Crave

Cohen spins vinyl on a Clearaudio turntable.

(Credit: Clearaudio)

Every year, the major record companies produce more miserable-sounding recordings. I'm not surprised by this. The labels know most folks listen to music with iTunes or streaming audio, and sound quality is a low priority for most music listeners. My weekend poll is ample proof of that.

Lyor Cohen, CEO of recorded music for the Warner Music Group, cares about sound, at least at home. He admitted, in so many words, to being an audiophile on the pages of the September 20 New York Times Sunday magazine. The media has been alerted! It's like learning that a fast-food bigwig is a wine snob.

Cohen was Run-DMC's road manager in the 1980s, and he now works with Jay-Z, Madonna, and the Beastie Boys. In the article, Cohen said his hi-fi is his "favorite possession." The Clearaudio turntable pictured in the article is a very high-end German model that "won a gold medal at a consumer technology convention a few years ago."

JBL's best speaker, the K2 S9900.

(Credit: JBL)

Most of you probably think of JBL as a manufacturer of affordable high-performance speakers, but the company offers a truly vast range of consumer and professional models.

The K2 S9900 ($15,000 each) is the best consumer speaker JBL makes. It's a massive thing, weighing in at 182 pounds, and it's armed with a 15-inch woofer, 4-inch magnesium, horn-loaded midrange, and 1-inch magnesium horn-loaded tweeter. It can handle amplifiers as large as 500 watts a channel.

The JBL K2 S9900 will be equally at home in ultra-high-end music and home theater systems.

The K2 was originally developed for the seriously finicky Japanese audiophile market. There it has already achieved legendary status, and it was years before JBL brought it home. American hi-fi at its best.

I haven't heard this latest version of the K2, but I'm somewhat familiar with the previous K2 S9800. That one's sound was huge, incredibly effortless, and capable of delivering truly lifelike dynamic range. That last quality alone goes a long way to making reproduced sound sound realistic.

If you can afford the best, make it your business to hear the K2.

This is Part 2 of a list of my favorite sounding CDs of late, in no particular order. My preference is for realistic-sounding recordings, recordings that allow the band to sound "live." And sure, I still like a lot of recordings that are heavily processed, but I wouldn't by any stretch use them to "test" the naturalness of a speaker.

The first half of the top 10 CD list appeared in the previous Audiophiliac.

A different kind of heavy metal music.

Savage Aural Hotbed, "Wreckquiem"

Talk about heavy metal, Savage Aural Hotbed is a (mostly) industrial percussion group. They rhythmically hit, scrape, or smash pipes, barrels, tenor and baritone snorkelhorns, electric power tools, and drums. I love SAH records for their dense textures and searing dynamics and this new one will give your system an aerobic workout while dazzling your ears with its mesmerizing charms.

Ms. Cash at her best

Rosanne Cash, "10 Song Demo"

OK, this one's from 1996, but it's withstood the test of time. True to the title, it's just Cash accompanied by a small group of players, Production is minimal, so if your system is good enough the music can sound very, very real. The music's a perfect 10.

Jazz that'll rock your world

Gerald Clayton, "Two-Shade"

Clayton's nimble piano trio delivers hard-driving pieces and explosive improvisations that'll push your hi-fi to the limit. The piano, bass, and drums balance is, musically and sonically, as good as it gets. It may be Clayton's trio, but it's a band of equals. The stereo image is set back, behind the plane of my speakers, so it doesn't have the claustrophobic, up close perspective of most contemporary jazz recordings.

The M2, a digital amplifier that sounds as good as analog!

(Credit: NAD)

NAD is a lesser well-known brand than Denon, Marantz, Onkyo, Pioneer, or Sony, but in my opinion NAD makes better-sounding electronics.

