Reference System Revisions and Updates (Vol.2, No.2: 1979)

Reference System Revisions and Updates

Reference A is the best we've been able to put together so far, regardless of price. Reference B is the best we know of per dollar. Both systems have undergone some changes since the last issue.

The rationale behind each of these two very different reference systems was presented and analyzed at some length in the last two issues. By now it should suffice to list the various components, all of which have been reviewed either in previous issues or in this one, and to indicate which are new selections.

Reference A

The caveat that prefaced our selections in the last issue no longer applies. This is now a system that anyone can assemble and get the most out of, without test instruments. All it takes is a check book.

Speaker System

From 100 Hz on up, a new electrostatic unit: Sound-Lab R-1 ($2200 the pair). Below 100 Hz, the trusty old Janis W-1 ($1350 the pair).

Power Amps and Crossovers

To drive the Sound-Lab, a choice of two new amplifiers: Bedini Model 25/25 ($650) for the ultimate transparency but limited headroom; JVC M-7050 ($1500) for the best combination of transparency and power.

The Janis woofers are driven, as before, by a pair of Janis Interphase 1 bass amplifiers with built-in 100 Hz electronic crossovers ($495 each, $990 the pair).

Preamplifiers, Interface and MC Step-Up

No change here; the Cotter System 2 is still our choice. The chain is: MK-2L transformer ($600) into PSC-2 phono stage ($500) into CU-2 control unit ($1450, if and when available) into NFB-2 noise filter/buffer ($450) into the crossover input. The last three are powered by the PW-2 power supply ($280).

Phono Cartridge

The Koetsu moving-coil pickup (now down to $750) is still our recommendation to Subscribers; we're using the experimental hybrid discussed on pages 46-47 of this issue.

Tone Arm

Nothing has come up so far to replace the Fidelity Research FR-66s twelve-inch arm ($1250).

Turntable

Again no change; the Cotter B-1 system re mains our choice. Currently it comes only with the Denon DP-80,factory-installed (approx. $2500 to $2600, depending on dealer); we're still using the almost unobtainable Technics SP-10 Mk II in our B-1.

This latest revision of Reference A now costs between $13,000 and $14,000 at retail, a significant drop from the previous version. The saving is a reflection of considerable simplification without any compromise in sonic performance.

Reference B

We almost envy those who are shopping in this category at the present time; never before has this kind of superior audio equipment been available for this kind of money-adjusting, of course, for inflation. If you're starting from scratch, consider yourself lucky.

Speaker System

If accuracy and lack of colorations are top priority: Vandersteen Model IIA ($940 the pair), not to be confused with the Model II previously recommended.

If sheer SPL capability and dynamic range are very important: DCM Time Window ($660 the pair).

Power Amplifier

The new Amber Series 70 ($459.95) replaces our previous selection.

Preamplifier

Another change: PS 111 Phono Preamplifier ($222) with PS Linear Control Center ($240) and optional rack panel ($25).

MC Step-Up The same as before, but in the new and improved version: Marcof PPA-1 ($124.95).

Phono Cartridge No change: Fidelity Research FR-1 Mk 3F ($230).

(Our previous alternate recommendation of the Win Laboratories phono transducer system, which eliminates the need for a preamp and a step-up device, must be held in abeyance until we find out what the latest production version is all about.) Turntable with Tone Arm Entirely new recommendation: Kenwood KD-650 ($400).

Substituting the armless Kenwood KD-600 ($350) and mounting the JVC UA-7045 arm ($250) on it would be even better, though possibly beyond Reference B budgeting.

In either case, the use of the Cotter B-2 isolation platform ($195) may be necessary for best results in certain installations.

Depending on the alternate choices opted for, this latest version of Reference B costs between $2300 and $3000 at retail, which isn't half bad considering the greatly improved sonic performance and the inevitable rise in prices since last time.

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Page-Counting

Subscribers, Please Note:

This would be a 76-page issue if all type sizes were exactly the same as last time. We decided to set all equipment reviews and certain articles in smaller but still highly readable type, in order to save pages and combat our insanely high printing and mailing costs.

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In the next issue:

Our approach to testing and critiquing speaker systems is validated in a novel and unarguably convincing way. It just might shake up the whole speaker world.

