turn up nothing. George
is impatient as his condition worsens.
Increasingly weak, he naps often and
can no longer stand bright light. He
cannot walk without aid. Worried but
powerless, Ira and his wife place George
at the home of a friend with a nurse to
care for him.
On July 9, 1937, he falls into a coma.
Rushed to hospital, he is examined by a
neurosurgeon. It is only the next day that
doctors discover what they had suspected
for some time: a brain tumor.
He goes into the operating room at
the Cedars Lebanon Hospital in Los
Angeles on July 11th, but he does not
survive the operation. He dies without
regaining consciousness.
The man behind the artist
Gershwin’s rise was not without
detours. It was because he was well ahead
of his time in his attempt to create a
fusion of jazz and the classics, because
he was a school dropout in a country
where diplomas had replaced titles,
because it seemed impossible to reach
the top echelons as a composer without
a solid classical background — and
Gershwin had studied at no university,
and with no European master. He was
also hampered by his very fame, for he
was more popular than many a composer
supposedly better schooled in harmony
and composition.
On top of it all, he was Jewish. Certain articles in contemporary musical
journals by supposedly broadminded
critics have an anti-Semitic tone whose
virulence is downright disconcerting.
There was, around George Gershwin,
an impressive cohort of women, admirers
or potential lovers of whom we know
little. A few names are mentioned here
and there: Kay Swift, Paulette Goddard,
Julie Adams. But what good would it do
us to know the intimate details of the
great? I can say only that Gershwin was
courted by the great of this world, who
hoped to have him at their table, as well
as by women who hoped to receive him
in their beds.
“Why should I limit myself to one
woman,” he is purported to have said,
“when I can have as many women as I
want?”
In praise of Gershwin
George Gershwin was a phenomenal
melodist and a composer of genius, the
most illustrious of the New World,
and — one can affi rm without fear of
contradiction — the creator of a distinctively American music. He leaves a
priceless heritage of fusion, classic jazz,
and eternal melodies that have entered
the American soul, with works such as
the Concerto in F and Rhapsody in Blue.
As for opera, his arias are recognizable
even to those who don’t know who wrote
them. We have all been exposed to these
sublime melodies, immortalized by their
spontaneity, their enthusiasm, their
freshness, their passion, and their deeply
human qualities.
As a pianist he was prodigious. It
was at the keyboard he was happiest,
spinning melodies or variations on those
melodies. Ira, his brother and collaborator, wrote that he had been especially
astonished by his brother’s left hand. We
might regret that he left us only three
works for piano, but such works! They
are the Three Preludes of 1926.
Very much inf luenced by AfroAmerican music, he was also an admirer
of Rachmaninoff, Schoenberg, Poulenc
and others. They in turn much admired
him and sometimes quoted his music.
Ravel became close to Gershwin, and
the two exercised a mutual influence.
Gershwin’s orchestrations became more
refined, while Ravel became influenced
by the Gershwin manner. Traces of
Gershwin can be heard in his Sonata for
Violin, his Concerto in G for Extroverted
Piano, and the Concerto for the Left Hand,
composed for a friend who had lost an
arm in the war.
Darius Milhaud, for his part, was the
first composer to sign a major classical
work in the jazz idiom. It was La creation
du monde of 1923.
But w h y m a k e c o m p a r i s o n s ?
Gershwin was Gershwin. There will
never be another.
Record Reviews
loved one exchange whispers rather than
words.
A second sonata, the Opus 45, in B
Flat Major this time, ends this musical
session of exceptional quality.
I always like to recall that it is to
Mendelssohn that we owe the rediscovery of the works of Johann Sebastian
Bach, whose reputation as an organist
had so eclipsed Bach the composer that
his works were hardly ever played.
Nota del Sol
Similia
Analekta AN 2 9817
Lessard: From their first album, Cantabile (UHF No. 64), the twin Labrie
sisters, flutist Nadia and guitarist Annie,
won over their audience. The pieces on
this, their second CD, includes some
of the most beautiful music from the
contemporar y composers of South
America.
From t he celebrated A rgent ine
guitarist and composer Maximo Diego
Pujol come two selections, the Suite
Buenos Aires and Dos aires candombreros.
The opening section, the first four
tracks, brings us to various picturesque
corners of the city, each with its local
color and special accent. The Palermo
section takes us into a romantic dream
with a heady tune. We would stay there
gladly, but we take a detour into the old
San Telmo quarter, with its cafés and
by Reine Lessard,
and Gerard Rejskind
63
Software
Mendelssohn: Complete Works for
Cello and Piano
Elizabeth Dolin/Bernadene Blaha
Analekta FL 2 3166
Lessard: Felix Mendolssohn occupies a
considerable place on the musical scene
of 19 th Century Germany. He was a
pianist, organist, violinist, recitalist,
conductor, composer, pedagogue, and
co-founder, with Schumann, of a music
conservatory of enviable reputation.
And he left a large number of admirable
works, such as the ones included on
this CD. To put them on show, here are
extraordinarily talented cellist and pianist, possessing a perfect understanding
of the master’s very soul.
From the fi rst notes of the Allegro
vivace of the Sonata No. 2 in D Major,
op. 58, from 1843, we are overcome by
the sheer beauty of the melody and the
energetic rhythm of the musicians. After
an Allegretto scherzando, the Adagio opens
with a series of piano arpeggios, to which
the cello adds its warm but troubling
tone, giving way to the piano which picks
up the melody. The sonata ends with a
lively Moto allegro e vivace, whose cello
ostinato made me think of The Flight of
the Bumblebee. Further along we come to
the Variations concertantes, op. 17, which
Mendelssohn composed when he was 20.
It contains nine themes, in which cello
and piano alternate in the spotlight,
ending in an Assai tranquillo. Next there
is a Lied of rare tenderness in a somewhat
melancholic vein…just the thing to listen
to at the end of the day when you and a
public markets, where we are engulfed by
the exuberant joie de vivre well evoked
by a short but astonishing percussion
passage. In Microcentro, our next listening point, an exquisite duo recreates the
atmosphere of downtown. There is no
better music to appreciate the virtuosity
of the two musicians, and the perfect
osmosis that unites them. The suite ends
with a reprise of Palermo and a frantic
finale.
