Simaudio Moon 740P Preamplifier and Moon 820S External Power Supply Review
April 11, 2022 Comments Off on Simaudio Moon 740P Preamplifier and Moon 820S External Power Supply Review
Kostas Metaxas T-RX Tape Deck Review
April 10, 2022 Comments Off on Kostas Metaxas T-RX Tape Deck Review
To hear clearly what I’m talking about you need…well, you need a T-RX. Through the Tourbillon, you’ll hear every note in those “sheets” of sound—’Trane’s high-speed arpeggios and diminished scales, the “three-in-one” chords that Monk taught him, the sixteenth-note quintuplets and septuplets, often played so quickly that, as one jazz critic noted, they seem to liquify from arpeggios into glissandos—and you’ll hear them with the “spin,” the harmonic/dynamic/temporal nuances that Coltrane added to each and every one. Rather than uniform sheets of sound, this avalanche of notes is like tiny beads of varying shape and color, dangling, curtain-like, from a horizontal melody and root-modal line that Coltrane is oh-so-careful to remind you of, by adding just a little stress or duration to key melodic notes.
Conrad-Johnson ART 150 Stereo Amplifier $19,500 Review
April 10, 2022 Comments Off on Conrad-Johnson ART 150 Stereo Amplifier $19,500 Review
The ART 150’s performance envelope isn’t limited to solo voice or small-scale instrumental recordings. Its ample power supply (with ten times the capacitance of the original ART Series) provides the requisite muscle to deliver the instantaneous current that takes large-scale, complex, and demanding musical passages by the scruff of the neck and shows them who’s boss. A term I’ve coined after living with big floorstanding Dynaudios for a number of years is “dynamic slam”: the ability to quickly, cleanly, and effortlessly scale from pianissimo to fortissimo, and, man, the ART 150 has sure got it.
“Asturias (Leyenda)”on Isaac Albeniz’s Suite Española performed by the New Philharmonia Orchestra [Decca, CAPC 6355 SA] is presented with such drive and immediacy that you feel you’re sitting in the orchestra rather than the audience. At the big crescendos, the brass and timpani have the speed and power of a crack of thunder; the cymbal crashes are shimmering and clean.
Bowers & Wilkins 801 D4 Loudspeaker $35,000 Review
April 9, 2022 Comments Off on Bowers & Wilkins 801 D4 Loudspeaker $35,000 Review
The comprehensiveness of the 801 D4’s sonic strengths is apparent, I should say, even with amplifiers that don’t entirely conquer the impedance drop described above. One certainly should not conclude that there are only a few amps out there that will do the job. Just a few days after I parted ways with the review pair, for example, I heard the new 801s at Capital Audio Fest played with a pair of McIntosh MC901s, the solid-state section driving the woofers and the tube section handling the upper drivers. The results were stunning.
Unless you view the fact that the Bowers & Wilkins 801 D4s demand stout and sturdy amplification to sound their best as a demerit, they are a loudspeaker without any musically consequential deficiencies. If you listen to nothing but Renaissance recorder music, these speakers will give you a sound that’s airy, dimensional, and tonally correct. If it’s Death Metal that floats your boat, you won’t be disappointed, either—they’ll render all the slashing, bashing, and growling with as much attitude as you could hope for. Best of all, if you indulge in the Baltimore Consort in the afternoon and Cannibal Corpse after dark, the 801s won’t bat an eye.
SHOZY ELSA REVIEW
April 9, 2022 Comments Off on SHOZY ELSA REVIEW
The mid-bass body completes the presentation nicely with good transition, and the mids have very good dynamism and definition. Although the Elsa is an IEM that gives generous treble, which I’ll go into shortly, the mids still have good space to shine. Elsa also escapes from being a thin-sounding IEM, and although it somewhat has a bright-ish signature, it still has a very good body and musicality here.
So the mids are quite energetic and a bit bright but not too much. So you get very good clarity and transparency here. The instruments and vocals have excellent definition. The instrument separation is good and the instruments and vocals have good positioning. The mids also have a very consistent and realistic tonality with a studio-quality approach. So the Shozy Elsa also gets the job done in the mid-range department too.
English Acoustics Stereo 21c stereo power amplifier Review
April 8, 2022 Comments Off on English Acoustics Stereo 21c stereo power amplifier Review
Bringing the best of the 1960s into the 21st century needs some addressing. First, there was an operational ‘quirk’ to the Stereo 20 that is echoed here; the phono connectors are on what might seem like the front right of the amplifier and the logo runs along the right-hand side, meaning the amp is designed to sit at 90° to most designs. More importantly, while a 14W stereo amplifier will meet (and exceed) many listener’s demands, loudspeakers with more challenging sensitivity and impedance figures will result in a smaller, quieter or even thinner sound (of the line-up of small loudspeakers I regularly use, the 21c fared well with the KEF LS50 Meta, was fine (but no roof-raiser) with the Audiovector R1 Arreté and didn’t like the upper-bass impedance dip of the Wilson Audio Duette Series 2 at all.
Allnic Audio L-10000 OTL/OCL Preamplifier Review
April 8, 2022 Comments Off on Allnic Audio L-10000 OTL/OCL Preamplifier Review
https://www.audiophilia.com/reviews/2021/12/3/allnic-audio-l-10000-otlocl-preamplifier
The flute whistle tones (a very delicate effect and very quiet; it takes great skill from the player to get the tones steady and pitch centred) on The Constant Gardner soundtrack is a test I use frequently. The delicacy and overtones (the note is all overtones and harmonics) are equally difficult to unravel. No problems for the L-10000. By far, the clearest I’ve heard them.
It goes without saying, the uptick in timbral accuracy as we go more expensive was profoundly beautiful. Allnic examples 2, 3 and 4 are all pretty spectacular at timbral beauty, the DHT, especially, but the accuracy played through the L-10000 was intoxicating. I could tell my intent on several recordings I’ve made over the years, even the to and fro between Bede Hanley’s fabulous oboe (Principal, Auckland Philharmonia) and my solo in Scheherezade. Any quality preamp will give you quality tone, but only the very best preamplifiers like the L-10000 place you in the hands of the performer. Here, their are no secrets, no fixing it in the mix, etc. If it’s on the original tape, you’ll be hearing it.
Audiophilepure 
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