BSG qøl™ review in latest HiFi'Zine, out now

The September 2012 issue of Hifi'Zine is now out (just in time) and it contains my  review of the BSG qøl.  Perhaps most interestingly, BSG offer a manufacturer's comment after the review that contains details I'd not seen elsewhere, and also announces the successful patenting of key ideas in the design.

As you can tell, I enjoyed this rather unusual new product. I remain unclear on how exactly it does what it does but the results are impressive in my system. I know the qol has given a lot of people reason to doubt but talking about it is really no substitute for hearing it. I made that point (edited out of the final version) but really, trying to form a view of any component, not least one as different as this without hearing it for yourself is an exercise in frustration. No matter how much you want to dismiss it or embrace it, you need to hear it, ideally in your own rig. BSG make this possible with easy 30-day returns, a trend that is welcome in this day of limited dealerships. They will be at RMAF in October but show conditions, especially given the well-documented volume difference when bypass mode is engaged, cannot substitute for hearing it in your system. Hearing is believing, but never more so when the mechanisms involved are out of the ordinary.  

The Ugliest Audio Gear money can buy

Much as we might wish to believe it's all about the sound, for most of us the aesthetics of a product are important drivers of our satisfaction and enjoyment of a product. Listen to how many audiophiles on forums slaver over the fit, finish and detailed workmanship involved in their favorite toys. It's not crazy, the look and feel of speakers, tables, cables and components do seem to matter. With that in mind, let me share my list of products that absolutely fail my 'looks good' threshold. I make no comments on the quality, value or general desirability of what follows, am confident they are fine sounding pieces of gear, but something about them just turns me off. Your mileage might vary, nominations welcome (manufactured, for sale equipment only please, as you will see if you follow the link below)

1. The Merrill-Williams REAL turntable

I don't know if it's the corky top, the stick-it-under-the-plinth power supply, the oversized chess piece center-weight, or the goofy inverted ball rubber feet but this table looks like a pieced-together kit made in someone's garage out of a modified 1980s mid-fi spinner. Nothing elegant about this player, let's hope it sounds more coherent than it looks!



2. Salk Soundscapes

I am sure these are very well-made but, and it's a big but, these boxes cannot escape the giving the impression that someone plonked three blocks together, stuck some chunky footers on them and tried to use beautiful veneers to tie the results together. Owners and potential purchasers 'ooh' and 'aah' about the look, but I cannot shed the impression that this is a speaker made for men who imagine the wife would welcome a new tube-amp for their wedding anniversary.

3. Wyred 4 Sound MMC5

Price is right with most products from W4S but this type of utilitarian sheet and rivet look would not look out of place in a Soviet-era knock-off. The little black fascia panels might soften the blow but this box oozes the vibe of something made up from the clearance-sale list at Parts Express.






4. Wilson Audio Polaris and Maxx 3 

I don't care how well reviewed or expensive these are with their material X and Y construction , but the

Star Wars robotic look suggests death-ray lasers interwoven with the soundwaves. If you entered your listening room late at night without thinking you might imagine alien intruders standing by the stereo. Bad as the Maxx and Alexandrias appear, that Polaris seems to be doing a passable impression of a fat R2D2. Out of this world looks to go with those prices.













5 - You tell me.....

For now, I am restricting this to commercially available gear, avoiding some of the Frankensteinian efforts of DIY-ers, and I am definitely excluding room treatments which are just too easy to hate, but you will surely be tickled by some of the images here, if not for the gear alone, at least for the Herculian efforts some folks make to give such gear a home. 

