Art Dudley

Montreal Audio Fest 2019

More from Art's Day One at the Montreal Audio Fest

Art Dudley Mar 24, 2019

I suppose I'm odd man out for not liking Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, which has sold over 45 million copies since its release in 1973 yet for me remains a monument only to the hazards of excessive marijuana consumption. Too bad for me: On Friday, the sounds of that album blasted from what seemed every third demonstration, and by the time I approached the door of the room sponsored by Montreal retailer Son Ideal, I was hearing DSOTM for literally the fourth time since the show opened. Quiet desperation, indeed.

Montreal Audio Fest 2019

Montreal Audio Fest 2019 Hits the Ground Running

Art Dudley Mar 22, 2019

At 1:00 on Friday I spoke with Sarah Tremblay (above), co-organizer (with Michel Plante) of the Montreal Audio Fest. The 2019 show had opened only two hours before we ran into one another, and already over 4600 attendees had pre-registered and 1400 of them had arrived on-site. (Admission is free, but the organizers ask of each attendee their name and gender, and whether they'd attended previous Montreal shows.) Tremblay told me that approximately 50% of registrants so far were first-timers: an excellent sign.

Digital Processor Reviews Media Server Reviews

Naim ND5 XS 2 media player

Art Dudley Mar 19, 2019

The late Julian Vereker, the sharp-minded former racing driver who founded Naim Audio and designed its first products, did so because he wanted audio amplification of a quality he felt no one else was making at the time, reasoning that if he wanted such a thing, so might others. Thus came about Naim's first domestic-audio product, the distinctive NAP200 solid-state amp (1973).

Art Dudley Listening Phono Cartridge Reviews Phono Preamp Reviews

Listening #195: Ortofon SPU Century & Grandinote Celio

Art Dudley Feb 19, 2019

Easy pickup: Art’s Dog, Chatter, cozies up to Leif Johannsen of Ortofon A/S and Dee Hustinova of Ortofon USA. (Photo: Art Dudley)

According to the 2018 edition of the UN's World Happiness Report, Denmark is the third-happiest nation on Earth, trailing only its neighbors Finland and Norway.

I heard that yesterday afternoon, on NPR. The reporter even spelled out the word used by Danes to describe their feelings of happiness: hygge. Apparently, at present, Denmark is positively rotten with hygge.

Art Dudley Listening Tonearm Reviews

Listening #194: Sorane ZA-12 tonearm

Art Dudley Feb 07, 2019

Peter J. Walker (19162003), founder of Quad Electroacoustics and designer of some of the most well-regarded products in the history of domestic audio, famously believed that a properly designed audio-frequency amplifier should have no sound of its own. As for suggestions that his Quad II amplifier (19531971) sounded better than most, Walker was unmoved: "We designed our valve amplifier, manufactured it, put it on the market and never actually listened to it."

Tube Power Amp Reviews

Air Tight ATM-300R power amplifier

Art Dudley Jan 24, 2019

To audio designers in Japan and elsewhere, the single-ended, 300B-tubed amplifier is like a haiku: an art form defined by both its prescribed limitations and the potential such restraint offers for artistic expression. Here, the only hard-and-fast rule is a simple one: output devices are limited to one 300B directly heated triode tube per channel. From there, it's a blank slate: Do you want AC or DC on the output-tube heaters? Tube or solid-state rectification? Low or high gain? Fixed or cathode bias? New parts, vintage parts, or a mix of both? Triode or pentode tubes as drivers? Capacitors or transformersor nothing at allbetween the plates of the driver tubes and the grids of the output tubes?

Art Dudley Listening Cable Reviews

Listening #193: Nordost Flatline cables

Art Dudley Dec 31, 2018

Among the many bits of audio lore that never have and probably never will be aired in public is the story of the amp that ignited the reviewer's curtains. (I assume that at least some of you hoped I was going to say "pants.") I can't tell it in any great detail, partly because the reviewer in question is a friend (though not a Stereophile colleague), and I'm not sure how much of the story he wants out there. In any event, my object here is to offer a long-overdue apology, to all concerned, for having laughed at that story over the years, because it has now happened to menot the part about the curtains, but definitely the part about the burning amp.

Audacious Audio Tube Power Amp Reviews

Cary Audio CAD-805RS monoblock power amplifier

Art Dudley Dec 20, 2018

There's no place for fashion in epidemiology, aeronautical engineering, or the mining and storage of uranium. Fortunately, domestic audio is less serious, its goals more scattered and ambiguous, than those and a thousand other pursuits.

And so, throughout the 20th century, any number of trends in domestic audio popped up their heads, some remembered as fads, others as legitimate approaches to playback. Among the latter are amplifiers whose output sections operate in single-ended mode, in which the entire signal waveform is amplified by a single device.

Art Dudley Listening Phono Cartridge Reviews

Listening #192: Koetsu, Ortofon, EMT

Art Dudley Dec 06, 2018

Although my house is now home to a borrowed pair of DeVore Fidelity Orangutan O/93 loudspeakersa loan I gratefully accepted early this year, when my 1966 Altec Flamencos proved a bit too large for my new listening roomit's a matter of pride that I own almost everything else in my playback system, cables included. So it's with no small discomfort that I acknowledge having nearly $30,000 worth of borrowed phono cartridges scattered around my living and dining rooms. (The former is where I listen to them, and the latterthe sunniest room in the houseis where I install them.)

Music and Recording Features

Mission Accomplished: Du Pré's Elgar

Art Dudley Nov 29, 2018

The stars lined up.

According to biographer Charles Reid, the British conductor Sir John Barbirolli "burned with Elgarian zeal," attributable in part to Barbirolli's participation, as a young cellist in the London Symphony Orchestra of 1919, in the premiere performance of Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto. That performance, conducted by the composer and with Felix Salmond as soloist, was a disasterElgar's rehearsal time had been cut short by a lack of cooperation from another conductor on the bill, a slight the composer never forgaveyet from then on, the 19-year-old Barbirolli regarded Elgar's music with reverence.