The Preamplifier Survey, Originally Intended for the Last Issue and by Now Considerably Expanded, Is the Main Event

Issue No. 18 Spring/Summer 1992 Retail price: $7.50 In this issue: The preamplifier survey, originally intended for the last issue and by now considerably expanded, is the main event. It's the final exam for preamps by Prof. Rich. Your Editor reports his tests and evaluations of delta- sigma ("1-bit") CD players and D/A converters. New staffer David Ranada begins a series of interviews with some of the deepest thinkers in audio. Part I: John Eargle, Roy Allison, Kevin Voecks, Floyd Toole. David Ranada also shows his musicological side with a monumental Magic Flute review and a bit of Beethoven. Plus the longest crank letter ever published and answered in our pages, along with sundry columns and features. pdf 1 Issue No. 18 Spring/Summer 1992 Editor and Publisher Peter Aczel Contributing Technical Editor David Rich Contributing Editor at Large David Ranada Technical Consultant Steven Norsworthy Cartoonist and Illustrator Tom Aczel Business Manager Bodil Aczel The Audio Critic® is published quarterly for $24 per year by Critic Publi- cations, Inc., 1380 Masi Road, Quakertown, PA 18951. Application to mail at second-class postage rates is pending at Quakertown, PA. Postmaster: Send address changes to The Audio Critic, P.O. Box 978, Quakertown, PA 18951-0978. The Audio Critic is an advisory service and technical review for consumers of sophisticated audio equipment. Any conclusion, rating, recommendation, criticism, or caveat pubished by The Audio Critic represents the personal findings and judgments of the Editor and the Staff, based only on the equipment available to their scrutiny and on their knowledge of the subject, and is therefore not offered to the reader as an infallible truth nor as an irrevers- ible opinion applying to all extant and forthcoming samples of a particular product. Address all editorial correspondence to The Editor, The Audio Critic, P.O. Box 978, Quakertown, PA 18951. Contents of this issue copyright © 1992 by Critic Publications, Inc. All rights reserved under international and Pan-American copyright conventions. Reproduc- tion in whole or in part is prohibited without the prior written permission of the Publisher. Paraphrasing of product reviews for advertising or other commercial pur- poses is also prohibited without prior written permission. The Audio Critic will use all available means to prevent or prosecute any such unauthorized use of its material or its name. For subscription information and rates, see inside back cover. pdf 2 Contents 12 Reasonably Priced Preamplifiers for the Reasonable Audiophile By David A. Rich, Ph.D., Contributing Technical Editor 21 Acurus L10 22 Acurus P10 23 Adcom GFP-565 29 B&K Sonata Series PRO-10MC 30 Bryston .5B 32 Citation 21 (follow-up) 33 PS Audio 6.0 34 Sumo Athena II 35 UltrAmp Line Amplifier 38 Recommendations 40 The Delta-Sigma Approach to CD Playback: Five Major Examples By Peter Aczel, Editor and Publisher 41 MarantzCD-llMkll 41 Pioneer Elite PD-75 42 Sony CDP-X779ES 43 Sony D-303 "Discman" 44 Theta DS Pro Prime 49 Interviewing the Best Interviewees in Audio Part I By David Ranada, Contributing Editor at Large 50 1. Interview with John Eargle, Recording Engineer 53 2. Interview with Roy Allison, Speaker Designer 57 3. Interview with Kevin Voecks, Speaker Designer 60 4. Interview with Floyd Toole, Research Director 63 Hip Boots Wading through the Mire of Misinformation in the Audio Press 63 Harry Pearson's response (?) to criticism 63 Robert Harley on music and power amplifiers 64 Recorded Music Mozart's Die Zauberflöte: a Complete Review of Three Recent Releases By David Ranada, Contributing Editor at Large 71 Nikolaus Harnoncourt's Beethoven Symphonies on Teldec 72 Editor's choice of recent, sonically outstanding CDs 3 Box 978: Letters to the Editor pdf 3 Editor/Publisher' s Mutterings/Notes: Yes, this issue is labeled Spring/Summer 1992. No, you didn't miss an issue in between; this is No. 18. Yes, it should have been the Spring 1992 issue, followed by the Summer 1992 issue. No, this won't count as a double issue against your subscription. Yes, it's almost twice as fat as earlier issues like No. 11 and No. 12, for the price of a single issue. No, that's not good business. Yes, it could have been split in two, but the first half would have appeared a little superficial, with unanswered questions. No, the Fall 1992 issue isn't scheduled to be combined with Winter 1992-93. Yes, a lot of the Fall issue is already written, so it has a good chance of being timely. No, I won't make any promises anymore. Any other questions? * * * This is the first issue of The Audio Critic that isn't being sent to you by first-class mail. The latest first-class rates are absolutely unaffordable, even after the recent 9% increase in our basic