A multichannel tube MC phono stage from Rega SPEAKERS: Focus Audio

ELECTRONICS: A multichannel tube preamp from Copland, great integrated amps from Vecteur and Audiomat, and an MC phono stage from Rega SPEAKERS: Focus Audio, Thiel, IliadPLUS: CD players from Audio Note and Copland, and Paul Bergman on the black art of power suppliesAS WELL AS: What comes after the DVD?

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ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 1

Winner WHAT HI-FI SUPERTEST October 2003

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Audioprism

McCormack

Bel Canto

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WBT

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Apollo

GutWire

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Perfect Sound

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Tel. : (905) 780-0079 • Fax : (905) [email protected]

Roksan Radius 5

Roksan Kandy MkIII


RendezvousGoing Against the Flow 19

YBA’s Yves-Bernard André is not known for following the pack. He explains why he’s not about to start.

CinemaBeyond DVD 21

They told you the DVD was the future. They never said the whole future.

Nuts&Bolts

The Power Supply 24by Paul BergmanPower supplies aren’t rocket science. So why does everybody talk about them so much?

The Listening RoomThe Copland CTA-306 Preamplifi er 28

Can a six-channel tube preamplifi er aspire to reference quality?

The Thiel CS2.4 30Not too big, not too small. Is it the peak of Jim Thiel’s art?

Focus Audio FS688 Loudspeaker 34Surprisingly small, surprisingly beautiful, surprisingly desirable.

Iliad B1 Speaker 37A small speaker with no surprises. Oh…except possibly for its price tag.

Audio Note CD Player 39You’ve seen the name, but how often have you seen the gear?

Copland CDA-822 Player 41Is the CD dead? We say no. So does Copland.

Vecteur I-6.2 Amplifi er 43Looking for a separate amplifi er and preamplifi er? Read this fi rst.

Audiomat Arpège Référence Amplifi er 46Promise her anything, but give her…

Rega Fono MC 49We were so bowled over by the original that we deplored the absence of a moving coil version. We didn’t have to wait long.

The GutWire MaxCon 52Cleaning up the dreck from the power utility? We’re for it.

Listening Room Preview 54The Connoisseur SE-2 single-ended tube amp, the GutWire NotePad damping devices.

SoftwareAnthem! 55

by Reine LessardEvery country has one. National anthems, it turns out, include some of the world’s truly great music.

Record Reviews 63by Reine Lessard and Gerard Rejskind

DepartmentsEditorial 2Feedback 5Free Advice 7Classifi ed Ads 66Gossip & News 69State of the Art 72

Issue No. 68

Cover story: The gorgeous Focus Audio FS688, one of three loudspeakers reviewed in this issue. In the background, a Montreal summer sky.

2 ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine

UHF Magazine No. 68 was published in November, 2003. All contents are copyright 2003 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.

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EDITORIAL: Paul Bergman, Reine Lessard, Albert Simon

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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 self-addressed envelope is provided. Because our needs are specialized, it is advisable to query before submitting.

Ultra High Fidelity Magazine is completely independent of all companies in the electronics industry, as are all of its contributors, except as noted.

Those darned labels The subscription ad on the page across says it: we don’t believe that the price of buying UHF regularly should be a ratty dog-eared magazine with torn edges and a label welded onto the most interesting part of the cover. Nothing new about that. When we mailed out issue No. 1 to the very few who had subscribed without ever seeing a copy (an act of faith if ever there was one), we put it into a plastic envelope with the label pasted on the envelope. Each copy arrived in perfect condition. And it’s been that way across more than two decades. So we were miffed (no, not miffed, livid? Furious? Apoplectic?) when we discovered that some issues of No. 67 had been mailed with the label right on the cover! Fortunately the labels we use can be removed with a little care, leaving little or no residue. Of course the guilty parties have been punished (I’m told they are now wearing orange jumpsuits somewhere in the Caribbean), and we have been assured this will never, never happen again. Amen.

Previewing equipment We’re working to pick up the pace, to publish UHF more often. Our read-ers are mostly patient, but they would like to read us more often, and I’m glad of it. One way to get this done is to bring in more gear to test, and to have it well in advance. Readers often hear that we are planning to review a particular piece of equipment (if only because we say so in our Newsletter at www.uhfmag.com), and they write to get an advance hint. What’s it like? Well, why shouldn’t we share those first impressions with readers of the print issue? On a regular basis, starting in this issue, we will be previewing equipment in advance of a full-blown formal review. That will also enable us to give impressions of audio components with lim-ited geographical distribution. We don’t want to fill our main Listening Room section with articles about equipment you can’t go out and hear, but perhaps you would like, at times, to read our take on some alternatives.

Reading on line We’re getting a growing volume of mail from audiophiles who would like to subscribe to UHF electronically, and to get their issues as PDF files. They assume (correctly) that an electronic subscription would be cheaper, and that they would get it much faster. As for us, we would love to say goodbye to those huge bills from our film house, our printer and our fulfilment house. Yet I don’t anticipate a time when the print edition will vanish. There's an obvious danger in PDF distribution, one that record producers could tell us all about. It’s especially severe for UHF because, unlike most other magazines, we make most of our money from our readers rather than our advertisers. I’m also convinced that producing the image of a print publication to be viewed on a computer screen is a misuse of the digital medium. Do expect, however, that our very busy Web site will play a growing role in the future of UHF.

Editorial


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The UHF Guide costs $14.95 (Canada) plus 7% GST (15% in NB, NS, NF), US$19.95 (USA) CAN$25 (elsewhere). The UHF Guide costs $14.95 (Canada) plus 7% GST (15% in NB, NS, NF), US$19.95 (USA) CAN$25 (elsewhere). 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).

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The books that explain…

The UHF Guide to Ultra High FidelityA practical manual for the discovery and exploration of high fidelity, which will make reading other books

easier. Includes in-depth coverage of how the hardware works, including tubes, “alternative” loudspeakers, subwoofers, crossover networks, biamplification. It explains why, not just how. It has full instructions for aligning a tone arm, and a gauge is included. A complete audio lexicon makes this book indispensable. And it costs as little as $9.95 in the US and Canada (see the coupon).

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The Worldof High FidelityIncluding these topics: The basics of amplifiers, preamplifiers, CD players, turntables and loudspeakers. How they work, how to choose, what to expect. The history of hi-fi. How to compare equipment that’s not in the same store. What accessories work, and which ones are scams. How to tell a good connector from a rotten one. How to set up a home theatre system that will also play music (hint: don’t do any of the things the other magazines advise). How to plan for your dream system even if your accountant says you can’t afford it. A precious volume with 224 pages of essential information for the beginning or advanced audiophile!

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Feedback

I am a devout reader of your maga-zine and have gotten many great ideas and equipment recommendations from you! It’s probably been mentioned before, but why don’t you guys design a “high fi delity” T-shirt with either your logo or just the words UHF…Ultra High Fidel-ity!!! The advertising would be justifi ca-tion alone, let alone a lot of your present readers buying one! What the heck…Stereophile offers their own!

Ed MorabitoST. CATHARINES, ON

Ed, we were just thinking about all the other things Stereophile does that we don’t…but that way lies madness. One-size-fi ts-none all right?

I would like to respond to David Gilchrist’s query in UHF No. 67 regarding power outages, surges, etc, as we understand where David is coming from, since we live in the same area. Our main transformer and hydro pole has been hit twice in the nine years we have lived at this location, and I have found that the only true protection against unwanted damage to our hi-fi system (and other electronic goodies) is by the old method of unplugging them from the wall. True, it is very tedious, but well worth it. It has been said that a surge protector will do little from a direct hit other than melt down and let the spike through to its next victim. Fortunately, we only lost our modem in one of those cases. We now disconnect the modem during a thunderstorm. Good luck, David.

Scott GuthrieROCKWOOD, ON

We’ve heard from other sources that, in severe cases, that’s the only way to go.

First I would like to compliment you on your fi ne magazine. You truly are the Audio Gods’ representatives on earth. With that said… I work for one of Canada’s oldest specialty retailers of audio and video. I would never argue with you on your choice of turntables or speaker cables, for I greatly respect your opinion. However, I believe your Kappa system could use a little… help? I believe you chose the best CRT rear-projection set in that size range (way to go UHF!). However, I think you overlooked the projector market. I know that you are audio focused and not video focused, but home theatre in general is video focused. A balanced home theatre system should have approximately half its value in the display device. There is one projector with outstanding perfor-mance for $6900. The Optoma H56 is truly a reference projector. Go see one properly set up. Did I read correctly that the centre speaker was yet to be determined? The centre speaker should match the fronts. Would you ever use a different left speaker and right speaker? No, of course not. It would destroy the stereo image between the speakers. The same goes for a centre speaker. Did you know that the top rated (video) DVD players (top 4) are all made by Panasonic? Say it with me — Panasonic. Doesn’t sound like a high-end name, nor should it. The video market changes too fast for small manu-facturers like Theta, Krell or Simaudio. On the audio side, you will use a digital out so the sound quality relies more on the processor than the DVD player. The savings on the DVD player can be put into a projector. Here is a general suggestion. You obviously have a lot of knowledge about hi-fi sound. Throw it all away and start

over. Huh? Home theatre and stereo have so many fundamental differences that your knowledge of stereo could be more of a liability. For example, stereo is set up so that one listener can sit in the sweet spot and enjoy great sound. Surround sound is set up to get the best sound for the majority of listeners in a variety of positions. The sound tracks for movies are not intended for home systems. They are meant for 10,000 sq.ft rooms. A speaker that sounds great in the sweet spot playing soft jazz may not sound good playing machine-gun fi re at 110 dB on the far left of the room. Get my point?

Dan MickVANCOUVER, BC

We greatly appreciate your comments, Dan, and your advice based on experience. We do understand the point about the desirability of matching a centre speaker to the other front speakers. For that matter, it is desirable to match the rear speakers as well, and we have heard some very good systems done that way. The reality is that we simply couldn’t do that in the space available. We now have three reference systems, and we are out of very large spaces that would allow us to position fi ve identical high end speakers in optimal position. To make matters worse, our experience with centre speakers hasn’t encouraged us to suppose that the same badge means the same sound. In this case being real-istic meant accepting the limitations of what we could do, and making some compromises. We did, however, select speakers that sounded similar in pink noise burst tests. That seems to correlate with performance on actual fi lm. The same space limitations were a factor in rejecting a projector as well, though we appreciate your recommendation. Since then, we’ve looked with some interest at new DLP rear projectors. You are right that high end DVD players mostly use transports from large companies, including Panasonic but also Sony, Philips and Pioneer. There’s more to the player than the taw transport, however, as witness the results we got from the Simaudio player and a Toshiba player, using the same audio and video processors in both cases. Your point about film sound tracks being meant for huge rooms is well taken, but we’re up against that all the time. Most

FeedbackBox 65085, Place Longueuil

Longueuil, Québec, Canada J4K [email protected]

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popular music recordings from major labels are not meant to be played on the sort of high resolution audio systems we favor, and some are specifi cally optimized for boomboxes. We can hear all sorts of artifacts whose existence would horrify the record producers. All we can do is try to reproduce our chosen music — or our chosen movies — under the best possible conditions.

I was very interested in your articles on centre channel speakers for home theatre in the current issue. I would like to share some of my thoughts. Like some, I believe that the value of the centre speaker is over-rated. My processor allows me to select a “no centre speaker” option which feeds the centre channel equally to the left and right speakers producing a phantom centre channel. In 95% of the cases this actu-ally produces a more satisfying result, partly because the quality of my left and right channel speakers is superior to any centre channel speaker and there is no shifting of tonal balance across the front. The issue of off-axis listening I fi nd to be mostly inconsequential.

One point that you do not men-tion in your articles is the basic design fl aw inherent in most centre channel speakers. The practice of putting two mid-woofers in a horizontal confi gura-tion produces interference between the two wave fronts which results in a lobed frequency response at different angles. I believe that this may explain some of the differences each of you heard from the speakers you auditioned. I fi nd that my centre speaker sounds better in a vertical confi guration (atop my Toshiba RPTV) than when positioned horizontally. Al-though the vertical position raises the acoustic centre slightly from 43 cm above the centre of my 50” screen to 59 cm., I feel that this is only a slight compromise compared to the improvement in sound

Don McIntoshPORT COQUITLAM, BC

We did in fact write about the fact that, for various reasons including the one you mention, a centre speaker may not be a perfect match for its brandmate. Some are, alas, not even close.

I am the seller of the Blue Circle equipment posted in the UHF Classifi eds. I was almost a victim of a scam run from Nigeria. I am e-mailing you the details so that hopefully no one gets burned. It will take form in probably a similar fashion. You will receive an e-mail asking if the purchase price in negotiable. When you respond they will offer you a fair to better-than-fair price, they will ask for your address and FedEx a cashier’s check drawn on a US bank account. They will then contact you after the check has been sent with some sort of excuse, that they can only purchase one piece of equip-ment and could you please wire them back the difference. The check looks real. It fooled two bank tellers and the manager. The check

is a fraud, and when the bank fi nds out it will debit your account. What tipped me off was it quickly became about the money and not the equipment. Hopefully this helps, if you have any questions call the Ottawa police and ask to speak to the fraud department.

Glenn EllisOTTAWA, ON

We have since received a similar offer for a pair of speakers we had listed in our own classifi ed ads. The cheque would come from someone “who owes me money,” and would we please send them back the difference. And the speakers, of course. Yeah, right.

There is a rumor around our little

and there are many innocent victims on the line.

Mike ShickeleCRANBROOK, BC

Mike, we fi gure the rumor comes from Michael Constantine’s character in the fi lm My Big Fat Greek Wedding. If you’ve seen the fi lm, you’ll know he advocated Windex for curing everything from psoriasis to bald-ness. We may have missed the part where he said to clean LPs with it.

After reading one of your articles, I swapped my Tesla KT88 tubes which I had always used, for a set of Svetlana EL34’s. The difference in midrange was incredible to say the least. My Jadis JA80’s virtually sing.

Clare SopotykST. CATHARINES, ON

You should post some pics of your reference systems on your web site.

Chris Barnsley, HAMILTON, ON

Er, yes. Get out the duster, Rosie. Albert? Got more fi lm?

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compared to the improvement in sound quality that I get and the difference is about the same as it would be atop a 65” screen. The practice of designing centre channel speakers in this hori-zontal confi guration is purely a matter of visual perception rather than aural perception. The designers of high-end speakers have sacrifi ced their principles to fashion on this one.

Don McIntosh

There is a rumor around our little town that cleaning LPs with Windex window cleaner is an effective way of not only cleaning LPs every day, but that it is good for cleaning the release agent off of new LPs. Is this true, or is it just a way to get people to try to replace their collections once they have melted their whole collection? Please answer this as an e-mail, as I do not have a subscription, and there are many innocent victims on

DANGER!Bïa (pronounced bee-yah) is a singer people fall in love with. She has three recordings out. You think you can be satisfi ed with just one of them?


Free Advice

I’d like to add 5.1 surround to my system while retaining my existing front speakers, preamp, and stereo amp. I reread Paul Bergman’s article of a few issues back, but have two questions: Since my preamp does not have a separate pair of outs, is it okay to use the tape loop? Can I buy a surround receiver to do the job, rather than a processor and separate amps? These are much less expensive than a processor/amp combo. I expect I would have to add resistors to the receiver’s front left/right speaker outs, but how exactly do I do this? The local store said a technician would have to do it. If you don’t think the receiver approach is a good idea, can you recommend a reason-ably-priced processor? I want decent movie surround sound, but retaining superior ste-reo sound for music is a lot more important to me.

Joe BanelTORONTO, ON

You can’t use the tape output, Joe, because the tape loop bypasses your preamp’s volume control. It has to be that way so that you can tape material with the volume turned down, as many people do...or used to when they still used tape decks. But then again perhaps you can. We’ll explain. It pretty much goes without saying that a receiver will not give you the performance you could expect with a top preamp-processor and good power amps, but some receivers will give you at least reasonable results. We suggest choosing one with preamp outputs for at least the left and right front channels. Those outputs can then be fed to an unused input on your preamp. When you listen to two-channel music, the receiver will be right out of the circuit. The only problem is that when you view a fi lm the receiver will have to

“know” the gain level of the preampli-fi er. There are three ways to do this. If your preamp has easily repeatable vol-ume settings, pick one, note it, and set the volume that way when you switch to a fi lm. If it doesn’t, set up the levels so that they are correct when the preamp volume is turned all the way up. But be sure to turn it down before you switch to some other input. This is a danger-ous technique, and it gets all the more dangerous if more than one person will be handling the controls. The third way does use the tape loop, or part of it. Feed the receiver’s left and right front outputs to the preamp’s “tape in” jacks.

I recently purchased a pair of Audio Physics Tempo III’s. I need some more time to find the way to best set the system up, but have a question that I can’t answer. These speakers seem top-rated on line. I have yet to see anything negative other than possibly a lack of deep bass. It could be because of the dynamics of my room, but I feel the midrange is lacking, and conse-quently its famous sound stage and depth and clarity. Why is it that my perceived missing midrange comes back to life when I add a pair of inexpensive Klipsch two-way 8” satellites? Does that mean my expensive Tempos are lacking this required range? How can you get accurate midrange with-out a midrange driver specifically for mid-range?

Mitch GoldmanPHILADELPHIA, PA

Well, it’s easy to see why the little Klipsch satellites are adding to the midrange, Mitch, but that doesn’t mean this is a good thing. If we assume that the Tempos and the Klipsches have the same impedance and effi ciency, half the signal is now being reproduced by each

of the speakers. The Klipsches won’t have much in the way of bass, and may not even be that extended in the higher frequencies. They are essentially mid-range speakers. So you’re hearing more midrange, of course. On the other hand quantity doesn’t equal quality, so you need to determine why you’re not happy with the midrange the speakers are delivering. All of the other components in the system can be a factor, from source to amplifi cation to cables. Oh, and one more thing: acoustics. Most people don’t put their systems in single-use rooms, so acoustical considerations must sometimes be sacrifi ced for other aspects of living comfort. Still, in most living rooms there may be changes you can make in speaker placement. We suggest taking a day to do some experimentation (and be sure you take detailed notes, otherwise you’ll be cer-tifi able before nightfall). One possible useful hint is that putting a speaker close to a room boundary, such as a wall, will generally emphasize bass, at the expense of midrange and every-thing else to be sure. Remember that even small placement differences can change sound radically. By the way, we presume your speakers are stand-ing on spikes or cones. If they’re not, the boom of the house structure can muddy up the bass and cover the mid-range detail. We should also address your ques-tion about reproducing midrange without a dedicated midrange driver. A perfect speaker would have a single point-sized driver that could reproduce anything. Since we have yet to fi gure out how to build it, most speakers use two or more drivers. Your two-way speakers have two woofers (perhaps better referred to as “woofer-midrange drivers”) and a tweeter, each adapted to a part of the audible range. Audio Physics doesn’t state the crossover point, but it is probably between 2 and 3 kHz. If we defi ne midrange as being between 200 Hz and 4 kHz, you can see that the two drivers share the task. There are advantages to adding a third midrange driver, but there are serious drawbacks too, which is why not every-one does it.

Box 65085, Place LongueuilLongueuil, Québec, Canada J4K 5J4

[email protected]

Free Advice


Free

Adv

ice

I’m moving into a condominium in a few months. The living room has a concrete floor. I’ve heard that laminated flooring is the hottest thing for condos, but I’m more concerned about obtaining the best sound than being in vogue. Should I go with wall-to-wall carpeting, or laminated flooring? Do you recommend any special layer between the concrete and carpet, such as a false plywood floor? If this was discussed in your magazine, please tell me the issue number. I’m a long time reader of UHF.

Bill SukloffTORONTO, ON

There’s a chapter on acoustics in our book, The World of High Fidelity, Bill, and Paul Bergman wrote a seven-part series on acoustics a while back, in issues No. 30 through 36. We mention this because there’s no simple answer to how to set up a room for listening to music. Wood fl oors have often been condemned because they vibrate, and indeed they can add an unpleasant boom to music. Concrete rings, however. Ringing is another sort of resonance, and it mostly takes place higher up in the audible frequency band. Either way, you need to decouple your speakers from the fl oor, which means using spikes, or — better yet — cones. Of course carpeting will help absorb highs, and possibly some upper

midrange if it’s thick enough, but if you have a lot of other absorbent material, that can be too much of a good thing. Some audiophiles actually put in a false fl oor with a fi berglass-fi lled space to act as a midrange absorber, and then put carpeting on top. This can work well, but it takes out some of your headroom, and it involves major work. Even then, the fl oor can be only part of the plan-ning of your room. But since you’re moving into a brand new place, you have the opportunity to do things right in the fi rst place. Not everyone does.

Certain recordings have exces-sive sibilance, to the point that it is very unpleasant, when played on my Rega P2/Rega Elys/NAD phono stage. Is this likely caused by the cartridge, or should I be look-ing to another part of the system to correct the problem?

Steve MennillOTTAWA, ON

Well the answer to that, Steve, is... Actually there are a lot of answers. If you read our reviews in UHF, you’ll note that we often complain of sibi-lance, a distorted exaggeration of “ess” sounds. Of course, excessive sibilance is found right on some recordings. And when it’s not it can be the result of bad news anyway: the use in the studio of

a “de-esser,“ a special compressor that squeezes all the juice out of the band of frequencies where sibilance tends to hang out. We prefer fresh fruit our-selves. Distorted sibilance can be caused by a number of factors, including the cartridge, the state of the stylus, the setting of the tone arm (an arm that is too high will do bad things for sibi-lance, but unfortunately height is not easily adjustable on a Rega). Bad phono stages also cause this, and don’t get us started on loudspeakers! First, clear the recordings them-selves. If you have a friend with a good system, or a sympathetic dealer who hasn’t dumped vinyl, make sure these recordings don’t have problems on all systems. Once that’s done, try plugging your NAD phono stage into a differ-ent system and listening to the same problem recordings. At this point, the trail of evidence will be pointing right at some likely suspects.

My current system is a blend of older and newer components. The older includes a Systemdek IIx turntable, a Hafl er 100 preamplifi er and 220 power amp, and an Akai CD93 “Reference Master” CD play-er. The newer equipment has all the above plugged into a Monster Power HTS 2500 Power Center, playing through KEF G1 Uni-G speakers, with Monster M Series cables. I know my fi rst update is the CD player. I could be persuaded to look at prod-ucts in the $2500 range, but I’m greatly concerned about the demise of CD to SACD or DVD-Audio. Given this, is the quality jump from $1500 to $2500 worthwhile, or should I save the thousand buck difference for new technology in a few years? Second, I’m not sure what products or price range constitutes a noticeable improvement on the Hafl ers. They still perform well, and I want my upgrades to be worth it for the long term. What is a good general guideline for breaking down a budget? Do you put X% on the source, Y% on amps, speakers, cabling, etc.? Where should other items, such as equipment stands, isolation equip-ment, electrical cords and fi lters fi t in?

John McLenahanCALGARY, AB


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John, your letter started going wrong right about the midpoint. There will certainly come a time when you will upgrade fi rst your preamp and then your power amplifi er, but when you are still using an Akai player, that time is not yet. Only the turntable can give you a clue as to how your electronics sound. A CD upgrade is the fi rst order of business, and nothing else should, for now, be on the agenda at all. What’s more, the stuff about per-centages is not helpful. You know us

well enough to understand the impor-tance we give to the source, but we resist tooth and nail all attempts to put numbers to it. We express it this way: each upstream component must be good enough so that you haven’t wasted your money on the downstream components. There’s more to be said, otherwise the whole magazine could be condensed to that single phrase, but when you’ve understood that you’ve understood a lot. As to the fi rst part of your letter,

your worries are shared by a lot of audiophiles. We are not prophets, and our lawyers would tell us to shut up if we ever claimed otherwise, but here’s how we think the future will play out. The CD will gradually be replaced by both high and low resolution for-mats. On the low end it is of course downloadable music in MP3 or AAC, through such services as Apple’s iMusic. On the high end, it will be SACD. But that’s the longer term. Right now, the market is loaded with hun-dreds of thousands of CD titles, and they won’t be going away any time soon. At the same time most SACD releases are hybrids, which means they are also CDs. This means a good CD player will remain useful for a long time. You will of course want an SACD player sooner or later, and sock-ing money away is not a bad idea. Fortunately, C$1500 will, if you spend it carefully, buy you a player that will make you happy you didn’t wait any longer.

I had the great pleasure of meeting you at the Montreal Son & Image festivals in 2002 and 2003. I have the Musical Fidelity 3D player and M3 amplifier. The speaker cables are Musical Fidelity, as are the interconnects. My speakers are Spendor BCIII’s. I would like to improve my sound, and I went to hear the Totem Wind speakers. I was very impressed. The comparison was done against the Krell Studio Reference, the Quad 989 and the Energy Reference. Last week I went to hear the Polk LSI 15. I liked the sound, even though the associated player and electronics (Cambridge) was mid-fi. I also want to hear the Cabasse Kara, the Triangle Ventis XS, the Sonus Faber Cremona, and perhaps the Dynaudio C4. I would have liked to replace the power cable of my amplifier power supply with an Eichmann eXpress, but the plug isn’t the same (the prongs are horizontal instead of vertical). Your advice and recommendations are greatly appreciated. I suppose that consider-ing the avalanche of mail you must receive, an immediate reply is an impossible dream. It’s just that in Montreal at the moment there is a veritable price war, and I would

“Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge.”

–Winston Churchill

Think about the complexities of music. Within a given piece, instruments and voices of varying frequencies and dynamic

amplitudes all fi ght to get through the maze of electronic components and wiring in the hope of arriving at your ears intact, in time, and represent a true replica of the original

recording. Doesn’t it make sense that the pathway between start and fi nish be a simple as possible? Complex designs

have a way of making complex music more complex, and often quite different from what was originally recorded.