We take our most critical look yet at phono cartridge design and performance.

We hope to report the final solution to our long-standing problem of standardizing a meaningful test for resonance and acoustical breakthrough in turntables and tone arms.

More about tape recording and tape decks, lots of reviews of new components of all descriptions, plus our regular columns.

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Assorted Editorial Ramblings, Rumblings and Grumblings

Lacking a monolithic editorial theme of any urgency this time, we use the opportunity to get in a few licks on this and that, follow up some unfinished business, and bring up a couple of things we haven't commented on before.

Out of habit and for easy reference, we are still numbering our editorial topics serially, without any implication of uninterrupted continuity from issue to issue.

As of this writing, our challenge in the last issue to bad-mouthers of The Audio Critic has gone totally unanswered. No one has come forth to engage us in a tape recorded debate, confront us with whatever we're supposed to be doing wrong, and have the uncut and unedited transcript of the tape printed in our pages (at our expense!) for the delectation of the audio community.

Oh yes, we still get poison-pen letters; we still have reports of sneak attacks on our technical or journalistic credibility by various individuals within the trade; we still see cowardly little slurs, hit-and-run insults and heavy-handed innuendos in the journals of the cultist fringe. But-surprise, surprise!--none of these snipers will stand up and have a candid two-way discussion with us in public.

Well, the offer still stands; the rules of debate we proposed can be found in 'this same space in the last issue (Vol. 2, No. 1, p. 8, topic #30). Our stated policy of not responding to our detractors in any other way but this also stands (expect for published letters to the Editor, which are still subject to possible rebuttal). That means no editorial recognition and no free publicity for creeps who can't look us in the face when they talk against us.

To offset the bad taste left by the shrill hostility of the few dozen techno-loonies and storefront gurus who feel threatened by the ''second opinion' we represent, we must also report love and kisses on a much more massive scale, involving many thousands of reasonably sane audio enthusiasts and music lovers, as well as some of the keenest professional minds of the audio world. Just recently, between the last issue and this one, judging from our subscription renewals, new subscriptions, love letters from subscribers (which we don't publish unless they contain editorially interesting information) and press notices, our acceptance has taken a quantum jump. We're finally beginning to feel that the difference between our equipment evaluations and the available alternatives is becoming fairly common knowledge, not just the perception of a few insiders who always knew where we were coming from.

Of course, the support of these technologically sophisticated insiders remains our most precious asset. In a recent newspaper interview, we stated that one of the important differences between The Audio Critic and other non-commercial or underground audiophile reviews is that we appear to have some credibility even among top technologists and academicians who know a lot more than the Editor, not just among rank-and-file audiophiles who know less. We added that we doubt very much whether the other editors can make such a statement--if they are honest with themselves.

We find it particularly gratifying, however, that those rank-and-file consumers of audio equipment also seem to sense and appreciate that at this point we have more to lose than other publications if we turn out to be dead wrong about something and that we therefore try to make damn sure we're right, especially about the big ones. When you get right down to it, it's extremely difficult for such a consumer--a music loving history teacher, let's say-to choose between a favor able and an unfavorable review of the same piece of equipment by two different reviewers. He can't possibly judge the total technical and psychological discipline, or lack thereof, that went into each conclusion. Somehow he goes by the overall vibrations--self-esteem or self-importance, scientific aura, seriousness, vocabulary, etc.--communicated by the reviewer, plus past experience with the latter's recommendations. All very unsatisfactory, since some quacks are pretty impressive and some reliable practitioners less so, and since no one likes to admit that he fell for poor advice on a previous occasion and bought a piece of junk. What we're trying to say is-we have, and always will have, a communications problem in this area, but as it turns out we could be doing a lot worse than we are.

Some of the favorable comments received from our subscribers are mixed with reservations to the effect that (a) we are much too technical and fail to explain audio engineering terms we use, or (b) we aren't technical enough and fail to be scientifically rigorous.