domestic subscription price. No full-size magazine known to me is mailed first-class; The Audio Critic has been an extravagant exception. A considerable effort is being made to optimize our mailing procedures to the point where your issue will spend only a few more days in the postal pipeline than first-class material and arrive just as reliably. If there's a mailing problem in your particular case, please let us know at once. We can fix it. * * * I welcome on board David Ranada, our new Contributing Editor at Large. Not many people who read audio publications are unaware of his name and previous writings. David is deeply steeped in both electronics and music, and by deeply I mean that he reads circuit schematics and orchestral scores with equal facility. He is also highly computer-literate. How many tweako journalists of the "alternative" audio press can make those claims? * * * Erratum: In the "Box 978" column of Issue No. 17, I wrote in my editorial reply to one of the letters involving Stereophile that "I don't remember anything in their pages about the...tragic decease of the brilliant Deane Jensen..." Actually, there was a necrology (as my father would have called it) in their January 1990 issue—well over a column on page 69, by lined by Robert Harley. My apologies; as I said, I didn't remember. 2 pdf 4 Box 978 Letters to the Editor We get hundreds of love letters and dozens of hate letters in response to a particularly good issue, such as No. 16 and No. 17, but the ones that drive your Editor up the wall are the please-let's-have-no-more- confrontations entreaties from the knee-jerk conciliators. The basic philosophy of these kind souls is that in a shrill argument where one side screams that 2 + 2=5 and the other nastily insists that 2 + 2 = 4, the probable truth is that 2 + 2 = 4.500. That's a good working principle in family court and maybe even in politics, but not in a technological discipline. Letters printed here may or may not be excerpted at the discretion of the Editor. Ellipsis (...) indicates omission. Address all editorial correspondence to the Editor, The Audio Critic, P.O. Box 978, Quakertown, PA 18951. The Audio Critic: not from manufacturers, retailers or jour- ear, replicating the waveform production of Reader Barry McClune raised this nalists. actual musical instruments, compressive point in The Audio Critic, Issue No. 17: If a By no means an equipment junkie, I mostly, as in "percussion." Electronics and test were published (double-blind, >95% advise everyone that spending time earns loudspeakers can reverse (or mangle) that confidence level, demonstrating some "gold- far greater rewards in audio than spending readily measurable referent to live music en-ear" type perception), what is the prob- money, and since the gear itself has too few by creating rarefactions, thereby limiting ability that those results would be accepted effective switches for Polarity, time be- both physical and aesthetic impact. The by the objectivist camp as being a valid comes the only thing to spend to achieve muffling distortion, I call it. Bass lines test? Good question! Null, I expect; but this easy remedy. Why everyone hasn't al- sound lumpy and amusical; attacks become first let me compliment The Audio Critic ready discovered for themselves this vital blunted; palpability is reduced throughout for printing this uncomfortable response, as factor that makes reproduced music sound the range; and speech intelligibility suffers. the management (firmly situated in that soi- right astounds me. Certainly everyone who Over a proper minimum-phase system the disant "objectivist camp") has strenuously crosses my own threshold catches it! Loud- effect is undeniable. Think: who could mis- objected to my recent research verifying a speakers are probably the principal cul- take a photographic negative for a positive widespread "subjectivist" view. Then let prits—those blatant incoherencers with print? And what would we call someone me introduce myself to your audience. drivers wired mutually out of phase to sat- who does? For over a decade my pet topic in au- isfy computer-designed steep-slope cross- The auditory mechanism by which we dio (after 78s, those Grecian urns of beauti- over desiderata that, ever forgetful of do in fact (pace Helmholtz) recognize Po- ful sound) has been Absolute Polarity. Re- phase, do at least achieve flat amplitude re- larity was first isolated by Charles Wood at grettably I did not discover it myself, sponse (on paper). Mere listeners really the University of Texas in 1957, later re- although by default I have become its most cannot be blamed for their oft-documented ported in the Journal of the Acoustical So- vociferous defender since Richard Heyser inability to discern shades of phase or even ciety of America as "the Wood effect," died.

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