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like to take advantage of it.Monique Lussier

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Monique, the reason the IEC plug on the NuVista power cable is differ-ent from others is that it is a 20 ampere cord, and electrical standards require a different connector. Unfortunately few audiophile cords are available with that connector, since they mostly don’t meet the 20A standard anyway. A notable exception is the GutWire Pure Clef power cord, which can be ordered with a Hubbell 20 ampere connector. Concerning the Totem Wind, you should also lend an ear to the Totem Mani-2, one of the best speakers ever made. It is extremely diffi cult to drive, unfortunately, but you have the neces-sary amplifi cation already.

How good is the Cyrus II amplifier and PSX power supply tandem? I have owned this pair for several years (second-hand), but am wondering how much I would have to spend to get a significant improvement? I’d certainly consider the used market again, though it seems that some very good values in integrateds have come on the market like the Unison Research Unico (I have not heard it, but understand that it’s a real nice sounding unit for the money. Again, I don’t know if it’s a significant enough improve-ment). I currently have a pair of Castle Edens (bought them after reading your review) and am using Audioquest Type 4+ biwired to the speakers. The rest of my system is a VPI Scout with Benz Glider and Marantz DR-6000.

Jeff BellinSALEM, MA

It would be a signifi cant improve-ment yes, Jeff. The Cyrus II fi tted with the optional PSX power supply is now getting long of tooth (we reviewed it in UHF No. 28, back in 1990), but it is still a good little amplifi er, and can probably work well for another decade or so. It hasn’t the roundness or the transparency of the Unison, nor of bet-ter modern solid state amplifi ers, but it is good on rhythm, and it projects good energy. Not bad, but it may be time for an upgrade.

I really enjoy your magazine and the Web site. I am the proud owner of a Mission DAC-DAD CD combination and would like to upgrade to a one-box CD player in the $1.2-2K price range. So far I have auditioned the Arcam group, models DIVA 62-92, which basically sounded better as the price climbed. Most were much better than my Mission gear. I do not know what brands in this price range to look at next, and would appreci-ate your suggestions. It seems there are not many choices in this range. Why is that? As an aside I notice that Arcam products have not been auditioned in the magazine for awhile. Is there a reason for this? Are they a good reliable manufacturer?

Jim YoungPORT ALBERNI, BC

Arcam has been around for some years, Jim, and appears to be perfectly stable. There are historic reasons for their absence from UHF’s pages, though that may be remedied at some point. Of course you know that we were quite enthusiastic about the Mission player and its optional converter, and for good reason. This was an era when all other CD players with three-digit price tags were horrible, and perhaps the word horrible isn’t even strong enough. The Mission wasn’t, and that

was good news for music lovers who wanted access to new music but couldn’t quite reach all the way to somewhat more expensive machines...such as the Arcam. The modern Arcam remains a solid upgrade over your much older player. Low-cost players may be an endangered species, we’re told, because more and more consumers are now killing (or severely wounding) two birds with one stone, choosing a DVD player instead of a CD-only player. Notice we said “consumers” and not “audiophiles.” They mostly shop in three digits, however, or even in two digits. Despite them, some very good players in your range still remain. Aside from the Arcam itself, Cambridge has a very good (but hard to fi nd) two-box player, and Vecteur has the L-4 player.

I am passively biamping B&W DM601 S3 speakers with two Rotel RB1050s power amps driven by the Rotel RC1070 preamp. The whole setup sounds to me very neutral, well-balanced and civilized in reproducing high frequencies. It’s a very good job from Rotel and B&W, even with my old Denon CD player (soon to be replaced with a Rotel RCD1070, Arcam CD72 or Rega Planet). I am very happy listener who spends at least two to three hours every day actively listening to music.


This may be candidate for a budget au-diophile’s (yes, that category of audiophiles exists) dream. Total price of speakers, pre-amp and 2 power amps is C$2500, taxes included. It gives me a performance at the very border of high end sound. Although design compromises must be present, Rotel does it in such a way that I can live with it without the urge to upgrade to 5 to 10 times more expensive gear Forgive me. I am an electronics engi-neer, and “cost is no object” strategy simply does not work for me. I am interested to fi nd out why Rotel’s new 10 series isn’t worth reviewing in UHF Magazine. Is it that bad, in your opinion? In order to fi nd out myself how these Rotels measure against more expensive units I have listened in my room to sev-eral integrated amplifi ers and separates from Arcam and Rega, and could not hear an equivalent level of improvement over these Rotel components. The law of dimin-ishing returns seems to be proving itself all over again. I would probably have to go for Bryston, Simaudio Moon W-5 or Classé as my next upgrade to get sound that I would

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consider worth the effort and money, but it is four times more expensive. Would there be an alternative in your opinion worth auditioning in between, which would give me a signifi cant improvement for my buck, and would result in a measurable increase in excitement?

Milos DunjicOAKVILLE, ON

Well, more than one actually, Milos, but fi rst we’d like to set the record straight concerning Rotel. At one time it was very convenient for us to review Rotel products, because we could actually drive over to the distributor’s warehouse and pick one up. That distributor closed some years ago and was never replaced. We can still get Rotel products from the US, it is true, though it means importing them and paying brokerage charges and possibly duty. This is what hap-pened recently when we reviewed Thiel products, which also have no distribu-tor in Canada. We do it anyway now and then, but the impact on our budget is unfortunately not zero.

That said, we have heard a number of very good Rotel products. The best of them offered exceptional value for money. There have also been some duds, but that can happen to pretty

much anyone. We don’t doubt that your present Rotel setup sounds fi ne, though we also think you won’t really know for sure until you fi nally upgrade your CD player.

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We should add that we have never espoused the long-popular theory that you get diminishing returns as you upgrade. If it sometimes seems true it is because you have made too small an upgrade...something we warn against because it is costly. It can also be that you spend money to get something worse than you already have, and the truth is that this is all too easy to do. We suggest the following method of evaluation. Substitute a possible component for the one you’re thinking of replacing (we know that this is not as easy for you as it is for us), and you may note some improvement. Do a bit of listening to get used to the sonic change, and then go back to your original component. If the upgrade is really worthwhile, if it offers more than diminishing returns, the change will seem much larger on the way down than on the way up. You’ve probably noticed that we’ve given you this advice without getting specifi c on brand names. It sounds from your letter as though you already have a pretty good idea what to listen to. In any case, step one should be your CD player. Our bet is that this one change will lead you to re-evaluate your system.

I have read your excellent magazine with interest and enjoyment for many years. Your Free Advice is a wonderful service, which I would now like to use. The Karma cartridge in my Linn Sondek/Ittok combo is ten years old and needs replacing. In my system, it seems very out of balance to invest in a new Linn moving coil cartridge. Even the Adikt seems expensive at $465. The rest of the system consists of a Sansui 3900 tuner (we don’t have live FM broadcasts in Vancouver, so it should be good enough, eh?), a JVC CD changer (for background music), a Linn LK-1 preamplifier, a Bryston 2B power amplifier, and PSB Stratus Mini speakers. Are the moving coil cartridges in Adikt’s price range likely to sound better in this setup? I’m thinking, in particular, of the Audio Technica AT-OC9ML/II or the Goldring Eroica. Or could the moving magnet Adikt beat them all?

Dale StewartVANCOUVER, BC

The Adikt is new, Dale, and we don’t know whether Linn is still using the same source for its moving magnet cartridges. If it is, the Audio-Technica and the Adikt are cousins. That doesn’t mean they’re identi-cal, though. Internal details aside, the Audio-Technica is a moving coil pick-up, not an MM. The Adikt comes with a Gyger II stylus. This is a line contact stylus, used on some other British car-tridges, including the top Goldrings, and it has a major advantage over the more common elliptical stylus.

I am currently rewiring my house and will be putting a dedicated line to the stereo location and another to the video location. Since most receptacles are 15 amp, I am wondering what the benefits of going to a 20 amp receptacle/breaker are? I will be using a high grade receptacle (Hubbell 8300 cryoed or PS Audio). I am also assuming that it would be better to use 10 gauge wire instead of 12 or 14. If I run the dedicated line can I use a double gang box with two receptacles ( for four outlets) without any loss in order to accommodate all of my equipment? I cannot see how this would be worse than having one receptacle with a Hubbell-based power bar. Perhaps I should install two runs and have each on its own breaker. I am also thinking about running a separate ground to the earth for this circuit so it is not on the main panels ground. What do you think of the PS Audio Power Port AC socket and the WattGate 381? These receptacles are much more expensive, and I am wondering if you have heard them. Also, many on the chatrooms are talking about how much better their Hubbell receptacles are sounding after they have been cryogenically treated (US$50-60). My last question is related to installing a main circuit panel surge protector, to safe-guard the whole electrical system. Will this affect the sound?

Brad WishnevskiLETHBRIDGE, AB

Perhaps it will, Brad, though we can’t be sure without getting a good look at the schematic. The ones we’ve looked at include parallel monitoring circuits, which we fi gure should have

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no deleterious effect, but they also include extra breakers, which may. However if you live in a region that gets a lot of lightning storms, and if you judge your home to be especially vulnerable, adding protection may be a sensible idea. Some panel protectors won’t protect sensitive electronic cir-cuits, however, so it pays to read the fi ne print. And a direct hit can weld everything together. You can indeed use a two-gang box to get four outlets instead of one. The heavier the wire from the panel, the better. If you have room on your electrical panel for an extra breaker, and if you don’t anticipate needing it for something else, you may as well put one in. It won’t take the electrician much longer to put in two lines instead of one, and his time costs a lot more than the wire does. Running a separate ground may be useful, if we assume that yours is better than that of the technician who installed your electrical system. It will in any case be newer. We have received a sample of the WattGate, but we have yet to compare it directly to the Hubbell. We also fi nd its price rather awesome. We’re not sure what to think about the cryogenic treatment of electrical and electronic parts. Some years ago, cryogenically-treated speaker cable was all the rage. We were given a demo of such cables, then being offered by Museatex, and, for better or for worse, we didn’t become converts. The com-mon “explanation” of the benefi ts of cryogenic treatment leaves us puzzled.

I may be asking somewhat of a contra-dictory question, but are there any carousel-type CD players that you would consider at even an entry level for high fidelity? The reason I ask is that, when I have company for dinner, I’m always having to get up during dinner to cue new music. I recently heard the Rotel RCC-1055 carousel player, and when compared to Rotel’s single CD player the RCD-1070 they were, by my ear, sonically similar. I would have liked to compare it to other similar-priced single players in the RCD-1070’s price range, but they didn’t carry anything (they were all $3000 plus) at the store I was at. My ultimate goal would be

to have a player for social occasions, maxing out on fidelity, and a separate one for serious listening. Am I too far off base here?

Kevin RedmondVANCOUVER, BC

Kevin, what you’re proposing to do is what we have often suggested. We’re not much for background listening ourselves, perhaps because we spend so much of our professional lives in fore-ground listening, but we recognize that not everyone is in the same situation. So it makes sense to choose the best possible player for “real” listening, and a feature-rich jukebox for other times. The Rotel may be better than most, but a dollar you spend on the jukebox is a dollar not available for your num-ber one player. One possibility: buy a two-box player for your main listening,

preferably with a converter that has two inputs, and connect the carousel to the second digital input on the DAC. Of course, if yours is a high-tech household, there are other possibilities. Load a few hundred favorite tracks onto a hard disc, and let the computer play jukebox. You can also choose a hard-disc-based portable player to do the background music work. The Apple iPod is perfect for this. Most people load MP3 fi les on it, but in fact you can load it with several dozen uncompressed CDs. The fact it will also play when you’re trekking across Stanley Park is just an added bonus.

I’m thinking of getting a DVD Video/DVD-Audio/SACD player. My basic stereo system consists of a Counterpoint SA100 and SA1000, a California Audio Labs

What’s happening at UHF?

www.uhfmag.com


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Delta transport and Counterpoint DA-10 DAC with Ultra-Analog HDCD card, an Oracle turntable with Alphason arm, a Sumiko Blue Point Special pickup, and KEF 104/2 speakers. I also have a Marantz SR-6200 home theatre receiver with a KEF C100 centre and KEF Coda 7 speakers at the rear. For the front speakers, I connect the line output of the Marantz to the line input of the SA1000. That gives me a music system independent of the home theatre. The DVD player would not replace the existing CD player. I’ve looked at the Marantz DVD8400, the Denon DVD2900, the Onkyo DVSP800, and the Pioneer DV47Ai and DV45A. What do you think of these models? Considering the limitations of the Marantz receiver, should I settle for the little Pioneer DV45A? Could one of these players replace my current CD player?

Marc-André St-OngeST-PASCAL, QC

Your current player is pretty good, and as you know we are using exactly the same converter you are in our refer-ence systems. If you’re searching for a universal player that can outperform — or even equal — your player, you’ll fi nd it a long, arduous search. You’re look-ing for disappointment with any of the players on your list. Several manufacturers well-known and respected in the audiophile fi eld do offer universal players. The Linn seemed excellent in two sessions we had with preproduction models. Others have been released by such companies as Tascam, Lexicon and McCormack. Can they earn a place of honor in your system? Possibly. They are of course expensive. The typical such player is like a Swiss Army knife. You can always press it into ser-vice as a fork at the campground, but if you do it at a fancy restaurant you’re going to get looked at real funny.

I have an original basic Arcam Alpha integrated amp whose inputs suit me well. I have heard I could use it as a pre amp for a Quad 405-2, amplifier, but am unsure as to how, wiring wise.

Geoff Alun-JonesSTRATFORD-UPON-AVON, UK

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It can be done, Geoff, but it may be really bad strategy. Though some integrated amps have preamp outputs that allow them to be used as preamps, as you propose to do, the Arcam does not. It does have “tape out” jacks, but those jacks bypass the volume control. You would have to get a competent technician to reconnect them to tap off the signal somewhere after the volume control. But in a compact amplifi er the operation may not all be that straight-forward. If your service shop has an hourly rate of £30, it’s easy to see that the “preamp” you gain may be worth less than you pay. Worse, the resale value of your amp, which is perhaps £75, will hover near zero. Chances are you won’t be happy with the sound anyway. The Alpha, not to be confused with Arcam’s much more capable Delta or the modern Diva, was somewhat gritty. We pre-sume you got your Quad amp second hand, and you can fi nd used preamps as well. Even a Quad 34 or 44 preamp will give you a lot more satisfaction.

I know that this is not your job to answer questions about stereo equipment but I have plans on buying Bent Audio’s transformer-based passive preamp. They are from Canada, and that’s why I am tak-ing the liberty to contact you. But I have also read about another transformer-based passive preamp from Canada that’s much more expensive, but very advanced. I have searched everywhere but I can’t find it anywhere. I don’t expect you to help me with this, it’s just a desperate long shot because you are a Canadian hi-fi magazine. If I remember correctly, the price was US$9800 compared to Bent Audio’s US$1875 with silver transformer and remote control, and the best Vampire RCA and XLO XLR.

Benny OrrelövUPPSALA, Sweden

Actually it is our job to answer questions about stereo equipment, Benny, or one of our jobs at any rate. We have not seen the Bent Audio pas-sive preamplifi er. The company is very small, and builds its units to order, in the great underground high end tradi-

tion. We like the quality of the parts that it claims to use, and that is encour-aging. We don’t know what the other Canadian company you refer to might be. Passive preamplifi ers can yield much better quality than most active preamps can. Conventional passive preamps have high impedance outputs that are sensitive to noise and tend to exacerbate the shortcomings in cables, but that is not the case of transformer-based preamps. Of course, getting one’s hands on a good transformer is not easy, but several manufacturers have succeeded. The Chinese-made Antique Sound Lab T1DT, reviewed in UHF No. 62, is a good example.

I am fairly new to hi-fi and I have found your magazine to be very helpful. My system currently consists of a Linn Ikemi CD player, DNM/Eichmann inter-connect (copper cable, silver RCA plugs), Jolida 801A integrated tube amplifier, Ecosse MS2.3 cable and Cabasse Farella 401 speakers. I have Ringmat feet and a Skylan Isoboard under the CD player, and Vibrapods supporting 5/8” MDF beneath the Jolida. Power conditioning is a Blue Circle MR1200. What would you suggest as the next upgrade?

Peter SamuelsCALGARY, AB

It strikes us that you’re on the right track, Peter. You’ve selected a very good source, which would have been our fi rst and most important recom-mendation, you’ve made some other judicious choices, and you’ve also cho-sen to include some important tweaks, including the power conditioner. Our fi rst question is whether you are happy with the sound you now have, compared to what you’ve heard in one or more stores. If you’re not, you need to do some detective work to fi nd out what’s missing. If you are generally happy, you can look to a more distant future. The amplifi er could eventually be replaced, though only if you can buy something much more sophisticated. In the meantime, it may be worth having a look at the acoustics of your room. We bet they’re not as good as your hard-ware.

I currently have an Audiomeca Romance/Roma/Benz Ref 2 turntable, a Krell KAV-300i integrated and B&W Matrix 804 speakers. I am looking for an SACD/DVD player. My TV is a Pioneer 52” plasma. I have no need for multi-channel SACD capabilities. I will build a separate system for multi-channel music and home theatre in a separate room. I have zero CDs. I want to start buying SACDs only. I am interested in the Sony DVP-


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9000ES and DVPNS999ES. The DVP-9000ES is no longer available new, and I am looking at buying a used one. What would be your recommendation? Any other choices? My budget is about $2,000.

Laval LetourneauOTTAWA, ON

A used DVP-9000 may make good sense, but only if you can get a really attractive price on one. Unlike an amplifi er, say, a DVD player has precision moving parts. Moving parts get less precise as they wear, and in economy products the precision may have been only just good enough when the unit was new. We don’t mean to pick on Sony, by the way, because the constraints of price are the same for all manufacturers. If the price isn’t right, go for the new model. In most cases, by the way, we are a little reluctant to recommend economy SACD players, if only because with CDs they sound so…but let’s remain polite. But you have no CDs and don’t plan to get any, so your plan makes

sense. And the Sony 999, at C$2000, is an economy player only in the eyes of oil barons. If you were looking at a $300 model, it would be different, and we would be telling you to run while you still could.

It has been some time since I have asked for some free advice, and the upgrade bug seems to be buzzing around. I have a modest albeit balanced system, consisting of an AR ES-1 table with Linn Basik Plus arm and an Audio-Technica AT-125LC cartridge, a Cambridge CD6 player, an Aiwa AD-F810 cassette deck, an Audiolab 8000A integrated amp, and Energy 22 Reference speakers (front ported) on 22 stands. The CD player is con-nected via a Wireworld Orbit III and the speakers via Monster Cable Powerline 3 with Michell GBO’s (from your store). My room is quite small, 9’ x 12’. I am quite pleased with the sound given the money I have invested, but I know it can be better if funds are available. 1. What in your opinion, would be the next step with a budget of C$500?. I am

thinking that a cartridge upgrade may make the most sense (my AT is about 20 years old, but still in good shape). I am thinking about (in no particular order) Sumiko Blue Point or Blue Point Special, Grado Reference Platinum, Audio-Technica AT-440ML, or Shure V15xMR. 2. I am also using a Discwasher brush for my albums. Is the brush in your store significantly better? 3. Have you heard or could you com-ment on two small floorstanding speakers, the Totem Arro and the Castle Pembroke? 4. Given my gear, when would you con-sider a speaker upgrade, and would these be good choices?

James P. ManleyAIRDRIE, AB

1) We would go for the cartridge, Jim. A cartridge with lower inductance will give you much more natural highs. Our top choice would be the Shure, if only because of its line contact stylus, but the Sumiko Blue Point Special is an interesting choice as well, as is the Grado. 2) Gee, can you still get Discwasher brushes? We still have one in a drawer, but the reason it’s there is that it is so plump it is easy to drop onto the record surface. Besides, what it’s good at is lin-ing up all the dust in a fat radial ridge. Carbon fi bre brushes are so soft they don’t gather anything. The Goldring eXstatic brush has both the velvet pad and the carbon tufts, and it works bet-ter than anything else known to us…except of course vacuum machines. 3) The Pembroke is a single-woofer version of the Stirling we reviewed — and liked — in UHF No. 66. We have not heard it, but there’s reason to be optimistic (check this out for yourself, though). We have heard (but never tested) the Totem Arro. It will in all likelihood not play as loud as the Pembroke, but it is justly famous for depth and image that must be heard to be believed. 4) That said, we would put a speaker change at the back of the line. The old Energy 22 was way ahead of its time, and it is defi nitely not the weak link in your system. We would fi rst shop for a replacement for the Audiolab amplifi er.

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935 Mount Pleasant RoadToronto 416-421-7552


Rendezvous

Yves-Bernard André’s approach to audio has always been charming even when he’s been wrong. And how many times

has he been wrong? The moving coil step-up transformer? Anything else? Now look at the other side of the ledger. He makes, or gets made, his own parts, right down to capacitors and the wire his transformers are wound with. He was the fi rst to attack the North American market with the counter-intuitive Intégré amplifi er, at a time when upscale integrateds “couldn’t sell.” Ironically, he opened a huge new market for his competitors. He was the fi rst to actually introduce noise into the optical drive of his CD player, with his famous (and much decried) blue diode. His name is a frequent subject of down-right character assassination on Usenet discussion groups. He doesn’t care. Recently, he dropped by a Montreal-area audio shop, Multi-Électronique in Beloeil (the shop owner, Philippe Renaud, is in our picture at left). Is he as

iconoclastic as ever? It looks that way.

Q: Were you interested in music when you were young?YBA: Yes. My parents went to concerts, and so did my grandparents. My father played the violin, and I learned to play the oboe. So I didn’t have to discover music all by myself.Q: Did you keep up with your playing?YBA: For a long time, yes, but it requires an hour and a half or two hours of prac-tice a day. About 15 or 20 years ago, when I began the YBA adventure, I had to make a choice. But I still listen to music of course. Each year, my wife

and I spend on concerts enough money to build a nice little hi-fi system. I’m not very visual, you know. I have four children, but I don’t have a TV set!Q: Do your children play music?YBA: My eldest son is 25, now. He was playing drums for a while, but then he dropped it.Q: To the relief of the household?YBA: To the relief of the household, yes. My eldest daughter used to play piano, and my other daughter plays about an hour a day. My youngest, Timothé, has started the violin.Q: When you’ve been a musician, how do you compromise on audio quality?YBA: I don’t think being a musician adds anything, because when you play you’re not in the same position as someone listening to you. What it does give you is a sensitivity to music. Let me explain that another way. I have a neighbor who’s a bird fancier. He invited me to come with into the wood to see some birds. When we got there, I couldn’t see a single bird, but he could see lots of them.Q: You did say you weren’t visual!YBA: Yes, but then I’d follow him around some more, and I began to see them too. It’s much the same with music. And it’s music that makes living worthwhile.Q: Did you think when you were young that you would someday build instruments for listening to music?YBA: I knew it very early. My fi rst patent, which was for a loudspeaker, dates back to 1971. And I may not look it, but I’ve fi nished my fi rst half century.Q: It was later that you moved into electronic equipment?YBA: Oh, I was already playing around with circuits. But then I got my diploma in engineering, and I went through my military service. Even today I really have two métiers. I do research and I teach at the École Polytechnique, and of course I have YBA. And discoveries in one domain can often be applied in another domain.Q: Does the research lets you fi nd new ways to design your products?YBA: It lets me see things in a differ-ent light. I can’t say that the sound of an audio product depends on just one thing — the power supply, the layout, the parts quality. It’s all of them. You

Going Againstthe Flow

YBA’s Yves-Bernard André is not known for following the pack. He explains why he’s not about to start.


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ignore one small detail, and the product may measure the same, but its sound quality will be destroyed.Q: Are you a demanding person?YBA: Even my family says I am! But life is short, and you have to live as intensely as possible.Q: Your products evolve over time. For instance, the YBA 2 amplifi er became the HC, then the HCDT, then the Alpha, then the Delta.YBA: I like to put myself in the position of the buyer. You buy something expen-sive, and then two years later you’re told it’s no good, or there’s something much better. Magazines and manufacturers live off these improvements, of course. I think designing a hi-fi unit is diffi cult, because you don’t know how it’s going to be used. Put a piano in a good room or in a bad room, and it won’t sound the same either, but it will always sound like a piano. With a sound system, on the other hand, in a good room you may hear a piano, and in a bad room you’ll hear a bad system. It’s diffi cult to build equipment that sounds lifelike, but is also fl exible. What is billed as transparency in one system may be perceived as hardness in another. That’s why I became one of the fi rst manufacturers to make products that evolve, that can be upgraded.Q: Upgraded as you made new discover-ies?YBA: The actual designs haven’t evolved that much, and the parts I use haven’t evolved much either.Q: You still use custom-made parts.YBA: Yes, I began that years ago, and I’m glad I did. A lot of the parts made today are conceived to work in computers and other digital products, but that has noth-ing to do with audio. Manufacturers get stuck with these parts, but I don’t. On the other hand, companies that make parts for me sometimes close, and I have to fi nd someone else. But that can lead to a better part.Q: You often use external power supplies, and some consumers wonder why you go to that much trouble. Does it make a lot of difference?YBA: Of course. Performance is based on the addition of many small details. For example, the little LED pilot light on my gear is not fed from the main power

supply, even in my less elaborate units. It’s fed right off the power transformer primary. That’s a detail, but if I connect the LED to the regular power supply I can hear the difference. There’s an added confusion. You might not notice it, but add four of fi ve details like that, and the difference will be huge.Lore feugait eros ad tat, ver illa aut et lorpero dolenim iure veliquat wis el ent

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I like to put myself in the position of the buyer. You buy something expen-sive, and then two years later you’re told it’s no good, or there’s something much better. Magazines and manufacturers live off these improvements, of course. I think designing a hi-fi unit is diffi cult, because you don’t know how it’s going to be used.

