BAASnotes.com – Bay Area Audiophile Society

New DIY class next January

San Francisco audio designer, Edwin Yang, will be once again teaching a class starting in January, 2011 at the Randall Museum. For the last few years, Edwin has been teaching students how to build a tube linestage, myself included. The linestage, although not expensive, is a terrific piece of gear – I sold my other 2 tube linestages after building it.

The next project is a tube phono stage. This class will be more challenging than the linestage class, but still possible for the student that has confidence and some dexterity. It is not necessary to have built anything before but that it desirable.

The class will be for several Saturdays starting in January. Some will finish quickly while others, like myself, will take the total of 10 Saturdays to finish. The class is always entertaining and educational and I highly recommend it. Cost will be around $600 – $700.

Phono stage comparison at the Randall Museum October 9th

The Bay Area Tube Users Group will be hosting a phono stage comparison at 1pm on Saturday October 9th. I will be bringing my Nighthawk and Prism Orpheus to compare to Edwin’s phono stageIf you have a favorite phono stage you want to compare, please bring it along. So if you are on the fence as to whether it is worth the effort to build one, attend the event and decide for yourselves.

Peter Truce

Recovering Old Vinyl – Is This the Way? (Video)

This NYtimes article and video document a historic jazz music find and recovery.

The handling of these treasured disks may make some vinyl purists (the triple-distilled water set) wince….

(Thanks, Jeffrey!)

Must-see Movie for Vinyl-lovers

“To Have and to Hold” – as in LP (not book) – is an upcoming documentary film about the hold that vinyl has over music-lovers everywhere.

The film is still in production, but you can get a taste of it from this “teaser” video.

Great stuff. This film should build on Fremer’s work, raising awareness and entertaining all at once.

Our Desert Island LPs

Long ago, we selected and posted our “desert island digital” (CDs).

Now let’s take a crack at vinyl!

Add a comment containing your 10-20 most cherished LPs. Try to include enough info that members can reach out and buy a copy.

I’m newly “reborn” to vinyl, but I’ll begin anyway:

• Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run
• S&G, Concert in Central Park
• G. Harrison & Friends, Concert for Bangladesh
• Joni Mitchell, Court & Spark
• The Who, Who’s Next
• N. Young, Harvest
• Chicago, Chicago II
• J. Hendrix, Are You Experienced?
• John Klemmer, Straight From the Heart (Nautilus)
• Iron Butterfly, In-a-gadda-da-vida
• CCR, Cosmo’s Factory
• CSN&Y, Deja Vu
• Jackson Browne, Saturate Before Using
• Traffic, Low Spark…
• Etc.

Can you guess when I last bought LP’s?  ;^)

Enter yours now – comment….

Bob

Spiral Groove Turntable Impresses Digital Audiophile(s)

BAAS membership reflects the current trends of audiophiles worldwide. As such, the majority (including myself) listen to digital these days. So it was interesting to see how our first “analog event” in several years would be received.

About 30 BAAS members gathered at Jason Victor Serinus’ home yesterday to listen to the latest in analog source technology, delivered by Allen Perkins of local manufacturer Spiral Groove (SG).

The system featured the following gear from SG:

• Spiral Groove SG 2 Turntable ($15,000)
• Spiral Groove SG Tonearm ($6,000)
• Lyra Cartridge ($6,000)
• Lehmann Audio Decade phono section ($2,400)
• Spiral Groove preamplifier (projected $15,000)

An impressive array, to be sure!

I am quite familiar with Jason’s system and listening environment, at least for digital sources. Here are my impression of yesterday’s sights and sounds:

• The SG gear is beautiful to look at, and even better to listen to. Furthermore, it’s practical. For example, it can be set up by one person in 30 minutes (!). Simple elegance.
• All told, I listened to the system for five hours. I heard fewer than a dozen tics or pops. This is a new record for me <g>. Especially notable: not a single record was treated in any way during the event. No rituals – just load & play. (Sorta like a CD…) [One member told me that the sound was clean because only vintage older "virgin" vinyl was used.]
• Allen’s description of the engineering design choices that guided him made a lot of sense to me.
• The sound in the second session was a bit tighter than the first. (This is not unusual. I think it’s caused simply by the gear being more fully warmed up.)
• Nordost Odin cables are the real deal. At one point we substituted the preamp’s power cable with a Odin. Wow.
• For the first time in a very long while, I was thinking “…maybe I do need a turntable…”

We also conducted several listening tests on digital sources. These allowed us to compare several digital exemplars to state-of-the-art analog. I’ll say here that two things were apparent:

• Analog rocks. There’s a reason why so many audiophiles are driven to turntables (see this article from today’s NYT). – they can sound great!
• PS Audio’s(PSA’s) new “Perfect Wave” stack combines outstanding ease-of-use with media flexibility and great sonics. That’s a tough combo to beat! Very nice kit, especially for audiophiles wishing to get into high-resolution without going to a computer. (Digital sources that I consider “reference quality” generally have price tags beginning at 2X the PSA tariff.)
• I preferred the sound of the Wavelength Wavelink USB audio interface to that of the the transport (many members agreed). I don’t think it yet matches the best in firewire converters, but it sounded quite detailed and transparent to me (especially on hires material).

Note that Jason’s description of the event – and activities leading up to it – can be found on the Home secrets Blog.