Equipment Reviews

Most-Read Equipment Reviews

Ultra Audio's site platform was changed in August 2010. For equipment reviews previous to that, use this link to transfer to the old site.

: Written by Ryan Coleman; Created: 01 November 2011

Herron VTSP-3A preamplifier Years ago, when I was first getting into high-end audio, I remember walking into a dealer’s showroom in Austin, Texas, interested in listening to some subwoofers for two-channel music. At the time I was using a simple two-way speaker that was restricted to about 40Hz, so I figured a good sub would help fill in what I’d been missing. The dealer had a stereo set of subs set up with a pair of speakers that were also restricted in the deep bass. When the subs were switched in and out, I heard a bit more bass depth, a bit more ambience, but nothing earth-shattering or obvious. Where’s the bass? I kept thinking. It’s like the things are barely on -- they’re hardly doing anything! No sale that day.

: Written by Michael Wright; Created: 15 October 2011

Copland CDA825 Friends ask me why, in this day and age, I’m reviewing a CD player.

"Because," I tell them, "you keep bringing CDs for us to listen to."

CDs are still a viable music format. I have a great appreciation for what’s being done with music servers and other types of computer-driven audio components, some of which are astounding in their level of performance. But at the end of the day, when I go into my listening room, I have a ton of CDs to choose from. For me, it’s just as easy to load a disc, sit back, and get into the music.

Copland, founded by Ole Møller, has been making high-quality electronics in Denmark since the 1980s. I first encountered Copland’s offerings at a late-’80s Consumer Electronics Show, and found them extremely well made and well regarded -- as they are to this day. Copland has seemingly always provided high-quality European construction without going overboard on price.

So when the opportunity arose to review Copland’s new CDA825 CD player ($6500 USD), I was more than a little excited to hear what it could do in my system. I was put in contact with Diane Koebel, of Divergent Technologies, which distributes Copland products in North America. She set the review in motion, and shortly thereafter a Copland CDA825 arrived.

: Written by Garrett Hongo; Created: 01 October 2011

Select Component TW-Acustic Raven 10.5 TW-Acustic, a small German company, has made quite an impression on the analog world since it introduced the Raven AC turntable at Munich High End 2005. In quick succession, TW-A introduced five attractive turntables, each with features that made it distinct from its predecessor, yet with an overall design philosophy that demonstrated unifying principles regarding analog sound and the production of precisely wrought mechanics to execute those principles. The eye-popping Raven AC cocked heads with its gorgeous copper platter mat, innovative plinth and platter materials, cantilevered armboards, the number of tonearms it could accommodate (as many as four, à la Micro Seiki), outboard Pabst motors, fine-spun yet lavish sound, and easy operation. Then, in 2007, came the Raven One, a simpler (one motor, one arm) and more affordable version of the AC, but with the same sonic character and precision machining. Introduced with the One, the Raven Two featured the ability to mount two tonearms simultaneously. The Raven .5, introduced in 2008 and discontinued shortly thereafter, was the entry-level baby of the family. The Black Night, TW-A’s Gothic flagship, debuted at Munich High End 2009 and is a veritable Batmobile, with a huge and hugely ingenious motor mechanism, a solid-copper platter, astonishingly attractive lines, and a feeling of a sensuous organicism wedded to finely machined industrial design. Finally, the single-chassis Raven Limited, with inboard motor and controller, debuted in 2011. Though only 50 of these handsome units will be made, each comes standard with the subject of this review: TW-Acustic’s new Raven 10.5 tonearm ($5500 USD).

: Written by Graham Abbott; Created: 15 September 2011

Artisan Silver MC I think my powers of observation are weakening as I grow older. When a courier showed up at my house with a diminutive box sent to me from the UK, I was mystified. The audio hobby has conditioned me to expect things to be bigger than I had anticipated, and so entombed in packaging that I end up buried in a mountain of paper and cardboard, and dreading the day I must repackage the bloody thing and ship it back. (Esoteric’s E-03 phono stage packaging could make an environmentalist faint dead away: It still holds the record for the greatest ratio of cardboard to gear in my experience.) I looked at the delivery person, wary as I am of the breed, and asked where the rest of the bits were.

