The Absolute Sound December 2021

Zappa’s “Dexterous Noodling”? “Frank Zappa in Hi-Res (Finally!): Revisiting Moments of Brilliance and Delight” by Alan Taffel in the October 2021 issue (page 138) was a disappointment and a lost opportunity—one that I hope TAS will address in a future issue. The Qobuz store currently contains twenty-four Frank Zappa albums in 24-bit/96kHz quality, and of those, seventeen are also available in 24-bit/192kHz quality. Based on its title, I assumed Mr. Taffel’s article would discuss the lineage of these new digital releases and analyze which sound best compared to their LP or CD counterparts. Instead, we were forced to endure reading about how Mr. Taffel has “outgrown” Mr. Zappa’s “embarrassingly juvenile” lyrics, and that Mr. Taffel now views Mr. Zappa’s guitar solos as “the same thing over and over” to the point that…

“As vital as shows are, they are far from ideal vehicles for gaining new converts to high-quality music reproduction.” No one was surprised when the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest announced that it would cancel this year’s show, scheduled for October 8-10 in Denver. Many other organizations have cancelled or postponed their events because of the pandemic, and given the recent surge in cases from the Delta variant, packing thousands of people into tiny hotel rooms for three days didn’t seem prudent. But no one expected that the Rocky Mountain show would cease all together. The show organizers, in their September 2 announcement, said: “And so it is with both sadness and anticipation for the future, we announce that the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest as we have all known it will be no…

Ideon Audio Absolute Epsilon DAC The Absolute Epsilon DAC is the result of Ideon Audio’s continuous effort to design and manufacture the best converter today. As with all Ideon Audio products, the Absolute Epsilon is a fully proprietary in-house design, made without the use of any third party or off-the-self modules. With its futureproof modular construction, the Ideon Absolute Epsilon DAC encapsulates the current state of the art in digital signal conversion. It includes a next-generation analog stage, with a proprietary symmetrical ultra-low-noise power supply. Dedicated software for the ESS 9038PRO DAC chip was developed by Ideon Audio in conjunction with ESS. Newly designed bespoke transformers with extreme cores run at more than three times the necessary current. Also, a new and upgradable separate DAC engine was designed with more layers…

The idea of honoring those men and women who’ve been instrumental in creating the high end has its roots in TAS’s series of large-format books, The Absolute Sound’s Illustrated History of High-End Audio. In the course of researching Volume One TAS writers and editors developed a renewed appreciation for the achievements of the pioneers who laid the foundations of this great industry. To honor these visionary engineers, entrepreneurs, and journalists, we decided seven years ago to create a High-End Audio Hall of Fame. For the inaugural round of inductees in 2014, we asked our writing staff to submit a list of candidates. The criteria were simple: Who had the greatest impact on audio’s evolution from laboratory experiment to consumer product? Who shaped the high end most profoundly, either through technical innovation,…

William Zane Johnson, (1926-2011) Paul Wilbur Klipsch, (1904-2002) Henry Esplin Kloss, (1929-2002) Hiroyasu Kondo, (1941-2006) Saul B. Marantz, (1911-1997) Frank H. McIntosh, 1906-1990) Jim Thiel, (1947-2009) Julian Vereker, (1945-2000) Edgar Villchur, (1917-2011) Peter Walker, (1916-2003) Mark Levinson, (b. 1946) Arnie Nudell, (1937-2017) Harry Pearson (1937-2014) Ivor Tiefenbrun, (b. 1946) Jim Winey, (b. 1934) Alan Blumlein, (1903-1942) Doug Sax, (1936-2015) J. Robert Stuart, (b. 1948) Atasushi Miura, (b. 1934) David Wilson, (1944-2018) Sidney Harman, (1918-2011) J. Gordon Holt, (1930-2009) Masaru Ibuka, (1908-1997) Akio Morita, (1921-1999) John Bowers, (1923-1987) Raymond Cooke, (1925-1995) Richard Vandersteen, (b. 1950) Robert Carver, (b. 1943) Nelson Pass, (b. 1951) Dan D’Agostino, (b. 1947) Keith Johnson, (b. 1938) David Hafler, (1919-2003) Arthur Janszen, (1907-1991) John Curl, (b. 1946) Joe Grado, (1924-2015) Peter Suchy, (b.1945) Jacques Mahul, (b. 1949) Gayle Martin Sanders, (b. 1947) Siegfried Linkwitz, (1935-2018) Alon Wolf, (b. 1964) Jurgen Reis, (b. 1961) Bill Conrad (b. 1946) Lew Johnson (b. 1944)…

I doubt I’m going to get much argument suggesting that in the supposed Gotterdammerung of vinyl following the introduction of the compact disc nearly four decades ago, turntables and arms have become decidedly-what is le mot juste here?-pretentious? extravagant? grandiose? even a little ludicrous? Back in the eighties during the “turntable wars,” the stand-mounted Goldmund radial integrated was a one-off, until it was joined by the Rockport Sirius sometime in the nineties. Since then, while it is an exaggeration to say that record-playing components of such size have proliferated, they are now far from uncommon. It’s never been easy to situate a turntable on a bookshelf-even for normal-sized tables, a shelf of greater depth, cut to fit the component, placed atop and fixed to the main shelf, was required. But…