The second Pujol piece opens with
Nubes de Buenos. Brought to Argentina by
Black slaves from Africa, the candombe
is a dance with rapid tempo and a
well-syncopated rhythm, with highly
romantic flute passages. The playing is
fiery.
There are excerpts from Celso Machado’s Musiques populaires brésiliennes,
with delicious rhythms and melodies.
Between then comes a lascivious Tango
by Eric Marchelie, which opens with an
air on the flute that develops with fervor
and passion to the energetic accompaniment of the guitar.
But without a doubt the pièce de
résistance is Histoire du Tango, with four
pieces by Astor Piazzola: Bordel 1900,
gay, catching, almost insolent, a touch
disreputable; Café 1930, dreamy and
tender; Night Club 1950, recalling the
rise of the tango to ballroom status; and
Concert d’aujourd’hui, a hybrid product of
two influences elevating the tango to the
classical level.
A guitar that goes to our head by its
formidable sound and virtuosity, subtle
rubato full of tenderness to touch our
senses, melodies that run through our
minds despite us, and two accomplished
musicians playing with matchless virtuosity and sensitivity, as well as a verve
which plunges us into a joyous session,
from which we emerge all too soon to a
duller reality.
The recording was done in the old
Saint-Augustin de Mirabel stone church,
north of Montreal, which for several
years has been used by Analekta for some
of its best recordings. The sound, from
Analekta’s usual engineer. Carl Talbot,
is impeccable.
Ralph Vaughan Williams. It seems odd make intellectual sense of it, though I
to hear his music played by a wind band, was somewhat shaken by the ending,
since he himself very much favored lush whose sound suggests an air raid siren.
strings, but this suite really was com- I wondered whether Del Tredici will
posed for band. I have reservations about ultimately feel compelled to add a third
his rather amorphous, rambling music, movement to his suite. It is too soon to
but he had a talent for arranging good guess what its title will be.
melodies in a new setting: his Fantasia
The sound, as usual with this comon Greensleeves remains, deservedly, his pany, was done by Keith O. Johnson,
best-known work. Vaughan Williams and is mostly outstanding, but for some
collected many folk songs to keep them rather shrill peaks on trumpets and
from being forgotten, and this suite flutes. It sounds especially good if you
contains several.
have a player with an HDCD decoder.
The first and third selections are Proper decoding adds explosive dynamBells for Stokowski
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title is drawn from its fi nal piece, that his few pieces that have survived is a
of Michael Daugherty. Daugherty’s collection of songs and dances called
forte is commissioned music suites. He The Danserye, originally composed for
has written evocative music in praise the instruments of the time —sackbut,
of Baltimore, Detroit, Los Angeles, krumhorn and the like — and adapted
and even places that don’t exist, such as for modern wind band by Patrick DunniSuperman’s home town of Metropolis. gan. Jerry Junkin’s excellent University
The subject in this case is Philadelphia, of Texas Wind Ensemble is much larger
and it is one of three commissioned than any orchestra of five centuries ago
pieces in honor of that city.
would have been, with the result that, not
It’s got bells, as the title promises: withstanding the period dance rhythms, Celebration
two large bells on either side of the stage, with their symmetrical development and Les violons du roy/Gauvin/Roschmann
plus a variety of other bells and bell-like characteristic repetitions, the suite has Dorian DOR-90024
percussion instruments. The result is a decidedly modern sound. This is by Lessard: The reputation of this ensemmost attractive and even refreshing, no means a bad thing, and I enjoyed it ble long ago overflowed local frontiers
but…why?
immensely.
to emerge in only a few years as one of
Daugherty explains that he has imagThe collection, finally, includes a the world’s most appreciated chamber
ined Stokowski — one-time conductor highly contemporary work by David Del orchestras. Its founder and conductor
of the Philadelphia Orchestra as of so Tredici, titled In Wartime. Del Tredici has found a way to be respected rather
many others — “visiting the Liberty completed it while he sat in front of the than feared. Much as he is appreciated by
Bell at sunrise, and listening to all the TV, watching the US “shock and awe” the public, he shows surprising modesty
bells of the city resonate.” He includes invasion of Iraq. Many composers have before the ovations at his concerts. As for
various bell sounds throughout the written music on the theme of war. It is the 15 musicians he leads, they are virpiece, including occasional tolling by generally joyous and bombastic if it is tuosos of their respective instruments.
the two big bells, and his multilayered written early in the war, sad and tragic
Bernard Labadie has a particular
orchestration is also meant to evoke the if written after. This piece was written penchant for Handel, Bach, Vivaldi and
variety of music Stokowski conducted, before, but was finished in front of the Mozart. Handel’s Concerto Grosso op. 6
from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and TV images. Would Del Tredici have a No. 5 in D Major opens this 78 minute
Goldberg Variations (which he quotes) to point of view?
CD of musical and auditory joy.
In Wartime begins with a hymn,
20th Century atonal music, and ending
The Allegro assai from the Sinfonia in
with a full-orchestra roar Stokowski the part most war requiems end with. D Major is from J.C.F. Bach, possibly the
loved. I do think Stokowski would have It then continues with a Battlemarch, least-known member of the celebrated
enjoyed conducting this.
well-crafted but whose sense I strove dynasty, though that should not be
The other works are unrelated. They to discern. Perhaps the war is still too taken to imply a lack of talent. In fact his
include an English folk song suite by close, and I was working too hard to output, nearly all composed at the court
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64
Obseción
Trio Amadé
Klavier K11134
Rejskind: The meaning of the title is
evident, though not why the Amadé Trio
chose it. The music is eclectic, covering
Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein,
Astor Piazzola and Emilio Colón. I’ve
run across Colón’s music on several
recordings in the last short while, but
this recording is significant for a particular reason: the cellist of this superb piano
trio is none other than Colón himself.
So let me begin by his own contribution, a tango with the enigmatic title N.
Written specially for this ensemble, it
opens with a gentle piano solo, followed
by a ravishingly beautiful violin passage
that is well supported by the graver tones
of the cello. It is in the second half of
the piece, running six minutes, that
you recognize that yes, this is indeed a
tango.