I know wires...

and I know they give me no end of heartache. Forget price, I've ruined HDMI connections by leaning on them, blown outlets by overloading plugs, added hum by changing cords, sent carefully designed speaker cables that came in for review back to the manufacturer as they did not fit my peculiar set up, and now, I've shorted out a snake-sized power cord by trying to get it to fit a connector without first planning the lay out. One of my otherwise excellent Spectron Thunderbolts hit the point of no return this week when, adding a new power conditioner on trial to my rig, I found I had to turn the IEC connector or the plug (or both) around at an angle to get it to fit the new component and amp securely given the new configuration. Seemed fine until I powered up and then the circuit died. Oops. Turns out I shorted the cable by turning the connector too far, wrestling the internal wire out of its connector just enough for two legs to touch. Ah, simple fix thinks I, a couple of twists and a quick go with the screwdriver and we'll be back in business. That was until I realized, thirty minutes of frustration later, that the sheer amount of copper used in these cords involved a connection between wire and socket that was more than my hand or hand tools could provide. So, off to the shop it has gone for repair (how much? don't ask!)  And so it goes with me and cables. Surely there is a future for me where all cable connections are thin, flexible and of suitable length. Maybe, but why do ultra slim cables seem to cost more than hosepipes?  

Q-up tonearm lifter

If you play records, sooner or later you fall asleep/leave the room/ or aren't quick enough to get to the table before the stylus runs off at the end. We've all been there. I remember a product called 'The Lift' from a few years back but never see them anywhere. Now there's a new solution, the Q-UP, ($60) which seems easy to fix to your table and has a spring mechanism that is triggered by the encroachment of your tonearm. Not the most elegant in operation, but it looks sweet enough, if this video is anything to go by.



Searching for the Lift did turn up the Levitator which looks as useful and a little more nicely designed to my eye, but without seeing both in action it's hard to tell. Check this out:

Good deal on Zu Essence, great blog entry

Zu Audio, whose products always sounded enjoyable when I've heard them, especially if you like rock, funk etc, are having a closeout sale on the Essence line, a pair now at less than half price. At under $2k a pair this has value written over it. A 60-day home trial and free return shipping if you are unsatisfied is included, plus the promise of 100% trade-up for two years. I'm not buying only because I have more speakers than any sane person would probably need in one house but if $2k is your price point and you have the space, here's a real deal.

Zu had a dealer tour earlier this year, sadly when I was out of town on business. The local dealer here, Whetstone Audio, has a great blog and it caught my eye this week with a tragically sad (and slightly old) story about the Garrott Brothers, known to a small band of cartridge lovers (not including myself) as the people who could modify any cartridge with loving care. Good deals, sad stories, it's all about the music. Peace. 

Von Schweikert podcast on VR22

Interesting new use of the medium to share information on the Von Schweikert  VR22 speakers has been made by the company. Check it out here. Can you tell which speaker Albert is referring to when he speaks of non-resonant enclosures?  I have a pair of the VR22s in for review, I'll say more as we go, they're in my rig right now but it's fair to say, at under $3k delivered, factory-direct, this is a going to be an interesting option for many.

Power: clean, conditioned and regenerated

A few years back I had an electrician run a dedicated line for my audio set up, a 20amp feed straight from the box at the back of the house to two outlets in my living room. He seemed skeptical when I told him also to use 'hospital grade' outlets but complied and I since replaced them with PS Audio outlets that grip power plugs like a vice. I cannot say it made a massive difference but it did clean up some of sonics and later, when I added a PS Audio Power Point Premier regenerator, I enjoyed very clean power free of pops from the AC kicking in (which is several times an hour in a Texas summer). When the PPP died (something I've experienced with more than a couple of the PS Audio components that I've owned over the years) I took advantage of an offer from the company to take it back on trade for a new P5, the latest generation of line regenerators (no mere conditioners!) from PS Audio. Have  to say, I like it. It looks good, works well and keeps most of my cables out of the way.

A couple of cords it does not hold however are those of my mono block amps which I've always plugged straight into the wall since using them with the earlier PPP tended to kick the fan in the regenerator on during particularly quiet pieces of music. For reasons that elude me now, I decided this week, when the system was powered down for a break, to try putting the Spectrons onto the P5 also, thereby running my entire rig from the one clean, freshly regenerated power supply which I can observe as a clean sine wave on the P5s front screen.