Put a piano in a good room or in a

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Beyond CD, Opus 3 SACD at $32.50This is Eric Bibb’s latest recording. Play it on your conventional Red Book CD player…or step up to superior sound with SACD.www.uhfmag.com/Opus3.html


Cinema

Sales of VHS cassettes are in free fall, and it isn’t hard to see why. You can now pick a basic DVD player for not much more than

the price of a family meal at McDo. The comparison is apt, because the children who insist on a Big Mac also know all about DVD. The stunningly low prices for DVD players have of course triggered a boom in sales of DVD movies, which in North America now outsell VHS. At the same time, it’s easy to fi gure out that no one can be making much money on a $69 player. Is there something else on the horizon? You bet. In fact it’s now rather closer than the horizon.

Recordable DVD Remember the newspaper articles that greeted the launch of the fi rst DVD players? Typical sentence: “However, unlike a VCR, a DVD player can’t record…yet.” Now it can. Pioneer was the first company to show a DVD player that looked like any other player, but for a conspicuous red “record” button on the front panel. Some observers believe the company chose the wrong format: DVD-R rather than the competing DVD+R. It’s not certain which side will win. DVD-R is the format backed by the DVD Forum, but the DVD+R (and the rewritable DVD+RW) is actually compatible with more DVD players than DVD-R. You can pretty much get away with ignoring the third (incompatible) system, DVD-RAM. Since then the system’s developer, Pioneer again, has shifted gears, with machines that can record both DVD-R and DVD+R. Naturally, it is not alone on the playing fi eld. Philips, the original champion of DVD+R, has its own recorders. The fi lm industry, made up largely of the same companies that make up the music industry, are already crying that the dropping prices of DVD record-ers are costing them money, because consumers are copying fi lms instead of

buying them. A study released in August seemed to indicate that “pirates” with DVD recorders were taking away a billion US dollars of business, about 5% of DVD sales. True? Well, there are reasons to be suspicious. The study was commissioned by Macrovision, the company that sells anti-copying systems for DVD and VHS. Drug manufacturer have been known to exaggerate the prevalence of a disease. In actual fact, DVD recorders are ill-suited to copying movies and other material. A DVD recorder may not have a tuner, for one thing. You can always plug a VCR into it and use its tuner, but that won’t simplify your wiring any, and we fi nd it doubtful that 5% of consumers can manage that. And if you want to use that setup to actually copy a VHS fi lm, you’ll need to add an image stabilizer in order to strip out Macrovision’s copy protection. Real practical! Naturally, if you drop a few hundred dollars on a recorder, you’ll want to do more than just dub a low-resolution source onto a high-resolution disc. You’ll have an eye to copying a few DVDs. That’s illegal in the US (though it seems to be legal for private use in Canada and Europe)…still, they can’t put a policeman in every TV room, can

they? The bad news is that this sort of copying is nearly impossible to do. If the fi lm industry wants to blubber all the way to the bank, it should look at a dif-ferent threat: the personal computer. Most computers sold today come with

optical drives capable of reading DVDs. The fancier models can also record DVDs (in either DVD-R, DVD+R, or both). Commercial fi lms use a data scrambling system called CSS, but there are dozens of Internet sites distributing a free pro-gram called DeCSS. There is also a com-mercial copying program for Windows, DVD X (marketed by 321 Studios, which hopes to win a court battle it initiated against the entertainment industry; see Gossip&News in UHF No. 66). With a modern computer, you really can copy movies. It takes a lot of work, though, and the 5% “piracy” fi gure seems a tad premature. It seems likely that the Macrovi-sion-sponsored “piracy” fi gure includes Internet copies that are made by aiming a camcorder at a movie screen. We can’t see much reason for MGM’s stock to drop because of piracy. Not yet at least.The digital videocassette

Did we say VHS cassettes were dead? There’s one form of the VHS cassette whose creators believe it has legs: D-VHS, a cassette that can record high defi nition video. “High defi nition” in this case means about four to eight times the defi nition of the best conventional TV source. Instead of the 525 lines of NTSC tele-vision, for instance, we have 1050 lines. Some US networks do broadcast in high defi nition, and have for some time (in Canada, HD telecasts are available via satellite). Movies on DVD can look wonderful, but wouldn’t it be great to watch them in high defi nition?

Beyond DVD

They told you the DVD was the future of home theatre. They never said the whole future.


Cine

ma

The D-VHS cassette looks like an ordinary videocassette, but a high-den-sity magnetic coating allows it to store a lot more information. So can you tape the Super Bowl in all its high-def glory and watch it again next summer? Perhaps not, because the machines don’t come with high defi nition tuners. This is another in a long line of products deliberately crippled so you can’t easily use them to do what they’re ostensibly meant for. You need a set-top box with an IEEE1394 (FireWire) output. You can, however, get fi lms recorded in high definition. The prerecorded format is known as D-Theater. There aren’t a lot of them, and if you have reasonably sophisticated cultural tastes the list gets even shorter. Typical cur-rent titles: Backdraft, Behind Enemy Lines, Diehard, and Terminator 2. But just as the owners of the very fi rst TV sets would spend hours watching the Indian head test pattern, you may fi nd yourself viewing, in high defi nition, a fi lm you wouldn’t normally even watch the trailer for.

Just be prepared to pay for the privi-lege. And enjoy it while you can. The days of winding and unwinding tape from little reels are numbered. Your

reference to a blue laser familiar. A decade ago, when we were complaining about the inadequacies of the CD’s 16 bits and 44.1 kHz sampling rate, we were promised the eventual development of a blue laser, which would pack so much information onto an optical disc that we could fi nally stop looking back longingly at analog. Conventional lasers are red, or even infrared. Shift the frequency up toward the blue, and the shorter wavelengths could be used to write and read much more densely packed informa-

tion. In fact putting more data onto a disc didn’t require a shift all the way to blue. The laser used in the DVD is of higher frequency, moving closer to yellow, and that’s enough to put an entire movie onto a CD-sized disc (with considerable lossy compression) or uncompressed higher defi nition audio. Now the actual blue laser has fi nally arrived. It probably won’t result in yet another new audio format, but it will affect home theatre in a big way. A present-day DVD can hold a theoreti-cal 17 Gigabytes, if it is two-sided and double-layered. The new Blu-Ray DVD can hold 27 Gb per side. Its fi rst applica-tion will be computer storage: imagine backing up a huge hard disc onto a single DVD. Next stop: high defi nition movies. How quickly this will happen is any-one’s guess. We assume that the movie industry will be smart enough to make everything compatible: high defi nition players that will also play older DVDs, and Blu-Ray DVDs that will also have a low-defi nition layer for playback on older yellow-laser DVD players. That’s what we assume. On the other hand, no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the entertainment industry.

Hard disc recording, plus…It’s well-known that a major use of

VCRs has always been “time shifting,” recording of programs to play at more convenient times. Though some tapes, especially of movies, wind up in collec-tions, most are played just once.

In the US, there’s a handier way to time-shift, using a hard disc recorder such as that of TiVo. The recorder, accompanied by a subscription to the TiVo service, allows unprecedented ease of recording and playback. Just tell the TiVo unit what programs interest you, and it will record them for you. Fire it up, choose a show, and you have it right away. No tape to rewind either. It gets better. TiVo does tricks a VCR can’t. You can pause live TV, if the phone rings while you’re watching a show. What the pause does is start recording, so you can rejoin the show later. Unlike a VCR, a hard disc recorder

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a lot more information. So can you tape the Super Bowl in all its high-def glory and watch it again next summer? Perhaps not, because the machines don’t come with high defi nition tuners. This is another in a long line of products deliberately crippled so you can’t easily use them to do what they’re ostensibly meant for. You need a set-top box with an IEEE1394 (FireWire) output.

however, get fi lms recorded

D-VHS machine could wind up in the closet next to your Videodisc player.

The blue laser DVD Just as D-VHS looks like a standard cassette, so this eventual successor to the DVD look just like a normal DVD. There’s little external sign that it holds nearly ten times as much data. Veteran audiophiles may find the

Hard disc recording, plus… It’s well-known that a major use of VCRs has always been “time shifting,” recording of programs to play at more convenient times. Though some tapes, especially of movies, wind up in collec-tions, most are played just once. In the US, there’s a handier way to time-shift, using a hard disc recorder such as that of TiVo. The recorder, Veteran audiophiles may find the

When you have to have 20 ampsHundreds of our readers have installed our Hubbell 8200 hospital grade duplex plugs, and swear that it was the best upgrade they’ve ever done. Need just a little more current. Try our Hubbell 20A plug, with isolated ground.www.uhfmag.com/AC.html


Cinema

lets you play back part of the show while it continues to record. An added bonus is that, if you have paused and are therefore watching the “delayed” program, you can skip through the commercials just as you would with a VCR. And you can also go back and rewatch a scene if you like. What you can’t do is add a fi lm you’ve recorded on hard disc to your collection. At least you couldn’t until now. But that is changing. Pioneer has announced a hybrid unit that contains a TiVo hard disc recorder and a DVD recorder. The prospect of fi nally putting the VCR in a garage sale is upon us. The fl y in the ointment: both the TiVo unit and the DVD recorder are standard resolution. Will there be a high resolution version? We’d bet there will…unless the “content providers” manage to cripple the technology as they have other technologies.

3-D DVD Over the years several hundred movies were shot in three dimensions. The best ones include Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder and some IMAX spec-taculars. The worst: a Canadian 60’s fi lm called The Mask (not to be confused with the Jim Carrey fi lm of the same title), and The Stewardesses, a porno fl ick which may have been shot in 8 mm. In between those extremes are The House of Wax, Jaws 3-D, and Friday the 13th 3-D. A number of these fi lms are available on DVD, but with the third dimension conspicuously missing. Lor ad minci tat. Ut adionse facing eummy nostisi euis nullam erosto eum nostie conulla etummodit atet vulput-pate et lametum at laore vulluptat nul-land gniat lum quis nulput velessi. Loreet, commy nullut at, conulla consequis exer am zzriurem irit ulput wisim inci eumsandit aut pratum dip elisi. Lortionsed duisi bla feugait adit nulput eugiam illum veliqua uerat at nis nim augait vulland onsequi iscincil ullaoreril et wis dolobore exer autat. Lorpero tisit nosting eu feuguero commy num verci exer ipsuscilit utpa-tum numsandigna feuis digna facip et at volorem dolortie tat, quissequis nos nonsequ piscin henim zzrit aliquat luptat

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You would think that the lowest-tech aspect of an amplifi er, pre-amplifi er or CD/DVD player must be its power supply. We

can obtain nearly unlimited amounts of electrical power from our local utility, and all we need to do is transform it somewhat, from alternating current to direct current, at the appropriate voltage or voltages required by the circuits. How diffi cult can it be? It turns out to be surprisingly dif-fi cult. Indeed, many of the problems facing audio designers do involve the power supply. Most modern power supplies look almost exactly like those of half a century ago. Is that what’s wrong with them? Let us examine the problem…if problem there is.

The typical power supply I was tempted to assume that every-one is aware of the reason that alternat-ing current is used to transmit electrical power. Perhaps not everyone is. Indeed, the rationale for AC escaped the great inventor Thomas Edison (whose name is borne by several utilities in the US). Edison’s power generators were pumping out DC — direct current. The wiring had a positive lead and a negative lead. His major competitor, Westinghouse, favored alternating current, with the polarity reversing itself back and forth 25 times per second (later 50 to 60 times). Both were easy enough to generate, but which was better? Edison favored DC on grounds of safety. We now know that a large jolt of alternating current will interfere with heartbeat regulation, and can trigger a fatal crisis called fi brillation. Edison actually developed an AC-powered electric chair, in the hope that the public would come to associate AC with violent death (he toured the US electrocuting, or “Westinghousing” large animals, a tactic that would get him picketed or jailed today). Ultimately AC won out

because of one important property: its voltage can be changed with a trans-former. A typical power transformer is com-posed of two coils wound around a metal core. It is usually shown schematically like this:

The importance of the transformer for the mass use of electricity quickly became evident. If power were sent to households at low voltage, the current would be very high (power is equal to voltage multiplied by current). As the number of electrical subscribers grew, wires had to carry more and more cur-rent, and the energy lost to heat became astronomical. The solution was to dis-tribute electricity at very high voltage, 50,000 volts or more. If you increase the voltage by 400 times, current drops by 400 times. The voltage can then be reduced to a safer voltage, anywhere from 100 to 250 volts, by placing a transformer close to each home. Of course, in the days of Edison (and of Nikola Tesla, Westinghouse’s brilliant engineer and inventor), electricity had limited use: lighting at fi rst, and then appliances powered by electric motors. Either can be designed to use either AC or DC. Fairly early in the new century,

however, came the fi rst electronic devices: amplifi ers fi rst, and then radios. Both needed direct current, and they needed it at a particular voltage. Within each of the new devices was a power supply, designed to turn the electrical company’s alternating current into direct current at a voltage specifi ed by the designer. How is this transformation done? We have already mentioned the transformer, which can turn the 120 or 220 volt line voltage into 5 volts, or 60 volts, or even 800 volts, as required. This is easily done by varying the number of turns of wire in each of the two coils in the transformer. However, what comes out of the other end is still AC, and electronic devices need DC. If we chart the voltage of AC, we get an attractive sine wave that looks like this:

There is an easy way to turn it into DC, however, by using what amounts to a one-way valve for electricity, called a diode. A diode (named for its two ele-ments) can be a vacuum tube, as it was for decades, or a solid state device:

You put AC into one end, and direct current comes out the other end. The DC isn’t usable, however, because it pulsates between full voltage and zero volts, like this:

To allow this voltage to be an energy source for an electronic device, we need to smooth it out. The perfect device for accomplishing this is a capacitor:

Everything you Always Wanted to Know About

The Power SupplyBut Didn’t Know Whom to Ask

Power supplies aren’t rocket science. So why does everybody talk about them so

by Paul Bergman

In Out


Nu

ts&Bolts

How does it do this smoothing? Imagine a water tap that delivers water in quick spurts rather than a constant fl ow. Put a cup under the tap to catch the spurts, and tilt it so that a constant stream pours from the cup.

A capacitor can be thought of as a storage unit for electrical charges. Charge it up, and you can “withdraw” current in a steady stream. The voltage now coming off the capacitor looks like this:

Oh oh! It’s still not the pure direct current we had hoped for. In order to make it acceptable, we will need a second capacitor, with a resistance in between. Our fi lter now looks like this:

The DC is now smooth enough for a power amplifi er, which handles relatively large signals that are less sensitive to hum and noise. In a preamplifi er, it may be necessary to add more sections. In an integrated amplifi er, you might well see a power supply fi lter that looks like this:

You might wonder about the resistors that separate the sections, or “poles” of the fi lter. We know that we want to get

maximum current from the power line. Doesn’t a resistor limit current? Isn’t it a bad thing? Theoretically not, but in practice perhaps. Let us examine why. Loreet er si eratuerat. Ut at dion vulputat iriuscilla facilla aute corem

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Read the whole article…

Understand power supplies better, with the guidance of Paul Bergman. Pick up

the print edition of UHF No. 68. For ordering information, see page 51 of this

PDF version. Or see page 3 to subscribe.


Griffin AudioBox 733, Montreal, QC H4A 3S2Tel. (514) 945-8245 FAX: (514) [email protected] proac-loudspeakers.com

Oakville Audio, Oakville (905) 338-1188Sensation Musicale, Granby (800) 313-HIFI

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New vitality andpotency from an internationally

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Smaller transformerand capacitors

HighFrequency

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You know how we can make this review real short? We can just answer the question you see below. The answer is yes.

Well, mostly yes. There’s a nuance or two to put forth here, but if you expect Copland to have botched this product because it’s multichannel, and who cares anyway, think again. First of all, who needs a preamp like this? The f irst candidate is someone who wants to build a system that must handle both home theatre and music. The standard solution is to purchase an A/V receiver, containing preamp, processor, and fi ve channels of power amplifi cation. Though not all receivers sound alike, all are the result of compro-mises. The compromises are dictated by the limitations of size, of price (even the top receivers are low in cost considering what they contain), and the market. How many movie fans actually care about the quality of music? The big box stores would tell you the percentage is very small. From our perspective, the number is large, if only because people who don’t care about musical reproduction are unlikely to read us anyway. There are ways to integrate home

theatre and high end music reproduc-tion. Some of them are awkward. The ideal solution is a preamplifi er that can handle six channels: the fi ve main chan-nels plus the “effects” channel for the subwoofer. One such preamplifi er, the Audio Refi nement Pre-6, was on the cover of UHF issue No. 61. We recom-mended it warmly, but what if you want a really high end six-channel preamp? And you may even if movies are not your passion. A good many music recordings in both SACD and DVD-A formats include surround sound. A good preamp can be the heart of a multichan-nel music system. Like the CTA-305 (reviewed in UHF No. 66), this is a tube preamp. Because it’s the same size as the 305, it’s easy to guess that something had to be sacrifi ced. That something is the phono stage. The main circuit board has been rearranged so that there is room for six side-by-side tube circuits, each using a

12AX7 dual triode. The front panel is much like the 305’s, except that there is are individual controls for each of the six channels, meant for balancing. The rear panel also looks like the 305’s, including its major failing: good quality jacks for the two main outputs, mediocre jacks for the other four out-puts, and also for all of the inputs. The major disappointment is the presence of just one six-channel input. If you’ll use it in a music-only system, that’s perfectly acceptable. But if you’ll be hooking up both a fi lm sound processor and an SACD player, then you have a problem. There are four other inputs, and there are separate outputs for stereo and for surround sound. There is also a tape loop, something we would have traded for one extra six-channel section. A pair of 12 volt jacks allow the preamp to switch on extra gear, such as power amps. We ran the CVA-306 through some technical tests, and we weren’t surprised to see results identical to those of the CTA-305. They are more like brothers than cousins. Noise was low, though of course it may vary with the quality of the tubes used. Because switching is done by relays placed right on the circuit board,

List

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Copland CVA-306 Preamp

Can a six-channel tube preamplifi er aspire to reference quality?


crosstalk among inputs was barely above the noise. When we moved the preamp into our Alpha listening room, we gath-ered together some CDs, and set out to determine one thing: does the 306 sound like the 305? We began with the wonderful Bist du beist mir from The Little Notebook of Anna Magdelana Bach (Analekta FL 2 3064). This piece, for harpsichord and the astonishing voice of soprano Karina Gauvin, is sheer magic when properly reproduced, but it is fragile, and the magic can easily dry up, along with the depth and the clarity. We were pleased to realize that the 306 kept nearly all of the magic. We could hear the acoustic milieu, a stone church near Montreal’s nearly defunct Mirabel airport. Luc Beauséjour’s harpsichord, which tinkles annoyingly with lesser gear, had a pure ethereal tone that delighted us. Depth was excellent. This is, after all, a natural stereo recording, done with a single pair of microphones. Was the 305 better than the 306? Yes, no doubt, but we had diffi culty agreeing on the degree of difference. We moved on to one of our favorite Blues recordings, Papa John from Doug McLeod’s You Can’t Take My Blues (Audioquest AQCD1041). This song is full of challenging elements, from McLeod’s voice to Heather Hardy’s breathtakingly acrobatic violin, to the guitars, to the inventive percussive

effects. It all pretty much came through gorgeously. Even so, “pretty much” perhaps doesn’t accord it all the credit it deserves. What we heard was in fact very close to what we had heard with our 305 refer-ence preamplifi er. “The difference,” said Gerard, is a lot less than the difference between the 305 and the older 301. Just the presence of those extra volume

controls is enough to explain it.” The 306 sailed through our often-used choral recording, Now the Green Blade Riseth without any collateral damage. Voices were strong and pure, but not shrill. The infamous crescendo at the end of the fi rst selection came through well. Yes, we still preferred our own preamp, but not by a lot. We ended the session with two more of our favorite CD. Nice. Copland has done well with this preamp. For either home theatre or for musical surround sound, you’re unlikely to fi nd better. What is equally important is that, even if you use it as a two-channel preamp, as we did in this test, you’ll be more than pleased with what you hear. And we think you’ll be convinced that you’ve snagged a bargain.

I can tell you right off that this preamp gave me chills. For starters, the spaciousness and the stereo image are remarkable. Human voices, woodwinds, brass, piano, cymbals, percussion and guitars emerge sounding warm and natural. It is nearly as though they were live, right there on stage, with all of the inflections, modulations, sensitivity, and even the trills. I’ve often mentioned that in some tests I noted that words were clearly audible, though some trailing syllables tended to vanish. With this preamplifier, I swear not a word gets lost. And what comes out is musi-cal and lyrical. What more can I say?

—Reine Lessard

I wasn’t sure how this test would turn out. I was remembering the disaster of listening to Copland’s multichannel power amp (see our last issue). Would this preamp be cut from the same cloth? No, whew! It is in fact cut from the same cloth as the two-channel CTA-305 tube preamp, which is of course one of our reference preamps. Is it actually as good? Do a head-to-head comparison, as we did, and you’ll just notice the difference.

—Gerard Rejskind

A very impressive achievement, I thought listening intently. This preamp handles

everything with ease, revealing all I wanted to hear. It produces a superb harpsichord, its notes glittering softly in the middle of the stage, as the sweet, mellow voice fills the air. Male and female voices featured equally clear lyrics, and a vast array of subtle details appeared wall to wall, from left to right and front to back…way back. I still prefer our Copland reference though, but only because I was tempted to compare most of the time, rather than merely listening. You’ll probably just sit and enjoy your music thoroughly, and you’ll have four more channels to enjoy come showtime.

—Albert Simon

CROSSTALK

Listening Room

Brand/model: Copland CTA-306Price: C$3495/US$2495Dimensions: 43 x 39 x 11 cmMost liked: Clear, superbly musical soundLeast liked: Only a single six-channel input, mediocre jacksVerdict: Compromise anything, except the sound

Summing it up…


We like to see consistency in a designer’s creations, and it’s interesting that Jim Thiel’s speakers,

except for the small ones, all have pretty much the same shape. You have to look hard to figure out which one you’re looking at. The distinctive form, which suggests an Egyptian sarcophagus, is not mere whim. Though this is a large speaker, the strongly profi led front baffl e gives it an

acoustically-narrow profi le. As we like to say, it is a large speaker that “thinks” it is small. The very thick (7.6 cm) front baffl e maintains rigidity, allowing supe-rior dynamics. The forward tilt reduces internal standing waves that color the

sound. It also corrects for a phase error, by placing the tweeter slightly farther away from the listener than the woofer. But there’s a lot more to Thiel’s dis-tinctive designs. Jim Thiel doesn’t pick his drivers out of the SEAS catalog. The custom-built 20 cm woofer uses an aluminum cone, and also has a rear structure different from that of most woofers. It’s usual to give the woofer a deep voice coil with plenty of turns of wire, to allow high effi ciency and better cooling. Thiel’s voice coil is shallow, but its magnetic fi eld is deep. That means the speaker can move back and forth as much as needed without the voice coil leaving the magnetic fi eld. That, says Jim Thiel, greatly reduces distortion at high levels. The tweeter is unusual too, and in fact Thiel refers to it as a “coincident tweeter/midrange driver.” It is essen-tially an 8.5 cm cone speaker, large enough to handle lower midrange (Thiel doesn’t specify the crossover frequency), with a 2.5 cm metal dome glued to it to radiate higher frequencies. This is the same tweeter used in our MCS1 centre speaker (see UHF No. 67). The oval “speaker” at the bottom isn’t a speaker at all, but a passive radia-tor: essentially a speaker with no voice coil, almost certainly a KEF. It adds resistance to the tuned port, making it seem longer than it is, and it also damps out port resonances. Good designers don’t all see crossover networks the same way. Reference 3a’s Daniel Dehay, for instance, has little use for them, employing only a capacitor to protect the tweeter. Jim Thiel goes to the opposite extreme. His crossovers are the size of small amplifi ers, loaded with polypropylene and custom-made polystyrene capacitors, air core coils, and a lot of wire with Tefl on insulation. That costs effi ciency (the CS2.4 is rated at 87 dB, lower than average for a speaker this size), but it allows him to correct for phase and frequency domain errors. Because of the way the crossover is confi gured, the CS2.4 has only a single (well-made) pair of binding posts, and biwiring is neither possible nor neces-sary. The CS2.4 comes with gold-colored screw-in cones. The threads on the

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Thiel CS2.4

Not too big, not too small, is it the peak of Jim Thiel’s art?


cones are a little loose, however. If you don’t tighten the locknut thoroughly, the cones will rattle audibly during play. The CS2.4 is available in various woods, from fl at black (the economy fi nish) to the gorgeous morado veneer of our speakers. We didn’t fi nd them particularly unstable, but cautious par-ents or dog owners may want to order optional outrigger feet to make sure they can’t fall over. Thiel recommends 50 hours of break-in time, but we ran up about half again that before moving the CS2.4’s into our Alpha room. Though these are substan-tial speakers, they are easy to place, and they are not overly sensitive to position. Nor are they visually overwhelming, as other speakers that size can be. As with other speakers we’ve reviewed recently, we used LPs for the sessions. The fi rst is always a delight, whether we hear it on CD or LP. It is harpist Susann McDonald’s performance of Marcel Tournier’s Vers une source dans le bois. It’s on her Caprice CD on Klavier, but we played it from the Professor John-son’s Amazing Sound Show LP (RR-7). It sounded gorgeous emerging from the Thiels.

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Listening Room

Brand/model: Thiel CS2.4

Summing it up…


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Brand/model: Thiel CS2.4Price: US$3900 (about C$5132)Dimensions: 105 x 28 x 35.5 cmSensitivity: 87 dBImpedance: 4 ohms (3 ohms min.)Most liked: Low distortion, no mid-range veiling, excellent transientsLeast liked: Some tilt toward higher frequenciesVerdict: It opens up the spectrum where the heart of the music lives

Get the lowdown on the Thiels

Pick up issue 68 of UHF Magazine. Details on page 51 of this PDF issue.


