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Floor Loudspeaker Reviews

Swans Speaker Systems Baton

Muse Kastanovich Nov 22, 2013

As a privileged reviewer-type person, I was sent the souped-up, all-rosewood, bi-wirable version that sells for $2905/pair. They're quite handsome and very solidly built, weighing in at a respectable 50 lbs each. At $2275$2905/pair, the Baton is Swans' most affordable speaker, and reportedly employs many of the technical refinements of their larger, more costly models.

The Baton uses the tried-and-true two-way dynamic design, with a 7" coated-paper woofer and a 1" fabric-dome tweeter. The tweeter comes with a little Marigo dot stuck to its center to shape its response. It's not a physically easy task for a woofer to reproduce (well) all the frequencies from about 60Hz up to about 2 or 3kHz. One that succeeds is a nice find, though, because the sound has a nice coherence to it when most of the music is coming from the same driver. But don't take my word for itjust look how many zillions of two-way speakers there are out there.

News Ariel Bitran

Winamp Is No More

Ariel Bitran Nov 21, 2013

Starting December 20, 2013, Winamp will no longer be available for download. A warning was posted on the Winamp website yesterday. Winamp served an instrumental role in the proliferation of downloaded music giving music fans an easy way to play music on their computer.

Think Pieces

How to Revive High-End Audio

John Atkinson Nov 19, 2013

When I became Stereophile's editor in 1986, the median age of the magazine's readership was the same age as I was then, 38; ie, half the readers were younger than 38, half older. According to our most recent reader survey, the median reader age is now 48, meaning that in the intervening 19 years, that median reader has aged at half the rate of the rest of us. A nice trick. But older that reader certainly has become, which has led to cries of doom from some quarters of the audio industry.

J. Gordon Holt Recording of the Month

Recordings of November 1986: Chesky's First Releases

J. Gordon Holt Nov 18, 2013

BERLIOZ: Symphonie Fantastique
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Massimo Fraccia
Chesky CR-1.

RACHMANINOV: Piano Concerto No.2 in c
Earl Wild, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Jascha Horenstein
Chesky CR-2.

Chesky? Massimo Fraccia? Is this a put-on?

No, it's not. Chesky is a new record company which, at a time when everyone is predicting the imminent demise of the LP, has just launched its first two LPs and is threatening to follow them with more.

David Chesky is a young composer/musician who, despite some impressive credentials in the classical music world, remains singularly unrenowned. But he is also a musical reactionary after my own heart, who feels that all the best performances of the so-called Romantic repertoire were done years ago and will probably never be equalled. But rather than just bitch about this in record reviews, he is doing something about it, by releasing some of those early, possibly definitive performances on the best-sounding recordings he knows how to produce.

J. Gordon Holt Recording of the Month

Recordings of December 1986: Two Out-of-Character Recordings

J. Gordon Holt Nov 18, 2013

REFLECTIONS
666rotm.reflections.jpg

Jim Walker, flute, Mike Garson, piano
Reference Recordings CD RR-18CD.

DEBUSSY: Quartet in g
RAVEL: Quartet in F
The Cleveland Quartet
Telarc CD-80111.

What do you listen to when you've heard Reference Recordings' Symphonie Fantastique, Telarc's 1812 Overture, and Sheffield's Firebird, the last of your audiophile guests have gone home, and tomorrow's a workday but you're too hyped up to go to bed?

These.

Both are from record companies whose reputations were built on sonic blockbusters, but the subjects of this review are about as true to expectation as Mr. T flouncing about with a limp wrist.

Reflections is a program of short works for flute and piano. It's quiet, restful, and, in an age when it seems that nothing is worth listening to unless it's high-powered or "significant," this laidback program is a delightful change of pace.

Headphone Reviews InnerFidelity

A Headset for Everyone: The Sennheiser Momentum On-Ear

Tyll Hertsens Nov 18, 2013

This story originally appeared at InnerFidelity.com

Sure...there's a few trade-offs here and there, but I have a hard time imagining an on-ear portable headset can get much better than this!

Ariel Bitran

CAD MH510 Over-Ear Headphones

Ariel Bitran Nov 14, 2013

This is Carter B. of Austin, Texas, one of the winners of our CAD MH510 over-ear headphone sweepstakes. After I sent Carter and our second winner, Jesus C. of Plainsboro, New Jersey, their prizes, I realized the Stereophile office had one extra set of these headphones. Hmm…

I was in the market for some monitoring headphones, and CAD traditionally makes microphones for recording. Could the CAD MH510 ($159.00) be the headphone I was looking for?

Stephen Mejias

Burger Records: A Wonderful Way to Live

Stephen Mejias Nov 13, 2013

For me, and many people like me, the 365 days that comprise a calendar year are more than just a tidy representation of a brief period of life. Those 365 days mark a period of music discovery, filled with disappointments, surprises, and, if we’re lucky, one or two completely life-altering revelations.

If discovering a new artist is great, even better is discovering an entire record label of exciting new artists. It happens for me with increasing reliability:

Stephen Mejias

The News about DSD

Stephen Mejias Nov 13, 2013

For many, the current hot topic in the world of high-end audio is Direct-Stream Digital (DSD), a method, developed by Sony and Philips, of digitally encoding an analog signal. The irony is that DSD is nothing new. The basis of the technology dates to 1946. Stereophile described it in “Industry Update,” as early as Vol.19 Nos.1 and 5, and again in Vol.20 No.9. And, almost exactly 14 years ago, in November 1999, John Atkinson went into greater detail, contrasting DSD with the more common Pulse-Code-Modulated (PCM) encoding used on CD:

Features

Book Review: RA—The Book

John Marks Nov 13, 2013

RAThe Book: The Recording Architecture Book of Studio Design
By Roger D'Arcy and Hugh Flynn (illustrator), with photographs by Neil Waving. Foreword by Adrian Kerridge. Black Box Limited (London), 2011. $215. Hardcover, 15" by 10.5" by 1.25", 350 pp. ISBN 978-1-907759-16-1. Available from www.ra-thebook.com (ships from within the US).

In July 2004, I reviewed Jim Cogan and William Clark's Temples of Sound: Inside the Great Recording Studios, a collection of the business histories of 15 US recording studios. Each chapter covered a particular studio, focusing on its role in the careers of the recording artists most associated with that studio; eg, United Western Recorders and the Beach Boys.