HiWire

The Channel Islands D-100s look decent, but you'll need a preamp or line controller for volume control.

Thanks, Reks. I'll look around for Thiel dealers in my area.

That actually hurts even more... I was thinking about getting the "nice" Paradigms for years - particularly the Signature S6. I'll still go and audition them, but it sounds like they're better left to the home theater guys. I read that they did something to the drivers to save cost, compared to the last revision of the Signature series. I'll check out the Opera and Quad loudspeakers and then go back to re-audition the Totem "The One" and the PSB Synchrony Ones. Unfortunately, I think my budget is going to be closer to $2,000 for a pair of speakers rather than $5,000, which is almost certainly going to lead to serious compromises. The only way to get good speakers at that price is to buy used. aerius knows me - I don't compromise much on sound quality, so I'll probably delay the speaker question for another few years until I can afford something better.

I'm going to take a pass on it, then... I guess it's going to be Sonus Faber after all...

re: Grado differences I just listened to "The Best of the Corrs" last night on my home system, which I had listened to twice in a row on my portable CD player. It was just for fun, because I wasn't expecting much difference on a pop recording. Big mistake. The difference in the amount of detail and richness on the HP-2s was huge... instrument separation, soundstage, and timing were all improved. Unfortunately... the first tracks on the collection were pronounced in their "plasticky" sound - all the voices and instruments sound very compressed and sterile in the studio recordings, and it is particularly obvious in the synthesized instruments. There is a complete lack of ambiance and acoustics, which emphasizes the pop radio intention of the tracks. By the middle of the CD, reality starts to creep in. I don't know if they switched producers, equipment or engineers, but there is a much more live sound in their subsequent recordings. The conclusion to this experiment: the high end Grados can certainly get you farther, but you need a good recording to enjoy the music. My home system ruthlessly revealed the problems with the disc, where I had never noticed any before... to the point of making the music hard to enjoy. The portable system is much more forgiving (or fuzzimifying) with bad recordings.

I tried a pair of K 701's and they were pretty lifeless compared to my Grado HP-2's. They were supposed to have had more than 1,000 hours of burn-in and the amplification setup was decent, but they just couldn't rock. It's too bad - I really wanted to like them when they were released. Do the new K 702 or K 272 share the same sound?

Panasonic RP-HTX7 $60

I am interested in the Special Edition and the NuForce Edition... at least theoretically. Although they are a big jump in price from the stock unit, they seem to offer similar benefits to a modded OPPO player at the same price. I'm looking for an upsampling DVD player for an HDTV and if it happens to have great SACD/DVD-A/HDCD multichannel playback, that would be ideal. I doubt that I'll be buying any Blu-ray discs in the next few years, so quality DVD playback is critical.

The funny thing is that we ended the meet by listening to Jay's vinyl rig on his vintage Marantz amp. I think hi-fi is a fun (and expensive) hobby, but it should never get in the way of our enjoyment of music.

Agreed. Nobody really needs that kind of peak volume in their room. According to the traditional reference scale, a jet plane taking off is about 140 dB – nobody wants that, even Spinal Tap. If you read Fremer's review of the Scarlatti, he states that there is an audible difference between the various upsampling methods and SACD. I'm simply waiting for this kind of SACD performance to become affordable – for now, I've invested in an upsampling Redbook player and I'm collecting hybrid SACDs to hedge my bets. The price to get "perfect" digital is still too high for me, and I don't plan to invest in vinyl. Also, I'm not currently paying for any music downloads, although I'm slowly ripping my CDs to iTunes' AAC 320 kbps VBR – a compromised format, but only for convenient listening on my computers.

Theoretically. Since the decibel system is logarithmic, SACD's 120 dB is a lot more headroom than CD's 96 dB. If you take a look at Stereophile's review of the dCS Scarlatti system, you can see some real measurements from a state of the art SACD player. I'd like to see measurements from an EMM Labs TSD1 + DAC2 combo for comparison.