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—Gerard Rejskind


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—Albert Simon

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—Reine Lessard

CROSSTALK


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It should probably come as no sur-prise that some small speakers have large price tags…or that expensive speakers can be small. The original

Totem Model One made that clear for a lot of audiophiles, and since then upscale speakers have come in many shapes and sizes. This is one of the smallest ones, though not, as we shall see, one of the least capable. You look at this small speaker, and you fi gure you could buy it for its looks alone. The piano walnut fi nish must be seen to be appreciated. Fit and fi nish is meticulous. For example, note the fl ared vent at the rear of the enclosure, and run a fi nger nail over its edge, to fi nd where the enclosure leaves off and the port tube begins. You won’t. In the time we had the FS688 around our offi ce, no one who saw it failed to exclaim on its sheer beauty. And you know what? When we told them it cost C$4000 a pair, no one so much as raised an eyebrow. But be assured that the money wasn’t spent exclusively on veneer and lacquer. Take the drivers. The Eton woofer isn’t large, just 14 cm across, but it is an expensive one, with a stiff cone

made of two layers of Kevlar with a Nomex honeycomb between them. The Scanspeak Revelator tweeter is the same one used in the magnifi cent Living Voice Avatar OBX-R speakers reviewed in our last issue. The capacitors are expensive Multicaps. Internal wiring is silver Litz wire from Cardas, whose copper binding posts and jumpers are also used. Keeping a small cabinet from ring-ing is easier than doing it with a large one — and that is but one of the advan-tages of going small — but it’s still an effort, and on the evidence Focus Audio has gone to the trouble. Tapping various parts of the enclosure revealed no obvi-ous weaknesses. The sensitivity fi gure, 85 dB accord-ing to the manufacturer, is much lower than that of most speakers made today.

This is not the speaker to choose to accompany a timid amplifi er. Our speakers were already well broken in (we picked them up at the end of the Montreal show), and we gave them only another 10 hours or so before bringing them into our Alpha room. We placed them on the superb Foundation stands you can see in the picture across. They look good that way…no mystery, since Foundation is a division of none other than Focus Audio. As with the other speakers, we picked a stack of LPs for this review. We began with the Olympic Fanfare from Dave Wilson’s old Center Stage album. Could this diminutive speaker handle the bar-rage of brass and tympani? Yes in the case of the brass, at least. The horns were brash and dissonant, with great energy and power, but with plausible timbres. We had no diffi culty listening through the louder instruments to hear everything that was going on. Albert and Gerard both used the word “refi ned,” and Reine thought the speaker was made to order for this music. Well…except perhaps for the very bottom of the frequency range. The Focus reproduced the impact of the tympani quite well, with a fast, ener-getic and well-controlled attack, but of course without the earth-shaking boom of larger speakers. The sound was by no means unbalanced, though Albert wondered allowed whether Focus made a subwoofer (the answer for the moment is no). We could already anticipate that the Focus would do well with the intricate and subtle harp piece, Vers une source dans le bois (Reference Recordings RR-7). How could it have done otherwise? Gerard wrote but one word: “perfec-tion.” The sentiment was unanimous. The cascades of notes from Susann McDon-ald’s fi ngers (does she really have only 10?) was at once charming and dazzling. Some of those notes are the result of a mere touch, and their discreet sound is responsible for much of the magic in this astonishing piece.

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Focus Audio FS688

Surprisingly small, surprisingly beautiful, surprisingly desirable


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Listening Room


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—Gerard Rejskind





—Albert Simon

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Lore velisl ut incilit at ipsusto odolenibh euis nulla con velent er irit lum vullum non-sectet velisim niat.




—Reine Lessard

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Brand/model: Focus Audio FS688Price: C$3999/US$2600)Dimensions: 33 x 18 x 25.5 cmImpedance: 8 ohmsSensitivity: 85 dB

Summing it up…

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Lor iliquis eum volor aut euipsus ionum Lore velisl ut incilit at ipsusto odolenibh Loreraestie feu feugueros esed dit dolor

CROSSTALK

Sensitivity:Most liked: Transparent, sophisti-cated sound…and great looksLeast liked: May be too crisp in some roomsVerdict: High price per kilo, low price per thrillHow good are they really?

The whole article is in the print version of issue No. 68. Check page 51 for

ordering instructions.


Creating a new loudspeaker may look as simple as screw-ing a couple of drivers into a box, but if you want to enjoy

what comes out you’ll want to take a rather longer journey. It is perhaps with such a journey in mind that Laurent Racicot, an audio journalist turned speaker designer, named his new speaker line after Homer’s very long epic poem on the siege of Troy. Iliad speakers are built by D-Box, a company located a 15-minute drive away from our editorial offices. The company began well over a decade ago with a series of very small self-powered speakers. That seemed weird at the time, though of course the spread of computers has made such speakers commonplace. D-Box then moved into subwoofers, including the Mammouth, with a driver nearly half a meter across, and its Odyssée motion simulator seat for home theatre. And now… This is, it's easy to see, the most con-ventional of D-Box’s products. There’s nothing terribly unusual about the B1, the middle member of the inexpensive three-speaker line (four if you count the subwoofer). It is a two-way speaker, using a 16.5 cm woofer and a textile dome

tweeter. The price seems rather attractive, but there are a lot of low-cost speakers out there, in venues varying from big box retailers to backs of trucks parked in alley-ways. What makes the Iliad different? The speaker designers we respect most claim that the best design will be of little use if the drivers are of mediocre quality. What Racicot has done is put together upmarket Audax drivers from France with cabinets and assembly work by “our Asian partners” (we’re guessing China). That balancing act is intended to deliver a speaker somewhat more sophisticated than one normally gets at this price, C$599 (about US$440). We broke in our brand new B1’s for some 60 hours, and then brought them into our Alpha room. The price does not, we should add, include stands. We used Focus Audio’s awesome Foundation stands, which of course cost double the price of the B1’s themselves.

We began the all-LP session (we fi nd ourselves doing this a lot of late) with the Olympic Fanfare from the long-discontin-ued Wilson LP, Center Stage. There’s a lot of brass in this fanfare, but the reason we like to include it is that the tympani is especially well-recorded, with impact of mallet on membrane that you can feel. How did it do? “We might be in for some surprises,” said Albert. Indeed. The bottom end was way better than we had dared hope, and the rhythm was satisfyingly light. Reine thought the brass section had lost some of its presence, but on the other hand the instruments didn’t all run together. The cymbals were very good when lightly struck, rather more artifi cial in a full-blown clash. Gerard wondered whether a coil in the crossover might be saturating under stress. The next recording, William Wal-ton’s Façade Suite is an even tougher test, because of the numerous instruments playing solo and in combinations. In the introduction there is a particularly murderous piccolo passage that most speakers, including our Alpha reference, mishandle. The Iliad did a little worse yet. The piccolo turned into a screech, and its duet with the clarinet made us strain to pick it out. Not that the rest of the recording was disastrous, far from it. Other higher fre-quencies, such as those of the snare drum and the cymbal, were at least reasonable. The other instruments didn’t all blend together, which meant that Walton’s elaborate and poetic counterpoints came through pretty much intact. Reine was hardest on the B1, but even so she added that on musical grounds she could be perfectly happy with it. Of course we wanted to hear a female voice, because we thought that might give the B1 trouble. We chose an audiophile classic, Amanda McBroom’s Gossamer from the original West of Oz Sheffi eld direct-cut LP. Amanda’s voice was satisfyingly clear, but not quite right, “as though she weren’t quite as good a singer,” said Gerard. Her esses were quite natural, though they sounded rougher later in the song, as she sang louder. Most of the instruments, including the electric bass, sounded very good, though the harmonica was an exception. Once

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Iliad B1 Speaker

A small speaker with no surprises. Oh…possibly except for its price tag.


again we noted the very good separation of voice and instruments. The tonal bal-ance was mostly dead on. The B1 did wonderfully well on the harp solo Vers une source dans le bois.The harp was somewhat closer to us. “Instead of being in dappled shade it’s out in full sunshine,” said Albert. Still, we admired the detail, the absence of background fog, and the speaker’s sheer sophistication. We ended with Secret of the Andes, whose massive percussion variety is such a challenge for a speaker. The B1 did well. Only a trace of bloom on the largest drum spoiled what would have been a perfect score. The impact of mallet or palm against membrane was unusually clear, and the rhythm was light and furious. Gerard complained

that the kick drum was a bit out of focus, but there was a no denying its impact.

Our bench tests didn’t turn up any-thing unpleasant. The square wave (at left) is surprisingly well-shaped, though the double line on the risers suggests a minor phase error between the drivers. The frequency response curve is basi-cally fi ne, though a bit ragged in the upper midrange. The lower midrange is a little bumpy too, though of course some of that is caused by room effects. Response is strong down to 70 Hz, and drops off below that. This is not unusual, notwithstanding the optimistic spec sheets from most manufacturers. However many speakers make horrible noises below their response limits. The B1 doesn’t…and that’s perhaps the reason it sounds as clean as it does.

On the whole, the Iliad B1 is a very good speaker, and it could be just a tuneup away from stardom. Speakers of this price all have weak points, but beyond their inevitable weaknesses they mostly lack the refi nement it takes to make you suspend disbelief and become one with the musicians. The B1 has that refi nement. Decidedly, more than the price is right.

It’s not easy to compare C$600 speakers with a reference that costs many times more, but since they came out of the challenge in more than honorable fashion, I’m pleased to give you the results. If I noted some flaws, I also noted some pleasant surprises, marvellous discoveries that deserve mention: restitution of an infinity of details, beauty of instrumental timbres, good impact and energy, a fine dynamic capability, and fidelity in commu-nicating words and sensitivity. Throughout the test, rhythm was in no way altered. In their category, these speakers can be recommended. If you have a modest budget and a room that’s not too large, these may be the speakers for you. Add a good source, and they’ll make you happy without wiping our your budget.

—Reine Lessard

To tell you the truth, listening to speak-ers of this price is not what I like to do for fun. Most of them have flaws that I find dispiriting when I’m trying to enjoy music.

The top end is shrill, the bottom is tubby, the rhythm is turgid, and the midrange could use a going over with emery. Let me emphasize that I have not been describing the Iliad B1. Its sound is remark-ably sophisticated, with a polish and refine-ment whose absence I have often deplored in speakers costing two or three times the price of the B1. The bottom end is not perfect, but there’s good coherence and little boom. Rhythm is strong. Yes, there are compromises. I'd guess that the crossover could use a retune, to avoid some perfectly avoidable artifacts at the top end. But let’s be realistic. This speaker is cheap enough to liberate funds for a much better source than you had perhaps planned on. For most audiophiles, this is absolutely the right choice.

—Gerard Rejskind

I don’t know about you but I often like to compare differently priced components using CDs (or LPs) as currency. How many CDs can I buy with what I save, for example?

Is my music experience going to improve more with additional music or with a more expensive system? No need to ask yourself that question with these speakers, though. Whether you’re setting up your first system or help-ing someone set up theirs, the D-Box Iliad speakers will free up the budget for plenty of CDs. You’ll be mouthing all the lyrics of more songs than you expected and you’ll hear them so clearly they’ll be etched in your mind. You’ll be able to spoil yourself with more percussion than you think you deserve, and they’ll handle it like pros. You might not want to challenge them too often with sharp sounds or piercing high notes, but they’ll constantly surprise you with their tight, precise, musical bass, and their great ability to dance and reproduce detail. As a result, you’ll probably wind up owning more CDs than you had expected, and you’ll find more music in them. Not a bad idea.

—Albert Simon

CROSSTALK

Impedance: 8 ohmsMost liked: Well-balanced sophisti-cationLeast liked: Some top end artifacts as volume risesVerdict: Music that makes you smile, at a price that will make you grin

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On the whole, the Iliad B1 is a very

of voice and instruments. The tonal bal-ance was mostly dead on.

The B1 did wonderfully well on the Vers une source dans le bois.

The harp was somewhat closer to us. “Instead of being in dappled shade it’s out in full sunshine,” said Albert. Still, we admired the detail, the absence of background fog, and the speaker’s sheer

We ended with Secret of the Andes,

but there was a no denying its impact. Victor Feldman’s piano, which a lot of speakers mess up, was just right. The electric bass sounded very good.

On the test bench…

some of that is caused by room effects. Response is strong down to 70 Hz, and drops off below that. This is not unusual, notwithstanding the optimistic spec sheets from most manufacturers. However many speakers make horrible noises below their response limits. The B1 doesn’t…and that’s perhaps the reason it sounds as clean as it does. On the whole, the Iliad B1 is a very

Brand/model: Iliad B1Price: C$599 (about US$440)Dimensions: 41 x 20.5 x 33.5 cm

Summing it up…

On the whole, the Iliad B1 is a very

24/96 sound on any DVD playerThat's right. Hi-Res music puts 24 bits and 96 kHz without lossy compression, and it plays that way on all standard DVD players. The fact that they’ve got some of the world’s greatest jazz artists, from the Concord Jazz catalogue, doesn’t exactly hurt.


You’ve heard of Audio Note, right? Have you ever seen any of its products? Audio Note is a British brand whose products

are known to be expensive, and in some quarters the company is quasi-legendary. Then again, unicorns are legendary too, but who’s ever seen one? By Audio Note standards, this player is inexpensive, because the line runs deep into four fi gures. Are the prices one reason for the legend? Perhaps, though as we shall see there is a happier one. The two boxes are the same size, resembling lab instrument cases. The CDT-One transport has no front-panel controls at all, featuring only a large fl uorescent screen below its disc drawer. The inevitable question came up: what if you lose the remote control? There actually are two buttons, one to open or close the drawer and the other to play or pause. And that’s all. Where are they? On the rear panel! We recommend picking up a universal remote…just in case. The DAC One 1x Signature, alas, has the cheap jacks that are popping up on too much expensive equipment. There is one balanced XLR connection, to con-

nect to a similarly-equipped transport, but Audio Note’s own transport doesn’t have a balanced output. It is inside that the DAC One is unusual. One notable feature is the presence of a tube output stage, using a miniature 6922 tube. The other, and a much more surprising one, is the “1x” referred to in the model name. Audio Note calls it “1x oversampling.” Pretty much all multibit converters use oversampling, and have for many years. It is used to avoid the “brute force” fi lter that, on early CD players, took a chain saw to the audio beyond 20 kHz. Such fi lters have serious audible effects, unfortunately. The solution: running the sampling signal at a higher frequency, four or eight times normal. The fi lter can be made much more gentle. Audio Note’s “1x oversampling” means of course no oversampling at all.

Why? We quote from the Audio Note Web site:

Musically relevant information is what we strive to convert from digital to analogue, not some misunderstood notion of “technical perfection” that produces its own sound through adding its own information, such as upsampling, which is really only just another way of “correcting” the data stream, as if we actually knew what was wrong with it in the fi rst place, or in other words just another coarse method of cheating the test equipment (and a few less knowledgeable consumers and reviewers more concerned with test data than music??). The mul-tiplication of the information in the data stream inherent in the oversampling and upsampling methods multiply the fl aws in the signal to an even greater extent, low level information is lost, dynamic headroom reduced and a shallow anemic sound results.

Reviewers more concerned with data than music? Gee, that couldn’t happen, could it? We hooked up a Wireworld Gold Starlight digital cable between the two units, and ran some CDs through them. The first was The Little Notebook of Anna Magdelana Bach (Analekta FL 2 3064). What grabbed our atten-tion fi rst was the harpsichord, whose presence was considerably enhanced. It was also slightly harder, as was Karina Gauvin’s voice. On the other hand, her voice seemed even more expressive. The player did well on Now the Green Blade Riseth, with male and female voices blending well, yet easy to separate. The organ and the plucked bass were solid, the rhythm excellent. Female voices had hardened somewhat, however, though that didn’t spoil the expressiveness of this fi ne chorale. On our harp recording, Caprice (Kla-vier K 11133), the Audio Note showed off once more its ability to underline and enhance the actual musical performance. Susann McDonald had never sounded better (and she’s always amazing!). Indeed, we liked everything about what we heard, from the deep resonance of the harp to the sharply-focused details, revealed without fog or ambiguity. In Patricia Barber’s Like JT from

Listening Room

Audio Note CD Player

You’ve seen the name. But how often have you seen the gear?


the live Companion disc, the kick drum’s impact was actually startling. But that wasn’t all. Barber’s piano sounded better than with our reference, sounding much more like a quality grand piano, each note carrying new energy. The percus-sion amazed us too, because it was so detailed we could follow the movement of the drumsticks on the varied surfaces. Amazing…and exciting too! Every bit as amazing was Boy from (Clarity CCD-1006). We could hear Maria Muldaur sound. “It sounds as though it’s really her singing,” said Albert, “and not merely someone trying to sound like her. Nor was it only Muldaur’s performance that was enhanced. The guitar introduc-tion had a magnifi cent roundness, but without added coloring. The saxophone was particularly rich and lively. The per-formers were slightly forward, but with a

good deal of depth behind them. And rhythm was superb too, as it had been with all of the other selections

we had listened to. We know better than to take that for granted with any digital device. We ended with Lobo from the new Carmin disc (Audiogram ADCD10163),

lots of subtle percussion in this song, and we could hear more of it. “The tempo is well-maintained with this player,” said Gerard. “It’s interesting to note the way good reproduction of rhythm has an effect on the melody as well, making it easier to grasp.” We were eager to see what Audio Note’s “1X” sampling would do on the test bench. Well…the result doesn’t resemble anything we’ve seen before. Check the 100 Hz square wave, above left. We’ve never seen one like it, and we’re not sure how to explain it. The -60 dB sine wave, on the other hand (at right) was more conventional, and pretty well perfect.

Jitter was very low, and remained low even on deliberately damaged CD tracks (it muted with a cut of 2 mm or more). It is, however, rather sensitive to vibrations. Placing it on a well-isolated stand is highly recommended. This listening session was a happy experience. There’s a defi nite down side to Audio Note’s chosen technology, to be sure, and we could hear it. But we also understand why so many music lovers swear by this company.

We at UHF are not generally known for throwing f lowers indiscriminately at components we test. Personally, I am not easily impressed, and, too often, “impres-sive” performances leave me in doubt. I know real music is rarely like a circus, but more like a garden. Well, this player, with its sober and elegant look, makes music seem like a walk in a quiet garden, where time stands still and surprises appear at every turn. (You can see me throwing flowers now, can’t you?) Nothing seemed overdone, no musician tried to take over the stage. Massed voices blossom (there, you see?) and spread before me without strain, dropping their lyrics delicately, and departing at the end of the piece. I know that, if I wanted to, I could get up and touch the instruments — and did I mention that their timbre is always right on? No, but it is. Nothing seems to be added, nothing seems to be missing across that well-balanced stage.

Actually, “balance” is a another word to describe what I felt when I heard music played by this source. Colors were distinctly displayed, as musical textures appeared in transparent shades. And you know what ? Nothing was meant to impress…that’s what impressed me about it.

—Albert Simon

Well, I’m impressed! This high end player produces an ambience that makes the presence of the musicians almost palpable. Faithful repro-duction is accompanied by exceptional defi-nition. It dazzles the ear with an incredible variety of sounds that are delightful without seeming the least bit artificial. In the deep sound field, with its several distinguishable planes, the dynamics have free rein. Oh, those striking timbres, those notes and those rhythms, those modulations, that sensitivity…all that’s needed for a perfect listening experience!

There’s impact, and there’s energy. Bass is solid, the midrange is rich, and the highs are light. The player communicates the subtlest emotion. Pile on the piano, voice, percussion, and a big orchestra, and you won’t note any distortion. This player, whose twin boxes won’t spoil your decor any more than your listen-ing experience, passes with flying colors.

—Reine Lessard

I had heard about Audio Note for years, but hearing about and hearing are two differ-ent things. Now I understand the legend. There’s almost nothing bad to say about this player, except perhaps that it sounds slightly forward compared to my other favorites> But “forward” in this case doesn’t translate into shrill, or clinical, or flat. In musical terms, everything comes out of this player sounding as it should. If higher praise exists, I don’t know what it could be.

—Gerard Rejskind

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Price: C$2199 (US$1650) each boxDimensions: 22 x 29.5 x 11.5 cmMost liked: Adds magic to a good musician’s performanceLeast liked: Increased hardness of certain voices and instrumentsVerdict: Music trumps numbers

more like a quality grand piano, each note carrying new energy. The percus-sion amazed us too, because it was so detailed we could follow the movement of the drumsticks on the varied surfaces. Amazing…and exciting too!

Every bit as amazing was Nature from The Hot Club of San Francisco

(Clarity CCD-1006). We could hear Maria Muldaur breathe, so clear was the sound. “It sounds as though it’s really her

disc (Audiogram ADCD10163), and once again the reproduction of musi-cal values delighted us. Bïa’s expressive voice was more natural, her mocking tone in this song more evident. There’s

resemble anything we’ve seen before. Check the 100 Hz square wave, above left. We’ve never seen one like it, and we’re not sure how to explain it. The -60 dB sine wave, on the other hand (at right) was more conventional, and pretty well perfect. Jitter was very low, and remained low even on deliberately damaged CD tracks (it muted with a cut of 2 mm or more). It is, however, rather sensitive to

Brand/model: Audio Note CDT-1/Transport One

Summing it up…

We wouldn’t be without itAnother great recording by one of the world’s greatest harpists, accompanied by an awesome fl utist. Original recording by Keith O. Johnson, digital transfer by Bruce Lee. On Klavier. www.uhfmag.com/Klavier.html


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This astonishing Danish company, two of whose pre-amplifi ers we own, long ago fi gured out how to get maxi-

mum music off CD. This is the latest iteration of the Copland CD player. It uses newer chipsets than the last version, which is no doubt the reason it no longer has HDCD decoding aboard. The presentation is straightforward, with enough buttons on the front panel to allow operation even if the dog has run off with the remote (which also has buttons for Copland preamps and amps). The rear is equally straightforward. The analog outputs include a pair of nice phono jacks as well as XLR balanced jacks. The digital output is unbalanced only. We began the listening session with a familiar recording, The Little Notebook of Anna Magdelana Bach (Analekta FL 2 3064), which can sound like a foretaste of paradise…or like the ante-chamber of a much warmer place. We were happy to note that it was closer to Up Here than to Down There. Soprano Karina Gauvin’s magical voice was warm, clear, pure and crystalline, without undue emphasis on the overtones. Luc Beauséjour’s harpsichord was natural, with possibly even more presence than with our reference player. There was a palpable sense of the large space of the Mirabel church where the recording was made. Did it sound every bit as good as it had with our own player? Nearly, thought Gerard, “but there’s a subtle shift in timbre. Everything sounds a little thicker, slightly less natural.”

We continued with our choral recording, Now the Green Blade Riseth (Proprius PRCD9093), whose complex-ity provides many ways a player can go wrong. The Copland mostly went right. Female voices were smooth and natural, yet highly energetic. Some CD players sound thin on the bottom, but that’s not common with Copland players, and this one was entirely satisfying. Male voices had good body, and the string bass had a subtle but solid beat we all noted with approval. The solo fl ute was beautiful, still without any of the high-pitched harshness we often hear. “When it’s reproduced like this you can really follow the melodic line,” said Albert, before adding, “That’s true of our reference player too, of course.” Gerard, for his part, wasn’t totally happy. “I still hear a bit of thickening. It’s like a sketch by an artist whose pencils weren’t quite sharp enough.” The Copland player did very well with our harp selection: Tournier’s Vers une source dans le bois (from Caprice on Klavier K 33111). The louder parts (yes, a solo harp can be plenty loud) was powerful and resonant, while the softer, otherworldly passages were magical, with no fog to hide them. The overall tone was as we like it: rich and warm, rather than cool and overly analyzed. Not that any detail was missing. From there we moved to a jazz

recording, Patricia Barber’s Like JT from her live Companion CD (Premoni-tion 22963). The CDA-822 handled it with deftness and ease. Barber doesn’t sing on this selection, but she plays piano and she is surrounded by several fi rst class musicians. The engi-neers came up with exceptional sound under what must have been trying con-ditions, and we felt as though we were there, with them in that Chicago club. Certainly all of the energy of a live gig was there. The drum kit generates sounds that f lirt with subterranean depths, while the other, highly varied, percussion instruments reach for the top. Both piano and guitar sounded attrac-tive and natural. Rhythm was strong. Audience sounds were not obtrusive, but they were present, as were calls of encouragement from the musicians themselves. The excellent stereo image placed all of this into a coherent frame. Indeed, Albert actually preferred the Copland’s version to that of our own player. “The piano is warmer than with the reference. I also especially like the sound of the cymbal shimmering when it is barely touched by the drumstick. Even the applause is more realistic.” We then moved to another jazz piece, Nature Boy from The Hot Club of San Francisco (Clarity CCD-1006), with guest singer Maria Muldaur. Her voice just glowed, as she slid from note to note in the way she does. “The sound of her voice draws you into the text,” said Reine, “and the sax is really sexy.” It wasn’t alone. The guitar was also especially attractive. The string bass had power, but it didn’t sound ponderous. That was as it should be. Albert sometimes complains of com-ponents that give music a “cooler” color-ing than our reference components do. The Copland actually sounded warmer, and he wondered whether that was entirely natural. “I’m not really sure,” he said. We ended the session with Lobo, a song in Portuguese from Bïa’s new CD, Carmin (Audiogram ADCD10163) Once again Albert found the tone somewhat warmer, but that was his only com-plaint…if complaint it truly was. Bïa’s expressive voice was delightfully clear, with each syllable easy to catch, yet with

Copland CDA-822

Is the Compact Disc dead? We say no. So does Copland.


a coherent overall sound. Indeed, we could hear infl ections that were hidden with our own player. The stereo image was well rendered. How well would the Copland do on the technical tests. Very well in fact. It had little diffi culty coping with a low-level signal. The trace above left is of a 1 kHz sine wave 60 decibels below full level. It is contaminated by neither distortion nor noise. The CDA-822 did quite well on the 100 Hz square wave as well (the trace at top right), which shows little ringing. The tilt of the top of the wave indicates a somewhat greater rolloff of high fre-quencies than we see on modern play-ers. Is that the source of the Copland’s “warm” sound? Possibly.

