Feature Articles & Reviews
Computer Audio Finds, Part One: Dirac Research Live Room Correction Suite
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April 2013
Surely all of our knowledgeable readers will know that the name Dirac is intimately connected with Nobel-winning physicist Paul Dirac and the experiment whose acronym spells his name: the DImeson Relativistic Atom Complex. As explained at http://dirac.web.cern.ch, the DIRAC experiment uses “a precise magnetic double arm spectrometer, installed in the high intensity proton beam of the CERN Proton Synchrotron,” to simultaneously “measure the lifetime of [π−π+] atoms . . . to observe [π−K+] & [π+K−] atoms . . . and then to measure the [πK] atom lifetime.”
Still with me?
I don’t understand any of that either, but apparently folks who are into quantum mechanics and quantum field theory fully understand Dirac’s incredible gifts as a theoretical physicist and the vast usefulness of his vita opus: the singular delta function. I dropped Physics 101 to avoid a failing grade, so none of this makes sense to me. My field was psychology, and what all this scientific talk means to me is that the guys who named their product after Professor Dirac have giant cojones. That’s a clinical term for folks who dream big.
Something Special: Oppo Digital BDP-103 Blu-ray Player
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February 2013
Oppo Digital has mastered the fine art of juxtaposition, steering a perfect course between value and luxury. Oppo products are bulletproof, yet, at any hint of a problem, customers gain immediate entrée to one of the best tech-support departments in all of consumer electronics. Perhaps best of all, despite the fact that their products come to market designed with exceptional intelligence and fully formed, the engineering staff never stops soliciting feedback from their dedicated clientele. They then use that feedback to make something remarkable even better. Their payoff is a reputation that’s at the pinnacle of the home-theater business.
So when a new box shows up from Oppo, I feel something similar to what my wife feels when she receives a nice blue box from Tiffany’s. The BDP-103 itself is jewel-like, and its packaging is better than that of many electronic devices costing five times its price of $499 USD. Everything is safely secured in place. Instead of the normal plastic bag stuffed with shoddy penny-ante stuff aimed at getting you by until you can go to Best Buy, Oppo includes a good-quality, three-pronged detachable power cord, a 2m HDMI 1.4 cable, a 4.5’ USB extension cable, a USB Wireless-N adapter, a well-thought-out remote control, and a 92-page manual evidently written by someone whose first language was English. Before you’ve even installed the BDP-103, you know you’re in the presence of something special.
JVC DLA-X70R 2D/3D Projector
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January 2013
I’m in the market for a new car. While I’d prefer to buy American, I’m open to anything. My father, other than a dalliance with catfish-styled Citroëns, was a devoted and stalwart Chrysler man. That meant no drama when new-car time came around: Just head to the old Chrysler dealer and order up a big car in his favorite color.
I have no brand dedication. Whatever appeals, I buy. Over the years, I’ve owned cars and trucks from Fiat, Volvo, Porsche, VW, Nissan, Ford, Chrysler, Dodge, Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Cadillac, and several more I can’t remember. Some have been money-sucking turkeys (the Mercedes and VW Rabbit, both diesels), and others have been unexpected delights (two VW Karmann Ghias, both of which I sold for more than I’d paid).
But every time I buy a car, I look for a few specific characteristics. (My criteria probably differ from yours, but that’s why they make so many models.) It has to have comfortable seats and a reputation for reliability, and it has to be built for what I need. Sometimes we need a Dodge Ram pickup for duties on our little ranch, sometimes all I need is something to get me from one place to another. A few years ago, I wanted something with a little zoom, but the Porsches cured me of that. Or at least so I thought. Lately, I find the Chrysler Hemi to be kind of interesting. Finally, the car must have room for a subwoofer.
I bring all this up because, when it comes to video projectors, I’m close to becoming just like my father. In my case, the default brand is JVC. It’s not that I wouldn’t default to diversity in a heartbeat if something better came along -- it’s that nothing better ever does.
Christmas Gifts for the Audiophile/Videophile in Your Life
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December 2012
Christmas has rolled around again, and it’s time to start putting together a wish list to leave in a conspicuous place to make sure your family and friends know what you really want. Over the past year I’ve been able to get my hands on an immoderate amount of great gear, beautiful music, and mesmerizing films. Now it’s time to put out a list of my picks for the top Christmas gifts. The list is also, by definition, a list of my favorite items of 2012. My wife used to force me to watch one episode per year of Oprah, and that was her "Favorite Things." The trick was, the audience got everything on her list. Would that I could do that for you, dear reader. Unfortunately, all I can do is direct you to a few items that may warrant your attention.
By placing a product in this list, I might as well be anointing it one of my Best of the Year products. Nothing goes on the Christmas list unless it’s the best of what I tested. However, given the economy, I decided on a price ceiling of $400. That puts a couple of receivers, the NAD T 787 and the Onkyo TX-NR5010, out of the race, but it gives me the space to include a set of headphones I’ve fallen in love with. And other than the very first item, this list is not in order of preference.
The Onkyo TX-NR5010 A/V Receiver: A Perfect Choice to Manage a Whole-House System
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November 2012
There was a time in the US when a really high-end audio receiver was looked down on. Audiophiles weren’t worth their salt if they didn’t have separates: tuner, preamp, power amp. A few Japanese companies were toying with high-end receivers, but in the US, only McIntosh and Marantz were making “audiophile” receivers. The folks who were buying Audio Research or Mark Levinson or Threshold gear wouldn’t have dreamed of lowering their sights to an all-in-one-box receiver. And the folks who were constrained by price generally weren’t looking for a high-cost receiver. So receivers were relegated to the low end of the mass market, as high-end separates became de rigueur for the aurally obsessed.
