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Welcome to Audiophilia. We publish honest and accurate reviews of high end audio equipment and music.
Welcome to Audiophilia. We publish honest and accurate reviews of high end audio equipment and music.
All by Martin Appel
Over the years it’s been my good fortune to have reviewed and/or been exposed to many fine power amplifiers. These ranged from solid state Class A, a variety of tube amplifiers, with and without transformers, to the latest solid state Class D designs. I concluded there is no one right way to achieve excellent sound quality. We all hear differently and we all have our individual preferences. So, it can be difficult to review a product that will make an impact on a field of quality products.
My current reference, a pair of Merrill Audio Veritas Monoblocks, was doing an excellent job and I was happy with them. Michael Levy of Alta Audio called me and was ecstatic in his praise of a relatively inexpensive, new stereo power amplifier by Audio by Van Alstine. Like all passionate audiophiles, Levy is demonstrative in praise and can be equally demonstrative about dislikes. He enthusiastically offered me the amplifier for Audiophilia review.
When Pass Labs comes out with a new piece of gear the audio industry takes notice. Well known for the quality of its products, the longevity of its designs and the seriousness to which it addresses the ever evolving science and art of sound reproduction, the XP-12 Preamplifier arrives. The XP-12 is the replacement for the XP-10, which had been their entry level, reference, one-box line level preamp for nearly a decade. What have they done to improve performance?
The new XP-12 starts with a new power supply. It uses an efficient toroidal design with both an electrostatic and Mu metal shield along vacuum impregnating and epoxy fill. This makes a very quiet transformer both electrically and mechanically. The power supply circuitry is also quieter and has additional filtering. The XP-12 uses a single stage volume control borrowed from the XS line preamp. This gives one hundred 1 dB steps with lower noise and distortion while removing some signal path parts. This redesigned volume control results in greater precision with a more luxurious feel.
Serendipity plays a role in discovering new equipment. Lately my vinyl setup wasn’t sounding the way it should so I started to examine my components to see if there were any obvious problems. I then decided to do a little house cleaning and rearranging of my system. During this move there occurred a few rough interludes where equipment and bodies made unintentional contact. It became clear that my Shelter 9000 cartridge was badly damaged.
I called a few buds and they recommended I check with Peter Ledermann of Soundsmith. The man is a legend in the field of cartridge design and repair. After chatting with him, I sent my cartridge in for evaluation. It turns out that I had really done a number on the Shelter. The cantilever was twisted, the stylus was completely gone and there was a lot of dirt trapped in the body. Peter assured me that he could fix the cartridge and bring it up to full working order for $550.00. He also explained how his policy for repair and rebuild is rather unique—all Soundsmith cartridges can be rebuilt to new, forever, for 20% or less. According to Peter, the Soundsmith cartridges therefore have a far lower cost per play over the years.
When my publisher informed me he had made arrangements with PS Audio to do a review of their latest DAC and that I would have the good fortune to do the review, I was interested. My Audiophilia colleague, Karl Sigman, is very high on their products and having heard them at his lovely abode I was looking forward to the arrival of their latest offering.
The Stellar series is comprised of the DAC and a choice of two amplifiers: the S300 stereo amplifier and a pair of S700 Mono-blocks.
As it turns out, the DAC is not only a DAC but a full function preamplifier making it the center piece of a system with remote control operation. It’s quite a package.
Comparing the DAC of the PS Audio Stellar with my reference DEQX HDP 4 processor proved to be challenging. For those of you who are unaware of what the DEQX can do, suffice it to say it offers the ability to greatly modify and alter the sound through its speaker and room correction capabilities. It also allows you to let the signal go through without any modification — that is the way I use it.
For the last decade I have been living happily with my upgraded AVID Volvere/SME IV turntable/arm combination, but ten years is a very long time and I got that itch. You know, that ‘itch’. The one that grabs hold and says I need to make a change, something new to satisfy that need for something better.
During this ten year period the fate of the LP has dramatically shifted. The LP has come back from the dead and a resurgence of sales has occurred. Demand for records has skyrocketed. New generations have ‘discovered what we oldsters have known about for a long time, the sound of the LP is still superior to that of digital and when played on a good system, absolutely breathtaking.
This rebirth of the LP not only impacts the turntable, tonearm and cartridge industries, but improves the health of all segments of the highend audio industry. This benefits all of us.
There are several reasons why I got involved in reviewing these headphones. First, I gifted my trusty Grado 125 headphones to the son of my colleague Karl Sigman. Karl and his son Jason came over for a visit and Jason let it be known that he wanted to get Beats headphones for a birthday present, because ‘they are cool’. Peer pressure was a powerful motivator for the soon to be 12 year old.
For those of you who own record collections and spend hours enjoying the listening that records bring, it is no surprise how important proper care and handling of your precious vinyl is to maintaining performance. One of the major problems that raises its ugly head is record warp. One has to deal with the muddying effects warped records produce including throbbing, overblown bass, and, if really bad, miss-tracking.
Before Martin gets started, I’d like to say thank you to him for rekindling this popular series on Audiophilia. It’s been the longtime opinion of Audiophilia that dealers have the most difficult task in our business — the very sharp tip of the high-end triangle of Manufacturers, Editorial and Dealers.
Conrad Mas, the guru of turntable design and creative force behind Avid HiFi emailed me about a year and a half ago to tell me about his new, “amazing” phono-preamplifier, the Pulsare. Normally, when manufacturers contact me about their new, best in the world gizmo, I’m very skeptical.