This worthy piece is followed by a
suite from the late Argentinian tango
master, Astor Piazzola, titled Las Cuatro
Estaciones Porteñas, a clear reference
to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. One doesn’t
expect to be able to dance to Piazzola’s
tangos, of course, though one almost
could to the Verano Porteño, the Summer
sequence. It alternates between fiery
brio and heartrending nostalgia. Spring
is deliciously melodic, while Autumn
is lyrical and hints tantalizingly at the
tango rhythm, which then bursts out
in full flame. Winter is another delight,
whose mood changes blindingly fast,
revealing its dance nature. It can be
surprisingly easy to make Piazzola sound
dull and confused, but even he didn’t
often make his music sound as delightful
as it does on this recording.
The other half of the CD is more difficult to recommend. Copland’s Vitebsk
(Study on a Jewish Theme) is inspired by
a folk song Copland heard during a New
York performance of The Dybbuk by the
Moscow Arts Theater. It is angular and
austere, not at all like Copland’s bestknown works, which often themselves
sound like folk music. It seemes dated
today. And I was left cold by a 1937 trio
composed by Leonard Bernstein when
he was 19.
The Amadé Trio, in case I haven’t
already made it clear, is absolutely firstclass. Violinist Felicia Moye in particular
has a penchant for lyricism that can
bring you close to tears, as she does on
both the Piazzola and the Colón. Pianist
Heather Coltman is excellent, and I need
hardly add that the group’s composercellist understands this music perfectly.
Best of all, the whole adds up to even
more than the sum of its parts.
The microphones were placed close
to the instruments, and so the actual
sound you hear will depend in large part
on the acoustics of your own room. Yet
it never sounds unpleasantly forward,
or shrill and edgy. The transfer to CD
is spot on.
Norman Dello Joio
Stamp & Keystone Wind Ens.
Klavier K11138
Rejskind: My first reaction: I was
delighted to learn that Norman Dello
Joio was still alive. Indeed, the last cut
on this disc is a 23 minute interview with
him, part of Klavier’s The Composer’s Voice
series. I became a fan of his orchestral
and choral music many years ago. Not
only is he a master melodist, but he
has a natural understanding of how to
use variations on a theme to surprise
and delight the ear. Clearly, he himself
delights in the sheer sound of the orchestra. And I must add that this delight has
never been more evident than in this
stunning recording, a topic I shall return
to in a moment.
Dello Joio is musically eclectic. He
studied composition with Hindemith,
but he also spent part of his youth
playing jazz, and he acknowledges Fats
Waller as one of his influences. It seems
to me he was always drawn to the use of
percussion and brass to fill the space of
a hall, and it appears natural for him to
compose for wind band, as he has in all
of these pieces. I was surprised to hear
that he wrote his first work for wind band
65
Software
of Bückenburg, is immense.
There is a superb arrangement by
Labadie of a part of J.S. Bach’s Art of the
Fugue, in which he doses the harpsichord
and the organ with remarkable discernment.
On track 12 there is the gift of a
sublime aria drawn from Handel’s
Dafné, sung by the divine soprano
Karina Gauvin. When her voice rises,
no matter what you’re doing she will
command your attention. Indeed, all of
the voices on the recording — not only
Gauvin but also Dorothea Roschmann
and Russell Braun — are magnificent,
and they touch us to our very hearts in
pieces by Handel and Bach.
After that come two remarkable concertos by Vivaldi, rendered in dazzling
fashion. In the midst of it, a first violin
enthralls us with the utter beauty of a
Largo e spiccato.
Bach’s Goldberg Variations follow, in
an orchestral arrangement by Labadie,
and finally three movements from
Mozart’s deathless Requiem, with a contribution from the choir and soloists of
the Chapelle de Québec.
I feel it would be redundant for
me to say much about these works so
well-loved for centuries. Except for the
J.C.F. Bach piece, they are staples of
both recordings and concert halls, all
for our greater pleasure. I’d rather praise
the dynamic playing of the musicians,
always perfectly coordinated, but whose
discipline in no way banishes a healthy
dose of sensitivity.
The sound? Dorian at its best.
THE UHF CLASSIFIEDS
Run your own ad in the print issue, and on our World Wide Web site for two months
NON-COMMERCIAL: $12 per slice of 40 words or less. COMMERCIAL: $24 per slice of 40 words or less.
TAXES: In most of Canada, add 7% GST. NS, NB, NF, add 15% HST. In Québec, add another 7.5% TVQ. No taxes for advertisers outside Canada. Payment may be made
by cheque, money order, or VISA or MasterCard (include number, expiry date and signature). NOTE: Because classified ad prices are kept so low, we cannot engage
in correspondence concerning ads. Fee must be paid a second time if a correction is required, unless the fault is ours. Prices shown in Canadian dollars. THE UHF
CLASSIFIEDS, Box 65085, Place Longueuil, LONGUEUIL, Qué., Canada J4K 5J4
PHONE: (450) 651-5720 FAX: (450) 651-3383. E-MAIL: [email protected]
CASTLE WINCHESTERS
Castle Winchester speakers, excellent condition, gently
used for two years. Mahogony finish. Boxes. $2400 or
best offer. [email protected].
SUGDEN WANTED
Will pay top dollar for used Sugden Audiotion power
amplifier. Call Mark at (519)885-4750, or e-mail
[email protected].
MUSE, EAD
Muse Model 2 DAC (HDCD); Enlightened Audio
Designs Universal Transport (T-7000); Excellent
Condition; $500.00 for the pair. Gary (905)937-0460 (St.
Catharines). [email protected].
REGA PLANET
Rega Planet 2000 CD Player, black with Solar remote,
good condition, original packaging, $900. Prefer to
sell directly in Toronto area. Peter, (416)445-4997,
[email protected].
AUDIOMAT, VECTEUR
Audiomat Solfege integrated amp, Audiomat Tempo 2
D/A, Vecteur Tierce walnut speakers. As new, played
so little they are barely burned in. Sold as system
only, $17,000CAN value, asking $8000CAN. Hefty
items, shipping costs will depend on destination. Jean,
(418)522-2620, [email protected].
LUMLEY, ANTHEM, DYNACO
Ray Lumley M-100 Mono blocks, very good condition
$1800. Anthem preamp 1 with separate power supply,
very good $800. Dynaco Mk III, modified by Lee Pratt,
sounds great, $800. Will, [email protected].
