10 Loudspeaker Reviews – Wilson Maxx to Quad 989 T HE H IGH E ND J OURNAL OF A UDIO & MUSIC™ ISSUE 126 • OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2000 Wilson MAXX loudspeaker The Hybrid Wisdom Audio System: HP Tells a Tale $7.95 US / $9.95 CAN Survey: Four Integrated Amplifiers Digital Signal Processors – TACT RCS 2.0 Guilty Pleasures – “Disreputable” Music We Love www.theabsolutesound.com T HE H IGH E ND J OURNAL OF A UDIO & MUSIC™ ISSUE 126 • OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2000 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF HARRY PEARSON EXECUTIVE EDITOR SALLIE REYNOLDS EQUIPMENT SET-UP & ACQUISITIONS MANAGER SCOT MARKWELL SENIOR EDITOR & TECHNICAL CONSULTANT ROBERT E. GREENE ASSOCIATE EDITORS JONATHAN VALIN, NEIL GADER ASSISTANT EDITOR BOB GENDRON SENIOR WRITERS ARTHUR S. PFEFFER, JOHN W. C OOLEDGE, JOHN NORK, ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN THOMAS O. MIILLER, PAUL SEYDOR, ROBERT HARLEY, J. GORDON HOLT REVIEWERS ALICE ARTZT, ARTHUR B. LINTGEN, MICHAEL KULLER, MICHAEL ALAN FOX, DAN SCHWARTZ, AARON SHATZMAN, JOHN HIGGINS, ANDREW QUINT, PETER H. 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Printed in the USA. www.theabsolutesound.com 2 • THE ABSOLUTE SOUND • ISSUE 126 Contents Horning Alkibiades Wilson Maxx Quad 989 Green Mountain Continuum 2 VIEWPOINTS Downstairs 107 Four Over Two: Paul Seydor & Neil Gader 6 Editorial Survey: Four Integrated Amplifiers – Magnum IA170, Roksan 11 Letters Caspian, NAD Silver Series 300 (plus a Bonus), Surround Sound Controversy: JGH and the Readers…The Impor- Electrocompaniet ECI 3 tance of Component Matching…Price vs. Performance…The Blues 117 Plinius 8100 Integrated Amplifier John Marks in the Night…The LaLa Land of High End Audio…Their Guilty Comment Neil Gader Pleasures 119 PMC FB-1 Loudspeaker John Marks Comment Mike Kuller 16 Errata G. computerii Again BreviTAS 123 Krix Equinox and Totem Model One Signature loudspeakers Neil Gader TAS JOURNAL 127 Yamaha CDR1000 CDR Recorder John Marks 131 Waveform MACH MC Loudspeaker Robert E. Greene Features 23 Arranged by Nelson Riddle David Morrell HP’S WORKSHOP Nelson Riddle’s distinctive arrangements for Sinatra, Nat King Cole, 135 Wisdom Audio M-75: A Planar/Magnetic Hybrid System Peggy Lee, Judy Garland, Rosemary Clooney, are part of what we love in Inside the “Brain” Scot Markwell these great singers. 37 What’s Wrong With Loudspeakers? Robert E. Greene THE MUSIC Most designers, reviewers, and consumers aren’t worried about the right Sounds Absolute things in speakers. 147 Chesky Records: Christy Baron & Clark Terry; EMI: Ravel’s Piano Music Up Front Concerto in G & Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 4; Mahler’s 39 Guilty Pleasures: Guilty as Charged Staff Symphony No. 2; SLCC (Saint Louis Chamber Chorus): Rome’s Golden HP asked the music writers to send us something on those musical selections Poets; Louis Armstrong; Sonny Rollins they adore but play only in secret. (HP himself started this surprisingly Featured Label popular series in his editorial, Issue 125.) 153 MA Recordings Neil Gader 157 Curmudgeon’s Corner: Audio-Audio, Video-Audio THE SOUND Arthur S. Pfeffer Upstairs Classical 49 Quad 989 Loudspeaker: Updating a Classic Paul Seydor 161 Webern; Creston; Le Cinéma (Chaplin, etc.); Shchedrin; Gesualdo; Comment Robert E. Greene Waxman; Berlioz; Wierén; Purcell; For Children: Telarc’s Dance on Peter Walker & the Original Quads Barry Rawlinson a Moonbeam 57 Horning Alkibiades Loudspeaker Scot Markwell 173 DISCoveries: Neglected Composers Dan Davis 65 Acarian Systems Alón Lotus SE Mk II Loudspeaker Aaron Shatzman 69 Green Mountain Continuum 2 Loudspeaker Mike Kuller Pop & Rock Comment Roman Zajcew 175 The Magnificent Seven: New Artists Emerge from the Fringes 75 Lamm M1.1 Monoblock Amplifier & L1 Line-stage Preamplifier Bob Gendron Fred Kaplan 79 Wilson Audio Maxx Loudspeaker Anthony H. Cordesman FINALE Comment John