DISH’s Hopper-Joey System: Bulletproof, Easy to Use, and Oh, So Powerful
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September 2012
They call them what?
The DISH installation team arrived at my house for what should have been a quick setup. I already had 75-ohm cable throughout the house, left over from the days of antenna TV. I don’t ever have old wires pulled out -- you never know when you might need them again. I also had good-quality HDMI cables reaching from the current DISH 722 to all our TVs. The DISH dish was already installed, bolted down, and aimed. All they had to do was swap out a set-top box and be on their way, right?
Wrong. The Hopper-Joey is a completely new system -- a rethink in every way -- and mine was one of the first installed. It was also the first for this installation team, and they were scratching their heads trying to figure out how it worked. "So you get a Hopper and three Joeys," the very professional lead installer explained.
Magnificent: NAD T 787 A/V Receiver
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July 2012
It was 20 years ago today, Sgt. Pepper -- oh, wait, that’s a different review.
Anyway, it was 40 years ago that NAD hit the market with a concept: Deliver great sound and modern design at rock-bottom prices. They would use really good circuit designers and Scandinavian commercial artists, then send the results off to China to be cheaply built. Their first great success was a sweet little integrated amplifier, the 3020. It sounded great on its own, but designer Bjørn Erik Edvardsen dropped the 1970s equivalent of an Easter egg into this little work of art: you could separate the preamp section from the amplifier section. This was a gift to destitute audiophiles everywhere; the 3020’s preamp, and especially its moving-magnet phono stage, were sonically up there with some of the very finest-sounding equipment made. As a matter of fact, my great-grandfather used to talk about his setup, a Linn Sondek LP12 (no one had ever heard of these turntables then) driving a 3020 connected to two Kenwood L07M monoblocks strapped to two Magneplanar Tympani 1D speakers. He says it rocked like a mofo, whether he was listening to the Boss or Donna Summer.
The Ultimate Upgrade
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June 2012
The Single Best Investment You Can Make to Upgrade Your Sound Today and the Journey It Took to Learn the Lesson the Hard Way
Inferno
It was a Saturday morning. I woke up late. The left side of my head was buried in the pillow, but I could see the sun was up. I concentrated, hoping, searching. Please, Lord, let something come through.
Nothing. I couldn’t hear.
I raised my head from the pillow and found I could still hear a little bit out of my left ear -- kind of like the sound you get when you wear earmuffs. If I really focused on it and turned my left ear toward my wife, her voice came through. But turn on the TV and I couldn’t understand a word. Music was unintelligible. It was as if someone had plugged up my head with gooey silicon -- nothing got in or out. All I could imagine was those tiny, delicate hair cells that line my inner ears disintegrating, and with them one of the primary joys of my life: listening to music. It was the weekend -- I couldn’t get to my trusted PA. I decided to get aggressive.
Coaxing the Best from Your Apple: the NuForce Icon iDo
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April 2012
Be careful what you say in public. A couple of months ago, I flatly stated: "I’m also a believer in never using a piece of gear whose quality is way above the ability of anything else in the chain to pass it along. While I occasionally violate that rule, it just seems to me that when I’m driving the [head]phones with an iPod, no matter if the file is a 320kbps MP3 or a FLAC -- er, uh, excuse me, Apple Lossless -- the limiting device is the iPod. And though I’m sure I could get much better sound through the Wadia DAC/dock or something like it, I can’t fit the Wadia in my shirt pocket and walk around."
The first comment I heard in return was from a friend who’d found my fashion sense to be wanting. "You wear shirts with pockets?" he sniffed. "I don’t think I own a shirt with a pocket." Well, yes, I do stuff my iPod or iPhone in my pocket, put on my ’phones, and walk around. There’s something pleasing about strolling through an airport, oblivious to all the ugly sounds, with a bit of Ozzy blaring in my ears -- no more tears, indeed. Or walking some of the dirt trails around Austin letting Keith Jarrett establish my rhythm. To me, that’s these little Apple devices’ highest calling.
A Guide to the Greatest Directors: Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE
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February 2012
My old running buddy John B., raised in the Jesuit schools of Chicago, used to tell the best stories about the shenanigans that went on there. Oh, he never experienced a tinge of the sexual abuse we hear about these days, but he did feel there was plenty of intellectual abuse going on. As he described it, the Jesuits had a distinct way of separating the gifted from the schlubs, with the obvious goal of grooming the former to go out into the world and carry on the Jesuits’ concept of life. A list of the powerful politicos raised in Jesuit schools might amaze you: Pat Buchanan, William F. Buckley, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas, to name a few. I’m not going to go all Dan Brown on you here, but it’s no secret that the Jesuits have always done their best to groom their stars to carry the Church’s beliefs out into the real world.
All of which is to help me imagine a short, pudgy boy named Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (1899-1980), sitting at his desk at St. Ignatius College, in northeast London, from 1914 to 1917. If we knew nothing else about him, we’d already know that strong forces were at work on his psyche. First was a force we would see in all of Hitchcock’s work: sexual hormones. Most teenage boys are 98.7% lust, but another force was at least striving for equal dominance, and that was the Church’s struggle to keep its young charges chaste. Those two opposed forces have been known to create a whirlwind -- what the dominant psychological thinker of the time, Sigmund Freud, would call a conflict between the superego and the id: that is, between the part of your mind that wants to keep you locked down tight, and the part that wants to run wild, sexually and generally. This conflict is played out when boys struggle to keep their fantasies and desires hidden, despite the fact that what they really want to do is act them out.
