Stereophile November 2015

THERE ARE AS MANY OPINIONS AS THERE ARE EXPERTS THIS ISSUE: Do audiophiles buy components to try to re-create that very first time? There is a difference between being deeply moved and being deeply delighted. Haydn engages my soul every time, but always the part of my soul that experiences delight—no dark brooding romantic passion, not even in the Sturm und Drang works. He sounds to me the ultimate Enlightenment composer. As I continue my third traversal of his 104-odd symphonies in the cycle recorded by Antal Dorati and the Philharmonia Hungarica, I consistently feel as I did when I stood in the rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial on a bright, brisk day in spring: musical thoughts wafting in and out like light and air moving through open colonnades of elegant form.…

TAKE HEED! Unless marked otherwise, all letters to the magazine and its writers are assumed to be for possible publication. In the spirit of vigorous debate implied by the First Amendment, and unless we are requested not to, we publish correspondents’ e-mail addresses. A gentle man has died Editor: Len Schneider was in the industry for many years. He was a pretty fair technical writer. I engaged him to help me write the owner’s manuals (each over 80 pages) for our Halo C 1 and C 2 surround processors, and he was a pleasure to work with. I don’t think he was capable of saying anything negative about people— a rare trait in our community. He died in hospice from cancer, following many years of health challenges. —Richard Schram Parasound Merlin & Burmester Editor: The audio industry…

SUBMISSIONS: Those promoting audio-related seminars, shows, and meetings should e-mail the when, where, and who to JAtkinson@enthusiastnetwork.com at least eight weeks before the month of the event. The deadline for the January 2016 issue is October 20, 2015. US: NEW YORK John Atkinson Back in the 1990s, record producer and audio writer John Marks offered me a report from a Consumer Electronics Show. Titled “Las Vegas on One Pair of Underpants,” it outlined how he’d managed to cover the show after the airline had lost his luggage. The piece had me laughing, so when John subsequently approached me with an idea for a regular column in which he would write about audio components and recordings in equal measure, I was all ears. John’s “The Fifth Element” premiered in our March 2001 issue, and…

INSIDER VIEWS ON EVERYTHING VINYL THIS ISSUE: A brief respite for the Continuum Audio Labs Caliburn. How big is the performance gap between TechDAS’s new Air Force Two ($52,000) and original Air Force One ($105,000) turntables? How do you halve the price without also sacrificing the build quality and features of the flagship model that defines the brand? Even $52,000 is more than most people pay for an automobile, not to mention a turntable. Still, TechDAS’s assertion on their website that the price of their new model is “reasonably improved” over the old strikes me as an understatement. How much sound and build quality, and which features, do you give up by saving $53,000? Very little of any of those things, as far as I can tell. The Air Force Two retains most…

IN SEARCH OF THE EXCEPTIONAL THIS ISSUE: Art culls his record collection and listens to Allnic’s T-1800 integrated amplifier. Please don’t tell her I said this, but lately, my wife has been getting twitchy about my records. Twitchy as in: She wants me to sell them. Or at least some of them. I have only myself to blame. For years, I have shared with her my every joy that came of finding, at a lawn sale or garage sale or on eBay or at a record store whose proprietors “had no idea what this thing is worth,” some rare and valuable treasure. And therein lay another facet of my problem: As often as I would rejoice at the music I was poised to enjoy, or the sheer pleasure of acquiring something rare and…

LOVING MUSIC TO BITS THIS ISSUE: Michael Lavorgna listens to AudioQuest’s JitterBug, Schiit Audio’s Wyrd, and UpTone Audio’s USB Regen. Unless something is broken, the bits from your computer will be delivered to your DAC intact; the claim behind three new products I recently listened through is that each can reduce noise within the DAC—noise that could otherwise corrupt the analog signal and thus make our music less musical. This notion is not based on audiophool woo-woo, but on the basic electronics of mixed-signal systems:1 Although its input is digital data, a DAC’s output is subject to all the noise problems of analog circuits. We also need to keep in mind that a USB cable is responsible for transmitting not only your data, but also the 5V DC power leg supplied by the…