I forgot to mention in my long-winded description of SACD to Key Lime Pie Girl and the guys: SACD's most commonly-described benefits are high resolution and multi-channel recording, but 2 other benefits came to mind yesterday. SACD has a wider potential frequency range and dynamic range. This gives the engineers more room to work in a variety of recording conditions. There are fewer compromises in compression, a lower noise floor and more potential filtering options. DVD-A approached the "limitations" of CD using different methods, but the goals were essentially the same. Upsampling DACs (like the Wolfsons in my CD36) are a kind of "hot-rod" solution as they work on the disc's output rather than the recording masters, unlike XRCD and HDCD. I think that SACD has yet to reach its full potential (recording equipment and hardware components are still evolving), whereas Redbook CD is at the end of its development.

I liked the PS-1. It sounds a lot like the HP-2, which is definitely a credit, in my opinion. It is detailed, neutral-sounding, and it has plenty of bass impact. Also, it seems to have a similar soundstage - not huge, but reaching farther than most of the Grados. The PS-1000 has potential, but I think it needs more burn-in. It's currently a bit bright and flat (as opposed to rich) sounding. pixel pusher's rig sounded great - it had power to spare and his amp had none of the weaknesses of poorly-designed tube systems. The sound was precise, rich, and musical. Also, it did a good job of warming up its corner of the room. Next time, we should find out if there is a way of switching layers on the Esoteric UX-3. SACD sounded great on the player, but I'm not sure if it was much different than Redbook playback. I was surprised by the sound of the Alessandro MS-Pro. It sounded a lot less dark than people have generally implied, and more like an RS-1 than I thought. Although it is mostly neutral sounding, the MS-Pro is still more forward and flavored than the Grado HP-2, my reference headphone.

I just did a little bit of reading on the Grado and Ortofon cartridge sites and my head is about to asplode. I don't know how vinyl people are able to remember all that stuff...

I am reserving this space for impressions about Paradigm's new Special Edition speakers. I'll try to audition them in the next month or so...

Pretty much any of The Cars' singles tonight.

I have crossed the Rubicon. This weekend, I was listening to Massive Attack's "Mezzanine", a recording I know well, when I realized I was hearing things I hadn't heard before. I'm talking about little details that were compressed or previously over-lapped in my headspace - background sounds, etc. expanded and came into focus. What was previously, by comparison, flat and simple became lush and complex. It was even more shocking because this album had just been preceded by Kylie Minogue's "Fever", which sounded normal, to my ears. At first, I thought something might be broken, since the last time I had a radical change in sound was when the ground channel cut out on my headphone amp. I've been listening to my player sporadically (2 hour listening sessions, averaging about once every 2 weeks) since I got it in December 2007 - I guess it took this long for the player to finally burn in. I'm looking forward to re-listening to all my music now that the Arcam's output is finally reaching it's true potential. I have since listened to Sophie Milman's "Take Love Easy" and Dire Straits' "Band of Brothers" - Milman's jazz arrangements increased in space and detail slightly and Dire Straits' masterpiece was rich and atmospheric, just as they had intended.

Congrats! Enjoy re-listening.

I can't wait to read the follow-up to that article. It should be interesting to see what Sony will do with the DAC technology in the SCD-XA5400ES. I hope it will not go to waste (e.g. find a new life in upcoming Blu-Ray players, PS3+, or portables)... Also, I find it interesting that the new player is half the price of the SCD-XA9000ES (still carried in their online store), but is considered to better sounding. It sounds like we might be getting more value for our dollar, for once. Maybe this recession has a silver lining after all.

How does this affect the Alessandro Music Series?

Great review. Keep it up!

Also watching... this is the state of the art, after all.

It's an interesting sensation - the brain is expecting the body bass from what it's hearing. Still, it's kind of hard to replicate the feeling, in general... you know, the kind you get when the drums in a marching band pass by. That usually makes my heart beat faster, etc.

Crap, now I remember this debate. So... what makes a DynaFET good, compared to a Dynahi or Dynamight? The wikipedia entry on MOSFETs isn't helping me much. I am looking at a single-ended, low-gain application (i.e. the Grado HP-2).

It's my work neighborhood (downtown). There are a lot of music and DJ stores in the area - there is some good stuff to be found, but the area is awash in poseurs.