Jitter was low, as we were certain it would be from the enthusiastic way the player handles rhythm. Not expected is that it remained low when we ran the Pierre Verany test disc with laser slices through the tracks. It took a huge

3 mm cut to pro-duce a noticeable increase in jitter. The transport actually tracked quite well the track with the widest (4 mm) slice, with only two brief bursts

of uncorrected noise. We can’t remem-ber seeing results like that before. The player is insensitive to vibration. It took a hard slap to cause mistracking, or even a jump in the jitter. We are aware that many audiophiles today are reluctant to pay this kind of money for what could soon be an “obso-lete” format. They wonder whether they should buy an SACD player instead. At some point the answer will be yes. For the moment, we point up the obvious: there are hundreds of thousands of CD titles, and mere hundreds of SACD and DVD-A titles. True, their number will increase, and that means your next CD player may be your last CD player. You might as well make it a good one. This is a good one.

If you cringe and shiver in the cold ren-dition of your favorite music, pause in your search for a magic solution downstream, and give this source a try. It seemed to blanket each selection we listened to with a wonder-ful, yet very subtle (and I mean really subtle) warm glow. It sounded golden to me, I don’t know why. The harpsichord sounded golden, for one. And it struck me that when I hear a harpsichord live, I am always charmed by the warmth and the rich vibrations that emanate from that rare instrument (as opposed to the tinny kitchenware clanking that passes for a harpsichord on some systems). Combine that with the warm and modulated sound of a superb soprano in an intimate setting (as opposed to what a soprano is thought to sound like…) and you’ll guess a bit of what I heard. Through a wealth of detail, I discovered fleeting yet unmistakable sounds such as those lingering in space between the notes

of the harp. Cymbals were brassy and smooth as they should be on their decay, and drum-mers are known to pay a fortune for that smoothness and richness. I could hear it effortlessly. In one instance, I asked myself if that golden glow was really natural. I think it was. And frankly, lost in the beauty of the music, I soon forgot all about it.

—Albert Simon

Here’s another Copland product that deserves top ranking. Its remarkable clarity and its dynamics result in a spacious stereo image that spreads well beyond the speak-ers. Are we suddenly in a concert hall? It’s a logical question, considering the presence of the musicians before us. This player reproduces not only the actual sound of musical instruments but also the sensitivity of the people who play them. None of the inflections and modulations of the human voice are hidden, and instrumen-

tal timbres are at once neutral and delightful. The piano can gambol freely, and percussion instruments, from the subtlest to the most spectacular, add not only to the impact of the music but also to its emotional effect. Attacks are firm, rhythm is energetic and captivating. And all of the audible spectrum is reproduced impeccably, including the very top.

—Reine Lessard

At its best, this CD player is spectacular. It’s no secret that some players appear to be welded at the hip, incapable of following rhythm. The Copland is the opposite of that. True, there are moments when it seems to lack subtlety, to make everything a little brighter and showier than it would be in real life. Yes, I know not many purchasers will complain about that. In a world full of dull-as-dishwater players, this one stands out.

—Gerard Rejskind

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Brand/model: Copland CDA-822Price: C$3400/US$2495Dimensions: 43 x 39 x 10.5 cmMost liked: Warmth, clarity, smooth-nessLeast liked: Has it traded warmth for subtlety?Verdict: Good enough to give the “aging” CD medium some vitamins

Summing it up…


This French company’s skill in building amplifi ers is not new to us. The I-6.2 is, if we’re counting right, the fourth

Vecteur amp that’s come through one of our reference systems. Previous ones may not have been beyond reproach, but each time we criticized one we wondered whether, possibly, we might be reaching a little. This model (aka the Club 12 in an earlier European version) is the biggest and most expensive integrated amplifi er the company makes, and by implication the best. It’s certainly the most powerful, with a claimed output power of 140 watts per channel. This is not a record for an integrated, but it is well above average, especially for a European product. The amplifi er is remote-controlled, though everything can be done from the front panel as well. All controls are digitally-actuated except the large volume knob, behind which is a motor-ized potentiometer. There are f ive inputs, plus a tape loop. One of the inputs can be converted to a phono stage, though that option is not offered in North America. The tape loop aside, there is also a preamp output, to allow either biamplifi cation or a connection to a subwoofer. Nice. There are two sets of good quality output posts, to make biwiring easy. As you would guess from the power, this is a weighty piece, made all the heavier by the bitumen-coated top cover, similar to that of the Vecteur AV-6 amplifi er reviewed in our last issue. We began the session with a record-

ing we never get tired of hearing, The Little Notebook of Anna Magdelana Bach (Analekta FL 2 3064). This is a tough test, but what came out of the amplifi er was like honey. Soprano Karina Gauvin’s voice was at once sweet and warm, “pure gold,” said Reine. The transparency was not accompanied by annoying artifacts, such as artifi cial brightness. Indeed, the sound of the Vecteur was not totally unlike that of our Copland/YBA combination. “It’s not quite the same,” said Albert. “I think our Copland preamplifi er adds another dimension. But it’s magnifi cent all the same.” Our preamplifi er also seemed to give our reference the edge in Stravinsky’s Firebird (Reference Recordings RR-70). But it was no more than an edge. There was perhaps a thinner sound to the brass, a slightly rougher edge to the strings, but what we heard delighted us. The soft passages of this ballet suite can and should be pure magic. Through the Vecteur, those magical, ethereal moments seemed to fl oat in space, and we held our breath. The long crescendo leading to the famous fi nale was magnifi -cent, aided by the amplifi er’s seemingly endless energy. Our third recording can be a handful.

Antiphone Blues is one of the audiophile world’s most famous recordings, featur-ing a jazz saxophonist, Arne Domnérus, doing counterpoint in a large and rever-berant church against an organist. We used the now-discontinued HDCD version, and it is a challenge. The sax has to be smooth, textured and powerful, the sound fi eld deep, the organ powerful. And the magic of Ellington’s Almighty God must fi ll the sky. And it did. We expressed only minor reservations, but…hey, that’s what we’re here for. The overall tone was cooler, and the saxophone slightly rougher. Well, only sl ightly, and Reine approved without reservations. “It’s sensitive and sensuous and majestic,” she said. “And magic too.” By and large our opinions converged. This was, as confi rmed by a tough test, an amplifi er that was more than capable. On the next recording we couldn’t even fi nd anything to express reserva-tions about. Doug McLeod’s You Can’t Take My Blues (Audioquest AQCD1041) was pretty much perfect. Let us count the ways. First there’s the rhythm. Can all amplifi ers follow complex, communica-tive rhythm like that of McLeod and cohorts? We wish! The I-6.2 can and does, seeming at once ponderous on percussion and fl eet of foot. There was still no hint of shrillness, but McLeod’s voice was limpid. We could follow even his fi nal dropped syllables, which led to bursts of reverberation. His guitar work was gorgeous, and we admired the way the cymbal shimmered tantalizingly when Jimi Bott barely touched it with his drumstick. There was no fog, no blur-ring. This amplifi er has lots of clarity, and — it got to demonstrate this more than once — it has the muscle to back it up. We ended the session with Sources (Audiogram ADCD10132), Bïa’s won-derful second CD. The best thing we can say is that what we heard sounded remarkably close to what we had heard with our reference amplifi er and pream-plifi er. It wasn’t quite the same, to be sure. Like the saxophone in Antiphone Blues, Bïa’s voice was somewhat altered, with a cooler and slightly sharper texture.

Listening Room

Vecteur I-6.2

Looking for a separate amplifi er and preamplifi er? Read this fi rst.


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“It’s not a matter of sibilance,” said Gerard, “and it’s subtle.” Indeed, Reine pronounced the difference insignifi cant. And, that detail aside, there was a lot to admire in the two songs we listened to: the fine detail that brought out the expression, the resonant guitar chords, and the biting (but not shrill) accordion. We ran our usual battery of technical tests. With our eye on the published power, we won-dered whether it would meet this ambitious fi gure. And the answer is…almost. At the usually chosen centre frequency of 1 kHz, the amplif ier clipped at 138 watts. This is just outside the 1% error of our instruments, and it is not truly signifi cant. At 20 kHz it did way better, managing 153.4 watts. Not many integrated amplifi ers can do such numbers. Many amplifiers cannot maintain full power down to very low frequencies, even if the spec sheet says otherwise. That’s the case of the Vecteur. At 20 Hz, the current draw on the power supply is great enough to catch the attention of the

protection circuit, which cuts in at 69 watts. At 30 Hz, the problem is gone, and the amplifi er manages an effortless 148 watts. Not all amplifi ers, we should add, have protection circuits, and at one time we recall them being quite audible even when the ampli-fi er wasn’t being pushed. The circuit in the I-6.2 does get a little over-ambitious. For instance, raise the volume too quickly, and the circuit will cut the output. Fortunately it is self-resetting. And unlike the protection circuits of old, this one never made its effects audible during play of actual music.

Crosstalk between adjacent inputs is an insignifi cant -82.7 dB at most fre-quencies. Even at 10 kHz, it remained at an excellent -66.1 dB. When audiophiles change an inte-grated amplifier for separates, they mention that they want more power, or more quality. With an amplifi er like this one, they may think twice. A good high-powered amplifi er is likely to cost a lot more than this Vecteur. And you know what? The odds are considerable it won’t sound nearly as good.

I often get asked by audiophiles whether they should buy a separate amplifier and pre-amplifier, or get an integrated. The correct answer, now, is “let me weigh your wallet.” If I can hold it without straining, you should at least consider an integrated. And possibly this integrated. It can do it all. It can drive any speaker to high levels, but it can thrill you when it plays at a whisper too. Spending the day listening to it was fun. I have to remember that the next time I’m asked The Question.

—Gerard Rejskind

From the start I was won over by this amplifier’s remarkable tonal balance, its excellent cohesiveness, its irreproachable clarity, the great refinement of instrumen-tal timbres, a pleasant reverberation you could touch, and superb reproduction of choral music. I was fascinated by the fine modulations and inflections of the sax, by

the exceptional purity delivered without hardness of a soprano voice, by the silken strings, by the full-sounding guitar that was anything but harsh, and by percussion that could be subtle and yet so effective. What’s more, this Vecteur has an excep-tional gift for communicating sensitivity and virtuosity, and for evoking a sense of being there. It more than satisfied me. When I lay its price alongside that of our reference amp and preamp, I can see what a great investment the I-6.2 is, and I recommend it warmly. Above all, beyond all technical considerations for which I have no gift, this is an amplifier that gives a large place to musicality and emotion.

—Reine Lessard

This is a powerful amp, but you won’t notice that until you need to feel its full impact. And I really felt it when I heard an orchestra rising from the mysterious mists of

muted strings to the glorious and luminous rise of brass and percussion. Fantastic! With our reference, however, I felt the same, except that, at the end all the musi-cians seemed to stand up for the occasion. Was it because I know the piece so well, or because I expected better than our reference from Vecteur? I’m not being fair, though, when I think of how close it was — and for an integrated amp to be so close is nothing short of amazing. Oh, and if you love voices, this is it. From baroque soprano to blues, I heard all that I expected to hear, with more detail than I would have thought. I also noticed that the Vecteur won’t color the sound or attempt to “improve” on the specific character of a recording. If you feel that something was not quite right in the original recording, it won’t be with this amp. High fidelity for all.

—Albert Simon

CROSSTALK

Brand/model: Vecteur I-6.2Price: C$3400/US$2495Dimensions: 43 x 39 x 11 cmRated power: 140 watts/channel, 8ΩMost liked: At ease at high power, every bit as much at ease at low powerLeast liked: Overactive protectionVerdict: Find ten amps like this, com-pare them, and we know which one will go home with you

Summing it up…


UHF now 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 (origi-nally 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 speak-ers, but it is also at the top of a particularly unaccommodating stairwell.

CD Transport: Parasound C/BD2000 (belt-driven transport designed by CEC).Digital-to-analog converter: Coun-terpoint DA-10A, with HDCD card.Turntable: Audiomeca J-1Tone arm: Audiomeca SL-5Step-up transformer: Bryston TF-1Pickup: Goldring ExcelPreamplifi er: Copland CTA-305 tube preamp Power amplifi er: YBA One HC Loudspeakers: 3a MS-5 Interconnects: Pierre Gabriel ML-1, Wireworld Equinox/WBT Loudspeaker cables: Wireworld Eclipse II with WBT bananasPower cords: Gutwire, Wireworld Stratus

AC fi lters: Foundation Research LC-2 (power amp), Inouye SPLC.

The Omega system It serves for reviews of gear that cannot easily fi t into the Alpha system, with its small room. We didn’t set out to make an “A” (best system) and a “B” (economy) system, and we didn’t want to imply that one of the two sys-tems is somehow better than the other. Hence the names, which don’t invite comparisons. Unless you’re Greek of course.

CD player: shared with the Alpha systemTurntable: Alphason SonataTone arm: Alphason HR-100S MCSStep-up transformer: Bryston TF-1Pickup: Goldring ExcelPreamplifi er: Copland CTA-301 MkII tube preamp Power amplif ier: Simaudio Moon W-5 Loudspeakers: Reference 3a Suprema II Interconnects: Pierre Gabriel ML-1. Wireworld EquinoxLoudspeaker cables: Pierre Gabriel ML-1 (formerly L3), for most of the range, Wireworld Polaris for the twin subwoofers.Power cords: Wireworld AuroraAC fi lters: Foundation Research LC-1

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 two-meter screens. We did, however, fi nally 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 processorPreamplif ier/processor: Simaudio Moon Attraction, 5.1 channel versionPower amplifi ers: 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 speakers: Elipson 1400 Subwoofer: 3a Design Acoustics sub Cables: Wireworld Equinox and Atlan-tis, Wireworld Starlight video cablesPower cables and line fi lters: Experi-ments with various models are ongoing, and will be the subject of future maga-zine reviews

All three of the systems now have their own dedicated power lines, with Hubbell hospital grade outlets. All extensions and power bars used are also equipped with hospital-grade connectors.

The UHF Reference Systems

Players for the new age of audio

Tweeters for beyond audibility

Equation 25 speakers

And that’s only the start!

In the next issue of


No, this amplifi er model is not named for a perfume. “Arpège” is French for arpeggio (which is of course

Italian), meaning a chord sounded by playing each of its notes successively rather than together. But although Audiomat is a French company, this amplifi er is built not in France but in Canada. Our sample was in fact the very fi rst one to come from Mutine’s plant north of Montreal. The Arpège is an integrated tube amplifi er, using push-pull EL34 tubes to produce 30 watts per channel. Audiomat claims that half of that power is available in class A…in other words that it’s a 15 watt per channel pure class A amplifi er, with another 15 watts (3 dB) of class AB headroom. The preamplifi er and phase inverter stages are provided by three 12AX7 dual triodes. Though the chassis is made of thor-oughly solid metal, the front panel is of metacrylate, the material used in several high-tech products (our Audiomeca turntable is made of it, right down to its platter). And it includes a transparent window, through which it is possible to glimpse the tubes and other circuits, if you turn the lights down low. We should

warn you that in real life it doesn’t look quite the way it seems to in our picture. We lit it specially to emphasize the trans-parency. There is in fact a metal backing to increase rigidity, but with a window to allow the innards to shine through. It is an attractive package., and it gets downright eerie if you like to listen in the dark. There are just two knobs, for volume and selection of one of the four inputs, labelled Line 1 through 4. There are two tape outputs, but there is no tape-source switch…in case anyone still cares about tape loops. We were disappointed with the phono jacks used, which are mass-market grade. The output binding posts, on the other hand, are of satisfactory quality, with posts for both 4 and 8 ohms. We used the 8 ohm connection, which was the correct one for our speakers, but we should add that some audiophiles choose the 8 ohm connection even with 4 ohm speakers. The rationale: the 8 ohm secondary

winding on the output transformer has only half as much wire as the 4 ohm winding. Of course the down side is a certain reduction in output power. The line fuse is user-accessible, just below the IEC line cord connector. The Audiomat’s power rating seems to call for matching with a reasonably effi cient loudspeaker. We listened to it with the Reference 3a Supremas of our Omega system, but we disconnected the Supremas’ push-pull subwoofers. The complete Supremas are still quite effi cient, at 91 dB, but they present a load that is a little scary for a small amp. The top part of the Suprema is still a full range speaker (the subs help out only below 50 Hz), and it is easy to drive. But don’t think we were planning to go easy on the Arpège. We began with a backbreaker of a piece: Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man (RR-93CD). Look-ing for dynamics? Check. Looking for deep bass? Check. Looking for a dense orchestration that can turn to mush if not handled right? Check and double check. And of course the first thing we looked for was the available power. Could the Arpège do justice to this radioactive music? In fact yes, and we had no hesita-tion in concluding that. The bottom end was excellent, and indeed Reine judged that the brass actually had more body than with our much more powerful solid state reference amplifi er. The tympani rolled with authority as well, and the gong seemed to push us back closer to the rear wall. But there was more. Notwithstand-ing the highly satisfactory energy, the orchestra seemed farther back in the sound fi eld, because that sound fi eld was deeper. The added depth also opened up the breadth and the space. This was going to be fun!Lorercipit ipsum ipsum veliquisis num dolortie modoloreet, cortinisi.Duisit la facidunt iure dolessequam delendre dolorper sim veliquam, quat nibh ex elit prate tissecte commy nis nummodigna feugait ulla con vulputem zzriureratue dolorercilla feuguerosto do dui bla core min vel ent aut ip eugue ming eros do conse velent prat nullam inis dunt dolessed te feu facipisi tat at.

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Audiomat Arpège Référence

Promise her anything, but give her…


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Listening Room


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—Gerard Rejskind

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—Reine Lessard

Model: Audiomat Arpège ReferencePrice: C$3990/US$2990Dimensions: 43 x 40 x 19.5 cmClaimed power: 30 watts per chan-nel, 8 ohms or 4 ohms

Summing it up…

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Ut essit illutatio eumsandigna—Albert Simon

CROSSTALK

nel, 8 ohms or 4 ohmsMost liked: Great design, nearly flawless executionLeast liked: Mediocre jacksVerdict: Why is it that the word “musicality” doesn’t even seem adequate?

Pick it up on line!

Price details are at www.uhfmag.com/IndividualIssue.html


Listening Room

Thinking of adding turntable capability to your amplifi er or preamplifier? Just pick up a good turntable, new or

used, and plug it into the… What’s that you say? You don’t have an input marked “phono”? Nor do most people today. A lot of manufacturers leave it out, fi guring you won’t want to pay extra for one. Or else they design one in as an afterthought. Problem is, an add-on phono section worthy of a good system can cost as much as a modest turntable. Or as much as a car. The Boulder phono stage goes for US$29,000, and is back-ordered, they tell us. What was that about the rich getting richer? But let’s come back down to earth. The Rega Fono, reviewed in UHF No. 65, got our hopes up. It was quiet, and even through our demanding Alpha system it produced goosebump-inducing sound. We’ve looked for that kind of performance in phono sections of that price (C$400), and we’ve invariably been disappointed. Our warm recommendation not-withstanding, the Fono we tested could handle only a high output cartridge (meaning around 2 mV), not a low output moving coil cartridge, which puts out between a fifth and a tenth of that voltage. Now Rega has fi nally brought out an MC version. It’s more expensive, but it costs a lot less than the phono sections we usually recommend.

The unit’s appearance is identical to that of the MM unit, except for the “MC” sticker at the rear. The front has only an on-off button. The back panel has the input and output jacks (of undis-tinguished quality, we’re sorry to say) plus a ground lug. The Fono connects to the wall by what looks like a standard power brick (or “wart” as the British say). It actually contains only a transformer, putting out 24 volts AC. The rest of the power supply, namely the rectifi er, fi lter and voltage regulator, is in the main box. You might search in vain for a common feature of MC phono stages: adjustments of input capacitance and resistance. No, they’re not visible, but don’t toss out the instructions. The adjustments are there, though you have to pop the lid to get at them. Most electronic gear bears the familiar tag, “no user serviceable parts inside,” but because the transformer is external, there are no dangerous voltages

in the main chassis. More on this in a moment. There’s no component harder to break in than a phono stage, since no one wants to play DJ for 50 or 60 hours straight, but the Fono does need seri-ous break-in time. When we got our sample and gave it a quick listen, we were shocked by how hard and shrill it sounded. Some 60 hours on, it had changed character completely. But the fi rst thing we noticed when we plugged the Fono into our Alpha system is the noise. There barely is any. The background is dominated by hum, not because there actually is much hum at the Fono’s output, but because there is so little hiss to cover it up. That was the fi rst reason we were impressed with the Fono. It wouldn’t be the last. We began with the LP version of William Walton’s Façade, whose instru-mental solos are a veritable minefi eld for any component that isn’t working just so. Of course, we all noticed the shrillness of the piccolo in the introduction, much of it due to our speakers. Reine thought it worse than the phono section of our Copland preamplifi er. Albert, on the contrary, found it improved, with the piccolo easier to follow in the subse-quent passage. Instrumental textures, which are so smooth in this Reference Recordings LP, were barely rougher. On the other hand, instrumental timbres were well reproduced, with the clarinet, the cello and the bassoon sounding especially attractive. We could hear nuances without straining, because there was no fog, no foreshortening of the recording’s legendary depth. “I fi nd this more refi ned,” said Albert. We continued with an LP we hadn’t pulled out in a long time, Mary Black’s No Frontiers. We were happy to fi nd it again, and we hung on Black’s every syl-lable (which wasn’t diffi cult). The clarity of the sound made it easy to follow the text without looking at the inner sleeve. Her voice was ever so slightly harder, with a bit of extra emphasis on certain syllables. But it was also warmer in tone than even with our tube preamp, and the sound was so clear we could hear her breathing. The guitar was closer, more detailed, and the synth sounded

Rega Fono MC

We were so bowled over by the original that we deplored the absence of a moving coil version. We didn’t have to wait long.


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more complex, with additional detail. The accordion passage was gorgeous. We also listened to Take the ‘A’ Train from the Ray Brown Trio’s Soular Energy (this was of course the LP, though the album is also available on a Hi-Res DVD). It sounded superb through our own phono circuit, and it sounded startlingly lifelike through the Rega as well. The fi rst thing we listened for was Ray Brown’s bass, with notes that go way down there. The Rega didn’t stint on bass, either in quantity or quality, with no blurring of the melody line. So clear was the sound that we could easily hear the snap of the strings on Brown’s instrument. We also liked the strong reproduction of the syncopated rhythm of this brilliantly improvised jazz piece. Rhythm, we know, is often the first casualty of mediocre gear. Not here. Gene Harris’s piano is especially well reproduced on this recording. How could we characterize its sound? We couldn’t quite agree. Gerard thought it sounded as good as it had with our reference. Reine complained of a touch of hard-ness on certain notes. Albert thought the overall sound, including that of the piano, was actually better than with our reference. Despite these divergences, we

all agreed that the difference — if indeed difference there was — was no more than minor. We ran the Fono through some tech-nical tests without coming up with any-thing terribly noteworthy. Oh…except the noise level. It’s shown above, refer-enced to a 0.4 mV 1 kHz signal. There

are horizontal graduations every 5 dB. You can barely see a slight rise around 60 Hz — the power line frequency — and not much of anything at 120 Hz and the other harmonics. This is hum, not one of those nasty buzzes that mess up too many electronic products. The fi rst harmonic of the main signal, at 2 kHz, is low, but even so it is above the noise.

A mysterious peak can be seen around 16 kHz, but we couldn’t hear it. The gain is fi ne, 26.5 dB, delivering volume suitable for most preamplifi ers. That’s with the factory setting. If you take out the two front hexagonal screws and slide back the cover, you can get at four tiny DIP switches, which allow you to set the sensitivity (from 0.15 to 0.6 µV), the input impedance (from 70 to 400 ohms), and the input capacitance (from 1000 to 4200 pF). How did Rega pull this off? The company is not generous with circuit details. Suffi ce it to say that it has man-aged to do what a number of competi-tors with similarly high reputations have attempted to do but have not managed to accomplish: make a low-cost phono stage without letting the low cost show. “I wonder,” mused Albert, “what one of these would sound like in my system.”

Did you ever find a car whose street performances were so wildly out of propor-tion to its price that you thought (a) what a bargain! And (b) What can I do to tweak it and make it even hotter? This Rega phono preamp, like its MM twin, is much like that car. First of all, a phono stage of this price just can’t sound this good, or can it? And second, if it sounds like this in stock form, I wonder what a hotter transformer and better jacks would do for it. Conclusion: the Rega Fono and the Mazda Miata may have been separated at birth.

—Gerard Rejskind

I have no hesitation in recommending

this phono section. The image is excellent, but I was especially struck by the energy and impact that come through, not to mention the multitude of fine detail. I even heard details I couldn’t hear with our reference! The human voice is especially warm and expressive, and words are perfectly audible. The timbres of instruments — particularly the guitar and the accordion — are most pleasant. Only at the top end did I find a little shrillness. A captivating listening session.

—Reine Lessard

Even if you have a phono section in your preamp and you really like what you hear, I’d still suggest that you give this one a try. We have, we did and I loved it.

I know how voices sound on our ref-erence system: round, warm, delicately expressive; I discovered, with the Rega MC phono section, that they can be even more so. I also discovered an intimacy with the musical performance that only a well placed microphone might experience. Being a pre-preamplifier, a phono sec-tion should be, in my opinion, second only to your source — not just another accessory allowing you to play an occasional LP. If you find yourself frantically searching for the next large ticket upgrade, take it cool, slow down, and start by introducing this phono section ahead of your preamp. You may find a lot more than you expected right within those vinyl grooves.

—Albert Simon

CROSSTALK

Brand/model: Rega Fono MCPrice: C$570 (about US$420)Dimensions: 16 x 4.5 x 14 cm (plus external power brick)Output: 180 mV for 0.4 mV input, 1 kHzMost liked: Astonishing musicality at an impossible priceLeast liked: Mediocre jacksVerdict: Reaches for the unreachable star, gets its hands on it

Summing it up…

50 ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY MagazineEACH ISSUE costs $4.99 (in Canada) plus tax (15.03% in Québec, 15% in NB, NS and NF, 7% in other Provinces), US$4.99 in the USA, CAN$7.50 elsewhere (surface) or $8.60 (air mail). THE ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION (issues 7-19 except 11, 15, 17 and 18) includes 9 issues but costs like 5. For VISA or MasterCard, include your number, expiry date and signature. UHF Magazine, Box 65085, Place Longueuil, Longueuil, Qué., Canada J4K 5J4. Tel.: (450) 651-5720 FAX: (450) 651-3383. Order on line at www.uhfmag.com

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.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 clean-ing machine, an interview with Ray Kimber..No.63: Tube amps: ASL Leyla & Passion A11. Vecteur Espace speakers, 2 intercon-nects (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: Amplif iers: 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 features. And all about music for the movies.

