www.stereophile_com DECEMBER 2000 $6.99 US $8.99 CAN MUSIC in the Round efe Qier ,e fe, cCor ck, Belles, Le rSpe,ake e rs fro Fr Rfic,nUr,.r anto Doe DíGifc,-1 io's LA.51 achieve my goal of unifying separate components to work as afunctional whole." Dan D'Agostino CEO and Chief Designer If each of your components is state-of-the-art, do you then have astate-of-the-art system? The answer is not any more. Krell CAST—Current Audio Signal Transmission— changes everything. By keeping the signal entirely in the current domain from source to speakers, asystem of Krell CAST components performs as one—as though there were no interconnects. For the first time, cable interaction is eliminated as asystem variable, clearing the way for Krell CAST components to do what separates are supposed to: reproduce music without compromise. IC'S 28c CD Player KCT Stereo Preamplifier FPB 600c Power Amplifier TIMMS L-Ii54,..11=1•41.11 A Krell Industries, Inc. •45 Connair Road, Orange, CT 06477-3650 TEL 203-799-9954 •FAX 203-891-2028 •E-MAIL [email protected] •WEBSITE http://wwwkrellonline.com Krelie ra registered trademark and CAST "is atrademark of Krell Industries, Inc. •CAST patent pending As We See It John Atkinson harles Hansen said it best, in a 22.05kHz, the second image extends from to the different choices in (heal filters recent e-mail: "People have been 44.1kHz to 66.15kHz, and so on, ad infini- made by the designers of these products Cholding back from criticizing this tum. Drastic low-pass filtering is required with respect to the number of taps, pass- technology because they weren't certain to eliminate these images on D/A conver- band ripple, and stopband rejection,2 and that some new discovery hadn't been sion, leaving just the audioband content in to changes in the jitter performance. made." Ayre Acoustics' main man was the re-created analog signal. For its first We will have more on this knotty sub- talking about "upsampling," whereby con- CD players, Philips realized that by adding ject next month, when Jonathan Scull and ventional "Red Book" CD data, sampled at three zero-valued samples in between each Bob Deutsch, respectively, review the dCS 44.1kHz, are converted to a datastream valid audio sample, the effective sample Purcell and the Perpetual Technologies PA with ahigher sample rate. rate would be increased to 176.4kHz, and 1digital/digital processors. In the mean- Ifirst heard this at HI-FI '98 in Los the unwanted images, instead of lying time, don't buy adigital product because it Angeles, where Steven Lee of Canorus, 22.05kHz on either side of 44.1kHz and has "24/96" emblazoned on its front panel. the then distributor of Nagra and dCS, was its multiples, would now lie at either side Buy it because it makes your CDs sound using aprofessional dCS 972 sample-rate of 176.4kHz and its multiples. A better- great. And if it can accept real hi-rez data converter to upsample 44.1kHz audio data, behaved and more consistent analog filter from an SACD or DVD-A transport—or first to 96kHz, then to 192kHz. With each could therefore be used. can be upgraded to do so, given the proba- change, there was an unambiguous In the years since then, the audio indus- bility that these datastreams will be improvement in sound quality. When first try has settled on an 8x-oversampling ratio, encrypted — that's abonus. Jonathan Scull, and then I, tried adCS 972 the 44.1kHz CD data being converted to a at home in our own systems, we were 352.8kHz datastream before D/A conver- SACD again impressed by the improvement—so sion. So while Istrongly suspected that the In the November Stereophile, David Rich much so that Imade the dCS 972 my improvement Iheard with the dCS 972 raised some technical questions concern- "Editor's Choice" for 1998. was simply due to its using a different ing the DSD encoding used in Sony's and However, as my measurements accom- oversampling filter, Iwasn't sufficiently Philips' Super Audio CD medium. Again, panying Jonathan's February 1999 review sure to spill ink on the subject. Ihad been puzzled. Basically, given its 1- of the 972 revealed (available in the But, perhaps partly as a result of this bit format, the seventh-order noise-shap- www.stereophile.com Archives), when the magazine's positive coverage of the dCS ing employed, and the 64Fs (2.8224MHz) unit upsampled CD audio data, it didn't upsampler, averitable slew of products has sampling rate, DSD should not be capable, add high-frequency information above the appeared offering that "96kHz" magic bul- in my opinion, of producing the increase in CD's original Nyquist limit of 22.05kHz. let. Like the Bel Canto DAC 1reviewed by dynamic range and high-frequency exten- And while the dCS unit can be set to add Robert Deutsch in this issue (p.143), or