But this little box turned out to be Box 1 of 1. It contained precisely one small, extremely lightweight phono stage, a very compact user manual, and no power supply. In fact, the Artisan Silver moving-coil phono stage is so small and lightweight that I had to tussle with my interconnects and position the whole assembly just so, to keep its rear end flat on the rack! Artisan, of course, doesn’t hide the fact that the unit is small -- that’s down to me not paying attention while visiting their website. Nor do they hide the small price: £209, or about $305 USD or Canadian at the time of writing.

: Written by Vade Forrester; Created: 01 September 2011

MSB Universal Media Transport “If You’re Not Getting into Computer-Based Audio Now, You’re Crazy.” That was the title of the “Opinion” editorial of April 1, 2011, by Doug Schneider, Publisher of the SoundStage! Network. Although our esteemed publisher admitted that the title was a deliberately provocative overstatement, he closed his article with this: “but you may well be nuts if you invest big money in a new CD player when it’s pretty obvious that the present and future of digital playback are computer-based solutions.”

Yet what follows here is a review of another disc player. Does that make us guilty of rank hypocrisy or, even worse, of capitulating to manufacturer pressure?

Worry not: The MSB Technology Universal Media Transport ($3995 USD without power supply) redefines universal to include the playback of music files from a computer, as well as every major audio format found on a 4.7” (120mm) disc: Blu-ray, DVD-Audio, SACD, HDCD, and CD, plus a number of video formats. It will also play FLAC and WAV music files from a USB or eSATA hard drive plugged directly into it, or from one of Reference Recordings’ HRx discs. It will also play computer audio files streamed over a wired or wireless network. So when MSB claims that the Universal Media Transport is universal, they mean a lot more than do most makers of “universal” players.

: Written by Jason Thorpe; Created: 15 August 2011

Select Component A record player works according to a set of principles wildly different from those on which other audio components are based. The LP groove and how it affects the stylus function at the level of the micrometer, or millionth of a meter (0.000001m); given the delicacy of those effects and the relatively blunt instruments that must read and amplify them, it’s a wonder they reproduce any recognizable sound at all, let alone the sonic delights that can come out of even a budget turntable, tonearm, and cartridge.

WTL Amadeus While the physics by which the analog system produces music are well-known and well-understood phenomena, in my opinion there isn’t a heck of a lot of leading-edge research dedicated to its advancement. Although some manufacturers do actually measure the turntables they design and build, my experience has been that most do not. As I said, the general principles of analog playback are well understood, so the game plan is usually quite straightforward: add a bunch of mass to the plinth and the platter, suspend or otherwise isolate the plinth from vibrations from the outside world, find or design and build a good tonearm, and use as smooth-running a motor as possible. The rest is in the details. Of course the designers also need to listen, listen, listen. I’d wager that, quite often, the results don’t reflect the efforts that went into it, and back to the drawing board they go.

: Written by Michael Wright; Created: 01 August 2011

Select Component Have you ever had the feeling that you knew someone whom you previously had never met or spoken with? Weird, isn’t it? That’s what I felt when I met Joe Jurzec, part owner of Purity Audio Design.

Four or five years ago, I was talking with a friend about Roger Paul’s H-CAT preamplifier. Seems he knew of a dealer that carried the H-CAT, Jam’n Audio, in Lake Villa, Illinois. As soon as I heard “Lake Villa,” which is more than an hour’s drive from my home, the conversation, as far as I was concerned, was over -- any drive of longer than an hour is too long for me.

Purity Reference Fast forward to October 2010 and the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, at which I had a pretty good time -- the event turned out to be much larger and more involving than I’d imagined. I entered the Purity Audio Design room, though it seemed a little too busy for any kind of serious listening. What caught my attention was a preamplifier whose shape was different from those of most preamps I’ve seen. I’d already been keeping an eye out for tubed preamps, especially after having been treated to a rousing demo given by Emmanuel Go, of First Sound, earlier that afternoon.

: Written by Jeff Van Dyne; Created: 15 July 2011

Silverline Sonatina Mk.IV This review has brought me full circle -- the Sonatina Mk.I was the first tube-amp-friendly speaker I ever owned. This, of course, led to an overwhelming desire to experiment with a tube integrated amplifier, which I satisfied with the purchase of a bargain-priced Cayin TA-30. I still use that amp (now heavily modified) daily, and it’s an overachiever by any definition. That purchase was followed by a turntable, and a sizable investment in rebuilding a vinyl collection. Who would have thought, as I approach the half-century mark in the midst of the digital age, that I would be returning to analog with such great interest? I owe it all to that first pair Sonatinas.

