The Gearhead

Boulder 850 Balanced Mono Power Amplifier Pair Monoblocks. Overkill, right? The use of conjoined-channel, “stereo” amplification is so ubiquitous, most folks look at two big separate mono amps and say “Nope!” Nonetheless, the discovery and development of amplification began as a mono endeavor. Actually, if you think about it, the stereo amp is the strange bird. An amplifier does one thing: it takes power from the wall, processes it, and then whips it up and down in big volt swings to represent the music signal fed into it. Amplifiers turn our wall power into music, and music is a wildly complex thing. They have a tough job. When you consider that speakers in a room perform the task of re-blending the left and right signals in front of you, you can see what a massive role in the eventual stereo image that they play. So, question: Would it be better to keep those signals separate until they get to the speakers? You’re damn right it would. That’s why we have monoblock

QLN Signature 3 Bookshelf Speakers; Walnut Pair One of the best hifi forum pejoratives I've seen is the term “cone-and-dome monkey coffin,” used to denigrate a standard mini monitor type of speaker design. If you’re presently looking at a set of these, as I am, you can try to imagine an old monkey who lived a long and happy life, laid to rest by his monkey descendants and lowered into the earth entombed in an adorable, BBC-licensed, LS3/5a cabinet. Why is a BBC monitor shaped the way it is? Why are these mini QLN monitors shaped like a trapezoid instead? Did the BBC scientists miss something that QLN did not? I’ve noticed trending waves of unique looks, each of which seem to concern a group of companies for a period of time, all throughout the history of audio. First you had Electro Voice and the giant cabinets like the fridge-sized Patrician dominating homes. Years later, Klipsch popularized the corner horn approach, and by the end of that trend, Klipsch had s

Focal Sopra No. 2 Floorstanding Speakers Oui, oui, mon ami, le fromage du poisson! Pardon my French, but this set of speakers from Focal is amazing. But then, I knew they would be. They’re the smaller brother of the speaker that I got to know quite well in the month leading up to last year’s Denver’s Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. The Sopra is a speaker line that aims for the summit, while staying within reach of the wealthy. Hah, poor bunch, they. Too many amazing speakers to choose from at the $14,000 a pair range. These do a lot of what the TAD Evolution One speakers do, but with their own character. Not surprising that listening to these flawless gloss black Sopra No. 2s reminds me of TAD. They both use beryllium in the tweeter, I believe. My journey with the larger Sopra No. 3 was illuminating in the sense that I distinctly heard a brand new set of speakers undergo a significant initial break-in over the month preceding the audio show. We knew this needed to happen to get all of

LSA Group LSA-1 Signature Bookshelf Speakers; Rosewood Pair I like to directly compare my DIY speakers to some of the world’s best designs from time to time, if just to take regular whacks at my ego. In my test rig, I’ve got a nice high-current speaker and amplifier switching box, so comparisons are easy and transparent. And I will say it’s nice to occasionally hear no difference in quality from a well-regarded speaker compared to mine, hearing instead just a change in perspective. My crossover intentionally allows a very slight dip — the “Nudell dip” — in the lower-midrange, to give the soundstage presentation a touch more depth. In contrast, I hear some speaker designers going the other way, accentuating the vocal and presence ranges to give extra detail and bite. Sometimes, in my opinion, at the expense of livability and resulting in listener fatigue. There is a middle ground, however. The TAD Evolution One speakers are smack dab in the middle of that middle ground (I call t

Paradigm Signature S4 Bookshelf Speakers One of the topics that resonates most with me when it comes to speaker design is the all-important crossover point frequency. Based loosely on the size of drivers available (influenced by consumers’ desires for final speaker size) and drivers' individual strengths, if it’s a two-way, the crossover point is usually around 2.5KHz. Right around where our hearing systems are tuned for the highest precision. Right where the human voice really shines. It’s a pity, but I guess that’s what makes the challenge worth tackling. The challenge is real: use a wideband midbass unit so you can push the crossover point above the vocal range, and you lose bass. Use a legitimately pistonic driver at low frequencies with a big XMax, and you likely are deep into cone breakup by the time you want to cross it over, and the sound is colored by the choice of material and construction of the driver. One solution is to go further: split the sound into t