the sion claimed —nor, as Mr. Rich pointed eight least-significant bits of random dither MSB Link DAC HI chosen by Stereophile's out, should it be stable enough to do so noise below the 16th bit, it didn't add any scribes as our "Budget Component of without introducing spurious tones. Like information that was below the CD's capa- 2000" (p.69), many of these products use Meridian's Bob Stuart in this issue's bility to preserve. Crystal's new CS8420 sample-rate convert- "Letters" (pp.9-10), David Rich came While Iwas content to believe the evi- er chip to produce a high-sample-rate down firmly on the side of high-resolution dence of my own ears —I even bought a datastream from CD data. Others, such as Linear PCM. Yet not only does DSD 972 —my experience with the upsampler the dCS 972, use afilter with several choic- appear to offer those dynamic-range and left a major question unresolved in my es of topology and noise-shaping behavior. bandwidth benefits, it both sounds great mind, one that reader Don Hanlon repeats Now I am sure. It is important to and does not suffer from spurious tones. in this issue's "Letters" (p.9): How did what remember three things about all of these As you can read in Barry Willis' report the upsampling dCS do differ from what products: 1) other than making active the from the 109th AES Convention in this the oversampling digital low-pass filters lowest 8 bits of a24-bit word, no new issue's "Industry Update" (p.22), respected that are now universally used do? audio information is created by any of audio theoreticians John Vanderkooy and Some background: The raw spectrum of these products; 2) as susceptibility to word- Stanley Lipshitz shared David Rich's con- asampled digital audio datastream contains clock jitter increases with sampling fre- cerns about DSD. Perhaps not coinciden- what are called "images" of the baseband quency, it is always possible that upsam- tally, Sony has revealed that, while the DSD data above and below each multiple of the pling audio data can make things worse, data on an SACD are still 1-bit-encoded, sample rate.' Thus, in a44.1kHz system, not better, and 3) no matter how good the encoding system actually uses amulti- the baseband spectrum extends from 0Hz these upsampling products can sound— bit quantizer, presumably within adigital to 22.05kHz, the first image is inverted and the dCS, Bel Canto, and MSB prod- negative feedback loop, as described by and extends from 44.1kHz down to ucts indeed sound excellent—there is no Mr. Rich. Mystery solved. conceptual difference between them and traditional CD playback systems. Iam now 1Jon Herron's excellent essay on the subject of 2A good examination of digital low-pass filter behav- oversarnpling digital filters can be found at www. convinced that the sonic differences we ior, "Effects.pdf," can be downloaded front www. madrigal.com/upconversion.htin. have heard and reported on are merely due dcsIteLco.ultipapers. Stereophile, December 2000 3 !gill" GENT REVEALING OR REFLECTING GOOD JUDGEMENT OR SOUND THOUGHT. Music and Movies have aprofound ability to enrich our lives. But only the most advanced audio-video systems can bring great performances to life. Introducing Integra: acollection of exquisite components yhose sound and image quality, intuitive operation and upgradeable architecture establish the future of home entertainment. Integra Integra / 200 Williams Drive Ramsey, N.i. 07446 / www.integrahometheater.com Features 60 2000 Products of the Year Stereophile's editors and reviewers select the best components from the year 2000. 75 The Audiophile Lifestyle Barry Willis sfits through three years ofStereophile's online surveys and learns more about the audiophile lifestyle than anyone should ever know. 87 A Master of Melodic Logic Bebop veteran Charles Mc.Pherson tells Zan Stewart how he's still waiting for it to happen. 95 Ludwig, Wolfgang &Joan? Daniel Buckley meets up with Joan Tower, whose coloful compositions and spirited personality have made her aseminal figure in dassical composition. Equipment Reports 110 Denon AVR-4800 THX Ultra digital surround receiver (Larry Greenhill) 121 Cary CAD-1610-SE monoblock power amplifier (Jonathan Scull) 135 Legend Audio Design Starlet integrated amplifier (Chip Stern) p.87 • n. 143 Bel Canto Design DAC 1D/A processor (Robert Deutsch) 151 Revel Ultima Studio loudspeaker (Kalman Rubinson) 161 Monitor Audio Silver 9i loudspeaker (Lonnie Brownell) Follow-Up 128 Cary CAD-300-SEI integrated amplifier (Jonathan Scull) 146 MSB Technology Link DAC Ill D/A converter (Robert Deutsch) 173 PS Audio P300 Power Plant & Lab Cable (Robert Deutsch) p.128 Stereophile, December 2000 Columns Staff VP/Executive Publisher Jaqueline Augustine 3 As VVe See It Publisher John B.