Stereophile April 2018

Enough has been said by now about the technical details of how Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) works to fill several books. But the technical details are only part of the story, and probably not the most interesting part—and they’re certainly not what provokes the extreme emotional responses of many to the format. So let’s jump into the business and practical aspects of MQA to which so many audiophiles are reacting. From the point of view of MQA Ltd., what might success look like? “Success” would be achieved when MQA is used to master most, if not all, new releases and back catalog of recorded music for streaming, downloading, or other uses. The higher the percentage of recordings mastered and released MQA encoded, the better. Nor must MQA be restricted to recordings of…

There’s still hope for integrity Editor: John Atkinson’s “As We See It” in the February issue—“More on MQA,” www.stereophile.com/content/more-mqa—was the most full-throated political-sociological statement/cri de guerre we’ve ever seen from him. Well said, and an impassioned higher purpose is clearly evident to all. Currying favor with the corporate interests Atkinson has to dance with doesn’t at all appear to be his reflexive go-to fallback … Bravo! In this age of ever-more-frequent advertorials and related, someone of depth and stature has to show how it’s done. —John Penturnjpen@rogers.com More on MQA Editor: I really appreciated John Atkinson’s “As We See It” in the February 2018 issue. It is great to see Stereophile acknowledge the restrictive nature of MQA and the potential for that to cause harm. If I were a manufacturer of consumer DACs and I had invested…

Author Rachel Joyce clearly knows her music. EVERYWHERE: BOOKSTORES Paul Messenger Regardless of who wrote it, a book titled The Music Shop will tempt any music lover. Evidence of this novel’s eclecticism is presented early: It begins with an epigraph by Nick Drake, and the first chapter is titled “The Man Who Only Liked Chopin,” followed by “Oh No Not My Baby.” Rachel Joyce has written, essentially, a romance set in 1988. Frank, who runs a music shop in a rundown part of town, has a special gift. He applies his deep knowledge of music as a kind of psychotherapy, helping, with considerable patience and expertise, a motley crew of neighbors as well as Ilse Brauchmann, a mysterious German woman. Frank is also battling a local development company, and record-label reps who are trying…

ATTENTION ALL AUDIO SOCIETIES: We have a page on the Stereophile website dedicated solely to you: www.stereophile.com/audiophile-societies. If you’d like to have your audio-society information posted on the site, e-mail Chris Vogel at info@XLinkAudio.com. Please note that it is inappropriate for a retailer to promote a new product line in “Calendar” unless this is associated with a seminar or similar event. CALIFORNIA ❚ Sunday, March 18, 2–5pm: The Los Angeles & Orange County Audio Society will hold its monthly meeting at Upscale Audio (2058 Wright Avenue, La Verne). Focal, Nordost, and PrimaLuna will be featured at this event. Nordost will perform product demonstrations and cable comparisons while offering special-event–only pricing. Additionally, any attendee wishing to trade up a lower-model Nordost cable to a Heimdall 2, Frey 2, or Tyr 2 model will be…

At Stereophile, we don’t generally allow Mulligans—review do-overs. Usually, we take a second look at a product we’ve reviewed only when the first sample turns out to have been defective, especially if it was damaged in shipping—and we rarely do even that. In my March 2018 column I reviewed two new cartridges from Kuzma Ltd.: the CAR-50 ($5895) and the CAR-60 ($12,995). Presumably, CAR is an abbreviation of cartridge, but for $12,995 you could buy a car you could climb into and drive home—so the CAR-60 had better be a damn great cartridge. The CAR-60’s qualities of parts and construction were certainly great, as were both its published specifications and the measurements I took of it. (See last month’s column for details.) Although I described the CAR-50’s overall sound as “bland,” I…

On at least one occasion that I can recall—in 1996, in the early days of Listener magazine—a US publicist for the Japanese manufacturing company Denon told me that they planned to discontinue their DL-103 moving-coil phono cartridge, an enduringly popular model that had been in production since 1962. At the time, neither the DL-103 nor any of their other cartridge models appeared on Denon’s US price lists, and neither English-language promotional materials nor even a basic spec sheet was available to American consumers or press. (All of this is charbroiled into my memory because the young woman in question was almost perversely unpleasant, a characteristic normally regarded as a disqualification for her line of work.) And near the end of this century’s first decade, an audio-industry veteran who didn’t work…