No.61: Digital : Audiomat Tempo and Cambridge Isomagic DACs, Vecteur D-2 trans-port. Speakers: Osborn Mini Tower and Mirage OM-9. Soundcare Superspikes. And: new sur-round formats, dezoning DVD players.

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.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.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 intercon-nects. 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 recom-mend 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.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 fol-lowup on the Copland 277 CD player. Plus: how HDCD really works.

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.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.

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 compar-ing interconnects. Also: YBA CD-1 and Spécial CD players. Yves-Bernard 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.44: CD players: Rotel RCD970BX, Counterpoint DA-10A DAC. Speakers: Apogee Ribbon Monitor, Totem Mite, more on the Gershman Avant Garde. Also: Laser-Link 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 ESL-63 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 preamplif iers, amps and preamps from Duson. Also: Sonic Frontiers SFD-1 converter, power line f ilters 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.

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. 38: CD players: Roksan Attessa, Naim CDS, Linn Mimik, Quad 67, Rotel 945, 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 M-7si, 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 record-ings 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, Esoter ic 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: Goldr ing Excel, 1022 & 1042, Revolver Bullet, Talisman Vir tuoso 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.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.

No.25: Preamps: YBA One, Sima 3001, Dolan PM1, Sugden C28. Amps: YBA One and Sugden P28 (guess which we bought!). Paul Bergman on amplifier design.

No.24: Speakers: 3a MM and MS5, Snell Type Q, Elipson Colonne Design, Linn Kaber, Vandersteen 2ci, Camber 3.0 and 5.0, Opus 3 Chaconne and Credo, ProAc Response 2.

No.23: Turntables: Revolver, Audiomeca J-1 and Roma, Opus 3 Continuo, Well Tempered Wtrp. Are power conditioners useful? Getting the most from LP and CD.

No.22: Power line filters: Inouye and Adcom. Better speakers: Quad ESL-63, Vandersteen 2W, Bryston crossover, Velodyne ULD15. Is biamplification better?

To see a list of older issues:http://www.uhfmag.com/Individualissue.html

Back Issues


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Proposition: the expensive elec-trical power that your local utility provides (at least when its Windows-based control

system isn’t choking on the SoBig virus or something) is inadequate for running high end audio equipment. Words to live by, some say; self-serving bunkum, according to others. We’ve taken a position on this, and we will again. We’d love nothing better than to use the stringy cord that came free with our equipment, and plug it into the 57¢ outlet in the wall. We’ve spent enough on our amps and speakers. You think we want to drop another bundle on fancy power cords and fi lters? But we have, because we’ve heard the difference. We like to put it in negative terms. It’s not that an expensive power cord or an elaborate fi lter allows “fuller bass” or “silkier highs” to come through. It’s that we can hear the huge perfor-mance hit that results when we pay no attention to the food our system eats. As the class dunce is reported to have said, “Sugar is the stuff that makes your hot chocolate taste really bad when you don’t put any in.” Ah, but what sugar to use? Not all filters work equally well, or even at all. We’ve tried a lot of the things over the years. The Rotel and the YBA are (or were) marginal. The Quantum fi lters (there are several of them) appears to rely heavily on the purchaser’s imagination. But we liked

the Enacom, because it does so much for so little money. We like the Chang Lightspeed. We like the Inouye, which we still use in one of our systems. And we also like the Foundation Research fi lters, three of which also use. But this unit caught our eye right away. For one thing, we like some of GutWire’s other products, notably its power cords, some of which we use ourselves. For another, the MaxCon is so well-built. It’s in a gorgeous, heavy stainless steel case, heavily damped so that when you tap it you think you’re hitting a brick. GutWire clearly agrees with our principle that everything is microphonic. We noticed the hospital-grade connectors too. We were almost prepared to give this one thumbs up without listening. But that’s not us, as you well know. We did this review in our Alpha room. We left our YBA One power amplifi er plugged into its Foundation Research LC-2 fi lter, which is also its power cord. Three other components, the Copland 306 preamplif ier, the Parasound CD transport and the Coun-terpoint DAC are normally fi ltered by an

Inouye SPLF fi lter we bought years ago. We took a series of CD’s and listened to them three times: with the Inouye, with no fi lter at all, and fi nally with the MaxCon. After the initial session, intended to get our six ears used to those recordings again, we disconnected the Inouye and went to a conventional but excellent power bar, the GutWire Stingray. We listened to the fi rst of the recordings again. It didn’t sound as good as it had before, but it was still better than we had come to expect from earlier tests we had done with no filtering. “I think,” said Albert, “that this is an awfully good power bar. It’s too good, and it’s not what potential clients for this fi lter will be using.” Indeed, it sounded as though the Stingray’s heavy shielding was doing some of its own fi ltering, a fact that is properly correct. After discussion, we pulled out a Noma power bar of the sort you can buy at the nearest shopping centre. That was much better…which is to say that the sound was much, much worse. How much worse? In The Little Notebook of Anna Magdelana Bach, soprano Karina Gauvin seemed to have shrunk dramatically. Gerard heard as her as closer and Reine as farther away, but both agreed that there was nothing behind her. The large church whose acoustics are so gorgeously captured on this Analekta recording was gone. Luc Beauséjour’s harpsichord sounded as though he had picked it up cheap on eBay. By the time it was over we were frowning. Some unfortunate adjectives got trotted out: thin, shallow, dull, cooler, slow. Not good. True, Albert said that what he heard was better than he had feared, but it should be said he had expected the ceiling to collapse on us. We moved on to one of our favorite choral recordings, Now the Green Blade Riseth. This too sounded a lot worse. “It’s two-dimensional,” complained Albert. “Can you name the two?” inquired Gerard. “Left-right, and height. Well, not even much height in fact.” There was worse. The male voices lacked body, and the women’s became

GutWire MaxCon

Cleaning up the dreck from the power utility? We’re for it.


Listening Room

harsh and strident, something we had noted in earlier no-fi lter tests. The har-monic link between them was obscured. The fl ute sounded fi ne, beyond the fact that it seemed to have been painted on the wall. And the fi nale… Oh rats! Is it all right if we change the subject? Buddy Bolden’s Blues on Opus 3 was similarly demolished by whatever evil force was pouring in from the power line. Rhythm was poor, despite the fact that the exaggerated transients seemed to be marking the beat like a metronome. The overall sound had become thin and hard, and we were frankly relieved when it was over. We plugged the gear into the MaxCon and tried again. That was much better! Most of the depth was back, and both Gauvin’s pure voice and Beauséjour’s harpsi-chord sounded lovely. The rhythm was much improved. That the MaxCon was immensely better than the Noma bar went pretty much without saying, but was it as good as our reference fi lter? We weren’t yet certain, though we were determined to fi nd out. The choral recording was immensely improved as well. The depth was back, and the fi ne voices of the singers melded together in satisfying fashion. There

was clear delineation of instruments and voices, but at the same time they all came together into a musical whole. Were textures slightly grainier? Pos-sibly. As for Buddy Bolden’s Blues, it was…well, magnifi cent. The depth and clarity allowed the counterpoint among clarinet, saxophone and sousaphone to emerge in realistic fashion. The rhythm was contagious. “They’re playing with a smile,” said Albert. “You can tell.” This is, then, a good fi lter. But was it better than our Inouye fi lter, which is well over a decade old? We returned to it, and then we played the jazz recording again. The Inouye did in fact sound better, and there could be no doubt about it.

There was as much detail, but every-thing sounded smoother, and all the rough edges were fi led off. The clarinet, the sax and the sousaphone were warm and articulate. We made ourselves a note to call Brian Inouye and check to see what his fi lter (which he still makes) costs today. It wasn’t cheap when we bought it all those years ago, and today it actually costs ever so slightly more than the MaxCon. We had expected that. This session brought home again a fact we have known for a while: the elec-tricity in the wall contains everything short of salmonella. And that’s despite the fact that our local electrical substa-tion is not shared with heavy industries. If you’re not as fortunate as we are, your system is having an even tougher time, and may be suffering from acute indiges-tion. A good fi lter is the cure. One more thing needs to be said. Audio components may be sensitive to power line noise, but they are also producers of power line noise, and they affect each other. Good shielded power cords can keep them from transmitting this garbage into the ether, and a well-designed fi lter can keep them from whiz-zing into the drinking water. You don’t need a degree in public health to fi gure out the benefi t.

This is an excellent accessory, which can make listening to music a lot more satisfac-tory. Like any good AC filter, it lets music reach our ears with much more clarity and better focus, with lots of detail. I noted delightful textures, lots of depth, catchy rhythm, a solid lower midrange, and superb coherence. Without matching the performance of our own filter, which continues to delight us, it promises hours of musical pleasure. And it keeps its promise.

—Reine Lessard

The illusion is amazing. Whenever I compare music with and without a good conditioner, it always seems that with the conditioner some things are added to the sound. It gains in body and roundness,

filling a larger volume in space. Sounds are more defined, cleaner, natural. And I noticed it without making an effort, with the MaxCon — nothing was actually added, yet the music was transformed into more. Think of it as filtering your regular drinking water and discovering that fresh, crystal clear sensation. For a more accurate analogy, think of making your favorite coffee or tea with it, and how much more flavour you’d have. You’ll understand what the GutWire unit does.

—Albert Simon

What comes out of the electrical outlet is not suitable for music and other living things…that’s a given, or it has been for a long time. I’ve heard good filters before, but why are so many of them built with parts

that appear to have come from war surplus outlets? The first thing I can say about the MaxCon is that it’s not like that. This is an astonishingly well-built product, and that’s almost enough to recommend it right there. Well…almost. It does a major job of making the electricity shine as brightly as its own alloy case. Is it as good as the Inouye filter? In fact no. Not in our system at any rate. My rule for power filters is the same as that of Hippocrates for physicians: first, do no harm. The MaxCon does no harm, because it’s so well made. That’s half the battle. And it does a pretty good job on the other half too.

—Gerard Rejskind

CROSSTALK

Brand/model: Gutwire MaxConPrice: C$1098/US$859 without cordDimensions: 30.5 x 7.5 x 7.2 cmMost liked: Gorgeous workmanship, much better current flowing out than inLeast liked: A little short of top rankVerdict: Looking as though it could beat all its competitors, it can actually beat most of them

Summing it up…


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We’ve been mulling this over for a while: setting aside a small part of our Listening Room section

to present gear to which we haven’t yet given the full review treatment, or which is not distributed widely enough

to justify a full review. We’ll be doing this regularly from now on. The Connoisseur SE-2 will in fact get the full treatment, but only in our next issue. In the meantime, we’ve done a fi rst listen. This is a Canadian-built integrated

amplifi er, built around what most high end afi cionados will consider a familiar format: a pair of 300B output tubes, run-ning single-ended, which is to say not in the usual push-pull mode, with two tubes or transistors per channel. The advantages to single-ended architecture are well known, as are indeed its disad-vantages. A disadvantage is power that can charitably be thought of as “limited.” How about 9 watts per channel? Two decades ago, of course, such an amplifi er would have been unable to play above a whisper, and we’re barely exaggerating. In the past decade, single-ended amps (by now you’ve fi gured out what the “SE” in the model name stands for) have proliferated, as have the speak-ers they require: speakers that are highly effi cient, and therefore need little ampli-fi er power. Our most effi cient speakers are the Reference 3a Supremas in our Omega room, which are rated at 91 dB. If we disconnect the subwoofers (which oper-ate only from 50 Hz down anyway), the speakers are quite happy with such modest power. The combination works, too. Owners of high effi ciency speakers may want to read the full review, which will appear in our next issue.

Connoisseur SE-2

Connoisseur SE-2

Everybody talks about vibrat ion, and how good equipment sounds

even better if you can keep it out. We pretty much agree with that concern. Two popular devices exist for doing the job. There are isolators, to be placed under equipment: cones, spikes, and other devices (see our review of a number of these products in UHF No. 65). And then there are devices that can be put atop the equipment, in order to keep it from resonating in the presence of airborne sound waves.

Now the two are one. The GutWire NotePad (from the company known for its cables) is a vinyl pocket filled with what seems to be jelly. You can put several of them under your equipment: each one can support as much as 10 kg. But you can also put them atop the equipment, to damp down a rattle-prone chassis for instance. A package of three NotePads costs C$79. The concept is a clever one. In our next issue we will be trying NotePads in both functions, in competition with other products intended to do the same thing. We’ll let you know what happens.

GutWire NotePad


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A national anthem is a tribute to one’s homeland, celebrat-ing through a text fi lled with lively emotion the qualities of

the country, and perhaps its struggles throughout history. There are other kinds of anthems, of course. They may sing the glories of a historical character whose passage has marked his/her era, or they may exalt patriotic pride, or even an ideal, such as love, peace, joy, liberty, equality, fraternity. Examples of the latter are Schiller’s Ode to Joy, borrowed by Beethoven for his Ninth Symphony, the Internationale, composed for France’s fi rst socialist movement, and of course the Olympic anthem. It was toward the end of the 18th Century that certain anthems acquired a certain offi cial status. Today, virtually all states have their own national anthems, and all are expected to stand when an anthem is played, even when it is that of a foreign land.

An Italian in France, a song for England The anthem of a coun-try is not always composed by a citizen of that coun-try. The US anthem, for instance, was composed by an Englishman, the Brit-ish anthem by an Italian, the German anthem by an Austrian, and the Spanish anthem by a German. Indeed, anthems have been known to travel. If the British God Save the King/Queen seems familiar everywhere, it is because its music has been used for anthems in Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, the United States, Liechenstein, and several others. What is it that made this melody all but universal? With its slightly soporifi c tone, it transmits no military fervor, and it is unlikely to stir anyone to combat. It has little to fire up soldier, noble, or simple citizen. Its appeal must lie elsewhere, for no fewer than 20 states have, over the course of two centuries, adopted it, with words adapted to their own realities, of course. And sometimes not even that — in some cases existing

words have simply been translated into the local language. The English text has a long history. In the 16th Century English sailors would greet each other with “God save the King,” to which the correct “pass-word” was “Long reign over us.” Sound familiar? Indeed, certain religious ceremonies included the Latin motet Domine Salvum Fac Regem, which means — you guessed it — “God save the King.”

Legend…or reality? We are in France in the Year of our Lord 1686. Louis XIV suffers acutely from an anal fi stula requiring surgery. Operations were risky then, which explains the great anxiety throughout the kingdom, especially the courtiers, the royal family and more particularly the Marquise de Maintenon, whom the king had secretly married following the death of the Queen. Under the protection of her royal husband, the marquise had founded the Collège St-Cyr to educate aristo-cratic but impoverished girls. For its inauguration, she organizes a gala, and commissions the court composer, the Italian Gian Battista Lulli (who would be known in France as Jean-Baptiste Lully), to compose a hymn of thanksgiv-ing to God for the recovery of the King. The words are adapted from the Latin motet already mentioned by a friend of the marquise, Madame de Brinon. The

college pensioners will sing the new hymn as the King enters.

Grand Dieu sauvez le roiGrand Dieu sauvez le roiVive le roi.Qu’à jamais glorieuxLouis victorieux…

Which translates to something modern Britons would f ind eerily familiar:

God save the KingGod save the KingLong live the KingForever gloriousLouis victoriousHis foes always subjugatedLong live the King.

The King is delighted, and the pupils of St-Cyr will from then on sing the hymn on each of the royal visits. And then…silence. The hymn to the King’s health is never sung again in France. Nor anywhere else, until… In that day, the pretender to the British throne bides his time at the Stuart court at St-Germain-en-Laye, in France, all the while preparing his rebellion. The marquise gives him the hymn for Louis XIV, suggesting that it would make a splendid British national anthem, with a simple translation which she may in fact have done herself. God Save the King! is fi rst sung in 1745 by supporters of James III Stuart at the Drury Lane Theatre, but is picked up by partisans of George II Hanover. It becomes popular, and will henceforth be sung at all offi cial ceremonies. Other verses are added, though they are rarely sung. The third verse runs:

Thy choicest gifts in storeOn him be pleased to pour;Long may he reign;May he defend our laws,And ever give us causeTo sing with heart and voice,God save the King!

England may be considered the birthplace of the national anthem, for God Save the King becomes the fi rst such chant to be sung around the world.

by Reine Lessard

Every country has one. National anthems, it turns out, include some of the world’s truly great music.


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In the late 18th Century Denmark often played it as its national anthem. Prussia also used it. The principality of Liechenstein still does. Even Russia bor-rowed it. It was the national anthem of Australia from 1788 to 1974. Switzerland adopted it in 1811 on a text by Rodolf Wyss, under the title Rufst Du, mein Vaterland. In Canada it is considered the royal anthem, played on visits by the British Royal Family, and on occa-sions presided by the Governor General or provincial Lieutenant Governors. The melody turns up in several com-positions by major composers, no doubt admirers of Lully. It is said Beethoven was so impressed on fi rst hearing it that in 1804 he composed seven variations on it. German composer Max Reger (1873-1916) wrote a Prelude and Fugue on God Save the King. Haydn, on a visit to England, was so taken with the anthem that he was inspired to write a tune for the Austrian emperor, under the title God Save Emperor Franz. He used the melody in his Emperor Quartet Op. 76, No. 3. It was similarly borrowed by Donizetti, Paganini and Brahms.

Unforgettable emotion On the screen is the immortal masterpiece Casa-blanca. The Ger-mans at Ricks’s Café Americain are noisy as usual. The clink of glasses blends with the buzz of conversation in the smoky atmosphere. Patrons dance to the music of pianist Sam, and the small orchestra. A woman speaks loudly. The Germans, masters of the café, are turbulent. Major Strasser, an SS offi cer, leads them in a chorus of Die Vaterland. Consternation. What will happen? A determined man strides up to the orchestra, Viktor Lazlo, the famed resistance leader. “Play the Marseillaise. Play it!” They do, and all but the Germans pick up the song, singing with one voice, one heart. On this electrifying melody, the words are a menacing clamor, the frightening sound of the people taking up arms. It is La Marseillaise, the great anthem of la France libre. It is a moment of power beyond words. You need not be French, or even understand the words, to be over-whelmed by this music and its irresistibly galvanizing power.

The creation of the anthem Throughout Europe it is a time of discontent and agitation, moving writers and composers to express the anger of the people, and also the ambitions of the emerging bourgeoisie. The French Rev-olution is underway, and the Republic is on the march. Implicitly threatened, the European monarchies go to war, hoping to stifl e the Revolution in its shell. We are at a reception at the home of the Baron de Dietrich, mayor of Stras-bourg. It is April 25, 1792, only a few days after declarations of war by Austria and by Prussia, which had long coveted Alsace and Lorraine. One of the guests is a young engineer, poet and amateur cellist, Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle. He is 32, and a captain at the French garrison in the city. “Monsieur de Lisle,” says the host, “you who speak the language of

the Gods, you who plays the harp of Orpheus, compose us a fi ne song for the soldiers who are emerging from all regions of our endangered land, and you shall have the gratitude of your coun-try.” The bold captain accepts the chal-lenge, drawing inspiration from a poster proclaiming Aux armes, citoyens!, and composing both words and music. In but a few hours he has written The War Song for the Army of the Rhine. Its success is immediate, and across France soldiers are singing it. In June of the same year the Mar-seille volunteers of the National Guard, having taken up the cause of the Revo-lution, leave for Paris. Arriving drums beating at the Place de la Bastille on the 30th of July, they sing the new hymn with such fervor that Parisians baptize it Le Chant des Marseillais, quickly shortened to La Marseillaise. Two years later the Directoire orders that all theatres begin representations with the hymn, which is decreed National Anthem by the Con-vention on the 26 Messidor Year III (July 14, 1795). In the meantime a young Corsican named Napoleon Bonaparte is preparing to enter the stage and move up through the ranks to the function of First Consul. He is said to have called La Marseillaise “the greatest general of the Republic.” When he becomes emperor in 1804, however, he bans the anthem. It will not be sung again until after his reign, and it is quickly banned again under the Restoration, since Louis XVIII has the same reasons as Napoleon to disavow a revolutionary chant. La Marseillaise resurfaces during the Revolution of 1830. Often sung from then on, it carves its place in the hearts and minds of the French, and in 1879 the Third Republic once again offi cial-izes its status as National Anthem. In September 1944, the French ministry of education orders the anthem sung in the schools, to celebrate the Liberation and to commemorate the martyrs of the German occupation. Through the war and the occupation of much of Europe, La Marseillaise is the cry of the oppressed. Many a victim of the Nazis dies with its words on their lips, as a fi nal declaration of faith.

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In his remarkable history of the French Revolution, Thomas Carlyle calls it “the song which makes boil blood in the veins, that one sings with tears and fi re in the eyes, with a heart facing death.” In his history of the Girondin movement, Alphonse de Lamartine writes that La Marseillaise is “the song of patriotism, but also the expression of anger. It moves our troops to the frontier, but it also accompanies our victims to the scaffold. The same iron serves to defend the heart of our homeland in the hands of our soldiers, and to dispatch victims in the hands of the executioner.”

Allons enfants de la PatrieLe jour de gloire est arrivéContre nous de la TyrannieL’étendard sanglant est levé (bis)Entendez-vous dans nos campagnesMugir ces féroces soldatsIls viennent jusque dans nos brasÉgorger nos fi ls, nos compagnesAux armes, Citoy-ens!

Formez vos bataillons!Marchons! Marchons!Qu’un sang impurAbreuve nos sillons.

Among noted composers who incor-porated this stirring music into their own works are Salieri, Schumann, Wagner, Liszt, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky.

Austria Napoleon is on the march, but even the threat of his Grande Armée hasn’t succeeded in lighting a patriotic fl ame in Viennese hearts. Governor Franz Joseph Count Saurau commissions a popular poet, Lorenz Haschka, to write words for a national anthem to be set to music by the great composer Joseph Haydn. The Kaiserlied is fi rst sung on February 12,

1797, the birthday of Emperor Franz II, and it will serve as Imperial Anthem right up the disintegration of the Empire in 1918. The music is drawn from the Kaiser Quartet, one of whose themes, as already noted, had been inspired by God Save the King! With the Empire gone, Austria is reduced to its German provinces, and it is proclaimed a republic. It is more than evident that a hymn to the glory of an emperor is no longer suitable. State Chancellor Karl Renner, a sometime poet, writes a new text in keeping with the country’s new constitutional identity. It begins with the words Deutschöster-reich, du herrliches Land. He gives it to a friend, composer Wilhelm Kienzl, to set it to music. Kienzl accepts with humility, quite aware that the universally-admired Haydn will not be easily displaced. His Renner-Kienzl Anthem is launched to

tepid acclaim. But with Aus-tria having dropped the Haydn melody, Germany now saw no barrier to its


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being recycled as Deutschlandlied, to words by August Heinrich Hoffman von Fallersben. Surprisingly enough, there was no protest from Austria. In 1938 Hitler occupies Austria and annexes it to the Third Reich. As the Nazi ideology spreads, the anthem on Haydn’s music is sung once more, along-side the Nazi hymn Lebens der jugend. With the collapse of the Reich Aus-tria becomes independent once again, and of course neither of the two hymns can suit. The Austrian federal govern-ment holds a competition for words to a new anthem, in praise of Austrians in the country and abroad, with a then considerable prize of 10,000 Schillings. With some 1800 entries, the eventual winner is the eminent novelist Paula von Preradovic, and the new anthem is adopted offi cially in 1947.

Land of mountains, land on the River,Land of fi elds, land of cathedrals,Land of hammers, with a rich future,You are the home of great sons,A nation blessed by its sense of beauty,Highly praised Austria.

But what of its music? It is said to be from a Masonic cantata by Mozart (the K.623), but this is doubtful. As for the Haydn music, which had survived wars and revolutions, Austria decreed that it would be sung no more, either in Austria or in Germany. It would forever be tainted by its close association with the Nazi movement and the ignominious Adolf Hitler.

