CATEGORIES
NAD C 298
POWER AMPLIFIER
ELAC Alchemy DPA-2
POWER AMPLIFIER
Fun with Moose and Squirrel
’Cause, it’s hard to say what’s real / When you know the way you feel —Flaming Lips, “One More Robot/Sympathy 3000-21,” from Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
Marten Parker Trio Diamond
LOUDSPEAKER
GRAMOPHONE DREAMS
The bijou sub We have inherited an infinitely vast library of recorded musical art, the majority of which is well-recorded but has yet to be fully and completely reproduced.
Clearaudio Concept Active Wood
TURNTABLE
Focal Aria K2 936
LOUDSPEAKER
DCS BARTOK DAC/HEADPHONE AMPLIFIER
THIS ISSUE: Herb Reichert on the dCS Bartók; Ken Micallef reprises his Schiit Sol review, trying it out with some better ancillaries.
The magnificent eight
The Story of the Grateful Dead, a 14-LP, 8-album collection of Grateful Dead recordings with booklet and deluxe packaging, from Vinyl Me, Please (VMP-A006, 2020), is intended as a curated sampling of the high points in the Dead’s extensive catalog. The first seven albums were cut from analog tape, while Without a Net comes from the original digital master. The sound is breathtaking.
T+A Solitaire P headphones and HA 200 DACheadphone amplifier
What I categorize as mainstream, dealer-based, fancy-pants stream-ers and big-speakers audio is actually only the gold-plated tip of a gigantic asteroid-like monolith that extends (underground) from New York to Hong Kong, from the Arctic Circle to Antarctica. This immense audio-social mass is mostly invisible to the Madison Avenue mainstream, but simple Google searches expose millions of proletarian audio-gear constructers (DIY’ers) working in shops, basements, and garages, scratch-building everything from turntables to tonearms to phono cartridges, to capacitors and vacuum tubes, to amplifiers, headphones, ribbon and electrostatic speakers.
MAKE MORE NOISE!
The title of this set—4 CDs and a book—comes from British suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst’s call to arms for women to fight for their rights: “You have to make more noise than anybody else,” said Pankhurst, who died in 1928.
RECORD REVIEWS
EDITOR’S PICK - RECORDING OF THE MONTH
Landscape into music
It says something about the power of music that some individuals fading into dementia can still recognize the music they knew earlier in their lives. Not to denigrate new music, or music one hasn’t heard before, but our mental jukeboxes award top chart numbers to music that we have lived with over time. Those DJs making their playlists in our brain are the toughest of critics. They don’t care what anyone else might think, “Close to You” is staying in the rotation. Music and memory are linked.
Some great new reissues
For jazz fans, a new batch of releases in Blue Note’s Tone Poet series—vinyl reissues remastered with care and cut from the original analog tapes—is the reason for celebration.
PS Audio Stellar M1200
MONOBLOCK POWER AMPLIFIER
McIntosh MAC7200
STEREO RECEIVER
Marantz Model 30
INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER
KEF LS50 Meta LOUDSPEAKER
LOUDSPEAKER
Cambridge Audio CXA81
INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER
BOWIE, CURATED
FIVE YEARS AFTER THE ICON’S PASSING, A FAN REVIEWS THE POSTHUMOUS RELEASES
Acora Acoustics SRB
LOUDSPEAKER
Some truly affordable phono cartridges
Someone once asked me, “If I buy your $90,000, 25W amplifier, what will I get that I am not getting with my $2000, 200W amplifier?” My answer was simple: “Goosebumps, tears, and smirking.” Great, well-tuned audio systems, at all price levels, give their owners less of the annoying and distracting stuff and more of the exciting and engaging stuff. Great systems offer more opportunities for smirking pridefully while listening to great recordings.
Scrubbing bubbles
THIS ISSUE: A new ultrasonic record-cleaning machine and a very pretty cartridge with a body made from Blue River Agate.
Alta Audio Alyssa
At first look, our November 2020 review of the standmount loudspeaker ($5000/pair) from Alta Audio1 appeared to be a thorough vindication of the Stereophile method of reviewing, combining measurements with a subjective listening journal. John Atkinson’s measurements were generally fine, but he uncovered “strong discontinuities in the impedance traces at 174Hz and 291Hz [that] imply the presence of resonances.” They could only be internal airspace resonances, since he found the Alyssa’s cabinet to be admirably inert.
MBL NOBLE SERIES N31 CD PLAYER–D/A PROCESSOR
In Stereophile’s February 2018 issue,1 I reviewed the MBL Noble Line N31, a baroque-styled CD player and D/A processor from German manufacturer MBL.2
LOOKING BACK AT FLEETWOOD MAC
TWO REISSUES SHOW THAT THE BAND WAS GREAT BEFORE IT WAS FAMOUS.
Gryphon Essence Mono
POWER AMPLIFIER
SAT's remarkable XD1 record-player system
Let’s begin by discussing what SAT’s XD1 Record Player System is not: It is not a Technics SP-10R in a sci-fi–inspired plinth—although the XD1’s engine does begin life as the SP-10R’s basic drive system, which is stripped down to a handful of essential components, reimagined, reengineered, and rebuilt to much higher mechanical standards.
GOLDENEAR BRX
When I first started writing for Stereophile, John Atkinson brought me a speaker to review. The shipping box was really beat, and it had some other reviewer’s name on the UPS label. After a few days of trying to get it to sound good, I speculated that John and at least one other reviewer already knew this speaker did not sound good. Flummoxed, I wrote JA a simple email (he likes simple emails), “Is this a test?” He replied, “Everything is a test.”
Deja Lou
It’s déjà vu all over again in New York City. 1988: The bankrupt Fear City NYC of the 1970s had given way to the go-go ’80s, with many missing the fruits of the Wall Street boom. AIDS ravaged the city, unabated, and a rash of violence and crime fueled by the crack-cocaine epidemic made for a grim underbelly of urban blight and neglect.