We'd like to respond to that by reminding everyone that The Audio Critic was conceived for and is primarily ad dressed to the consumer--a very special kind of consumer, to be sure, who wants to know the rationales and proofs, not just the product ratings. What The Audio Critic emphatically is not is either 'My First Book of Electricity' or, on the other hand, a doctoral thesis. If you want to know the difference between resistance, impedance and reactance, any good en cyclopedia, technical dictionary and even some pop-tech newsstand magazines will give you the answer. (The Wall Street Journal doesn't explain, either, the difference be tween a stock split, a stock dividend and a spin-off.) Nor can we be expected to test and review literally hundreds of pieces of equipment with the same kind of academic rigor as a scientist brings to the few dozen research papers of a life time-or, for that matter, as a research-oriented manufacturer can apply to one or two products a year.

What we have to offer is nothing more than (1) a very nicely equipped laboratory, (2) a correctly aligned reference stereo system with exceptionally high resolving power, constantly upgraded, (3) an attitude informed by the laws of physics and the love of music, and (4) a little more time than the typical audiophile has available for judging any single piece of equipment-but just a little more. That's all. We don't teach kindergarten and we don't tell PhD's how to do their job. And we certainly don't claim to be the sole possess ors of any piece of knowledge about electronics or electro acoustics. But when we say that speaker A is more accurate and sounds more like music than speaker B, we make sure that neither scientists nor hairdressers can possibly misunderstand what we mean and why. Their money is equally good, and our job is not to allow them to waste it.

There also seem to exist some strange ideas in certain audio circles as to just what constitutes ''scientific'' audio journalism and reviewing. Diagrams, graphs and numbers, no matter how fatuously conceived and irrelevant, are the irrefutable credentials of the scientific tester in this crowd, with special emphasis on very small and very large numbers. Especially favored are extremely complicated explanations of the simplest things, preferably with newly coined buzzwords.

Since we believe that science is essentially a highly developed and mathematically implemented form of common sense, we want to alert you to the dangers of this insidious form of charlatanism, which perverts the sophisticated consumer's aforementioned desire for rationales and proofs. A snake oil promoter is still selling you snake oil even if he shows you a fat book with cross-sectional drawings of the snake's oil-producing tissues, tables of snake oil viscosity indexes, and diagrams of the snake's brain waves. Where as a shirt-sleeve technologist without phony pretensions may casually remark that a line-contact stylus reads a larger and more representative sample of the information on the groove wall than a spherical stylus, and right there he has told you something quite profound, practical and scientific.

Neither science nor honesty nor even experience is sufficient, however, to keep the reviewer out of trouble at all times in the delirious world of consumer audio. Take our recent recommendations of the Rappaport AMP-1 and Hafler DH-200 power amplifiers, for example.

Both have turned out to be a credibility problem for us.

In the case of Andy Rappaport, how could we possibly have predicted that with all his initial success and rapidly rising sales he wouldn't turn out to be enough of a business man to stay even marginally solvent and keep out of bankruptcy? Now there are all those marvelous-sounding but painfully touchy AMP-1's out there, with no more Rappaport company to service them under the original three-year warranty. (See the power amp article in this issue for possible help.) Or how could we have predicted that the designer of the DH-200 would leave the Hafler company and that they would then produce slightly variant versions, none of which sounded as good as the one we had originally reviewed? (Until very recently, that is; again, see the power amplifier article.) A totally effective and reliable consumer-oriented testing service would have to maintain a network of inspectors to check out the business management as well as the production lines of each audio company whose products are under re view. Fat chance. We don't even have the staff to step up our publishing schedule, let alone to police the industry. Nor does any other publication. The commercial hi-fi magazines get around this problem fairly consistently by reviewing only the products of well-established companies that advertise in their pages. That way, of course, they miss some of the most original and most exciting new products, which are almost invariably made by the Rappaport type of company.

If you have any idea how we could serve you better in this very difficult area, please let us know. We don't see how we can spot management-related future problems in an excel lent and well-behaved product submitted to us, but maybe you can tell us something we haven't thought of.

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Whatever Happened to the 'Admonitor'?

In response to comments from our subscribers, we're in the process of rethinking the format of the 'Admonitor' column, which is temporarily closed for alterations. When it reopens, the emphasis will be no longer on admonishing the hi-fi copywriter, whose forked tongue is apparently taken for granted even by novice audiophiles, but rather on monitoring the latest, most fashionable and most blatant audio hypes, which are a joint product of advertisers, dealers and reviewers. The column will probably end up as a kind of directory of Who's Kidding Whom About What.