MOON W-5 AMPLIFIER
UHF is selling a Simaudio Moon W-5 power amplifier.
We have long considered the W-5 one of the world’s
best high-powered (185 wpc) solid state amps (the
notable exception is the newer W-5 we have picked
up). It is in mint condition, with box and manual. It is
the original version, with the “Celeste” name, serial
number 970503. Original price C$5200, for C$2850 plus
shipping. Contact UHF at [email protected], or call
during EDT business hours, (450)651-5720.
PREAMP BY DE PARAVICINI
Upscale preamplifier from Alchemist, the Forseti
Signature version designed by E.A.R.’s Tim de
ProAc
Neat
Creek
Crimson
935 Mount Pleasant Road
Toronto 416-421-7552
Royd
Visonik
Epos
!
The
Odds
Are
Good
Eichmann
Naim
WIREWORLD, PIERRE GABRIEL, NAIM
Wireworld Eclipse III+ speaker cables (3 meter, new,
still in sealed plastic) list $2560, sell $1650. Pierre
Gabriel ML1 interconnects (1 meter, new) list $1160,
sell $800. Pierre Gabriel L1 interconnects (1.5 meter,
mint) list $800, sell $450. Naim nait5/flatcapII/stageline
phono stage (mint) list $4450, sell $3500. Chord 2
interconnects (mint, 2 pairs RCA-DIN ) sell $160.
Teac/Primare ABX10 integrated amp (excellent, 100
watts, balanced inputs) sell $1100. Email address
[email protected].
Ecosse
Isoblue
MUSEATEX REPAIRS
Museatex/MeitnerAudio factory service and updates.
Please check our web-site at www.museatex.com.
E-mail me at [email protected] or phone (403)2840723.
ENERGY/QUAD
Energy Reference Connoisseur walnut (see issue No.
9 HiFi and No. 69 Kappa system, UHF), no orig boxes,
will crate to ship. asking $1,000 o.b.o. 1 pair vintage
Quad electrostatics crated ready to go $750 o.b.o (905)
937-4100.
hi fi fo fum
Ringmat
INTERCONNECTS
Tired of paying high-end price for interconnects?!
Amazing high quality trouble free interconnects.
OXYGEN FREE COPPER OR SILVER WIRE. Best
quality gold plugs or NEW REVOLUTIONARY BULLET
PLUGS. RCA-to-RCA or RCA-to-DIN (for Quad, Naim,
etc). No more adapters. Silver soldering. Exceptional
workmanship. Standard or custom orders. From $75.
BIS AUDIO, (450)663-6137.
MAGNUM DYNALAB
Magnum Dynalab 101A “Etude” tuner, $600 firm.
Magnum Dynalab Signal Sleuth 205, $200 firm.
Complete with manuals. Little used, and mint. (705)7260519.
“Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is
not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not
beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music.
Music is the best!”
Frank Zappa
The Goods
Are
Odd,
But
BRYSTON
Bryston BP-25 preamp, 2 years old, with remote Rotel
RQ-970BX phono preamp, 6 months old. Both mint,
$1700 for both. Mike, (705)268-7399 weekdays. (April
21/04)
REFERENCE 3A
Reference 3a MM De Capo speakers. 2 years old and in
excellent condition. Original boxes and manuals.Asking
$1800. E-mail me at [email protected] or phone
519-322-4059.
Cyrus
Rega
Arcam
Paravicini. Spectacular styling, large outboard power
supply. See it online at the Alchemist site. Was
originally US$2000 without phono stage. This one
includes the MM phono stage and is in mint condition.
$1325 (Canadian) plus shipping. Contact UHF at
[email protected], or call during EDT business
hours, (450)651-5720.
NAIM NAIT
For sale: Naim NAIT 3 (with MC phono board) plus 10
ft pair Naim speaker cables and high quality 5-pin DIN
cable terminated with 4 RCA male connectors. Plus
Naim MM phonoboard = C$1200. iandidave@hotmail.
com. (March 22/04)
MONITOR AUDIO
Monitor Audio MA1200 Gold MkII two-way with rear port.
Black ash veneer. 87 dB/1W/1m. 30 Hz-20 kHz +/- 3 dB.
Bi-wireable. Binding posts upgraded to Cardas Rhodium.
Internal wire upgraded to Cardas. Capacitor upgrade
to Hovland. DeFlex port damping. Mass loadable to
80 lb each. Spikes and Michell Tenderfeet included.
Grills, original boxes, manual. Mint Condition. Orion
Blue Book value: US$700 without upgrades. $950 CDN.
[email protected].
TOTEM
Totem Hawks, cherry finished, with boxes, packing,
$1800. Bryston interconnects, 2 strands, 5 m each with
Neutrik RCA’s, $200. Nordost Red Dawn interconnects,
1 m, balanced, $400. Buyer pays delivery. Call (613)7481950.
AUDIOMAT - VECTEUR
Creekside Audio for all your stereo/theatre needs.
Audiomat, Vecteur, Atlantis Acoustique, Gershman
and lots more! Discover the magic in music with our
fine products. (250)-878-6252, Kelowna, BC. www.
creeksideaudio.net.
startling. Dello Joio loves the sound of
the orchestra, and Leek has captured it.
This is a truly great recording.
Note to the competition: before you do
your next 24-bit recording, have a listen
what Leek does with only 16.
Kickin’ the Clouds Away
George Gershwin
Klavier K77031
Lessard: At this moment I am hearing George Gershwin at the piano.
Gershwin himself! After hearing his
music interpreted by so many other pianists, by so many singers, by orchestras
large and small, by so many bands, after
having read thousands of comments on
his dazzling piano performances, I have
Gershwin himself in my Linn player,
nearly 70 years after his death. Such
emotion! That pleasure alone is enough
to justify getting this recording.
But that’s not all. It’s a chance to hear
once again his many moving melodies:
I Was So Young, You Were So Beautiful, a
gorgeous love song, Drifting Along With
the Tide, and So Am I. Better yet, I was
able to gauge for myself his inimitable
virtuosity, his brilliant playing. On this
CD he plays not only his own works
but also those of other composers he
admires: Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin
and others. I can’t believe it! And whence
comes this magic?