TAD Evolution One Floorstanding Speakers You never know what a new day will bring, and this one brought me the best speakers I’ve ever heard in my life. No big deal. I’ve heard a lot of great speakers. I’ve listened extensively to PS Audio’s Infinity IRS V system, the Infinity Beta system, and TAD Reference One, and at audio shows I’ve gravitated toward the big speaker rooms and heard Tidals, YGs, massive electrostats like the Martin Logans & Sanders Sound, Focal Grand Utopias and big Wilsons galore. And a whole bunch of others I’m forgetting. I even got a chance to have Arnie Nudell demo his “IRS Killer” speakers for me at his home before his passing. My audio memory of that is brief, so it’s difficult for me to say with 100% certainty that these TAD Evolution One speakers are better than Arnie’s, but the fact that I’m wondering says something about these dynamic speakers from the TAD Lab. Something I’ve noticed here at The Music Room is that many speakers need att

Vitus Audio RS-100 Stereo Power Amplifier Depth. That’s what you get with a good A/B amp that you just can’t quite touch with even the most excellent Class D. Sorry, it’s the truth. Most Class A/B amps on most loads at most volumes stay in Class A anyway, and there’s no contest. Sure, you can optimize the path of the power to your Class D monoblocks, use isolation bases to minimize vibration, place Shakti Stones or other EMI/RFI filters over the PCBs, put on your voodoo suit and hail the demon gods of audio to deliver Nirvana. Or you can plug in a high quality A/B amp and never look back. That pesky switching frequency and the usual harmonics of Class D just end up getting in the way of the sheer magic that is possible with the world’s best A/Bs. Even if you eliminate the upper harmonics and create a harmonic structure similar to tube amps, as PS Audio does with the Stellar S300 amplifier I use for testing, you can’t quite match the subtle details an A/B brings that

Martin Logan Motion LX16 Bookshelf Speakers When something jumps out at me, I’ve got to write it down. I don’t generally think about price or any consideration other than excellent sound. So while most of these blog posts will likely be about higher priced gear, if something that is budget priced sounds like a winner, I’ll shriek it from the mountain top. Which brings me to the subject of this blog post. These little Martin Logan Motion LX16 bookshelf speakers had me interested from the first sounds that they made. After writing my recent lengthy cable manifesto while listening to Gary Burton and Makoto Ozone’s wonderful album Time Thread, I came across these high gloss black beauties and wanted to keep listening to the vibes and piano duo. If you wind up with these because a certain someone said they were good (it happens), definitely fire up this recording on the little Motion LX16s. These speakers were made to produce the realistic soundstage of a cream of the crop vi

PrimaLuna ProLogue Four Stereo Tube Power Amplifier Let’s talk about the difference between tubes at a bargain, versus the no-holds-barred approach. The magic of tubes is real, and while it’s easy to say that, the fact remains that you can hear certain qualities to the midrange and top end when tubes are involved, that you don’t necessarily hear with solid state. It’s something that can sound different on different music — quite hard to pin down with words, although you know it when you hear it. And if you DO hear these qualities from a solid state amplifier, it’s notable. Everyone wants to be the first to remark on whether an SS amp has a sense of “tubeyness.” The amplifier I use for testing here at The Music Room is widely described as such, and it comes about its tube-ish nature by way of a bit of second order and third order harmonics in the input stage. It comes close to the real thing, but it ain’t quite the same. Clearly the bright bottles are onto something, but they don’t