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Our First Tape Deck Review (We Picked a Good One)

Just a quick look at a remarkably well-engineered product, before we take up the subject in greater depth in a less crowded issue.

Tape recording and tape recorders are demanding to be explored with the same back-to-basics approach as we brought to the phono groove and tracking geometry, but we can't do it in this issue; it's much too big a subject. Just to get rid of typical audio salon notions of what's important and what isn't would take many more pages than we can spare here. The re-educative effort might have to be even more strenuous than in the case of phono reproduction. Who talks today about absolutely fundamental concepts such as the relationship between tape speed and tape head geometry, the difference between amplitude modulation noise and phase modulation noise, or the essentially 'digital' effects of high-frequency bias in analog recordings? There's a lot more to tape recorders than you can read even in the most complete spec sheet or manual.

Meanwhile, just to kick off the subject, here are our impressions of an excellent machine that caters to the well heeled consumer rather than the professional.

Tandberg TD 20A

Tandberg of America, Inc., Labriola Court, Armonk, NY 10504. Model TD 20A stereo tape deck, 7.5 and 3.75 IPS 4-track version, $1500. One-year warranty; manufacturer pays return freight. Tested #4503370, on loan from manufacturer.

When we borrowed this tape deck from Tandberg, the 15 and 7Y2 IPS 2-track version was not yet available. That's the one we really want to evaluate in depth, as it can be expected to utilize the inherent mechanical and electronic capabilities of the design to the utmost. Meanwhile, the slow-speed 4-track version under consideration here should be regarded more as an ultimate hi-fi tape recorder for the home than as a serious recordist's tool; however, it does demonstrate the extraordinary engineering skill Tandberg has developed over the years in making this type of deck. The performance of the machine exceeded our fondest hopes.

At 7 1/2 IPS, we measured the peak-to-peak flutter and wow on a 3 kHz tone to be 0.027% for combined recording and playback. Assuming that these add up rms-wise, the transport itself checks out at 0.019%, a figure we find hard to believe. Man, that's stability-and you can hear it, too.

Frequency modulation is the great killer of tape sound, but Tandberg has it licked. The published specs are obviously very conservative.

The frequency response of the TD 20A is, of course, partly dependent on recording level, as in other tape recorders, but at 7 1/2 IPS it's essentially flat to 10 kHz over just about the whole dynamic range, with only 3 to 4 dB of roll-off at 20 kHz. We call that quite excellent. Even more impressive is the ability of the TD 20A to record and repro duce square waves with good leading and trailing edges and with decently flat tops. Most tape recorders flunk that test ignominiously. You have to push the Tandberg to a high recording level before the waveform begins to be non rectangular. It's truly remarkable. Needless to say, all of these outstanding performance characteristics are somewhat impaired at 3 3/4 IPS, although the machine remains very, very good at that speed, far superior to the most pretentious cassette recorder.

As for actual music recording, we don't consider the 4-track format to be suitable for taping live concerts or studio sessions with top-notch microphones, not only because of the limitations in fidelity, which in the case of the TD 20A are highly tolerable, but also because of the impossibility of editing two-way tapes. We did, however, perform a very critical comparison between an outstanding direct-to-disc phonograph record as played on our ' Reference A' system and a carefully made 7.5 IPS copy of the record on the TD 20A through the same system. There was an audible difference, but our ears had to search for it very hard. Once we latched on to the sonic identities of the original and the dubbing, we could invariably identify them blind, but the spread between them was surprisingly small. The copy had a slightly less crisp and incisive top end and just a smidgen less inner detail. It was an outrageously good showing for a nonprofessional tape deck. In addition, our best prerecorded 7 1/2 IPS 4-track tapes sounded better on the TD 20A than we had ever heard them before. What more can we say? In conclusion, it should be pointed out that the controls and mechanical operation of the Tandberg are sheer delight.

Our 15-hour seminar was recorded at 3.75 IPS on the TD 20A, and we could never have lasted through the rigors of editing the typed transcript against the original tape if the machine had been less smooth and responsive. Well done, Tandberg.

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[adapted from TAC]

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Also see:

Records & Recordings--A Discography for the Audio Purist: Part III

Why We're So Mean, Vindictive, Arrogant, Negative--and Truthful

Various audio and high-fidelity magazines