Starting in his twenties, Gershwin
played a number of compositions on a
reproducing piano, a more sophisticated
version of the player piano once common
in bars and saloons. Popular from 1903
to 1930, it could record on a paper roll
not only the actual notes played, but
also the dynamics and the pedal position. The makers of these machines
were willing to pay good money to sign
up the finest pianists of their time. To
make this recording, a reproducing
piano was placed in a concert hall, stereo
microphones were suspended over it,
and Gershwin’s piano rolls were played.
Gershwin…in modern stereo!
But I won’t reveal all of the secrets of
this fabulous machine, since you’ll find
them explained in detail in the booklet
accompanying the CD. I can add only
that this recording is a must in any
serious eclectic record collection, and
that you’ll listen with renewed pleasure
to Swanee, Shilkret’s Make Believe,
Donaldson’s Rockabye, Lullaby Mammy,
Rhapsody in Blue, and of course Kickin’
the Clouds Away.
Piano Rags
Richard Dowling
Klavier K77035
Lessard: Like many a new music form,
the rag was initially condemned by the
Establishment and considered suitable for clubs and brothels. Its rapid
spread and huge popularity indicate
that, notwithstanding the disapproval,
it captivated music lovers everywhere,
and composers as well. Among those
who wrote ragtime music were John
Philip Sousa, the king of band marches
and inventor of the sousaphone, George
Gershwin, Sigmund Romberg, Jerome
Kern and Irving Berlin. You can also
fi nd ragtime in the music of Dvorak,
Debussy and others.
Though ragtime was shouldered aside
by jazz in the 1920’s, it was never totally
eclipsed, and there was renewed interest, starting in the 60’s, in this music,
originated by itinerant pianists, mostly
Afro-Americans and mostly from the US
67
Software
only in 1963, when he was 50. That work,
Variants on a Medieval Tune, is the very
first piece on the CD.
The medieval tune in question will
be familiar to most listeners as In Dulci
Jubilo, the tune to the Christmas carol
Good Christian Men Rejoice. Dello Joio
exposes it undisguised in the first of six
movements, and then starts work to reuse
it in ever more inventive forms, played
first by the bassoon, then the clarinet,
and later the brass, then different mixes
of brass and woodwinds: flute, French
horn, and so on. The percussion is used
as tasty condiment. He adds a number of
original melodies to the cauldron, some
of them unrelated to the main theme,
though sometimes more closely related
than one might guess.
Also on the CD is another set of variations, the Fantasies on a Theme by Haydn.
The theme is drawn from Haydn’s String
Quartet No. 2, op. 76. Dello Joio had
borrowed the theme once before, for
his orchestral Homage to Haydn of 1969,
premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra
no less! He later reworked it as this wind
band piece, and it sounds as though it
was originally written that way. There
are four movements, which have their
own track numbers on the CD, but are
played without pause. This suite alone is
worth ordering the record for.
The other pieces are less familiar, but
are worth discovering. City Profiles is a
wind band adaptation of his New York
Profiles of 1949, with constantly shifting moods in which he uses the band to
excellent advantage. From Every Horizon
is also for New York, adapted from his
score for a film about the 1964 World’s
Fair.
The members of the Keystone Wind
Ensemble are drawn from facult y,
students and administration of Indiana
University of Pennsylvania, which barely
hints at what an outstanding ensemble
this is. The playing is flawless, very
much together, and it is full of life and
enthusiasm. They play with obvious and
communicative pleasure that does justice
to the music. Bruce Leek’s engineering
is entirely up to the task, and indeed
appears to push the envelope of what can
be put onto a Red Book CD. The clarity
is wonderfully satisfying, and the percussion rings with a power that is often
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south. In 1973, the hit movie The Sting
won awards not only for best picture but
also for best musical score…for the rag
The Entertainer.
Do I like rags? Yes I do, for one of the
benefits of being eclectic is the ability to
find happiness with many different musical styles. I envy the composers, who can
express so many fi ne sentiments using
this very complex music that merely
sounds easy, if only because it is played
by pianists with astonishing talent. The
originators of ragtime were all magicians
of the keyboard.
The present recording features Richard Dowling and his Steinway, playing
rags by such celebrities as Joseph C.
Northup, Artie Matthews, James Scott,
Joseph F. Lamb, Gershwin, and Scott
Joplin — dubbed the king of ragtime.
Included are Joplin’s Bethena, Maple Leaf
Rag and A Mexican Serenade. This last is
as sentimental as you could wish, with
rubato, pregnant pauses…the works.
Except for William Bolcom, who was
younger, the others were born before the
turn of the century.
68
Oskar
Antique Sound Lab
Ruark
Dali
YBA
Chord Cable
Reference 3a
Rega
Monster Cable
Harmonic Cable
XLO Cable
Tel: (403) 228-1103
Fax: (403) 245-8198
The CD opens with Bolcom’s The
Cannon Ball of 1905, a highly original
blend of classics and ragtime. The
booklet says that it recalls (What? Did
I read right!) Franz Liszt. Begging your
pardon, I don’t agree. And yet… Listen
to those rapid cascades of arpeggios,
staccatos and clever repetitions, blended
with the syncopated rhythm typical of
ragtime, and tell me this is not a virtuoso
piece! What we call light music is not
necessarily music that is easy to play,
as this disc demonstrates. Dowling has
the knack for broad chords, thirds and
octave jumps, delivered with remarkable
precision, without ever breaking the
luminous rhythm that make the hours
seem short.
Then come two rags by arranger
Artie Matthews, believed to have also
written the first blues, Baby Seal Blues, in
1915. Joseph E. Lamb’s American Beauty
Rag is especially attractive and a bit sentimental, though without sacrificing the
joyousness of the genre. Lamb’s Ragtime
Nightingale has touches of rubato here
and there. James Scott’s tongue-in-cheek
Hilarity Rag is irresistible. Jay Roberts’
Entertainment Rag is full of contagious
humor, and contains some easily-spotted
quotations. Kitten on the Keys is absolutely
divine, and represents very well a cat
choosing to dance on the black and white
notes.
The list could go on. In short all of
the pieces on this CD are dazzling, both
by their style and by the pianist’s exciting
play. I recommend it warmly.