When I powered up I was surprised on several fronts. First, the display would not work but several restarts fixed this (though not without my worrying that I'd been struck by the failing PS Audio gear curse!) but second by the sonics. The music really did sound different with the amps on the P5 but it was not all good. Bass seemed to be greatly reduced while upper frequency detail seemed enhanced. I decided to leave everything on for a few days to familiarize myself with the sound but after two days I could not take anymore, it all just sounded too edgy, thin and lacking in body.  Putting the amps back on direct feed from the wall restored my pleasure but not before I'd discussed this with both PS Audio and with Spectron.

I think it's fair to say, there are significant disagreements as to what is happening here. PS Audio correctly view the power from the P5 as being cleaned up, therefore what I was hearing is probably a tonal balance shift. If the music is sounding worse to my ears and I cannot get used to it, there is probably something wrong elsewhere in my rig or, heaven forbid, I am really hearing what these amps sound like. Spectron tell me the problem is the P5. They do not recommend using it, or any transformer-based conditioner in fact, with their amps which are particularly fast and current intensive. They point out, also correctly, that if it the amps sound better without the P5, then that's all the evidence required to avoid its use. Two reasonable conclusions but two contradictory lines of reasoning.

All this has me wondering just what is happening here so I'm embarking on an exploration of various power treatment options. It won't surprise you to learn that said options are not cheap however I would like to get some of these into my rig to compare them on the same circuit and system. Stay tuned.

An audio blog for your significant other

It had to happen but there was never a guarantee that it would be this good. Check out The Audiophile's Wife and perhaps be grateful it's not you that is being written about here. On second thoughts, that's pointless...it's all of us! 

RIP Maestro Lord

I was particularly saddened this week with the news of Jon Lord's death on Monday from a pulmonary embolism, even while he was fighting pancreatic cancer with some success. When you get to a certain age, you think back on the music you grew up with less than critical eyes, and from which you can still obtain genuine pleasure in the sonic trips down memory lane. Jon for me was the sound of Deep Purple and that band is permanently etched in my mind with experiences of hearing certain music for the first time, for scouring record stores in the hope of finding obscure records and for the times when you never really got to see bands, you had to hear them first, in that pre-video, no rock-on-TV age that was the early 1970s. The death has caused an outpouring of memories and comments online and I am amazed to find that via the web, I can read comments from strangers who were actually at some of the gigs I attended years ago on the other side of the world.

The best reading on all this is at the The Highway Star where the band and many friends share their emotions or you can listen to Ritchie Blackmore and Rick Wakeman talking about Jon on the BBC's Last Word podcast.   Best line I've picked up was from Ian Gillan who told a funny story about an over-excited fan running up to Jon once in a hotel, blurting out in his confusion:  "Jon, Jon....I am your hero"  to which Jon quickly responded, "Ah, so you're King Arthur!"  Great man, great music. Go listen here as he explain his 'sound'

Fair use, plagiarism or what?

I suppose it says something positive about the content of HiFi'Zine that other sites think it's ok to lift articles wholesale and post the text on their own pages with minimal attribution. I realize web protocols for authorship are, shall we say, in flux, but I was a little disappointed with the Carver Forum which lifted text and graphics from the recent Bass Integration Guide (parts 1, 2, and 3) put together by Paul Spencer and while it offered a fleeting link at the top saying 'From Hifi'Zine', I cannot imagine any other publication considering this anything other than stealing. If you wrote those articles and put in the hours on measurements and graphics that clearly Paul put into them, as any reader can see,  I think you'd feel aggrieved to see your work presented this way.  I doubt Bob Carver wants to be associated with this type of 'design' choice.

[Addendum:  The site manager has removed the content since a complaint was registered but let's just say, gave the owner a lecture about free access. Who knew?]

