John Atkinson

RMAF 2013

VTL Rocks the Alexias with Daft Punk

John Atkinson Oct 12, 2013

"What is this music?" asked Jason Serinus (above).

We were sitting in the VTL room, where a pair of Wilson Alexia speakers ($48,500/pair) were being driven by VTL's S-400 stereo amplifier ($33,500), TL-7.5 Series III preamp ($20,000), and TP-6.5 phono preamplifier ($10,500 with transformer).

"It's 'Lose Yourself to Dance,' my favorite track from Daft Punk's Random Access Memories LP," I whispered...

Media Server Reviews

Marantz Reference NA-11S1 Network Audio Player/DAC

John Atkinson Sep 26, 2013

In March, to celebrate Marantz's 60th anniversary, the company launched the subject of this review, the Reference NA-11S1 network player ($3499), which Ken Ishiwata described to me as "a new start, a new era" for Marantz. Michael Fremer attended the European press conference announcing the NA-11S1, and I subsequently talked to Ishiwata via Skype.

News

Ray Dolby, 1933–2013

John Atkinson Sep 12, 2013

Photo: Dolby Laboratories

We are saddened to learn of the passing of inventor and audio entrepreneur Ray Dolby. Other sites have published full obituaries; I'd like simply to offer my memory of interviewing Ray back in the spring of 1977 for the English magazine Hi-Fi News, when Dolby Laboratories were trying to get the BBC interested in using Dolby noise reduction in FM broadcasting. Despite my being a neophyte audio writer, I was treated with courtesy and respect by a man who had forgotten more about audio engineering than I knew.

Floor Loudspeaker Reviews

Sony SS-NA2ES loudspeaker

John Atkinson Sep 06, 2013

The door to a professional reviewer's listening room is one that revolves: As one product leaves, another enters. After a while, it becomes difficult to remember exactly when you auditioned any specific component. But some products stick in your memoryyou fondly remember the time you spent with them, and wish they hadn't departed quite so quickly. With loudspeakers, I recall a few such: Revel's Ultima Salon2 ($22,000, footnote 1), MBL's 111B ($17,000), Dynaudio's Confidence C4 ($16,000), Sonus Faber's Amati Futura ($36,000), Vivid's B1 ($14,990), TAD's Compact Reference CR1 ($40,600 with stands), and even the much less expensive Harbeth P3ESR ($2195$2395) and KEF LS50 ($1500). Among the most recently reviewed of those fondly remembered speakers is Sony's SS-AR2ES ($20,000).

News

Sony to Push Hi-Rez Downloads & Playback

John Atkinson Sep 05, 2013

It was like old times. A major consumer electronics company was presenting a press conference in a high-rent venue to introduce its new audio products. These events used to be commonplace; now they are rare. But on September 4, in Manhattan's Jazz at Lincoln Center, to an audience that included record company executives from Universal, Warner, and Sony Music, HDTracks' Norman and David Chesky, Chad Kassem and Marc Sheforgen from Acoustic Sounds, whose new DSD download store was last week's big news, musician Herbie Hancock, and veteran mastering engineer Mark Wilder, Phil Molyneux, President and Chief Operating Officer of Sony Electronics since September 2010, announced that the company saw high-resolution audio as the future of recorded music playback.

Think Pieces

Nothing More than Lights in a Box

John Atkinson Aug 22, 2013

"Without content, television is nothing more than lights in a box."Edward R. Murrow, 1958

"When it comes to video, most audiophiles are insufferable snobs."J. Gordon Holt, 1984

Those who have followed the arguments between audiophiles and home-theater enthusiasts in the pages of StereophileI lifted the Murrow quote from a 1996 battle between Steve Guttenberg (representing the former community) and Joel Silver (representing the latter)will have no doubt over which side of the argument I am on.

Think Pieces

The Great Wall of China

John Atkinson Aug 16, 2013

You could sense the frustration in Keith Pray's e-mail. "We are on the same team. I have always respected your wishes and will continue to do so," he had written me. At the request of a possible advertiser, Stereophile's publisher had asked me a question about something appearing in the issue of Stereophile we were preparing. I had responded that not only would I not give him an answer, I felt it inappropriate for him to ask.

Think Pieces

Nothing is Too Wonderful to be True

John Atkinson Aug 08, 2013

"Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature . . ."Michael Faraday

"When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him."Jonathan Swift

Floor Loudspeaker Reviews

Boston Acoustics M350 loudspeaker

John Atkinson Aug 01, 2013

Boston Acoustics made its name in the early 1980s with the A40, an inexpensive two-way bookshelf design that became one of that decade's best-selling speakers. Stephen Mejias was impressed by the A40's spiritual descendant, the Boston Acoustics A25 bookshelf speaker ($299.98/pair), when he reviewed it in November 2011, and I was similarly impressed when I had the speaker on the test bench for measurement. So when, in the fall of 2012, Boston's soon-to-be-departing PR representative Sara Trujillo let me know that the company was introducing a range of more expensive speakers, I asked to review the top-of-the-line, floorstanding M350.

Budget Component Reviews Media Server Reviews

Astell&Kern AK100 portable media player

John Atkinson Jul 25, 2013

Apple's iPod came of age in the fall of 2003, when, with the release of iTunes 4.5, the player was no longer restricted to lossy compressed MP3 or AAC files. Instead, it could play uncompressed or losslessly compressed files with true "CD quality"; users no longer had to compromise sound quality to benefit from the iPod's convenience.

Enter Astell&Kern. At the beginning of 2013, this brand from iRiver, a Korean portable media company, introduced its AK100, a portable player costing a dollar short of $700 and capable of handling 24-bit files with sample rates of up to 192kHz.