One Life
Katinka Wilson
Opus 3 CD22032
Rejskind: It seems you can’t go to an
audio show without finding a new CD
by a new female jazz singer. Most would
sound fine if you ran across them in a
smoky club late at night, but buying the
CD is another matter. A number of these
singers come from the Far East, particularly Hong Kong. Do they understand
what they are singing? On the primary
level, sure, but…
Now and again you get a hit. Sheffield’s Margie Gibson is such a prize.
And remember Thérèse Juel, who sang
so gorgeously in Swedish on the Opus 3’s
original demo disc?
Katinka Wilson is also from Opus 3,
and I’m sorry to say I can’t put her in
the hit category. Despite her un-Swedish last name and her flawless English
phrasing, she was born near Stockholm.
She is multitalented, not only singing
but playing guitar, and writing her own
music and lyrics. She has good backup,
which includes Janne Petersson, one of
Eric Bibb’s people.
I tried to get into this music, I really
did, but neither the melodies nor the
words kept me from thinking about
things other than music. Wilson has
studied some pretty good singers, and
she has learned all the tricks well, but
really good singing is not a trick. It is
an art, or should be.
Even the sound left me cold, something I don’t often say about Opus 3
recordings. It is a hybrid SACD, yet its
sound is oddly flat and one-dimensional.
Perhaps it’s the fact that this is a multitrack mix, as given away by the fact that
Wilson sometimes adds in overdubbed
choral effects. I can’t think of a reason
to recommend it.
Gossip&News
News From the Trenches
Though Blue Circle was originally
known for tube gear, it has been moving
extensively into solid state…including its
new BC27pi phono stage.
Swedish radio has gone to 5.1 channels. No, not on the air, but on the
Internet. The experimental service
offers surround sound music concerts
you can download, burn to CD, and then
play through a home theatre system.
Both DTS and Dolby Digital versions
are included.
This is not for dialup connections:
fi les run up to 729 Mb! Try them at
http://www.sr.se/multikanal/english/
e_index.stm.
*
The upsampling stakes keep being
raised. Numerous CD and DVD/SACD
players now offer upsampling of CDs
from the usual 44.1 kHz to 96 kHz. Now
MSB goes one better: 192 kHz. That’s
available in the company’s new Super
DVD player.
This is another in the growing
category of “play anything” machines,
handling DVD, DVD-A, SACD, etc. It
costs US$7995.
An add-on for some earlier MSB
players adds the upsampling capability
for US$699.
*
Naim will soon release its new DVD5
player, which will include an onboard
Faroudja video processor.
The unit has been made slim so it
can be tucked behind the turntable
or preamp, to keep cables short. The
second chassis is the power supply,
which includes a whopping 200,000 mF
of filter capacitors…enough for a pretty
good power amp. The BC27pi costs
US$1395. The BC27, which has a more
The DVD5 has been designed for
conventional power supply, is US$595,
use with very large displays, and can
and is upgradable to the “pi” version.
upscale
images to 1080 lines…the video
e
to hav
*
to audio upsampling.
’t have t a lcounterpart
t
n
o
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ou
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. But y r to k now t
We reviewed the Creek CD50 player
The new player, whose price has not
y
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e
om
to
just in time…before Creek replaced it as easy to c gerian dicta
yet been announced, will play DVDi
w
p
N
i
s
osthe
mer
g
with the Mark II version. It
looks
r
,
o
t
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a
n
r
it Audio, but not SACD.
ber to lit t le value.
e I nte similar
is t hat t
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u
F
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but it is Eradically
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d
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sen of using
Instead
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o
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o
e
t
Philips transport favored by most
manuh
bout t hort, it’s no
nt ainexpensive
term.
rean
e
facturers, Creek
uses
f
ns
f
I
i
.
d
t
ot her
n
’s
e
e
t
a
m
m
h
o
W
computer-grade
CD-R
In late Juneupthere
h comdrive, which
w it h swas a flurry of their record company, EMI, for impose
es w it
m
m
o
o
c
c
d
l
loads data into . a block of computer angry
Internet postings about the new ing the protection, but deny that the
e shou
ut
abomemory
haps wCD by The Beastie Boys. Not only was it CD contains either a virus or spyware.
r
memory. The
buffer then
plays
e
P
?
p
ossiassume
the data, with what
is copy-protected, but if you inserted it into Rather, they say, it is the same Macroviust gcan
ill jwe
t
s
t
i
s
I
minimum jitter.
your computer drive, it would automati- sion CDS-200 copy protection system
There are potential problems: Euro- cally install a “worm,” a malicious piece used on numerous European discs.
pean record stores are full of discs of software that would prevent you from
If that’s true, what the disc does is
mucked up with copy protection schemes copying the contents. The postings got bypass the normal music player built
aimed at foiling their use in computers. rather vicious, with some Beastie Boys into Windows or the Macintosh OS, and
Creek claims the CD50 MkII will play fans (oh, they’ve got them) calling for install its own music player instead. So
all current discs, and that the player’s lawyers, or even a mob with torches.
the music will play, but it can’t be copied
firmware is on an easily-changed plug-in
We couldn’t check this out, because in the usual way.
device.
copies made in the US or the UK don’t
Of course that doesn’t really mean it
contain the virus, if indeed that’s what it can’t be copied. Our view: any executive
*
Among new products from Benz is. But this may turn out to be be much who thinks gadgets like this will protect
Micro is a line of new titanium watches. ado about nothing…or at least nothing his company from the 21st Century
Says the company: “Swiss precision, style we haven’t seen before.
should be checked for transplantable
The Beastie Boys themselves blame organs.
and it’s analog!”
sip
s
o
g
han
t
e
r
mo
s
i
t
tha
p
i
s
s
Go
69
Gossip&News
Beastly CDs
Errata
It’s Latin for “errors,” and this is
where we make corrections to items in
issue No. 69 of UHF Magazine.
First the title (page 34) of the Creek
CD player: the one reviewed is not the
MkII version, unlike what we wrote. The
text made it plain that the forthcoming
MkII will be quite different from the
player we reviewed, using a computer
ATA drive and reading the music from
memory.
In the review of the Audiomat Opéra
integrated amplifier (page 40), we said
that one of the two toggle switches on
the front panel is for the tape loop. It is in
fact a muting switch…as we would have
realized had we looked more attentively
at our own cover photo!