Introduced in the late 1970s, NAD's 3020 quickly became one of the best-selling integrated stereo amplifiers of all time. Not just because it sounded better than anything going for two or three times its humble MSRP, the 3020 had that special something that made it, well, lovable. Over the years NAD maintained its leadership position by consistently designing great-sounding, unpretentious products.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending an advance preview of NAD's upcoming Master Series M2 Direct Digital Amplifier ($5,999). Yikes, the price was a lot higher than I expected, but don't worry, NAD still makes affordable electronics. Its 40 watt per channel C 315BEE stereo integrated amp goes for $349. It's impossible to beat for the price.

But the M2 is something else again. NAD claims it's not just another digital amplifier, and that's a good thing. I've heard some really nice digital amps over the years, but most don't cut it for serious audiophiles. It's not so much that they sound bad, just kind of bland. They gloss over detail and make everything sound the same.

So the first thing I noticed about the M2 was its resolution and clarity. In other words if I didn't know it was digital, I wouldn't have guessed. It's right up there with the better high-end amplifiers. The M2 is a 250 watt per channel stereo integrated amp.

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

Isoclean makes audiophile-grade gold-plated fuses. This fuse is a "tweak," an accessory that promises to improve the sound of your hi-fi.

Audiophiles eat this stuff up. We put special cones or pads under our equipment to eliminate bad vibes, plug our electronics into AC power line conditioners, and buy equipment stands to coddle our components.

Isoclean isn't the first company to offer audiophile fuses, and I can't say I'm game for these types of tweaks. They reek of "snake oil" silliness, but an audiophile buddy couldn't stop raving about the difference the Isoclean fuses made to the sound of his hi-fi, so I decided to give them a try.

My Magnepan 3.6R speakers have a total of four fuses (two in each speaker), and the fuses are $39 each.

Each Isoclean fuse is packed separately with a thick cleaning cloth you use before installing the fuses. The gold plating is of a high quality, and with the supplied cloth, I buffed it to a shine.

Also noteworthy is the fuses' glass body, marked with a direction arrow. Isoclean recommends experimenting with reversing the direction of the fuse to see which direction sounds better (turn the gear off when reversing the fuses).

To cut to the chase, yes, the fuses did make a difference. The sound was fuller, weightier, and the stereo imaging was more 3D with the fuses in the speakers. Was it a jaw-dropping improvement? No, but it was there.

Audiophiles looking for a little boost to their sound should check out Isoclean fuses. You can use the fuses in some speakers, CD players, preamplifiers, power amplifiers, and other devices.

Not everyone cares about audio quality. In fact, there's some evidence to suggest we're raising a generation that actually prefers the sound of MP3s over higher-fidelity recordings. Still, there will always be people who obsess over sound quality--just as there are always people with discerning taste in food, or an eye for fine art.

Some things really are just a series of tubes.

(Credit: CNET UK)

There was a time when fidelity fanatics wouldn't touch an iPod with a 10-foot pole, and clung tightly to formats like vinyl, CD, and SACD. Things have eased up over the years, though, as the devout have begrudgingly come to terms with the fact that the iPod isn't going away anytime soon.

Fortunately, the iPod isn't impossible to adapt to audiophile sensibilities. Over the years, online communities of like-minded souls have shared hundreds of tips on how to squeeze the best audio performance from the iPod. This collective wisdom ranges from simple steps (encoding music as lossless or higher bit-rate AAC files), to extreme measures such as replacing some of the iPod's internal components.

When you boil it all down, there are five accessories that come up again and again when people talk about getting the best audio from their iPods. We've collected them in the following slide show as a kind of iPod audiophile 101. Read more...

Accessories for iPod audiophiles

A Nano docked into the Wadia 170i Transport.

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm starting to think the iPod is a true high-end audio component. What's changed? I heard it in my high-end system, docked into Wadia's 170i Transport ($379). I can now testify to the iPod's bona fides.

Thing is, an iPod, even one loaded with uncompressed AIFF or WAV files, isn't all by itself a high-end component, but teamed with Wadia's 170i Transport, aka, dock, an iPod is elevated to high-end status. The transformation takes place when the Wadia transmits the iPod's zeros and ones to an outboard digital-to-analog (D/A) converter in your A/V receiver, or even better, a standalone high-end D/A. Wadia's claims that the 170i is the first and only "dock" to extract a digital output from an unmodified iPod.

