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Reviews of Attainable Hi-Fi & Home-Theater Equipment

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Details: Written by: Colin Smith; Created: 01 October 2014

NAD D 7050 Reviewers' Choice Considered as a device that can be all things audio to all people, NAD’s D 7050 Direct Digital network amplifier ticks many boxes. Its compact footprint and stylish design make it a friend of the style conscious. Those more comfortable with texting than talking will love that the D 7050 can handle all manner of ways to distribute music: Bluetooth, AirPlay, Spotify, something ancient called TosLink, and . . . coaxial? Like, whatever! Wires are so my great-grandparents.

Description

Audio enthusiasts like you and me are no doubt impressed by the D 7050’s Direct Digital innards, descended as they are from a lineage that would make the bluest blood swoon with envy. In the beginning there was NAD’s M2 Direct Digital amplifier, and it was very, very good. The M2 had the Direct Digital world to itself for a couple of years, then begat the C 390DD -- one of the best midpriced amplifiers ever, and a component whose presence I miss to this day. What’s remarkable about this technology trickle-down isn’t that it happened, but that, at each step, NAD has slashed the price of admission. The M2 still sells for $5999 USD. Much of its capability is resident in the C 390DD, for $2599. Now comes the D 7050, for only $999. Is it even possible that the D 7050 can hold a candle to its bigger brothers?

Details: Written by: Sathyan Sundaram; Created: 15 September 2014

Wyred 4 Sound mINT Because most of the recordings I listen to are stored in digital formats, as files or on discs, when I connect a traditional amplifier to my system, numerous analog inputs are typically left vacant. This is becoming the case for more and more listeners. While vinyl has lately experienced a bit of a renaissance, turntable aficionados remain outnumbered by those who’ve never used one. Fortunately, to address this need, audio companies have been producing equipment that combines integrated amplifiers with digital-to-analog converters -- an appropriate solution when the onboard DAC is of good quality.

In its six years, Wyred 4 Sound, of Atascadero, California, has racked up awards and positive reviews throughout the industry, including from SoundStage!. Their product line includes DACs, music servers, preamps, power amps, integrated amps, and cables, along with upgrades, such as to the Sonos Connect. Within most of those categories are W4S products at several price points -- a remarkable array from a small company. The US-made mINT -- an abbreviation of “mini-integrated” -- lives up to its name: At a svelte 8”W x 3.5”H x 8”D and a mere 9 pounds, it’s the smallest integrated amplifier I’ve reviewed. Nonetheless, it’s full of features, packing a DAC, integration options, and a headphone amplifier, along with some impressive specifications. It costs $1499 USD.

Details: Written by: Thom Moon; Created: 01 September 2014

U-Turn Audio Orbit Plus Reviewers' Choice Vinyl’s back! Well, sort of. According to SoundScan, as quoted by a Statista chart on US sales of recorded music in 2013, LPs were 2% of the total music market, or about 6.1 million units -- up from 858,000 units in 1991, the first year SoundScan tracked LP sales, and from 2.8 million in 2010. A different citation of SoundScan’s stats for 2013 sales noted that the No.1 LP was Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories, which sold 49,000 copies. That’s a drop in the bucket to the 2.43 million units (all formats) sold of the overall No.1 album, Justin Timberlake’s 20/20. So while there is indeed a resurgence of vinyl, its size may be overstated.

Still, it can’t be denied that sales of LPs, once hastily abandoned for what Sony called the Compact Disc’s “Perfect Sound Forever,” are growing, while those of CDs are sharply declining: down 14.5% between 2012 and 2013, per SoundScan. And why not? To my ears, there’s a distinct difference between analog sound and digital sound. Digital can sound “etched,” while analog is “buffed.” In many cases, analog sounds smoother. But vinyl also suffers from clicks, pops, scratches, and other types of surface noise -- and sometimes ill-conceived manufacturing processes, RCA’s Dynagroove system of the 1960s being the most egregious example. But every format has its place. While I long ago added a CD player, and more recently a DAC, to my system, I never considered discarding my vinyl or my turntable -- mostly because I’d have to replace my 750-plus albums, many of which are so obscure they’re still unavailable in digital form.

Details: Written by: Michael Wright; Created: 15 August 2014

Blue Circle PLC Thingee Reviewers' Choice In the original Perry Mason TV series (1957-1966), District Attorney Hamilton Burger (William Talman) is almost always the prosecutor who’s trying to jail the clients of defense attorney Mason (Raymond Burr). Usually, just when Burger seems finally about to win a case, Mason finds a way to reveal the real culprit and thus exonerate his client. So it is with me and Gilbert Yeung, founder and designer of Blue Circle Audio: He’s always saying he’s come up with a component that can do a particular thing, I almost always scoff at the claim -- and then he proves his point. Once, he said he had an amplifier whose output stage comprised 288 op-amps and could drive most speakers. I still haven’t figured out how he pulled that one off, but he certainly did.

Once, however, I did win a small victory: I told Yeung that the power cord he’d supplied with his BC6000 powerline conditioner produced an easily audible coloration. When the volcanic eruption from Mt. Yeung had subsided, he decided, in true Yeungian fashion, to offer the BC6000 with an optional IEC inlet, so that customers could use the power cord of their choice.