The same review suggested somewhat ambiguously that the Opéra is
supplied either with an Actinote power
cord, or with “the usual junk power
cord.” Though our test unit did have an
Actinote in the box, neither is standard
issue with the Opéra, which comes with
a Belden cord fitted with a Hubbell wall
plug.
Gossip&News
“Piracy”
Last
Do Record Companies Cheat?
For years record companies have
wrung their hands over music downloading, but not all their artists are singing
from the same hymn book. Courtney
Love and Janis Ian have been extensively
quoted on the subject in UHF.
Now add David Crosby, of Crosby,
Stills, Nash and Young, who in March
opened up to PBS about the record business.
There’s a lot of cheating and lying and
stealing that goes on in any major business,
and the music business is no exception. I
don’t think that there’s much we can do
about it. They built their business model in
an era when they could make, I don’t know,
on a million-selling album, they’re making
10 million bucks or something, and they do
eight of those in a year. That’s what they
built their business model on. And it seemed
reasonable to build huge buildings and hire
hundreds of people…and get a corporate jet
or two. What a very grandiose idea of how
to go about things.
Now they’re going in the tank, because
the world has changed, and they did not
change with it. They bit the poison pill,
without realizing it, when they went digital.
Once a thing is in the digital domain, it can
be copied as many times as you want. And
there is no system that can keep it from being
copied. You can devise the most clever one you
want, and I will bring some little geek with
a pen protector in his pocket into the room
and he will fi x it in a minute.
Crosby told PBS he and his former
band members would never have made
it under today’s system.
And there’s more. I think one of the
most glaring examples of what they do
wrong is they cheat as a matter of policy on
paying, because they know that you’ll have to
hire an accountant and audit them. Then,
when you get the audit figure and they
owe you $486,000, they’ll offer you 30%
in settlement, knowing full well you’ll ask
for 100% and that you’ll settle somewhere
around 50. The other 50% is free money.
They knew it going in. They intended to do
it from the beginning, so that they could get
the other 50% for free. Hence, just a little
bonus thing, thank you very much, and it’s
from heaven.
And they all do it as a matter of policy.
They know they’re going to cheat, going in.
Crosby has praise for Apple iTunes
Music Store, which he says is selling lots
of his music…with no expenses.
You can view the full program, The
Way the Music Died, at:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/
frontline/shows/music/
chanTag McLaren Goes East
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owners could sue not only those who losing.
steal music or fi lms, but also “parties
One of the company’s exploits, when Group, which also owns Quad and
who intend to induce others to infringe it started up in 1998, was purchas- Wharfedale. The new company Web
copyright.” Note the word intend.
ing Audiolab, and then dumping the site does show audio products as well as
The main target is clearly the fi le company’s products in favor of a new the home theatre stuff, but there’s no
sharing networks such as Grokster and line that — according to a distributor indication what the new management’s
KaZaa. Critics, however, claim that who said thanks but no thanks — cost tilt will be.
Hatch wants to reverse the Betamax double.
The international Audio Group, by
decision of two decades ago, and that
In July of last year, company CEO the way, has not purchased the F1 racing
the measure could be used against such Udo Zucker announced that TM A company, one of whose major shareholddevices as the iPod
would cease all development of new ers is DaimlerChrysler.
70
Does DVD Have a Future?
It’s no secret that CD sales are down
worldwide. But while record companies blame fi le sharing, there may be
another culprit: the DVD. CD and DVD
purchases come from the same family
budget, and it seems natural that the rise
in one would be accompanied by a drop
in the other.
And the DVD is booming. One of
the world’s major producers of both
DVDs and CDs is Cinram, based in
Toronto, with plants worldwide. Cinram
distributes what it makes, too. It got the
distribution rights to Warner products
last year and Universal this year, with
BMG (RCA Victor, etc.) coming aboard
shortly. No wonder Cinram’s profits
in the first quarter of this year jumped
105%. That should have made the stock
price soar.
But in fact Cinram stock bled 10%
of its value since the start of the year,
because some analysts are nervous. Sure,
DVD is big right now, but what if there’s
something else that will replace it?
Like what? Well, several technology
companies have been showing possible
successors to the current DVD. A high
defi nition disc using a blue laser is one
possible replacement, though for the
moment there are two incompatible
systems on the table. And Microsoft
figures you’ll be watching movies on
your computer. That was enough for
Cannacord Capital to put Cinram shares
under review “with negative bias.”
Hmm, let’s see now. Cinram started
out making CDs, but transited seamlessly
to DVD. If there’s something beyond
DVD, won’t someone have to make it?
We Wood, Wood You?
company, so perhaps they know something we don’t.
Wood can crack, of course, but JVC
says its woofer cones are specially treated
to be at once strong and resilient. To
accomplish this, JVC soaks the cones in
Japanese sake. You can’t make up stuff
like this.
Who says audio design isn’t art?
Aldburn Electronics . .
Almarro . . . . . . . . .
Artech Electronics . . .
Audiomat . . . . . . . .
Audiophileboutique.com
Audio Room . . . . . .
Bluebird Music . . . . .
Blue Circle . . . . . . .
Boyz on a Wire . . . . .
CEC . . . . . . . . . . .
Charisma Audio . . . .
Daruma . . . . . . . . .
Diamond Groove . . . .
Divergent Technologies
Eichmann . . . . . . . .
Entre’Acte Audio . . . .
Europroducts Internat. .
Exposure . . . . . . . .
Fab Audio . . . . . . . .
Focus Audio . . . . . . .
Griffin Audio . . . . . .
Gryphon . . . . . . . .
Hi Fi Fo Fum . . . . . .
Home Theater Cruise .
The House of Sound . .
Jadis . . . . . . . . . . .
Justice Audio . . . . . .
Just May Audio . . . . .
Linn . . . . . . . . . . .
Marchand Electronics .
Michell . . . . . . . . .
Moon . . . . . . . . . .
Murata . . . . . . . . .
Mutine . . . . . . . . .
Pierre Gabriel . . . . . .
ProAc . . . . . . . . . .
Reference 3a . . . . . .
Roksan . . . . . . . . .
Shanling . . . . . . . . .
Simaudio . . . . . . . .
Signature Audio . . . .
Soundstage . . . . . . .
Spendor . . . . . . . . .
