Feature Articles

: Written by: Jeff Fritz; Category: Opinion; Created: 01 October 2010

201010_cash How many times have you heard a reviewer state something to this effect: "It should sound better, given the price"? I know I’ve said it, and I know that, at one time or another, I’ve seen something like it from most of our reviewers. And I’ve read it in other magazines, not just those covering audio equipment.

In a perfect world, the more expensive component always would sound better. But here in the real world, we know that too many variables are in play for us to be able to assume that higher price automatically means better sound.

The first of these variables are economies of scale: Large manufacturers have more buying and manufacturing power than smaller companies, a fact that was made abundantly clear to me when I walked through the Paradigm factory. The company makes a gazillion pairs of Atom loudspeakers a month, which means that an Atom’s constituent parts can be produced by Paradigm in huge numbers. This is not a situation in which one skilled worker is being paid a premium to build one box at a time. It’s one huge machine producing box after box for hours, days, weeks on end. Such efficiencies translate into a lower unit price. If a smaller company had to build an Atom of equal quality, it might cost them twice as much to do it, and they’d have to pass on that cost to the customer -- which challenges the assumption that a higher price buys a better component.

Some variables are less obvious.

: Written by: Jeff Fritz; Category: Opinion; Created: 01 September 2010

Measurements don’t tell us everything. My ears are more accurate. They don’t measure the right things. They don’t equate with how I hear music. I just don’t care.

Some audiophiles don’t like measurements. I think that many are afraid of them. I’m going to tell you why.

One reason is that most audiophiles, and many reviewers, don’t understand measurements. They haven’t bothered to learn how to interpret them, or what makes them important, or which ones most reliably indicate perceived sound quality. It takes a commitment of time to seek out explanations, ask questions, and learn how to correlate the measurements with what you hear when listening to your favorite music in your room. Gaining that basic understanding can sometimes mean hard work. For the math-averse, it can even be painful.

: Written by: Jeff Fritz; Category: Opinion; Created: 01 August 2010

This past week, SoundStage! Network writer Randall Smith moved into a new house with his fiancée, Amy. This was a special event in his life, almost as much because he was finally going to have a dedicated listening room as because he was setting up housekeeping with his bride-to-be. Randall had been pining for a new room for some time, and now, finally, his dream was becoming a reality.

But moving into a new room poses a multitude of problems for a reviewer. First, we had to clear Randall’s reviewing schedule. With the room being the single greatest determinant of an audio system’s sound quality, setting that variable is critical to the accuracy of Randall’s future reviews. Neither he nor I wanted a review product entering this new acoustic environment midstream. What we did want was for Randall’s system to be back up and running as quickly as possible, and with the full measure of its sound-quality properties firmly entrenched in our minds. We began with some very basic steps.

Our first order of business was to set up Randall’s system in the new room. This involved positioning the gear so as to maximize the efficiency of routing cables and ease the swapping-out of components. It was a straightforward task; Randall’s system is anchored by a single-chassis Simaudio Moon Evolution 600i integrated amplifier. His Bel Canto DAC3 D/A converter is extremely compact, and his home-theater functionality is handled by an Integra DTR-80.1 A/V receiver instead of separates. A Sony PlayStation3 is his primary HT source, while an Apple MacBook Pro laptop computer stores and plays his audio files. Randall’s system is tethered together with Analysis Plus cables, and his Pioneer Kuro television was mounted on a bracket almost flat against the front wall.

: Written by: Jeff Fritz; Category: Opinion; Created: 01 July 2010

201007_bomb There’s no shortage of opinions in the world -- opinions about everything. And with the Internet literally everywhere, there’s no shortage of platforms through which to disseminate them. Lately, I’ve read online debates on a number of subjects related to high-end audio publishing, and I’d like to put in my own two cents, based on my experience in the biz.

Confirmed: Long-term loans affect reviewer recommendations. How can they not? If a reviewer has a component on long-term loan, then he or she obviously likes the component. You could argue that the fact that the reviewer likes it enough to use it is itself a kind of endorsement. But does the reviewer like it enough to buy it outright, with her or his own money? Is accepting the free use of a product proof that the reviewer would choose that same product if it had to be paid for? Not to me, but we’ll never know. That oft-used argument against living together before marriage applies here: Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? I’ve said in the past that long-term loans are advertisements for the manufacturer, not necessarily endorsements by the reviewer.

: Written by: Tom Mathew; Category: General Interest & Interviews; Created: 01 November 2016

Tom Mathew: Thank you for speaking with me, Mr. van den Hul. You’re 78 years old and still making world-class stereo equipment. What is your fountain of youth?