Above all, a nation united Like Italy and some other lands, mid-19th Century Germany is not yet a country when its fi rst (unoffi cial) national anthem is adopted. When Bavaria had become a monarchy in 1806, it had adopted Heil unser Konig, heil! with a great resemblance to God Save the King! A few other patriotic chants are proposed, but gained little currency. At that time, a poet and professor with very liberal ideas, worried by recurring wars among the small German lands, sets about to convince all Germans to unite instead of fi ghting among themselves. His name is August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben. In his Deutschlandlied of 1841, he enjoins the crowned heads and subjects of the Germanic states to set aside their quarrels to build a strong and united country: Deutschland, Deutschland über alles (Germany above all else). He also intends it, it should be noted, as a cry in favor of freedom of the press and respect of human rights. The poem is set to the music of Joseph Haydn, already familiar to German ears. Germany, fi nally united in 1871 under Kaiser Wilhelm, puts aside the Deutsch-landlied in favor of a Royal Anthem, Heir Dir im Siegerkranz. It is not until 1922, three years after Germany became a republic, that the Fallersleben hymn is adopted as the national anthem. It then has three verses. When the Nazis take power they adopt the infamous Horst Wessel Song, and also modify the text of the Deutsch-landlied to twist its meaning: über alles in der Welt (above all else in the world) becomes Heim ins Reich (at home in all of the world). That ideology of course will lead to a world war. Followed the armistice, the trea-ties, the division of Germany, and the

eventual building of the Berlin Wall. Each Germany wants its own anthem. East Germany adopts Auferstanden aus Ruinen by Becher on music by Eisler. West Germany selects Schroeder’s Lied des Glaubens Deutsches Land, with music by Reutter, but it never becomes popular, and in 1952 West Germany returns to the Deutschlandlied, with the text restored to its pre-Nazi version. The anthem becomes that of the newly reunited Germany, though now shorn of its fi rst two verses, containing only the third:

Unity, rights and liberty for the German Fatherland!Let us then all strive like brothers with heart and hand!Unity, rights and liberty are foundation of good fortuneFlower in the glow of this good fortune,German Fatherland

Fratelli d’Italia, L’Italia s’a Desta Italy knew its own tumultuous periods, and it is no exaggeration to say that no country had more diffi culty choosing a national anthem. Since the time of the creation of the Risorgimento by the house of Savoy, there have been some 450 popular patriotic songs. Before the birth of la Repubblica Italiana, Italy was composed of small kingdoms and principalities scattered from the Tyrrhenian to the Adriatic. This period of confusion is marked by fratricidal wars, with the result that from through 18th and the 19th Centuries, the region is dominated by France and Austria. The Risorgimento is a sort of new renaissance, leading in the 19th Century to the liberation and unifi cation of the Italian peninsula, under the leadership of Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garib-aldi. Italy’s political diaspora is large, and discussions among its members are always lively. Eager to liberate his country of foreign infl uences, Mazzini has founded the Young Italy movement, whose members include the young republican poet Goffredo Mameli, who is then 20. Mameli is impatient with the waf-fl ing of King Carlo Alberto, and in any


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case he hopes for a unity that would be won by the people rather than by a monarch. It is in this hothouse that, in the midst of patriotic celebrations in 1847, he composes his most ardent poem, Fratelli d’Italia, l’Italia s’à desta (“Italian brothers, Italy has arisen”). It is set to a splendid music in martial style by Michele Novaro. Up to then most of the numer-ous patriotic songs had referred to the king. The Star of Alberto had been the most popular, and Marcia Reale (the Royal March) will be replaced as Italian national anthem only in 1946. Mameli’s poem speaks of past struggles of Lombards, Florentines, Genoans and Sicilians against the French. It is soon on all lips, spreading through the peninsula like wildfi re.

Italian brothers,Italy has arisen,With Scipio’s helmetbinding her head.Where is Victory?Let her bow down, For God has made herThe slave of Rome.Let us gather in legions,Ready to die!Italy has called!

Va’ pensiero A number of countries have adopted electrifying patriotic songs that, for many reasons, were more popular than the offi cial anthem. That’s the case of Verdi’s Va’ pensiero, composed fi ve years before Mameli’s poem, and a serious competitor. A paraphrase of the 137th Psalm, Va’ pensiero is the chorus of the Hebrew slaves in Verdi’s Nabucco. The opera tells the story of the conquest and enslavement of the Jews by Nabucco’s Babylonian army in the 6th Century BC. Naturally enough, Italians identify with the captives, having so long hoped for liberation from the Austrian yoke. The text is of course accompanied by Verdi’s sublime music, which lifts enthusiasm and exacerbates patriotism. By popular demand, it becomes modern Italy’s unof-fi cial anthem. The 25,000 spectators who lined the route of Verdi’s funeral procession

spontaneously sang Va’ pensiero. It is also the anthem of the International Freedom Movement.

Russia Around 1833 Czar Nicholas I commissions a national anthem inspired by God Save the King! The music is said to be from Alexis Lvoff, but the theme is that of the British anthem, and indeed the words seem familiar:

In happinessIn peace to reign!Dread of his enemies,Faith’s sure defender,God save the Czar!

After the 1917 Revolution it of course gives way to the Internationale, which remains the Soviet anthem until 1943. Stalin, eager to fan the fl ames of patriotism and ideology in this time of war, invites poets and composers to the Kremlin to submit their work. The music of Alexander Vasillevich Alexandrov is selected. The words initially chosen are quickly replaced by the defi nitive text of G. El-Reguistan and the offi cial poet Sergei Mikhalov. The Soviet anthem (known offi cially as Eternal Alliance of the Free Republics) will last until the dissolution of the “eternal alliance” in 1991, though the text will be revised in 1977 to remove references to Stalin. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the new president Boris Yeltsin banishes this remnant of the old regime and chooses a new anthem. It is drawn from the opera A Life for the Tsar of Mikhail Glinka. This comes as a sur-prise, since the era of the Tsars is so long past. The music is certainly pleasant, as is all Glinka’s music, but it lacks the deep, rich, solemn and impressive tone of Alexandrov’s air. But Alexandrov’s anthem will not be gone for long. In 2000 the Duma, at the urging of President Putin, votes overwhelmingly to return to the Soviet anthem of 1944. The co-author of the original words, Mikhalov, now 87, is brought back to pen a new text. With its references to God and empire, the refur-bished anthem is universally acclaimed,

with even the Russian Orthodox church applauding.

Russia — sacred our empire,Russia — favorite our country.Mighty will, great glory —Your virtue on all times!

Sing to the Fatherland, ours free,The brotherly century peoples union ,By ancestors the given national wisdom!Ours Glorious land! We are proud of you!

I’ve just listened to it again on the Analekta recording of the Red Army Chorus. It is, I believe, after La Marseil-laise, the most beautiful, grandiose and moving national anthem of all time.

A captivating story It is in a friendly but nonetheless foreign land that is composed, in 1797, the chant of the Polish Legions. Poland is then carved up and dominated by Prussia, Austria and Russia. Italy offers asylum to the Polish soldiers. One of them Jozef Wybicki, writes a song exalt-


ing the idea of an independent Poland. Set to a popular mazurka by Dabrowki, it is adopted spontaneously by many Poles. Titled Feszcz Polka nie zginela (“Poland is not yet lost”), it is proclaimed national anthem in 1917. As in the case of many anthems, its text will be reworked to better suit the times, in 1948.

Poland has not yet succumbed. As long as we remain, What the foe by force has seized, Sword in hand we’ll gain. March! March, Dabrowski! March from Italy to Poland! Under your command We shall reach our land.

The composer, by the way, was also a military man, General Jan Henryk Dab-rowski. He participated in the defense of Warsaw in 1794, and created the Polish Legions in 1797. He also took part in the insurrection of the Wielkopolska region in 1806, and in several battles against the armies of Napoleon from 1806 to 1812.

The United States America and England are at war in what will be known as the War of 1812. The evening of the 13th of September, in the port of Baltimore an American officer visits a British ship under a white fl ag, to negotiate the liberation of an American prisoner. The British, planning a surprise attack against the American Fort McHenry that night, fear the offi cer will warn his compatriots, and keep him hostage that night aboard their ship, appropriately called the Surprise. The offi cer is named Francis Scott Key. The next morning the sight of the American f lag still f loating over the fort confi rms that the British attack has failed. He is moved to write a patriotic poem on the event.

Oh, say, can you see,By the dawn’s early light, What so proudly we hail’dAt the twilight’s last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars,Thro’ the perilous fi ght, O’er the ramparts we watch’d,Were so gallantly streaming? And the rockets’ red glare,The bombs bursting in air, Gave proof thro’ the nightThat our fl ag was still there.

The poem is resurrected in the late 19th Century by the US army, and it becomes a song, set to the music of the English composer John Stafford Smith, Anacreon in Heaven, written a century before for a Masonic lodge. It will, by the way, be quoted in Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfl y. Though The Star Spangled Banner is

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the offi cial US anthem, there have been other American patriotic songs. Yankee Doodle was sung in colonial days, between 1750 and 1760, and it was used in Andrew Barton’s 1767 opera-ballet The Disappointment. During the War of Independence, it was the British who were singing it, to mock the American patriots. The Americans actually adopted it as a national anthem, though, albeit with different words, and it remained until its replacement by The Star Spangled Banner. Even today Yankee Doodle is the theme music of shortwave broadcasts of The Voice of America. Not at all martial but quite gorgeous is Katharine Lee Bates’ America the Beau-tiful, on music by Samuel Ward:

O beautiful for spacious skies,For amber waves of grain,For purple mountain majestiesAbove the fruited plain!

In this century Irving Berlin contrib-uted another unoffi cial anthem, God Bless America. And fi nally there is the 1831 patriotic hymn by Francis Smith:

My country tis of thee,Sweet land of liberty,Of thee I sing.

The tune, once again, is that of God Save the King!

Canada It is widely told that Canada’s anthem, O Canada, was the winner of a competition for a national anthem, to be played on the 24th of June (the fête nationale of French Canada) in 1880. The truth is that, although there was to be such a contest, there wouldn’t be enough time, and thus a well-known composer was commissioned to write it. Here’s how it really happened. There were already popular songs celebrating Canada. In French Canada back then, Vive la canadienne was a mainstay of parades and celebrations.

In English Canada, there was already an unoffi cial anthem, The Maple Leaf Forever. However its words presented a problem:

In days of yoreFrom Britain’s shoreWolfe, the dauntless hero came

Wolfe having been the British general who had conquered New France, it is easy to see why this text was considered offensive to French-Canadians. In June of 1880, then, the Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec determines to realize a dream: to create a national anthem acceptable to all. He asks Adolphe-Basile Routhier,

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judge, poet, and cofounder of the Royal Society of Canada, to write the text for a distinctive anthem. The eminent composer and organist Calixa Lavallée is asked to write the music. He accepts on condition that he might compose the music before Routhier writes the words. In a single evening, Lavallée completes the air of the future anthem. Over the years there has been a serious controversy concerning the originality of his composition. The fi rst measures of O Canada are identical to those of the second act introduction of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Indeed, at Canadian stagings of the Mozart opera, it is common for the introduction to be accompanied by a fl urry of whispers by spectators who think they recognize the anthem. It should be said that, beyond the f irst measures, the two works diverge. Lavallée’s melody is catchy without being too martial. It inspires in Routhier a text that is moderate, though with sub-stance, marked by patriotic fervor and faith in the Almighty’s role in the past and future of Canada.

Ô Canada! Terre de nos aïeux,Ton front est ceint de fl eurons glorieux! Car ton bras sait porter l’épée,Il sait porter la croix! Ton histoire est une épopéeDes plus brillants exploits.

Though long used unoffi cially as the anthem, it will be only in 1980 that Parliament gives it offi cial status, exactly a century after its creation. After 1880 there are several attempts to set English words to Lavallée’s music. The one eventually adopted is by another judge, Robert Stanley Weir in 1908, the tricentennial of the foundation of Quebec City.

O Canada! Our home and native land!True patriot love in all thy sons commandWith glowing hearts we see thee rise, The True North strong and free!

That is slightly different from the original Weir text, for it has been altered more than once. Even today, there is a movement to change the reference to “sons,” which is seen by some as sexist.

Andorra Somewhere between France and Spain, occu-pying but a few hundred mountainous square kilometers, is the principality of Andorra. Its location made it historically a paradise for smug-glers, and, today, duty-free shoppers. Traditional tales speak of a Moor-dominated land conquered in 803 by Charlemagne, whose son Louis the Pious promulgated a charter of freedom. Positioned as it was on the border, it was claimed by both Spain and France, who ultimately agreed to make it a princi-pality under joint sovereignty. Andorra voted for independence in 1993, but it had adopted a fl ag, and of course a national anthem, back in 1914. Its words, in Catalan, by Joan Bennloch I Vivò, pay homage to historical tradition:

The great Charlemagne, my Father, from the Saracens liberated me,And from heaven he gave me life of Meritxell the great mother.I was born a princess, a maiden neutral between two nationsI am the only remaining daughter of the Carolingian empire.

With 68,000 inhabitants, Andorra is one of the world’s smallest states.

Acadia A country? A nation? Those are mere words. A territory may be distinct by dint of its pride, its loyalty and patrio-tism, and so it is with Acadia. The French had settled lands in what are today the Atlantic Provinces from 1524, well before Europeans had arrived in what is now Quebec City and Mon-treal. The lands were ceded to England in 1715. In 1755 there was what would today be called an ethnic cleansing, with French settlers rounded up and scattered to what is now Quebec, New England, Louisiana, even France. Many eventu-ally found their way back, especially to present-day New Brunswick. Many did not. The “Cajuns” of Louisiana are part of the Acadian diaspora. There are a million Acadians worldwide. Acadia is not a country, but the descendents of those fi rst French set-

tlers created a nation of the mind, whose name was derived either from an Indian word, or possibly from Arcadia, a name given it by a French explorer struck by the beauty of the trees on that land. At the second Acadian National Congress in 1884, a religious hymn, Ave Maris Stella, was chosen as an anthem. There wasn’t universal approval. The playing of religious music at celebrations where alcohol might be served shocked some sensibilities. Many attempts were made to fi nd another anthem, but efforts were fruitless. The anthem is no longer religious however. At a worldwide Acadian con-gress in 2001, new secular words were adopted, no longer in Latin but in French and English:

Acadia my homelandTo your name I draw myselfMy life, my faith belong to youYou will protect me (bis)Acadia my homelandMy land and my challengeFrom near, from far or hold onto meMy heart is Acadian (bis)

Gounod at the Vatican The Vatican is of course a state in itself, and it had an anthem, com-posed in 1857 by Vittorino Hallmayr. However the eminent opera composer Charles Gounod (1818-1893) had com-posed an alternative, which he had titled The Pontifi cal March. It had been played in St. Peter’s Square in the presence of Pope Pius IX in 1869. It was only 81 years later that Pius XII decreed that Gounod’s music would succeed the old hymn. With new words by Monsignor Antonio Allegra, it was renamed Inno Pontifi cio, the Pontifi cal Hymn.

O Rome immortal of Martyrs and Saints, O immortal Rome, accept our praises: Glory in the heavens to God our Lord, And peace to men who love Christ!

There are as many fascinating stories of national anthems as there are coun-tries. No surprise that music called upon to carry such signifi cance should have attracted the talents of the greatest musicians and poets.


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Canadian PremieresGryphon TrioAnalekta FL 2 3174Lessard: If a contemporary composer uses classical instruments to imitate the sound of a 1920’s synthetizer, or a musical saw, I have a problem with that. When the fi rst synth, the Theremin, was invented over 80 years ago, it was with the opposite intention, to let a machine imitate existing instruments. For that reason, I don’t fi nd that the compos-ers represented in this collection have brought much new to the sound of the chamber orchestra. But that doesn’t mean their music is without interest. Quite the contrary, certain pieces are so well constructed that they are most pleasant to listen to, and can be entirely satisfying. Did I like this CD? Yes I did, if only because of the great virtuosity of the musicians, and the remarkable record-ing. Fortunately there is more. I adored Kelly-Marie Murphy’s Give Me Phoenix Wings to Fly, which opens with an imperative piano followed by strings that play with rapidity and energy. If there is any doubt that the piano is not only a string instrument but also a percussion instrument, those doubts will be laid to rest. In her impec-cable structure, the composer has evoked with felicity the experience of the bird capable of rising from its own ashes. Chan Ka Nin’s And the masks evoke… is strongly inf luenced by Canadian

Native culture. The opening piano chords are like angry drums, plunging us into the story of a people and its fi ght for the recognition of its culture and its place in society. It is evocative of all that nature can offer us in the way of symbols, the howling of the wind, the song of the birds…an offering by the composer to those who fi ght for their rights. Old Photographs absolutely delighted me, and I was surprised to find this unabashedly romantic piece in the midst of more angular works. This is a sensual, even sentimental piece, written by Greek-born Christos Hazis, now a Canadian. It begins on a slow and intimate air for piano, which is shortly joined by the violin and cello. In totally unexpected fashion, we fi nd ourselves on the dance fl oor, in an enchanting tango which begins tenderly enough but becomes more and more fi ery. The CD ends with Gary Kulesha’s Trio No. 2. In his teaching as well as in his compositions, Kulesha makes it his mission to help a wider public to have access to the contemporary musical experience. It would be ungrateful on my part not to add a note about the exceptional playing of the members of the Gryphon Trio, and I insist on naming them. They are Jamie Parker, piano, Annalee Pati-patanakoon, violin, and Roman Borys, cello. You’ll also note with appreciation the fi ne sound of the instruments of the last two, products of great Italian violinmakers.

Requiem (Gabriel Fauré)Maîtrise Seine-Maritime

CK1012Lessard: This CD is full of superb ele-ments from the musical standpoint. This is great music from previous centuries, and it is vital that it not be forgotten. Such composers must be immortalized.

However… Despite the great beauty of the voices, I found that the organ continuo underlined the fact that they aren’t singing together. Instead of following the singers, the organist often precedes them, as though he were afraid that otherwise they wouldn’t be able to fi nd the right note. It’s annoying. In the Fauré Requiem, aside from the canons, it hap-pens that the baritone and the soprano don’t come in at the same time. If the Fauré is a mass for the dead untainted by a fear of death and eternal hellfi re, I can’t say the same of Gregorio Allegri’s Miserere Mei Deus, whose outra-geous text is downright scary. A rough translation: “In offence was I born and in sin conceived by my mother's ardors.” And: “Thus thou wilt approve the pre-scribed sacrifi ces, the total offering and the holocaust: so shall we offer up bulls on thy altar.” Which words contradict the text immediately preceding: “Lord, thou wilt not want for me to offer up a sacrifi ce, thou wilt not accept a holo-caust.” It is at once contradictory and archaic. The baritone is superb, to be sure, and the boy soprano who offers a high C so pure transports us with delight. Even if the sound of the Latin language is familiar to many, the syllables sung are so close to inaudible that I couldn’t follow the text booklet in hand. In Hein-rich Schutz’s Selig Sind Die Toten, the German text is sung as though it were

Record Reviews

by Reine Lessard,Gerard Rejskindand Albert Simon


Latin, which doesn’t exactly improve things. I began by saying that this sublime music must not be lost, but what about the texts? Perhaps we should treat some of these works as instrumental music, or transform them into songs without words. No accompaniment needed either. The sounds are almost angelic, and the music itself divine. It gets worse. Trying to listen again to The Lamb, marked on the booklet as

track 10, I couldn’t fi nd it. As what must be an anti-piracy measure, the 11 selec-tions have been scattered over 31 physical tracks. A pirate will barely be slowed by this crude trick, but anyone who has actually paid for the CD will have little chance of ever fi nding a particular selec-tion. I want, however, to reiterate my admiration for the quality of the voices, and especially that of the soprano, Clé-ment Lebreton.

IlluminationsChamber Music Palm BeachKlavier K 11135Lessard: You owe it to yourself to pick up a copy of this recording. The musi-cians are exceptional, the composers represented ally boldness, originality and energy, and the recording quality reaches a summit. It opens with the Chôros No. 7 by the exuberant Brazilian Heitor Villa-Lobos, he of the inexhaustible musical imagina-tion, written during a visit to his native country. The variety of sounds and rhythms plunge you into an ambience in which vigorous tempos and lyrical effects blend in happy fashion. It opens with an exquisite air for the fl ute, joined by the plaintive sound of the violin, the warmth of the bassoon, the authority of the French horn, the richness of the cello, and several other instruments including a saxophone…leading to unex-pected harmonies from which sensuality is by no means absent. Surprise follows surprise. The fl ow is so spontaneous it could actually be improvised, but what balance, and what clever architecture! A charming theme returns again and again, for the composer never loses track of the fl ow. Also on the recording is a treasure, the Trio Op. 6 for Flute Bassoon and Viola by the celebrated 20th Century composer, Malcolm Arnold. His worldwide reputa-tion rests to a great extent on his fi lm music, but he also penned several sym-phonies and other magnifi cent works. From the fi rst measures of the Allegro ma non troppo, you are transported into a dazzling caper filled with dazzling dissonance, appoggiaturas, decorations

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of the most surprising sort…glissandos that border on slapstick, ostinatos, sudden stops, syncopated rhythms, a shower of effects of irresistible charm, and especially a group of notes that return again and again like a pleasing leitmotiv, of which you never tire. Will the Andante con moto restore your seren-ity? A high note from the fl ute joins the bassoon from its fi rst notes, followed by solid bowing on the viola, in a deep, rich aria. But hold on! The fi nal Allegro comodo takes up once again the lively opening themes, and then ends too soon. You’ve gone through ten minutes of pure delight. This is Arnold at his best, with combinations of the unusual sounds that were his trademark. Do you recognize the name of Emile Paladilhe? You’ll have three minutes to appreciate the depth and romanticism of his Danse noble. At the turn of the last century this composer did not get his due, and it is American composer Clark McAlister (whose own Rideau rouge pre-cedes it) that we can hear this forgotten piece, since it is he who rediscovered it. Too short, this piece for violin, alto and cello is so full of warmth, so beautiful, so moving, that I couldn’t help mentioning it to you. I could of course continue, telling you about Rideau rouge, about André Jolivet’s Pastorales, and about Martinù’s Nonet, but I think I’ve said enough to convince you that this CD is a “must.”

Organ TreasuresMattias WagerOpus 3 CD22031Rejskind: When real high fi delity was fi rst picking up steam, audiophiles were collecting organ recordings, and it’s easy

to see why. No other instrument can pro-duce a higher note, nor as low a note. Nor can any rival the sheer dynamic range of a pipe organ, which can leap instantly from near inaudibility to a mighty roar. What better way to demonstrate the capabilities than by playing pieces that ordinary record players would turn into indecipherable mush? I was one of those collectors, I admit, and I had my favorite demo pieces, ones that could shake both the house and the senses. There is the Bach Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, naturally, and César Franck’s bombastic but thrilling Pièce Héroique, and especially Charles-Marie Widor’s Toccata from his Symphony No. 5 (no one ever seems to play the rest). So I was happy to fi nd that all three of these treasures can be found on this hybrid SACD. And this is no little country organ. Wager plays the organ of the Hedvig Eleonara church in Stockholm, which includes a 32’ Bourdon and another 32’ Bombarde, as well as a variety of 16’ pipes. There is a powerful torrent of sound when he opens up on the fi nale of the Widor, and it is not accompanied by the harshness that some recording media (and systems too, of course) can add to it. This is a 4.1 channel surround recording, not using the centre channel but making plenty of use of the “point-one” subwoofer channel. As on most SACD recordings, there is also a CD layer, processed with Sony’s Super Bit Mapping. Apart from my (and perhaps your) old favorites, there is other music here. There are three other Bach pieces, including Jesus, Joy of Man’s Desiring and an organ version of the orchestral Air on the G String. There are Charles Ive’s Variations on America, making considerable use of My Country ’tis of Thee (aka God Save the Queen). There is a charming waltz by Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933), and there are three pieces from the Opus 29 of Gabriel Pierné. Come to think of it, those were often mainstays of organ demo recordings, and for good reason. I can recommend this recording…if, of course, you are lucky enough to have a system that can handle it.

The Magic of HorowitzVladimir HorowitzDeutsche Grammophon 474 334-2Simon: “The most important thing is to transform the piano from a percussive instrument into a singing instrument … a singing tone is made up of shadows and color and contrast. The secret lies mainly in contrasts.” (Vladimir Horowitz). For many he was and still is the only one. There is Horowitz, and then there are other pianists. This album is a selec-tion of the recordings he made for DG in his fi nal years. He wanted to be a composer, and both Rachmaninov and Prokof iev encouraged him in his native Russia, but he decided to try piano recitals to help his family in 1922. His originality and spontaneity were legendary and he was proud of that: he liked to say that Chopin never played his own pieces the same way twice. In Switzerland in the 1930’s, pianist Rudolph Serkin remem-bers hearing Horowitz play Chopin’s G Major Ballade at the home of a mutual friend, and said that he had never in his life heard piano playing like that. “It was as if Horowitz had come from another planet.” I listened to the two CDs non-stop and never felt the time pass (yet each CD runs over 71 minutes). Each piece was new and fresh, and the notes rippled across the stage with utmost clarity in caressing pianissimos, suddenly explod-ing in thunderous fortissimos. I loved the charming hesitations, the characteristic minute pauses before each new phrase, the smiles, the tenderness, the melan-choly — making his piano actually seem to talk. Listen to his version of Liszt’s transcription of Schubert’s Ständchen on CD-1 track 2, and especially the last two or three minutes or Chopin’s Mazurka in A Minor on track 4. His piano will tell you all about the serene simplicity of a Bach Chorale Prelude or just as easily dance for you a Rachmaninov Polka. And it is indeed his piano. His Steinway was specially f lown from New-York to Milan for the recording of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 with Carlo Maria Giulini conducting — one of the treasures of CD-2. It is a warm and emotional interpretation, quite in keeping with Mozart’s letters criticiz-


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ing performers whose playing lacked freedom and feeling. Actually, a Horowitz recording of a piano concerto was such a rare event that it was all recorded on fi lm — rehearsal and performance. That fi lm can be yours too. Did I mention that it’s on a DVD included with the two CDs? That’s right. Don’t just walk, now, run.

Mariners and MilkmaidsToronto ConsortDorian DOR-93247Lessard: This 75 minute CD presents 26 pieces by this ensemble specialized in Medieval and Renaissance music. It’s some music, and I can’t hope to do justice to it in this space. Fortunately the booklet is full of information about the music and the period when it was played or sung. There are also notes on the artists, and the words of the songs. It’s all there. I can’t say that Medieval music is to my taste, but a number of the selections brought me a good deal of pleasure. There are popular dances, folk airs, several martial songs and instrumen-tal pieces, pretty ballads, and several comic stories told in but a few words. The Cut-purse which opens the disc is a fi ne example of these brief tales told on a catchy air. The Country Lass is sung by a superb voice that leaves all of the room needed to the pure beauty of the melody, with discreet piano accompaniment. A charming madrigal for mixed voices, Sister Awake, tells the story of the “sleep-ing beauties” who awaken and leave their “bed of roses” to “go A-Maying.” You’ll probably like Mad Tom, attributed to Henry Purcell, perhaps wrongly, sung

by a talented bass. William Byrd wrote The Maiden Songs, harpsichord variations on a popular air. The album ends with Greensleeves, which has lost none of its charm and popularity after four centuries! It’s sung here by a fi ne baritone. Both musicians and singers are excellent, and they are well served by an impeccable recording.