Totem Acoustic . . . . .
UHF Back Issues . . . .
UHF Books . . . . . . .
Venus Hi-Fi . . . . . . .
. . . . . .47
. . . . . .24
. . . . 12, 16
. . .Cover 3
. . . . . .60
. . . . . .68
. . . . . .46
. . . . . .10
. . . . . .20
. . . . . .57
. . . . . . 17
. . . . . .21
. . . . . .10
. . . . . .47
. . . . . . 9
. . . . . .10
9, 14, 20, 66
. . . . . .46
. . . . . .13
. . . Couv. 3
. . . . . .16
. . . . . .16
. . . . . .66
. . . . . .15
. . . . . .18
. . . . . .16
. . .Cover 2
. . .Cover 2
. . . . . .47
. . . . . . 11
. . . . . .12
. . .Cover 4
. . . . . .12
. 57, Cover 3
. . . . . .16
. . . . . .16
. . . . . .47
. . .Cover 2
. . . . . . 17
. . .Cover 4
. . . . . . 11
. . . . . . 8
. . . . . .61
. . .Cover 4
. . . . . .25
. . . . . . 4
. . . . . . 21
71
Gossip&News
How did we miss this one?
We were in Vegas, and so was the
JVC EX-A1, a “desktop entertainment
system that includes a DVD player, and
these intriguing speakers, with woofer
cones that seem to be made of…
Yes, they’re wood.
Perhaps that’s not as outlandish as
it sounds. Lots of speakers use paper
cones, and what is paper
but wood that has been
chewed or something?
But JVC hasn’t chewed
the birch that is used for
its new speakers. The
cones are made of actual
birch layers.
W hy? Bec au se it
“brings out the natural
beauty of music by providing the ideal combination of high sound
propagation speed and
high internal loss.” We
ourselves would probably have gone for low
internal loss (or a good
proofreader), but JVC
is a lot bigger than our
ADVERTISERS
L
State of the Art
arge record producers are
crying the blues, and their
sobbing is so loud hardly
anyone on t he planet can
sleep through it. The executive résumé:
pirates (i.e. music lovers who own computers) are taking the bread from the
mouths of the creators (A&R people,
record company vice-presidents and
indie flacks). Curiously, not even the
recent upswing in CD sales has stemmed
the flow of tears. Or the threat of lawsuits for that matter.
It’s really too bad that the large
companies whose continued hegemony
depends on people buying recordings
have ignored what could have helped
them immensely: hi-fi. Let’s see how.
The problems of the recording
industry with “piracy” are not new.
More than 20 years ago, in our pages, a
record industry spokesman was crying
about the record world being threatened
by copying on cassette (curiously, the
same spokesman is still around, and
guess what he’s crying about now). That
situation brings smiles today, because
cassette copies seem so primitive by
today’s standards.
But are they? I seem to recall that
tapes made from our reference system
using our Nakamichi deck sounded
pretty good, better indeed than the
typical MP3 download file…including
the MP3’s that actually cost money. Of
course few non-audiophiles had decks
like that. Back then, cassettes were made
either on boomboxes, aka “ghetto blasters,” or on minisystems. Few of those
systems used Dolby noise reduction.
Copies were run off for friends using the
unit’s high-speed tape copier, which also
didn’t use noise reduction. Ugly!
Today these systems feature CD
players rather than cassette decks,
prominently labelled as compatible with
CD-R and CD-RW. But that isn’t all
that’s changed. Not so many years back
a minisystem was actually composed of
separate components, albeit not very
good ones. It then cost perhaps $700.
But notice what happened next. The
“components” became a solid box styled
72
by Gerard Rejskind
to look like a stack of components. That
allowed manufacturers to reduce the
price, as did a million shortcuts. The
$700 mini became a $500 mini, which
made it impossible to sell the $700
system. Then it dropped to $300, and
$100, and to $89.97 at Wal-Mart.
That much is known to everyone,
but consider this. The mainstream
audio manufacturers, such as Sony and
Philips, coinventors of the Compact
Disc, set out to convince the public that
you could greatly reduce the quality of
the music source, and it wouldn’t matter.
They launched new digital systems,
respectively MiniDisc and the DCC
digital cassette, which discarded more
than 80% of data, yet were referred to
as “near-CD quality.” Tech journalists,
many of whom appear to have slept
through high school physics, quickly
shortened that to “CD-quality.”
Interestingly enough, Sony and
Philips were then two of the world’s largest
record companies! Did they not understand
what they were doing, telling people
the source quality didn’t matter? They
STATE OF THE ART:
THE BOOK
Get the 258-page book
containing the State of the Art
columns from the first 60 issues
of UHF, with all-new introductions.
See page 4.
were preparing the way for the success
of MP3, which typically contain as little
as 8% of the original digital data.
And the popularity of the increasingly cheaper and trashier minisystems
did the rest. When the CD player, amplifier and speakers are so poor, do you need
more than 8% of the data? And note the
brand names on those systems. Sony is
a major record company. Philips was
Polygram until it (wisely) sold its stake
in an industry it was helping to strangle.
Panasonic owned MCA Records during
those critical years. Why were they doing
this?
While the typical system was sinking well below mediocrity, some record
producers were actually helping make it
the norm, by mixing their albums so that
they would be optimized for what among
themselves they refer to as “shitboxes.”
Listen to a well-made CD on a good
modern system, or even on the $700
minisystem of a decade ago, and you’ll
perceive MP3 as what it is: no more than
a low-quality teaser for the real thing.
The development of SACD makes the
difference even more obvious. If Sony
and its competitors were smart — and
there is room for doubt — they would
bring out all future releases as hybrid
SACDs, and they would trumpet the
sonic superiority of their discs, using
MP3 in the same way they use radio
airplay: free promotion.
And since some of these companies
are still well-connected with hardware
manufacturers, they should start making
affordable little systems with SACD
players built-in. They wouldn’t cost
$89.97 and that’s for sure, but not all
buyers of cheap systems choose them
because they can’t afford better. They
choose them because no one has told them
it makes any difference.
Want to snare younger music lovers?
Bring out more portable players that
can carry uncompressed music. The
iPod can, though Apple doesn’t bother
pointing it out.
Nobody with any of these products
is going to think KaZaA downloads are
good enough anymore.
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