Classe Delta CP-500 Stereo Preamplifier Over the years it’s always been difficult to describe to people what a preamplifier does, and why there would be a need for one. To most people, a power amplifier with no volume control, or an expensive, large device that is little more than a dressed-up volume knob — these things are mind-bl owing. All the while — we’re talkin’ years here — I’ve witnessed again and again with my own ears a myriad of effects to a system from just adding or replacing a preamplifier. I’ve heard soundstages narrow (not a good thing) and soundstages spread bewilderingly wide. I’ve heard an uptick in punch and “bounce” when a pre is added. I’ve heard a lowering of noise. I’ve heard a sound go from interesting to breathtakingly realistic with the addition of a good pre. But I’ve also heard sibilance added, magic removed, detail obscured and all the bass attenuated. The best preamplifiers do something that is noticeable, but they’re judged first on whether the r

Harbeth 40.1 Speakers / 3-way Monitors w/ Stands I’m finally getting around to writing this blog post, a few months removed from one of the more impressive feats of a speaker that I’ve witnessed. The Music Room is the kind of business that interests everyone in this hobby. We’re not beholden to any brand when it comes to our giant library of used hifi equipment. We try to take the best stuff in hifi audio’s past, so there is an element of curation to the offerings. It’s a great thing to be a part of. And likewise, we love this role and our industry and we try to stay connected and lend a hand where we can. The quickly growing vinyl subscription service and record club called Vinyl Me Please — you may have heard of them from their recent partnership with Classic Album Sundays — is based nearby here, and it’s got franchises popping up all across the country. One of the community-focused things Vinyl Me Please does is host listening and lecture parties called “The Spins” (c

B&K Reference 200.2 S2 Stereo Power Amplifier Warm is a strange adjective to use to describe the way something looks, or the way it sounds. Does “warmth” play a role in the highest caliber audio systems? Or does its implied deviation from neutral suggest that warmth doesn’t belong in the same conversation about the best sound? Well the problem with that take is that audio excellence and music enjoyment are very subjective and personal experiences. And how do you characterize warmth to someone else? Since warmth is a sound quality descriptor, and music is a wildly fluctuating mess of tones and harmonics, the amount of warmth must be variable from piece to piece and track to track. And person to person. What if there’s an amp that is both mildly warm and impressively detailed? Would you believe this sound comes from a solid state amp? One audiophile may be impressed, and another might shrug. That’s the conundrum I face when firing up this eminently enjoyable power amplifier from

AudioQuest Columbia XLR Balanced Interconnects Some of the things people talk about in high end audio are actually very subtle and hard to even experience unless everything in your system is set up right. Things like P.R.A.T. (Pace, Rhythm, And Timing), musicality, soundstage depth, tonal truth, and more. Maybe the only hifi buzzword you can experience without a proper setup would be the stereotypical “black background.” Turn off your stereo, and there you go. Nyuk, nyuk. Wise guy eh? When folks get all up in arms about hifi snake oil, and they claim, red-faced, that no one can tell the difference between $10K speaker cables and a coat hanger, one has to assume that these people A) have never heard the cables they deride, and B) have not set up a proper test for themselves to compare cables more closely related than say a set of Wireworlds and a strip of tin foil. Number one step in the process to hear and contemplate the contribution that cables make to the overall prese

iFi Pro iCan Balanced Headphone Amp / Preamplifier Sometimes all you need to do to suss out an audio component is look at the front faceplate. The features that the manufacturer envisioned for the device can tell you a lot about what they find important and what they’re trying to bring to the table. I was emphatically sold on iFi Audio as an amazing David vs. Goliath hifi story by a loyal PS Audio customer calling in on the phone when I was retail sales manager for the brand. He was emphatic that the designers behind this equipment were the cream of the crop, and that the (in his words) unfortunately low prices of the iFi gear meant that most folks with the coin and the ear didn’t take the brand seriously. Well I’m taking this iFi Pro iCan tube / solid state headphone amplifier and preamplifier very seriously. I mean, my goodness — it’s a tube-based balanced preamplifier for less than $1000 (just guessing at our eventual price)… for this feature set for the price, can yo