A friend recently sent me the real estate listing for a beautiful home in Deer Isle, Maine, about an hour from where I live. I gawked at the pictures and calculated I'd need to work for Stereophile for another 127 years before I'd have enough dough to buy it. Then I noticed something unusual on one of the walls of the place: lots of gold records. Google helped me figure out that the house had belonged to the late singer-songwriter Dan Fogelberg. I knew the name but was unfamiliar with his music.
Minutes later, I was playing the studio version of "Nether Lands," seemingly named after my country of birth. A beautifully orchestrated piece with restrained woodwinds and soaring strings, it reminded me of the best of Van Dyke Parks and of some post-Pet Sounds Brian Wilson songs. I played it straight through three times.
Part of the reason I was so smitten with the recording lay in the engaging, naturalistic presentation it received from the handmadein-Switzerland Piega Gen2 811 floorstanders ($30,000/pair) that had just made their way to my listening room.
Up-close and personal
The Piegas arrived double-boxed with four custom foam inserts per tower, two of which are circular and fit entirely around the speaker, life-preserver-style. The speakers were further protected by black drawstring bags made of soft cloth. My pair was finished in standard brushed aluminum, but the Gen2 811s are also available in white lacquer and a black anodized finish-plus in eight other colors that require a $2000 premium. Although the towers weigh 139lb each, it wasn't terribly arduous to unpack them and move them into position.
Bu hikaye Stereophile dergisinin September 2024 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Bu hikaye Stereophile dergisinin September 2024 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
Michael Des Barres and the Art of Aural Obsession
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PLANET OF SOUND
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T+A R 2500 R STREAMING RECEIVER PHONO MODULE
In my review of the T+A R 2500 R receiver (August 2024 issue), I covered many of its features and took as deep a dive as time and column inches allowed.
Audia Flight FLS10
The dogma of separates has long reigned supreme among audiophiles: If you're serious about sound quality, you're supposed to need a dedicated preamp and power amp.
Totem Acoustic Element Fire V2
Totem Acoustic was founded in 1987, in Montreal, Canada, by a former high school math teacher named Vince Bruzzese. The company's first product, the Model 1 loudspeaker,' impressed me so much I bought a pair.
MoFi Electronics MasterDeck
Get two mouthy jazz drummers in a room and watch the sparks fly. Talented turntable designer Allen Perkins, the brain behind Spiral Groove,2 Immedia's RPM turntables,³ and various SOTA models, is first and foremost a jazz drummer.
Soulution 727
AImost 14 years have passed since a review of a Soulution product appeared in the pages of Stereophile.\"
The Spin Doctor checks out the Kuzma Safir 9, a superarm from Slovenia.
The British audio scene from the late 1970s through the mid-1980s was pretty strange. Audio as a hobby was a big deal, with widespread appeal to a much younger crowd than today. Audiophiles were guided by a flurry of what my friends called \"hi-fi pornos,\" audio magazines that filled the racks at the newsagents.
Alex goes to Japan
Arriving in Japan from the United States is like being turned upside down. This condition lasts for much of the first week. When I visited in November, the time difference between Tokyo and New York was 14 hours. \"The floating world\" is a term for the pleasure-addled urban culture of Edo-period Japan, but it's also an apt description for the twilit and not-entirely-unpleasant weirdness of first arriving in Tokyo. Everything seems slightly unreal.
Wilson Audio Specialties The WATT/Puppy
Since the original WATT/Puppy concept kicked off in the late 1980s,' there has been a 40-year evolution leading to the latest version reviewed here.
