Audiophilia

May 1 update

Some Danish loveliness in the form of a CD player and DAC. The Gato Audio CDD-1 - CD-player ⁄ DAC. Gato Audio describes it — At Gato Audio we are very pleased to announce the long awaited and very versatile CDD-1 CD player and D/A converter. It has now been delivered to our distributors and their dealers whom are ready to demonstrate its superior sound quality and stunning beauty.

Developing CD players and D/A converters is almost an art form, it takes loads of time and huge amount of patience to master the delicate mix of digital and analogue signal circuits. In the heart of the CDD-1 you will find the Philips CDpro2 mechanism, mounted in 1kg of machined aluminum suspended in a tripod of Sorbothane viscolastic material. A special clamp/lid solution secures and stabilizes the CD while spinning – all in the name of eliminating mechanical resonances.

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by Anthony Kershaw

Audioengine was formed 6 years ago out of a desire to bring reasonably-priced and great-sounding studio monitor speaker designs to the consumer audio market. The Audioengine team succeeded beyond their dreams with the Audioengine 5 powered loudspeaker, a wildly popular speaker for the computer audiophile generation.

Getting the speakers right, they moved on to DACs. The D2 24-bit Wireless Computer Interface is the flagship thus far and the subject of this review.

The D2 is a quality DAC transmitter and receiver pair. They allow you to transmit and control a digital audio signal from a source and receive it as either a digital or analog signal. The two small, beautifully made boxes contain all you need for true plug and play — transmitter, receiver, two power cables, USB cable and RCA cables. I had the system set up and running in five minutes. My weapons of choice? My reference system (fabaudio Model 1s, Audio Research pre and power, and Cardas and Transparent cabling) and my new MacBook Air running Apple Lossless files.

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by Henry Wilkenson

Small two way speakers have been around for quite some time now. Once known as bookshelf speakers, people actually did put these speakers on book shelves. You could have your system in a neat package that had a very high wife acceptance factor. The sonic results of this practice were another matter altogether. The practice of putting speakers on shelves quickly stopped once good dedicated speaker stands became available and people realized the sonic advantages of removing their speakers from shelves.

Anyone wishing to have anything approaching full range sound however, often resorted to “shoe-horning” a pair of large floor standers into rooms that were really too small to properly accommodate them. Apartment dwellers often wound up sharing the bass from these large speakers with their neighbors. More often than not, the neighbors were not appreciative of the situation. The alternative was to live with the “book shelvers” and their highly compromised sound.

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by Martin Appel

One of my favorite rooms at the 2012 CES was the Acoustic Zen/Triode room. Robert Lee of Acoustic Zen and Santos Oropel of Twin Audio Video, a dealer for those wonderful Triode amplifiers, were both very enthused about a product called the Sakura. They used this hair dryer shaped device on all the CDs just before they played them.  Oropel explained that it’s a handheld device that eliminates and  neutralizes static charge, and would  I be interested in reviewing it? The claims made by these folks and the manufacturer’s literature seemed too good to be true, but I promised to keep an open mind. After all, there’s been a history of products in the ‘Tweekasphere’ claiming all kinds of sonic benefits and many (not all) end up not only emptying your wallets of cash, but often degrading the sound quality.

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by Anthony Kershaw

I was chastised recently in an otherwise friendly letter. The remonstration? ‘Review more soundtracks.’ Just as I was feeling suitably scolded, this blast from the recent past showed up at the office. Soundtracks, you want? Here you go.

This is the ‘Anniversary’ Edition. It includes nice packaging (stickers, detailed notes, etc) and two discs. The original James Horner score on CD 1 and a recording by the splendid group, I Salonisti on the second. The second CD contains the type of repertoire played by the tragic musicians of the Titanic on the night it sank. ‘The White Star Line Songbook’. Lots of light classics in arrangements for string quartet (with double bass, not cello) and piano. The expert musicians make a case for the parlour music. The recording (mastered by Mark Wilder, Battery Studios, NY) and performances are exemplary.

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by Martin Appel

After reviewing the excellent Kokiri Digital Cable and reading our own Andy Fawcett’s rave reviews of their superb Komako line of analogue interconnects and speaker cables, I was inspired to review Antipodes’ top of the line Reference Interconnect.

I received a pair of Reference Interconnects and installed them in my system running from the DEQX processor to the Marantz preamplifier. It would have been wonderful to have sets of the Antipodes throughout the system. Not possible! So, I reasoned that replacing only one pair of interconnects in a crucial place in the system would allow me to perceive the performance and their character.

All Antipodes products require a prolonged burn-in period so I didn’t start serious listening ’till around the 200 hour mark. I believe that at this point I could fully appreciate the product’s sonic characteristics. Presently, my system is replete with Antipodes cabling.

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