Forty years ago, as I was starting out on my audio journey, I railed against the flashy mainstream audio gear of the day. To me less was more, and I tried to convince my friends that my small, austere British-made audio rig, including what my friends jokingly called my Lynn Swanndek turntable (after the Steelers wide receiver), really did sound much better than their big silvery Japanese stacks loaded up with shiny knobs, switches, and meters. Audio was all about the sound after all, and I wasn't interested in some dazzling visual display that had nothing to do with what I was hearing. I gravitated toward gear that wasn't flashy or fancy looking, feeling that meant that the effort and expense to create it went where it counted most, to the parts that made it sound great.
While I've mellowed a bit over the decades, my basic attitude hasn't changed that much. I have owned a lot of pedestrian-looking but brilliant-sounding hi-fi equipment. Highlights include my Julius Futterman H3aa mono OTL amplifiers, with their unpainted aluminum chassis and Dymo labelmaker stickers printed out by Julius himself to identify the various connections and tube sockets, and my Croft Audio Vitale preamp, with its laughable attempts at bling: gold-plated knobs and a faceplate of roughly finished wood.
First place in the ugly stakes, however, has to go to my Symdex Epsilon loudspeakers (although Herb Reichert's legendary Jamaican-flag-painted refrigerator speakers, which had 15" Altec 416 woofers cut into the main doors and Altec 604 drivers cut into the freezer, may have given them a run for their money). The Symdex was the first speaker created by future Snell and Revel designer Kevin Voecks. When new, these speakers looked a bit like a skinnier Vandersteen Model 2, with fabric-wrapped cabinets and wood end caps, but I modified them to within an inch of their lives, turning them into very likely the ugliest speakers ever created.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة August 2024 من Stereophile.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة August 2024 من Stereophile.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Philharmonic Audio BMR Monitor
Let's get this out of the way: The BMR Monitor may be a monitor, but it isn't a bookshelf or desktop speaker any more than a yacht is a dinghy.
Technics SC-CX700 ACTIVE LOUDSPEAKER
The usual Specifications box (below) is a nuts-and-bolts listing of the electrical and physical properties of the Technics SC-CX700 loudspeaker, who made it and where, and a widely varying amount of information about their electrical and acoustical performance. The information comes from the included literature, available downloads, and whatever I could find on the manufacturer's website.
Youth movement
Paul Klipsch was a genius,” Roy Delgado told me recently, with the sound of genuine amazement in his voice. “Me, I’m just a tinkerer.”
The Loricraft PRC6i record cleaning machine and the WallySkater v2.1 Pro
In my last Spin Doctor column, I gave an overview of my experiences cleaning records over the last 50-plus years and the advances in record cleaning technology over that time. My review of the HumminGuru NOVA ultrasonic record cleaner focused on that increasingly popular approach to record cleaning, using ultrasonic cavitation instead of scrubbing the record with a brush. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in that half-century of playing around with audio gear, it’s that it can be a mistake to embrace a new technology just because of its newness, dismissing what came before as obsolete. The vinyl record itself is a good example of a technology discarded as obsolete, then embraced again by new (and old) generations. You can add vacuum-tube amplifiers, analog tape, and much else in our hobby to that list.
Wattson Audio Madison LE Streamer
After it was delivered, I weighed the box containing Wattson Audio's DAC-equipped Madison LE Streamer on my bathroom scale.
Grimm Audio LS1c ACTIVE LOUDSPEAKER SYSTEM
It's not unusual for audiophiles to have fond childhood recollections of the old family stereo, but Eelco Grimm's memory of his dad's audio system probably stands alone.
Cambridge EXN100 STREAMING D/A PROCESSOR
Each soloist seemed to pop out to the front, between the two speakers (of course), their life force emerging over decades, grooves, and digital bits.
J.Sikora Standard Max Supreme, KV9 Max Zirconium
In his review of the J.Sikora Initial turntable, Stereophile's resident artist/sage Herb Reichert wrote, \"Extended bathing, lighting candles, making tea, and preparing food are ritual work forms that prepare my senses to accept both pleasure and illumination.\"
The Voxativ Hagen2 Monitor loudspeaker
I think I just found the perfect Herb speaker. It uses a hand-crafted 5\" wide-range driver with a cone made from Japanese calligraphy paper. It rolls off around 50Hz at the bottom and 30kHz at the top. It has no crossover. Its cabinet is made of MDF that responds loudly when I tap it with my fingernails. Inside is what its designer calls a “short horn,” which appears to harmlessly disperse back-cone energy while adding energy below the driver’s cutoff frequency. Mainly, though, it’s a perfect Herb speaker because it is naturally phase coherent. And sparkplug fast. And completely unmuffled.
The Beatles in Mono according to Kevin
It's almost too easy to make Dave Dexter Jr. the villain in the story of the Beatles' fumbled introduction to America.