Bach: The Concerto AlbumLara St. John/NY Bach EnsembleMagnatune LC11982Rejskind: Who is Magnatune? It’s a record company of course, but that’s not the whole story. This is not a physi-cal recording, but a downloadable fi le. There’s something here to interest both the audiophile and the music lover. Magnatune is an on-line record company with a difference. Its motto: We are a record company but we are not evil. For more on the company itself, see Gossip&News on page 70. Unlike such services as the Apple Music Store and Musicmatch, Magnatune doesn’t sell compressed fi les, it gives them away. If you’re willing to lay out cash for a full fi delity version of the MP3 version you’ve heard, you lay out from US$5 to $18…your choice. You can then burn it onto CD. I downloaded two versions of this recording. The fi rst was in uncompressed WAV format. This should have given the best result, but on my Mac the fi les got converted to AIFF (the Mac’s native audio format), and the resulting sound was shrill and glassy. The other ver-sion was compressed with FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec). Decompressors

for every platform are available free at http://flac.sourceforge.net. The total compressed package “weighs” about 300 Mb, which of course limits it to broadband connections. FLAC delivered pristine AIFF fi les. Now to the recording itself. Lara St. John is a fi ne Canadian-born violinist who has gotten a lot of press, at least some of it for irrelevant reasons. She is tall and blonde, and her CD booklets don’t always show her wearing a lot of clothes, or, on her fi rst album, any clothes. But is there such a thing as bad press? At any rate, this recording well illustrates what I already knew from ear-lier recordings, that she is an exceptional violinist as well. Three Bach concertos are included here, the ones with BWV numbers 1041 through 1043. This last is a double concerto, with the second violin played by her brother Scott, who is also a violinist of note. These are daunting works, because of a complexity which is mathematical as much as musical. The danger for a musician tackling Bach is making it sound like mathematics rather than music. St. John never comes close to falling into that trap. It is astonishing to hear her, seemingly crunching the math in a remote part of her intellect while concentrating her conscious attention to the sheer beauty of what Bach created. And goodness these are beautiful pieces! Their depth of course f lows from their complexity, but when they are properly played, as they are on this recording, their effect on the emotions is awesome. These are among the more familiar works from the vast Bach reper-toire, and I have heard them many times, but even so I was amazed how often Bach could surprise me with twists and turns that, however unexpected, seem inevitable in context. There are some especially great moments, such as the famous Allegro from the BWV1042 or the Largo from the double concerto, but these works are composed of wall-to-wall nuggets. It isn’t possible to describe the beauty of the music without also describing the beauty of the playing. Both St. John and the chamber ensemble accompanying her have a feel for the music, always letting its lyrical aspect come through without


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diminishing the overall structure. The sound is well-balanced and not at all forward, with a very good orchestral image. St. John’s 1779 Guadagnini violin always sound smooth and natural. The sound is rather different on the fourth work, the G Minor Sonata BW V1001. Unlike the concertos, recorded in New York, the sonata was recorded at Skywalker Sound in California, using a Pacifi c Microson-ics recorder, presumably with HDCD encoding (which code is not on the recording, however). St. John is much more forward here. The sound of her violin remains quite natural, but she seems to struggle a little more than she does in the concertos, as though she is working a little too hard on the techni-cal challenge of playing those torrents of notes that collide and fl ow into each other. To her credit, she does meet the challenge. I began by saying that the recording is downloadable, rather than physical. But that’s not entirely true, because Magnatune offers non-exclusive con-tracts to its musicians. The physical CD is therefore available from the musician’s own site, larastjohn.com. The price including shipping is equal to Magnatune’s maximum: US$18.

The Depths of a YearEhren Starks/Kate GurbaMagnatune ES6460Rejskind: The very title suggests the musical genre. This is of course a New Age recording (from Magnatune’s downloadable music stable), though that alone won’t tell you much. Some New Age music is boring, and deliberately so, intended to facilitate and not interrupt, personal meditation. Some, on the other

hand, is viscerally exciting, using the tex-tures and dynamics of both acoustic and electronic instruments to excite the pas-sions. Mannheim Steamroller’s famous Fresh Aire recordings are an example. This is a purely acoustical recording. Pianist Ehren Starks plays a Yamaha grand piano (you can see it on the downloadable booklet cover), accompa-nied by the cello of Kate Gurba. Gurba uses her cello in several ways, playing it with her bow, but sometimes plucking it like a string bass, or even striking it to obtain percussive effects. The mood is rather introspective, but with enough melodic invention to engage the atten-tion. I confess that originally I listened to it in MP3 form on my computer (while doing something else of course), and I found myself pausing to actually listen. The piano and cello take turns carry-ing the melody. The Tale of Room opens with an obsessive rhythm by the piano, with the cello coming in with a soaring folklike melody. In Sunset in Pensacola, on the other hand, the piano opens solo with one of the most memorable melo-dies of the album, and it is only later in the piece that the cello joins in, in a rhythmic capacity. In Bailar Tristemente the dancelike rhythm is carried equally by the two instruments, in an innovative arrangement I liked a great deal. Subtle Groove is swing, with a good many effects from the cello, not all of them involving the strings. There is a good deal of variety here, though by the end I wasn’t certain there was enough of it to sustain an entire album. Like some books, it probably shouldn’t be devoured at one sitting.

Brazilian SoulAlmeida, Byrd, Holland, MagnussonHi-Res HRM2009Rejskind: I count exactly one Brazilian in this all-star quartet, namely the leg-endary guitarist Laurindo Almeida. Still, one could conceivably give Charlie Byrd honorary Brazilian citizenship, consider-ing that, even before Almeida began his American career, Byrd was popularizing Brazilian music around the world: fi rst the samba and then the bossa nova. Or so claims the booklet for this delightful high resolution DVD of the 1980 Con-cord Jazz recording.

The soul of this music is the guitar, or two guitars to be precise. Almeida had by then integrated his music into the great streams of American jazz, in various ensembles, including the one that may or may not have been named for him, the LA 4. Here he returns to his roots. Except for discreet percussion by Milt Holland and solid but subtle beat from bassist Bob Magnusson, the two guitarists dominate, and so do the famous rhythms many of us grew up with. The album begins with Ernesto Nazareth’s Carioca, and it’s hard not to be captivated. Most of the pieces are compositions by Brazilian musicians of the fi rst half of the 20th Century, arranged for two guitars by Almeida, with considerable aid from Byrd. Two of the pieces, Naquele Tempo and Cochichando, are by Alfredo Vianna, a fl utist Almeida frequently played with in his Rio days. The great Antonio Carlos Jobim is represented with Stone Flower, and Byrd himself contributed For Jeff. Most of the arrangements were done by Almeida. Last and least is the show tune Don’t Cry For Me Argentina, whose lackluster rendition was possibly a concession to the marketing people. It’s always a fi ne tune, but it sounds oddly out of place in what is a Brazilian-American fusion album. But no matter, this is a fi ne perfor-mance by two great musicians. It’s been captured in vivid and dynamic sound that benefi ts from the extra information on this DVD. I’ll listen to this anytime.


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Are cable differences for real, or are the critics right when they say that hardware store wire sounds as good? And if they’re not, are upscale cables demonstrably superior? A few years back, Wireworld brought out its Cable Comparator, a black box that allowed a double blind comparison of any cable alongside a short direct link. When our editor tried it at a show, he had little trouble spotting a particular cable every time. But when we got our own comparator box at a problem. The box has connectors we consider mediocre. In our comparisons, we could hear the grainy quality caused by loose connections, and that graininess dominated our impressions. Meanwhile Wireworld had run into difficulties convincing its dealers to buy their own comparators. Why? Was it because a double blind test is messy to set up? Or because they weren’t eager to show off differences among cables they themselves sell? Wireworld now has a simpler solution: a demo disc containing the “sound” of several Wireworld cables, including the Oasis, Atlantis, Equinox, Polaris, Eclipse and Super Eclipse. That seems fair enough. What may trouble competitors is that some of their cables are also included on the disc, from such manufacturers as Monster, Audioquest, Transparent and Kimber. So are inex-pensive Belden cables. The same song, I Concentrate on You by Jackie Ryan, is played through a (short) “direct connec-tion,” then through each of the cables. The idea is interesting, though we think a basic error was made. Each track is preceded by a voice announcement, thus making a blind test impossible. This invalidated some comparisons, amd cable critics will have a fi eld day with that. No one will be surprised to hear that the Wireworld cables came out of the test sounding very good. The quality of sound was roughly proportional to price,

with a couple of exceptions. The Atlantis was much better than the cheaper Oasis, with a fuller sound that became harsh only on loud segments. Equinox was considerably better again, and Polaris and Eclipse added gradual improve-ments, with a fuller, clearer sound, and better articulation of voice, piano and plucked bass.

on Ryan’s voice, and excellent weight on both voice and plucked bass. We did detect an odd “phasey” effect on the

brushed snare drum, but performance was otherwise very good. The two Belden 1505A cables were not the worst, sounding shallow, with little resonance and “life,” but without the harshness of some cables. The 10 m version sounded a touch grainier than the 1 m cable, but it was otherwise similar. A notch or two below was the Monster Sigma Retro Gold, which was unpleasantly harsh on some parts of Ryan’s song, despite good presence and

The worst of any of the cables was the Audioquest Anaconda. The piano was harsh, the rhythm turgid and strangely slowed. Louder passages were downright

Finally, the Wireworld Atlantis was played again, but reversed. Was it differ-

sound a little harsh on parts of the song, but a quick comparison revealed the same problem with the Atlantis the “right” way around.

How was the test done? You can see for yourself. The CD is also a CD-ROM, with images of the test setup. Will Dave Salz’s competitors scream bloody murder? Is the sky blue?

Gossip&News“Hearing” Cables

The audio world is full of engineers who are in fact self-taught. John Michell was one of them, but he had a skill that stood him in particularly good stead: he was a master machinist. Because he understood the way mechanical parts must go together, he could make binding posts and banana plugs that would stay tight, whereas the inevitable knockoffs would loosen if you stared at them hard. He could also build precision devices to detect vibration…namely turntables and tone

arms. Those too were machined with a preci-sion Michell’s competi-tors envied. Though John Michell seemed to have been around forever, he was still a relatively young 67 when he died of a

recurrence of lymphoma in October. The company that bears his name will go on, since it has been run for some time by his daughter Julie and her hus-band Steve Rowland. But J. A. Michell has lost an important designer of analog gear. He was working on new designs mere days before his death.

The audio world is arms. Those too were John Michell

When our editor tried it at a show, he had little trouble spotting a particular cable every time. But when we got our own comparator box at UHF, we ran into a problem. The box has connectors we consider mediocre. In our comparisons, we could hear the grainy quality caused by loose connections, and that graininess dominated our impressions.

Meanwhile Wireworld had run into difficulties convincing its dealers to buy their own comparators. Why? Was it because a double blind test is messy to set up? Or because they weren’t eager to show off differences among cables they

Wireworld now has a simpler

All but one. The top-of-the-line Super Eclipse sounded unexpectedly harsh on some passages. The best of the “other” cables was the Nordost Valhalla, which sounded full, yet clear and articulated, with very good voice. It was closest to the Eclipse, and of course to the direct connection. The Kimber Select KS1020 was very good as well, with excellent reproduction of the timbres of both voice and piano. Transients on the plucked bass had good impact. It sounded slightly thin, how-ever, and the sound fi eld was shallower. The Transparent MusicLink Super also did well, with excellent articulation on Ryan’s voice, and excellent weight

Ryan’s song, despite good presence and clear articulation. The worst of any of the cables was the Audioquest Anaconda. The piano was harsh, the rhythm turgid and strangely slowed. Louder passages were downright unpleasant. Finally, the Wireworld Atlantis was played again, but reversed. Was it differ-ent? It did sound a little harsh on parts of the song, but a quick comparison revealed the same problem with the Atlantis the “right” way around. How was the test done? You can see for yourself. The CD is also a CD-ROM, with images of the test setup. Will Dave Salz’s competitors scream bloody

Have you taken “The Course” Yet?

You can spend days reading free material on the uhfmag.com site. But whether you’re

starting out or you’re an old hand, don’t overlook the six-page course on high fi delity:

www.uhfmag.com/book1.html


Goss

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New

s

Most corporations prefer to hush up evidence of falling sales, if they can do it without their execu-tives going to jail, because it has a negative effect on the stock price. Record companies, on the other hand, actually call press confer-ences to announce that their sales are headed for the dumpster. Why? In fact we’re not sure. Perhaps it’s as a warning that they could dis-appear if their (presumably former) customers don’t stop downloading music from the Web. Perhaps we’ll feel sorry for them. With our sym-pathy plus two dollars and a half, they can get a ride on a bus. In actual fact, they’re having trouble getting public sympathy. Their US lobby group, the RIAA, is not exactly following the Dale Carnegie handbook. Among its triumphs: a lawsuit against a 12 year old girl (her frightened mother settled out of court for $2000). And its method of identifying evildoers appears to be less than bulletproof. It has sued a 65 year old grandmother who has never visited a download site, and a software engineer whose computer, a Mac, actually won’t run the Kazaa download program he is suspected of having used. While this last ditch legal maneu-vering is going on, record companies have begun lowering prices on CDs by as much as 40%. Universal Music, which is between owners, began it, and record chains quickly negotiated price reductions with its other suppliers, and dropped the price of other CDs as well. The fact that CDs have long been too expensive is evident. Check the price of a CD at your local record store, and then stride over to the cassette section — if there is still is one — and check the price on that. Last time we looked, the cassette of a typical pop-rock album was 40% cheaper. Since the same art-ists and promoters have to be paid, and since a cassette actually costs more to produce than a CD, one is tempted to conclude that CDs have long been 67% overpriced. In the meantime, the up-front costs

would rent a $200/hour studio and stay there for months, sometimes recording actual notes and sometimes smoking stuff. No one gets to do that today. Indeed, a lot of pop recordings don’t get made in studios at all. In both fi lm and audio, the digital revolution has brought dividends. A digital recorder and a 64-track mixer that once would have blown a gaping hole in a million dollars can now be had in virtual form for a few hundred (the one shown here,

DigiDesign ProTools, has a price that begins in three digits). Add a fast laptop computer and per-haps $3000 of microphones and preamps, and you’re on your way to your next album.

Even classical and jazz albums are now seldom made in studios. A small concert hall or even a church is perfect.

Of course there are the costs of

That includes an open bar for reporters, of course, but that may not be all. It has been documented in some depth elsewhere that, in

many cases, the promotional budget also includes large amounts of money given to “indie” promoters, who in turn pay radio music directors to add new record-ings to their playlists. So notice. The record companies pay money so that you get to listen to their music for nothing on the radio (they pass the costs on to you if you buy the CD). But then if you try to get the music for nothing on the Net, they sue you. Can record companies reinvent themselves? You tell us.

Here’s a company that is trying to reinvent the model. Magnatune (magnatune.com) says that “We are a record company but we are not evil.” What it offers is “shareware” music. On its site are Net “radio stations,” and fi les of their recordings in both MP3 and genuine CD quality. And they’re free. Well, actually whether you pay is up to you, and what you pay is up to you as well. An album may cost you from $5 to $18…you decide. Many of the artists (rock, electronica, metal, classics) are not household names, though we did notice, in the classical sec-tion, the excellent Canadian violinist Lara St. John, playing Bach concertos. John Buckman explains why he started Magnatune. When my wife was signed to a British record label, we were really excited. In the

end, she sold 1000 CDs, lost all rights to her music for 10 years (even though the CD has been out of print for many years), and earned a total of $45 in royalties. The record label that signed her wasn’t evil: they were one of the good guys, and gave her a 70/30 split of the profi ts (of which there were none). The label got screwed at every turn: distributors refused to carry their CDs unless they spent thousands on useless print ads, record stores demanded graft in order to stock the albums, and in general, all forces colluded to destroy this small, progressive label. Magnatune, by contrast, has no advertising beyond word of mouth, and the artist gets half the money. There’s something so refreshing, so non-RIAA, that it makes you want to rush out and tell everyone you know. Consider it done.

Can Record Companies Reinvent Themselves?

“We Are Not Evil”

they can get a ride on a bus.includes large amounts of money given

tives going to jail, because it has a negative effect on the stock price. Record companies, on the other hand, actually call press confer-

that their sales are headed for the dumpster. Why?

In fact we’re not sure. Perhaps it’s as a warning that they could dis-appear if their (presumably former) customers don’t stop downloading music from the Web. Perhaps we’ll feel sorry for them. With our sym-pathy plus two dollars and a half, they can get a ride on a bus.

In actual fact, they’re having trouble have been dropping. Time was a band would rent a $200/hour studio and stay

haps $3000 of microphones and preamps, and you’re on your way to your next album.

Even classical and jazz albums are now seldom made in studios. A small concert hall or even a church is perfect.

Of course there are the costs of promotion.

That includes an open bar for reporters, of course, but that may not be all. It has been documented in some depth elsewhere that, in

many cases, the promotional budget includes large amounts of money given

they can get a ride on a bus.includes large amounts of money given

Use it, or slowly lose it…

With each passing week, your cables are making a worse connection with your

equipment. We treat ours with ProGold spray or wipes. Nothing like it for

prevention. Miraculous when things go really wrong.

www.uhfmag.com/Connectors.html


Gossip&N

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Alternative Audio . . . . . . . . . 12Almarro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59Applause Audio . . . . . . . . . . 13Audiomat . . . . . . . . . . Couv. 3Audio Plus Services . . . . . . . . 33Audio Room . . . . . . . . . . . 22Bluebird Music . . . . . . . . 16, 27Blue Circle . . . . . . . . . . . . 17Charisma Audio . . . . . . . . . . 8Copland . . . . . . . . . . . Cover 3Daruma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58Diamond Groove . . . . . . . . . . 6Divergent Technologies . . Cover 3Eichmann . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61Entre’Acte Audio . . . . . . . . . 17Europroducts Internat. 10, 18, 56, 61Exposure . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27Fab Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13General Audio . . . . . . . . . . 56Globe Audio . . . . . . . . . . . 57Griffi n Audio . . . . . . . . . . . 26Hi Fi Fo Fum . . . . . . . . . . . 18Jadis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9Justice Audio . . . . . . . . Cover 2Just May Audio . . . . . . . Cover 2Living Voice . . . . . . . . . . . 16Marchand Electronics . . . . . . 14Moon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9Murata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12Mutine . . . . . . . . . . . Couv, 3Natural Frequency Audio . . . . 14Pierre Gabriel. . . . . . . . . . . . 9Plurison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33ProAc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26Roksan . . . . . . . . . . . Cover 2Shanling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Simaudio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9Signature Audio . . . . . . . . . 11Soundstage . . . . . . . . . . . . 23Totem Acoustic . . . . . . . Cover 4UHF Back Issues . . . . . . . . . 51UHF Books . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Venus Hi-Fi. . . . . . . . . . . . 58YBA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

The reason we’re putt ing it in quotation marks? Well, you’ll see in a moment. It’s not news that rock artists you can hear on disc are…ahem, augmented by the magic of electronics. Is it news that the same may be true even if the artists are live? Or perhaps we should say if the artists are “live.” We’ll cut to the chase. You’ve prob-ably seen demos in which elec-tronic wizardry was used to change the pitch of a human voice, from Donald Duck down to an octave below basso profundo.

Heck, you can buy software like that for your home computer now. But let’s go a step further. Imagine an electronic device that can not only change the pitch of your voice, but can change it to the pitch it should be. And it doesn’t require a mainframe computer, either. A Japanese company has brought out an inexpensive version for karaoke bars. For pro venues, such as

studios or stages, TC-Helicon has brought out a software plug-in you add to TC Elec-tronics’ PowerCore audio software suite. “Today,” says the company’s literature, “some kind of pitch correction is a prereq-

uisite in many areas, as great intonation in vocal tracks are (sic) expected in most types of popular music.” After we had puzzled over the gram-mar a bit (the company is German, so we should perhaps cut it some slack), we wondered about the precise signifi cance of the word “today” in that sentence. Does the company mean that “today” popular music is dominated by people who can’t sing for sour apples? What we suspect it means is that “today” it is harder and harder to hear live musicians even if one pays for con-cert tickets. It goes without saying that they will be amplifi ed, which is to say distorted. Their sound will be equalized, that is to say distorted some more. The music may even be split into different bands, processed separately, and recon-stituted. Even serious dance companies use recorded music, as do musical comedies. The producers of one musical comedy explained the use of tape rather than musicians by saying that “we didn’t want to take work away from musicians, we just wanted spectators to have the same experience they get listening to the record.” Really? Gee, we can remember when it was the other way around.

“Canada’s music industry has been the hardest hit of any country in the world by illegal fi le sharing. Retail sales are down by more than $425 million since 1999. In the last year, staff lay-offs at record companies have topped 20 per cent. (About 45,000 people are dependent, directly or indirectly, on the recording industry in Canada.) If this decline continues, there will be less money to invest in Canadian artists and Canadian music.”

Brian Robertson, PresidentCanadian Recording Industry Assoc.

The Globe and Mail, October 2003

“In England, home taping is eroding the industry to such an extent — and this is not an exaggeration — that in two or three years there may not be an indus-try.”

Brian Robertson, PresidentCanadian Recording Industry Assoc.

UHF Magazine, November 1982

ADVERTISERS

The Sky is Falling

“Singing” On KeySilence Audiophile RecordingsExplore them. www.uhfmag.com/Silence.html


Do you want your loudspeakers to reproduce the extremes of the audible range of frequen-cies? Well of course you do.

Everyone talks about the need for deep and powerful bass, and for extension of the top end. So we live in an era when even big box stores sell subwoofers, and when a major claim trumpeted for media such as SACD and DVD-Audio is extended frequency range. Whatever happened to the mid-range? The attention given to the extremes, perhaps extending all the way to inau-dibility and beyond, is not new. When high fi delity fi rst became a mainstream topic of conversation, half a century ago, the characteristic of “hi-fi ” most often mentioned was complete frequency range. Indeed, I still have a hi-fi demo disc from that era which attempts to demonstrate hi-fi by presenting the same musical passage three times: with full frequency range (20 Hz to 18 kHz), with moderate filtering (100 Hz to 8 kHz), and fi nally with severe fi ltering (200 Hz to 5 kHz). As you can imagine, by the time you hit the third band the music appears to be played on a kazoo. The physical aspect of common hi-fi speakers seemed to confi rm the primary goal of extended range. Hi-fi speakers were much larger than common domes-tic speakers, and seemed to promise lots of bass. And hi-fi speakers had tweeters, whereas junk audio then did not. I was moved to think about all this recently after I spent a couple of sessions listening to a pair of Quad electrostatic speakers. These weren’t the modern Quads, but a German-made reproduc-tion of the original Quad ESL-57 of the 1950’s. Quad’s founder, Peter Walker, didn’t go along with the big-woofer-plus-tweeter orthodoxy of the time. His original speaker was and is a single large panel. Although it undoubtedly reproduces a larger frequency band than a 50’s “console phonograph,” it is known not for deep bass or sparkling highs but for its amazing midrange. Selling midrange at the dawn of

hi-fi was not exactly simple. After all, even a table radio could reproduce the midrange, the part of the spectrum rep-resented by cut 3 on that demo record. Who needed expensive equipment to do what a $30 radio could do? But the Quad could accomplish something magical that other speakers of the day could not, and which most modern speakers cannot even today: reproduce the midrange with vanish-ingly low distortion. And the midrange is important, because that’s where most of the music is located. For example, middle C, the start of the octave that is at the centre of most music, is at 256 Hz, well within the range of a table radio. Although the leftmost key of a piano produces a note around 27 Hz, a lot of music never goes below low C, 128 Hz. At the top end, a soprano saxophone soars to only a little above 1200 Hz, a frequency even a tele-phone will reproduce. Even the piccolo tops out around 3500 Hz, considerably higher than the violin. Do we need extended frequency range?

Well, yes we do, because musical instruments don’t produce pure tones. What distinguishes their sound from the output of a sine wave signal generator is their harmonics. The piccolo’s top note, for instance, has a second harmonic at 7 kHz and a fourth harmonic at 14 kHz. If the harmonics don’t get reproduced, you’ll have diffi culty telling a fl ute from a violin. Ah…but what if they’re not repro-duced accurately? Which brings me back to the old/new Quad. This legendary speaker is not known for response that is extended at either extreme, but in the midrange it has very low harmonic distortion. Notice the word “harmonic”? Speaker manufacturers don’t often quote distor-tion fi gures, or if they do it is at unre-alistically low levels. If your speaker has perhaps 5% or 10% distortion at real-life levels — and don’t think for a moment this doesn’t happen — it actually invents new harmonics, to augment and confuse those of the music. What’s worse, it may even invent odd-ordered harmonics (at three or five times the fundamental frequency), something acoustic instru-ments don’t do. What good are the highest harmonics if those harmonics have nothing to do with the music you are trying to reproduce? However I’m not trying to throw cold water on attempts to reproduce a wide spectrum of frequencies. Rather, I want to shed light on the reason an ancient design like that of the Quad sounds so much better than you could guess by looking at its sparse published specifi cations. Its harmonic distortion in the midrange is many times lower than in most speakers you’re likely to hear. You’re missing some harmonics, but you may not care, because at least the ones you’re hearing are actually related to the music. Today you can buy a subwoofer that dips to 20 Hz or a super tweeter that begins at 15 kHz. Both can add to the musical experience, but neither can com-pensate for what may be going wrong in between.

STATE OF THE ART:THE BOOK

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See page 4.

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at the back?Countless readers have confi rmed it over the years: when they get their hands on the latest issue of UHF, they open it to the last page. The reason all of them mention: Gerard Rejskind’s last-page column, State of the Art. Since the magazine’s founding, the column has grappled with the major questions of high end audio. It has been acclaimed by readers around the world. Now, the columns from the fi rst 60 issues of UHF are brought together into one book. Each is exactly as it was originally published, and each is accompanied by a new introduction. Order your copy today: $18.95 in Canada or the US, C$32 elsewhere in the world, air mail included.

Documents

A multichannel tube MC phono stage from Rega SPEAKERS: Focus Audio