The 170i's digital out sends a 16 bit/44.1 kHz PCM digital signal to a D/A. The 170i does that for MP3, AAC, Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV files, but just be aware that it converts all but AIFF and WAV to 16/44.1. It can also pass 16/48 PCM, but in most cases 16/44.1 is what you'll get.

According to Wadia's national sales manager, Martin Cooper, iPods store MP3, Apple Lossless, and AAC files in Apple's own digital language, and when an iPod is nestled into a 170i it converts those files to 16/44.1 PCM. That way, the signals can be processed by the D/A in your A/V receiver or high-end D/A. MP3, Apple Lossless, and AAC files will sound "good," just not quite the same as the original CD. In other words, only AIFF and WAV files can be heard with bit-for-bit accuracy over the 170i.

(Credit: Avid)

My first experience with high-end audiophile turntables was during my early hi-fi days, being mesmerized by the soothing sounds when paired with tube pre-power amplifiers and speakers. The Acutus from U.K.-based Avid comes in at the top of that hierarchy with a radical design and matching premium aesthetics. Available in polished chrome or gold-plated finish, it features an elaborate vibration-damping system as well as beefy construction.

The $24,000 kit is also bundled with a smart-looking external power supply. This has universal power compatibility, though we doubt anyone would be crazy enough to jet-set around the world lugging this 19-kilogram mammoth.

(Source: Crave Asia)

(Credit: Audioengine)

I can't claim to be any sort of expert when it comes to computer/PC speakers, but if my recent CNET reviews of Bose, Creative, and M-Audio speakers are any indication of what's out there, the Audioengine 2 is a truly awesome design. I auditioned the Audioengine 2s at home where my desktop workspace is pretty crowded, but the speaker's tiny 4 by 5.25-inch footprint was easy to accommodate. It's 6 inches high.

Judged as a speaker, and I've reviewed well over 500, the Audioengine 2 is terrific. It's so good you don't have to be an audiophile to notice the little thing makes a lot more bass than something its size has any right to. But it's no muddy boombox, the bass is deep and yet nicely defined, no need to add a subwoofer. The midrange and treble refinement are exceptional, so Jonny Greenwood's orchestral score for There Will Be Blood sounded spacious and clear as can be.

The left speaker has stereo 3.5 mm and RCA inputs and really nice all-metal speaker outputs that connect to the right speaker. The left speaker also houses the power on/off and a machined metal volume control. Instead of the usual mini wall wart power supply, the Audioengine 2 comes with a healthy outboard power supply; hook up cables are included. You can also use these things as iPod speakers.

The built-in Class A/B amplifier delivers 15 watts per channel; the two-way speakers have a 2.75-inch Kevlar woofer and a .75-inch silk dome tweeter. The medium-density fiberboard cabinet in painted, my samples looked demure in satin black, and they also come in gloss black or white. When you open the shipping box you'll find the speakers packed in cloth bags so you really feel like you've purchased a quality product. A three-year warranty ensures long-term satisfaction.

I moved the Audioengine 2 out from the desktop and played them in my bedroom hooked up to a CD player. Wow, with more breathing room the sound was even better and stereo imaging stretched way beyond the actual locations of the speakers. True, rocking out with Spoon's Gimmie Fiction CD revealed they don't sound like a set of mighty floorstanding tower speakers, but the Audioengine 2s are a leap over the pint-sized competition or one-piece iPod speakers. The Audioengine 2s can play fairly loud, but sound best at low to moderately loud volumes. Even audiophiles used to the good stuff will dig these speakers, they're that good.

My friend Gary Krakow, over on The Street.com raved about them in his "Hark! These Herald Headphones Sing" The Good Life blog from late last year. Now that I've heard them I agree; the Audioengine 2 goes for $199 a pair and UPS Ground shipping is free. The Audioengine website sells the speakers with a 30 day money-back guaranty.