Details: Written by: Philip Beaudette; Created: 01 August 2014

Note: Measurements taken in the anechoic chamber at Canada's National Research Council can be found through this link.

Most people use their stereos to listen to music. Audiophiles use music to listen to their stereos.

A friend said that to me recently, and although I wanted to disagree with him, there was some truth to it. It’s not uncommon to hear audiophiles argue about the supremacy of tubed vs. solid-state amplification, digital vs. vinyl playback, or ribbon vs. metal-dome tweeters. Some people have more to say about the gear than about the music it’s designed to reproduce. We audiophiles seem innately wired to tweak the sound of our systems until we get it just right. Unfortunately, some people never really kill the upgrade bug, but instead constantly swap equipment in a never-ending quest for a sound I wonder if they’ll ever attain.

Of course, I still believe that people who love listening to music should do so on a good system. Life is too short for mediocre sound. But for most of us, that means assembling a high-quality stereo at a reasonable price, then enjoying it to discover music, rather than obsessing over whether it can sound better. A few weeks ago, I received a pair of Monitor Audio’s Silver 6 loudspeakers ($1500 USD per pair), the newest iteration of the smallest floorstander in their Silver series. Those last two sentences are not unrelated.

Details: Written by: Thom Moon; Created: 15 July 2014

Musical Fidelity V90-DAC Reviewers' Choice Musical Fidelity’s V90-DAC is part of the company’s reasonably priced V90 line, which includes the recently reviewed V90-AMP integrated amplifier, the V90-HPA DAC-headphone amp, the V90-LPS phono stage, and the V90-BLU Bluetooth receiver, for sending music from a smartphone or tablet to a sound system. Each model comes in a nice, champagne-toned aluminum case measuring a petite 6.5”W x 1.7”H x 4”D.

The front panel of the V90-DAC ($299.99 USD) has two small toggle switches: Power On/Off, and a three-way Input switch with settings for USB, Coax/Optical 1, and Optical 2. Two tiny LEDs alert the user when the power is on and when the V90-DAC has locked to a digital signal.

Details: Written by: Hans Wetzel; Created: 01 July 2014

Devialet 120 Reviewers' Choice Hyperbole is the scourge of high-end audio. So many professional reviews are full of grandiose statements about how life-affirmingly better a given piece of equipment is than a competitor or its own predecessor. “Towering achievement,” “revolutionary,” “astonishing” -- such phrases are thrown about frequently enough to dilute any significance and meaning they might still possess. This normalization of high praise means that a review that isn’t luminously positive is viewed as a middling evaluation, while actual criticism of any kind becomes a pan. Where have reviewers’ spine and integrity gone? There are, indeed, a lot of good products out there -- but only the very, very best warrant the kind of lavish praise we too often see.

The Devialet 120 integrated amplifier-DAC is such a product.

Details: Written by: Erich Wetzel; Created: 15 June 2014

These days, preamplifiers priced at or near $1000 are expected to do everything. Many are able to accommodate virtually any sort of source component. Are you a techie who has fun adjusting the multitudes of features available in today’s audio components? Or do you just want to turn the system on, set the input and volume, and not touch it again? The Rotel RC-1570 ($999 USD) is designed for both types of user. It’s a capable example of today’s flexible system center: the modern digital preamplifier.

Details: Written by: Erich Wetzel; Created: 01 June 2014

Note: Measurements performed by BHK Labs can be found through this link.

Parasound Halo A 23 Reviewers' Choice Parasound Products, based in San Francisco, has a reputation for building great-sounding consumer-audio equipment and selling it at reasonable prices. Many readers will be familiar with the connection between the company and John Curl, who since 1988 has designed many of the circuits used in Parasound components. Less well known is that Parasound’s equipment is in use in many professional film-sound and music-production applications. Professional sound design requires well-engineered, high-resolution gear that imposes on the sound as little as possible of its own sonic character. The combination of a talented circuit designer, great sound, and professional use often leads to high-priced consumer gear -- but not at Parasound in general, and specifically not in the case of their Halo A 23 two-channel power amplifier.

Details: Written by: Sid Vootla; Created: 15 May 2014

I first came across Line Magnetic Audio several months ago, while browsing Internet audio forums. There was a great deal of buzz about the company, and especially about their field-coil speaker, inspired by Western Electric’s 755A drive-unit. A search led me to a Chinese website that had some astonishing designs -- massive horn speakers, and amplifiers that took up an entire vertical rack, mounted on casters and sprouting exotic tubes and myriad gauges. They also had more conventional tube amps, one of which, the Line Magnetic 211IA integrated amplifier, I auditioned and used in my recent review of Contrast Audio’s Model One As3-Ref loudspeaker. I was very impressed with the fit, finish, and sound quality of the 211IA, which is based on the EL34 tube. Sridhar Reddy of ARN Systems, the Indian importer and distributor of Line Magnetic products, suggested that I consider reviewing the KT88-based 216IA integrated amplifier ($1850 USD), and was enthusiastic about its sound. I exchanged e-mails with James Hwang, Line Magnetic’s director of international sales, to learn more about the company and its products.