I sold my Mk.Is not long after moving from a largish colonial tract house in flyover country to the drastically more expensive real estate of the Pacific Northwest. My beloved Sonatinas, and their penchant for requiring more than the usual amount of space between them, sadly fell victims to a much smaller listening room. In fact, it was the Mk.Is’ desire for wide spacing that at first made me somewhat reluctant to review the Mk.IVs -- I was afraid they’d require the same treatment, which would have relegated my listening to the home-theater room -- a task not insurmountable, but still difficult. Happily, they didn’t.

: Written by Peter Roth; Created: 01 July 2011

select_150w_t A cure for proliferation and redundancy

One of the downsides of assembling a state-of-the-art audio system is the proliferation of boxes for differing sources. On the digital side alone, my system has relied on three separate devices: one each for computer audio (a USB digital-to-analog converter), for SACD and CD, and for DVD and Blu-ray. Separate boxes mean multiple interconnects, power cords, and rack shelves -- an expensive proposition. Perhaps most frustrating is the knowledge that so much of what each box contains is redundant: digital filters, DAC chipsets, clocks, analog output stages. Nevertheless, no single digital device, to my knowledge, came close to providing edge-of-the-art performance with all of these disparate formats. It was therefore an exciting day last summer when Ayre Acoustics announced the imminent release of its DX-5, a new digital source component billed by Ayre as a Universal A/V Engine ($9950 USD).

Ayre DX-5 The DX-5 is a single-chassis digital player with a transport able to spin all commercially available 5" silver discs -- CD, SACD, DVD-Audio, DVD-Video, and Blu-ray -- as well as a USB input capable of receiving datastreams from the "Red Book" standard of 16-bit/44.1kHz to high-resolution files of 24/88.2, 24/96, 24/176.4, and even 24/192. My anticipation was further enhanced by reports that the DX-5 achieved higher levels of performance with audio discs than even Ayre’s own C-5xe^MP (my prior reference player) -- or, with computer audio, Ayre’s QB-9 USB DAC. The QB-9 has been part of my reference system for the past 18 months, and both it and the C-5xe^MP are SoundStage! Network Recommended Reference Components. As a bonus, Ayre has included video playback in the DX-5, with an attention to detail unheard of in my experience. That all of this functionality could be contained in a svelte aluminum case requiring only a single AC cord, one set of analog interconnects, and one shelf space seemed almost too good to be true.

: Written by Jeff Fritz; Created: 15 June 2011

select_150w_t The upward-spiraling prices of high-end-audio components over the past ten years have exasperated many audiophiles, and understandably so. How many people are actually shopping for $200,000/pair speakers? Just as frustrating, particularly for committed audiophiles who, for a single product, might well spend into the high four or even the low five figures, is just how little, these days, such considerable sums can actually buy. There’s no better example than the power-amplifier department. It’s easy to find five-grand amps made from the commonly available, off-the-shelf ICEpower modules from Bang & Olufsen. Not that these are bad per se, but the same modules are available in products that cost under two grand. What’s up with that?

Coda Technologies 15.0 There was a time when $5000 or $6000 would buy a statement-type stereo amplifier -- say, a Krell KSA-250 or a Mark Levinson No.23.5. Today, used samples of those benchmark products, now almost 20 years old, still command prices of almost half of their original list prices. I wonder if, 20 years from now, today’s ICEpower amps will be doing as well.

The point is that audiophiles need to consider their purchases more carefully than ever, not only to ensure that they’re getting products they’ll enjoy listening to and that will be reliable for many years to come, but also that they’re getting something that will stand the test of time in terms of resale value. In my book, all three criteria need to be met before a product can be considered for purchase.

If you admired any of the behemoth, hot-running, sweet-sounding, solid-state amps of yore -- e.g., those Krells and Levinsons -- but missed out back then, not to worry: For those of you who, like me, have fond memories of the past but who want something fully up to date powering their speakers, there is an oasis in the desert.

Remember the old Threshold power amps? Well, Threshold is gone, and while Nelson Pass, founder of Threshold, has been producing amplifiers under his own name for some years now, other former Threshold employees are also designing and manufacturing power amps. Their company is Coda Technologies, and their amplifiers are completely up to date in terms of parts quality and circuit design, while capturing some of the all-out-assault of the hardware of years gone by.