: Written by: Peter Roth; Category: General Interest & Interviews; Created: 01 February 2016

It’s been a big year for AudioQuest, which has usually been thought of as a maker of audio and video interconnects and cables. In 2015 it launched its new lines of headphones and power filters, and released the second phase of its digital source devices. Earlier this year, I spent a day at AudioQuest’s headquarters, in Irvine, California. In the company’s listening room, I was treated to a demonstration of a prototype version of what has since become AQ’s flagship power filter, the Niagara 7000 Low-Z Power Noise-Dissipation System. I also talked with Skylar Gray, Director of Ear-Speaker Products; Garth Powell, Director of Power Products; and Bill Low, Founder and CEO/Chief Designer. All three, along with AQ stalwart Joe Harley, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Product Development, share a palpable passion for music and the playback of recordings of music, and each has an independent vision of what is still to be achieved in high-performance audio systems that complements the visions of the other three.

: Written by: Peter Roth; Category: General Interest & Interviews; Created: 01 April 2014

Bruno PutzeysIn Part One of my discussion with Bruno Putzeys, we explored some early turning points in his audio education and career, his exciting period of blue-sky experimentation and commercial-product design at Philips, and his move to Hypex in 2005, where he expanded the boundaries of class-D amplification with the development of NCore. In Part Two, the conversation returns to 2005 and the formation of Grimm Audio, then brings us up to date with the launch of Mola-Mola, the products shipping at the start of the second quarter of 2014, and the groundbreaking Mola-Mola DAC, which will follow in 2015.

Pete Roth: Looping back in time a bit -- feedback pun intended -- did your leaving for Hypex coincide with the work you began doing with Grimm Audio?

Bruno Putzeys: More or less. Grimm essentially was started because I’ve always been interested in A-to-D and D-to-A converters, back from my days of deciding on my thesis. Around 2000 or 2001, I proceeded to build a discrete A/D-converter circuit, which at that point I was hoping to sell as a design to some professional audio manufacturers. It was set up as a 1-bit front end with a decimating back end done in DSP, but I never got to the latter because the front end happened to operate at exactly the same format as DSD. In those days, we had the first wave of DSD. So I tried to sell that, but I was not really much of a sales guy, and so I failed.

: Written by: Peter Roth; Category: General Interest & Interviews; Created: 01 March 2014

Bruno PutzeysWhile you may not yet have heard of Bruno Putzeys, it’s likely you will in the coming years. Already, his name is very well established in Audio Engineering Society circles. Based in Belgium, Putzeys graduated magna cum laude from the National Technical School for Radio and Film, in Brussels, and began his career at Philips’s Applied Technologies Lab, where he worked for the better part of a decade. He is responsible for the development of the Universal class-D (UcD) amplifier modules now made by Hypex for industry manufacturers and DIY hobbyists, as well as the new, state-of-the-art NCore class-D amplifier modules featured in cutting-edge audio equipment such as Bel Canto Design’s newly launched Black. Putzeys is also one of several equal partners in Grimm Audio, a company that serves the professional recording industry and makes several well-regarded products designed by Putzeys, including the AD1 DSD analog-to-digital converter and the LS1 studio monitor.

In the second quarter of 2014, Putzeys’s first consumer products will begin shipping via his first consumer venture, Mola-Mola. The line will begin with a monoblock amplifier based on his NCore technology, and a highly configurable analog preamplifier that will include modular slots for the installation of an internal phono stage and, later, an onboard DAC and possibly even bypassable tone controls. Mola-Mola’s third product will be a standalone DAC, projected to ship in early 2015, followed by an integrated amplifier (according to Putzeys, a high priority) and perhaps even a standalone phono stage. Based on my experiences of listening to Mola-Mola prototypes, I think the industry is in for a treat -- the DAC has the potential to rewrite the rules for what’s possible in high-performance digital. It was my pleasure, at the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show, to talk for 90 minutes with Bruno Putzeys as he stood on the verge of much wider recognition, to learn more about his past, his accomplishments and philosophies, and his hopes for Mola-Mola and the industry at large.

: Written by: Simeon Sandiford; Category: General Interest & Interviews; Created: 01 September 2013

Delos 40 Years logo Amelia Haygood -- the visionary

Amelia Da Costa Stone was born in Gainesville, Florida, on July 15, 1919. At 16, her interest in languages and international relations took her to Paris, to study at the Sorbonne. After majoring in history and international law, she returned to the States and Washington, DC, to work for the US State Department as editor and director of publications for the Interdepartmental Committee for Cultural and Scientific Cooperation.

In 1942, Amelia married J. Douglas Haygood, a clinical psychologist, and her interest and skill as a therapist soon emerged. She pursued graduate studies in medicine and clinical psychology, and eventually she and her husband established a joint practice in Beverly Hills, California. After his death, in 1956, and the subsequent loss of a close friend through a long terminal illness, Amelia Haygood decided to go in a different direction. Her lifelong passion and interest in music, performers, recordings, and high-fidelity sound, as well as her graduate studies in psychoacoustics and the physics of music, helped shape her new trajectory.

: Written by: Simeon Sandiford; Category: General Interest & Interviews; Created: 01 May 2013

Four frames of reference

Mastering suite 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.