HiFi'Zine June 2012 issue now out

This  new issue has two entries from me, both connected with the new cable company, High Fidelity Cables: a review and an interview with head honcho, Rick Schultz, former chief of Virtual Dynamics. I'd been trying to get Rick for a while to talk about developments old and new in the cable business and am pleased to finally get our conversation on the record.  Also, great articles on the Akimate Micros, music reviews, and the best guide yet to getting started on computer audio for Mac users by editor in chief, John Reekie. Enjoy, comment, and think about contributing an article yourself if so inclined - remember, HiFi'Zine is a magazine by audiophiles for audiophiles; advertising free, open to all and happy to explore the hobby from all angles.

Is A'gon slipping?

Well the interest in the Audiogon alternatives has clearly grown recently given the traffic here. I took a look at the Qualcast data on hit rates

You can certainly see a sharp downturn in visits to the 'Gon since the redesign, though it's fair to say that they had apparently grown traffic significantly over the last two years so it's something of a return to 2009 rates, not too shabby in itself but clearly something changed this year and the mood seems to be swinging. Let's see how this plays out over the next few months.

Alternatives to Audiogon part II

That note below about the A'gon complaints seems to have drawn much traffic and some private emails. My defense of A'gon is that it remains the best out there  until someone or other is prepared to put the effort into a real alternative. Well, it seems some folks are willing to walk the walk, with varying degrees of success. A recent push mail from AVGuide contained a link to SoundOffers which offers a gear selling structure similar to the 'Gon. Nice enough interface but the experience is seriously hampered by the lack of product. Multiple categories of product have nothing listed and even the most populated categories have but a handful of items listed. Still, it's a reasonable effort that holds promise with basic listing only costing $3 for 30 days and, as far as I can tell, none of the commission rates that annoys so many with A'gon. It's local too, at least in as much as the publisher for TAS has interests in Austin. Worth keeping an eye on as this one has marketing back up that might grow it into something significant.

A much more grass-roots oriented effort has been launched by the guys behind the Canuck Audio Mart.  Named, perhaps not surprisingly US Audio Mart, these folks really are pitching themselves as an Audiogon alternative with a full statement to that effect off their home page. Most exciting, since the owners rely solely on advertising revenue from manufacturers and dealers, the process of buying and selling gear is free, it has sufficient product for sale even now to make it feel worth using, you can improve that by revealing listings form the Canadian site that sellers will ship to the US, and it has member discussion forums. Right now it's showing sufficient energy for optimism about its future. For those of you still annoyed with A'gon, this is definitely worth checking out. I've registered and will be working my way slowly through the content and forums over the next week or so but for now, this is the one to watch.

Complaints over Audiogon continue

It's been nearly 6 months since Audiogon made changes to its fee structure and design. From the outset people seemed upset, not least those who were paying for ads at the time and saw traffic diminish and the search engine sputter. The site has slowly become more robust and retains top-spot at the place to go for scoring or selling audio gear but this has not stopped the criticism. Here's a new article that seems to have tapped into a lot of the negative sentiment, published in Home Theater Review this week, claiming dropped traffic and revenues as a result of the changes made to Audiogon.

I am more sanguine than most on this, after all, it's still the best place to get a sense of the value and availability of gear, and I've bought a lot of my system over the years through listings on that site. Until some other group comes up with a real alternative, they will remain the #1 place for this type of transaction, so how bad can it be?  Of course, if you are a member of some other forums, such as the excellent Audio Circle, you can list and buy without fees, but don't imagine you have the same choice of gear as you will find on A'gon. As usual, it's easier to criticize than create, and I wonder how many people really feel strongly enough to take up the challenge of doing it better?

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a....sticker?

Well if you love tweaks, you'll love these new 'chips' cunningly disguised as a stickers which you put on the back of your speakers with the express aim of  gaining some audio magic.  Working (allegedly) at a 'sub-atomic' level,  the sticker, er, chip, to quote the Cable Co folks, "is mounted on an adhesive backing which can be attached to the device. The Chips are "programmed" for their specified applications. The adhesive is not aggressive, and the chips can be used and removed for testing purposes, no problem."  Priced at a level which makes them affordable by all (!), let me know what you hear won't you?


And in fairness to the Cable Co whom I don't tend to think of as marketers of much nonsense, here's a link to their line of videos explaining their products