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Systematic Upgrades, Part Two: From Black to Silver

Four frames of reference

Recording steelpan and other genres of acoustic music on location has been my main focal point since 1983. This portfolio was initiated with a portable Nakamichi DMP-100 encoder and Betamax storage system, in conjunction with a pair of Sennheiser HD 580 headphones for monitoring.

In the 30 years since, my recording suite has gradually evolved, and its epicenter is now a Pacific Microsonics Model One HDCD processor (the HDCD technology is now owned by Microsoft). Signal pickup is via two pairs of powered reference DPA microphones with associated preamplifiers: a cardioid Type 3512 and an omnidirectional Type 4004. An Alesis Masterlink ML-9600 hard-disk recorder stores all recorded information as high-resolution 24-bit files.

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Function and Form at Fine Sounds Group: An Interview with Livio Cucuzza

In today’s hi-fi market, if a company launches a product that sounds fantastic but looks awful, they’ll have as much, if not more, trouble selling it than if the opposite were true -- a sad state of affairs for those who would be happy to sacrifice visual appearance in the search for the ultimate sound quality. But with the way the consumer-electronics industry (think Apple and Samsung) and makers of other luxury goods (cars, watches, boats, you name it) have stepped up the style game, designers of high-end audio gear have pretty much had to ensure that their products’ looks befit their sound -- that, or get left behind by companies that do understand the need to optimize both form and function, regardless of a product’s cost.

One brand that I’ve noticed making real inroads in ensuring that its products are as beautiful as they sound is the Italian firm Sonus Faber, founded in 1981 by Franco Serblin but now owned by the Fine Sounds Group, also headquartered in Italy. Fine Sounds also owns Audio Research Corporation, McIntosh Labs, and Wadia Digital, all of which still make their products in the US; as well as Sumiko, a North American distributor based in Berkeley, California.

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Active Loudspeaker Systems on the Rise: Peter Roth Talks With Andy Payor, Laurence Dickie, and Richard Vandersteen

Based on what I saw and heard last January at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show, powered or active loudspeakers seem to be a growing trend, especially at the cutting edge. Long a staple of the professional audio world, active speakers haven’t fared all that well among audiophiles. One might think that with the proliferation of multi-box digital playback systems and complex analog front-ends -- with their turntables, tonearms, cartridges, phono stages, disc cleaners, anti-static guns, electron-microscope-grade support systems, etc. -- audiophiles might have widely embraced the potential of active speakers. Perhaps they soon will.

Gryphon Audio Designs, Rockport Technologies, Vandersteen Audio, and YG Acoustic have now topped out their speaker lines with active or semi-active speakers. In Vivid Audio’s suite at the Mirage, I spent the better part of a morning with the company’s designer extraordinaire, Laurence Dickie, discussing the nuances of the active crossover modules he is preparing to offer as an option for Vivid’s Giya range of loudspeakers, which are already world-class transducers using passive crossover networks. While Dickie indicated that Vivid plans to offer an active quad-amplified, four-driver, line-level digital crossover network, all of the other examples (including what Dickie realizes will likely be the more popular choice Vivid will also offer) combine active and passive crossovers within a biamplified, multi-driver loudspeaker. In such a hybrid design, the active portion of the crossover feeds one amplifier specific to the low-frequency (LF) drivers, while the passive section of the crossover is connected to the other amp, which powers the rest of the drivers. Vandersteen, YGA, and Gryphon include amplification for the LF side of the split (Vandersteen also includes LF analog room correction), while Rockport and Vivid let the customer select amplification top and bottom.

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Digitizing Older LPs: Is CD Resolution Good Enough?

Minimum resolution for digitizing vinyl

I received a number of e-mails following my April 2012 SoundStage! Hi-Fi editorial, “Why in the World Are Audiophiles Digitizing Vinyl?” Most of the letter writers expressed general interest in what sort of equipment would be best suited for the task, and a few wanted to see reviews of specific components. For our GoodSound! publication, Ron Doering reviewed the Parasound Zphono USB and I wrote about the Furutech Alpha Design labs GT40 -- both devices combine a phono preamplifier and USB-connected analog-to-digital converter (ADC) in a single box. Reviews of other relevant products are in the works.

One reader had a much more specific question:

Your articles have strongly suggested that higher-than-CD resolutions result in better audible quality than the ordinary CD can provide. If one digitizes from sources that do have such high quality (e.g., the new audiophile vinyl), then one might anticipate your recommendation: “buy an A/D converter that can do at least 24-bit/96kHz; don’t settle for the 16/44.1 that populates the budget market.”

Wouldn’t the same logic also suggest that digitizing older LPs does not need more than 16/44.1, since the masters did not contain information above what 16/44.1 can adequately capture? I may be a good representative of a subclass of readers: those who want to turn the page on the old LPs, cassettes, and CDs, only to adopt computer files as the future music medium, whatever the resolution of those files. For such people, would a good 16/44.1-only ADC still be a mistake? Key to answering this question is one’s knowledge of the masters used for LPs as late as the 1980s -- when CDs took over the market.

Thanks for providing food for thought. -- SC

Food for thought indeed . . .

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