Nork 182 Where To Buy The Absolute Sound The Landing 183 Ad Index 87 Plinius M14 Phono Stage & M16 Line Stage Paul Bolin Comment on M14 Dan Davis Last Page 97 Audio Art Jota Amplifier Stephan Harrell 184 Math Test for Musicians Comment Scot Markwell 101 Digital-Signal Processing Devices – Part I: Tact RCS 2.0 Digital Front Cover: The Wilson MAXX Preamp & Room/Speaker Correction Device Robert E. Greene Epigraph: Imagination is evidence of the Divine. William Blake What DSP is and what it does. TAS VIEWPOINTS • 3 EDITORIAL The Guilty Pleasures of a First Love he reaction to last issue’s editorial on Guilty the song wraps up, she tells you “in Bermuda waters, so TPleasures caught me by surprise. Contrary to what many of clear and cold, I await my loved one, as I grow old.” She you might suspect, we seldom get mail about any given drowned? And she beckons? Not he? article, and less than seldom specific responses to either A bit later, on Decca, Peggy Lee released a song she reviews or, gulp!, editorials (a notable recent exception wrote called “Sans Souci” (without sorrow), in which the being Jonathan Valin’s tribute to the courage of Dr. Roger chorus is chanting “Rowboat, go, go” in the background, as A. West). Lee pipes out elliptical lyrics, like, “They got no room We had, quite evidently, struck a resonant chord. And here/for someone like me.” Here? Nobody has mentioned a set me to thinking. specific place. Someone like me? Whatever does this mean, Meanwhile, the first batch of essays (but far from the since she has not defined herself, directly, as an “outsider?” last) from select members of the staff on their Guilty Play it as often as I would, I could find no answer to the rid- Pleasures arrived and I found myself, as I trust you will, dles the song posed. Guess you’d called it an example of the deliciously surprised. Who’d have thunk that Robert E. Pearson Principle of the Specific Vague (PPSV). And what, Greene, that rigorous analyst and mathematician, would go dear hearts, has Phil Collins been “waiting for all of my for Julie London? Or that the august Dr. Andy Quint life” in “The Air Tonight?” Or Jimmy Spheeris [Isle of View, would find comfort in the musical arms of Eminem (a.k.a. Columbia 30988] in “I am the Mercury” when he sings “I Marshall Mathers). have been bought, I have been sold in the city/I’ve dined Such have set me to thinking about another kind of with the demons and drunk of their fear.” guilty pleasure, musical first loves: Those pieces of music Devoid of a specific context (the Spheeris being a bril- that first turn us on to music’s power to shape the imagi- liant example), I found my own creative imagination set native life. loose to take wing and, to quote Spheeris from the same In my case, the first that I remember was Prokofiev’s song, “weave light where it’s storming.” Peter and the Wolf, which I was exposed to at the tender age Ofttimes, the music itself, minus words, would set the of five. My parents loved to go out dancing to Big Band scene and I would, imaginatively, paint the picture. This Music, and their collection of recordings (played back on a began with the arrival of adolescent hormones, I suspect. large-ish Zenith console) were mostly these. Don’t ask why And the very first classical piece to strike up those fancies (unless one can be a reincarnation of a “future” self), but was Respighi’s Pines of Rome. Funny isn’t it, how we tend to from the age of three or so, I became fascinated by this look askance, if not down upon, those earlier classical device and within no time, since I couldn’t read (despite enthusiasms, and just as odd how the first interpretation we my entreaties), had learned to distinguish among their sin- hear of a piece is the one by which we’ll judge all future gles by the color of the record label, the amount of print interpretations? In this instance, it was Toscanini (Reiner’s on it, and the size and spacing of the grooves.