The Fifth Element #60 

Leben Hi-Fi Stereo Company is a very small company in Amagasaki City, Japan, that hand-builds an exquisite line of vacuum-tube audio electronics. I find it intriguing that Taku Hyodo, founder and main man of Leben, once worked for the comparatively huge Luxman firm. Years back, Luxman went through various corporate owners and spent some time wandering in the desert, before returning to its high-end audio heritage. Whether, as I suspect, Leben was founded during Luxman's years of ownership by car-stereo maker Alpine, or if Hyodo simply wanted to be the captain of his own destiny, I don't know.

What I do know is that the design and build qualities of the Leben model that I have had the pleasure of borrowing—the CS600, a 32Wpc tubed integrated amplifier ($5895)—are of artisan class. By that I do not mean precious, self-indulgent, or "artistically" flimsy. The 49.5-lb CS600 is built like a brick—if anything, more solid of build and finer of finish than the 1950s and 1960s American hi-fi gear it consciously (though not self-consciously) pays tribute to.

When my friend Bob Saglio stopped by, I showed him the CS600. He took a quick, appreciative look and said, "Some Germans still know how to build things right." I then informed him that Leben was based in Japan. "Some of them, too," Bob allowed. Another audio-savvy visitor was very taken by the sound, but didn't go over to take a close look until after he'd listened quite a bit. When he saw the tubes glowing under the vents in the top panel, he did a double take. "Wow," he said. "This doesn't have the typical 'tube sound.'" But that's getting ahead of the story.

I first encountered Leben Hi-Fi Stereo in the flesh, as it were, at the 2008 Festival Son et Image in Montreal, where exhibitor Coup de Foudre (Thunderclap, en anglais) had a small room set up with the Leben amp driving ProAc Response D Two loudspeakers. My socks were knocked off—not by the power, obviously, or the deep bass, but by the tactility and easefulness of the sound. The music just seemed to have a very easy time of sounding "real." Note that I am not talking about a retro or euphonic sound. There was, instead, a distinct lack of fog on the window between the music and me. It wasn't the biggest window in the lumberyard, to be sure, but it was a very clean one.

When I participated in Stereophile's "Ask the Editors" panel discussion at FSI, moderator John Atkinson asked each of us to mention standout exhibit rooms in a few different categories. If I recall correctly, those categories were Best Cost-No-Object Sound, Best Value for Money, and Personal Favorite. I gave Coup de Foudre's (CdF) Leben-ProAc room my Best Value for Money nod. Not because the CS600 doesn't cost substantial money—it does. Rather, because it and the ProAc speaker struck me as poster products for those who want to buy it once and buy it right.

I can't claim that my advocacy made all that much difference—Stereophile's diligent scribes I'm sure made every effort to visit every exhibit room—but in due course, both Robert Deutsch and John Atkinson visited the CdF room and reported back via Stereophile's FSI blog pages. Robert endorsed the CS600's sound, build, and true value for money. JA later posted: "In some ways—particularly the overall balance and the sheer accessibility of the music—this was the best I heard at the Show despite the system's affordable price."

Take a moment or two to mull over that last little observation—"best I heard"—from John Atkinson, who has measured more than 750 different loudspeakers in the past 21 years. FSI that year featured several ambitious loudspeakers costing over $40,000/pair, and amps all the way up to $90,000/pair. And in terms of "overall balance" and "sheer accessibility of the music," a system anchored by these comparatively modest components served up sound that JA considered best-of-show. Which leads directly to another of my favorite catchphrases: Sometimes it's better to bite off less and chew more thoroughly (the continued relevance of descendants of Quad's ESL-57loudspeaker being more proof of that).

John also mentioned that his first visit to the Leben-ProAc room overlapped with my last—I went back at least twice, to make sure I was hearing what I thought I was hearing: startlingly good sound, especially at the somewhat reasonable prices of $5895 (CS600) and $3500 (ProAc Response D Twos). JA also mentioned on his blog that I had with me a CD-R of tenor Brian Cheney, accompanied by pianist Elaine Rinaldi, singing "Che gelida manina," from Puccini's La bohème, created by Alan Silverman as part of a project in microphone comparison for the New York City audio-engineering community. (JA's photos of that event, where he was one of the listeners, can be foundhere.)

By the way, the Cardas/Soundelux microphones used in that shoot-out ended up being further revised, not only in casework and internals, but also by having undergone a name change. They are now the Bock Audio 5-Zero-7 microphones. (The diaphragm remains George Cardas's Golden Ellipsoid design.) The relevance being not only that my birthday is coming up, but also that both pairs of mikes Cheney sang into were of remarkable resolving power and exceptional dynamic range. Indeed, as I mentioned in my August 2008 report on FSI, as Cheney went for a high C, the CdF person lunged for the volume control and turned it down quite a bit. Despite that protective measure, JA reported that the Leben-ProAc combo transported him back to the recording venue, Sear Sound.

DNM 3D Six preamplifier 

It isn't enough to say that engineer Denis N. Morecroft is one of contemporary audio's few visionaries: He's one of a very few mature designers whose passion for doing things a certain way hasn't abandoned him in the least, and whose well-argued convictions seem stronger than ever. Thus, as others cave in to commerce—the tube-amp designer who offers a solid-state product just to help his dealers fill a price niche, the source-component manufacturer who rails against digital audio one day and starts cranking out CD players the next—DNM Design remains the likeliest of all modern companies to stay its course.

The DNM 3D Six preamplifier ($13,495), the latest realization of Morecroft's ideas on domestic audio, embodies literally all of the design distinctions that have originated at DNM throughout the company's 30 years of existence: low-mass conductors, nonmetallic casework and parts, true star grounding, "spaced pair" signal paths from input to output, three-dimensional circuit layouts, slit-foil capacitors, and the use of subminiature resistive-capacitive networks to tame impedance reflections.

The 3D Six's model designation refers to the number of individual 25V sources in its outboard power supply: three dual-mono boards, for a total of six discrete sources. Prior to this review sample, my experience of the DNM 3D had been limited to the Primus version ($7995), an entry-level product (for DNM), whose scaled-down outboard power supply incorporates a single 25V source, and which I wrote about in the March 2008 edition of my "Listening" column. DNM also offers the 3D Twin ($10,595), the outboard supply of which contains—you guessed it—two discrete voltage sources.

Description
Like most earlier DNM preamps and amps, the 3D Six is considerably smaller than the high-end audio average, with casework and fasteners made entirely of acrylic and nylon: Given Denis Morecroft's conviction that recorded sound suffers distortion from eddy currents created within conductive materials by the audio signal itself, the 3D contains as little metal as possible.

In common with other solid-state preamplifiers, the 3D Six's active circuitry resides on various removable subboards—actually doubleboards, designed to allow complementary gain devices and supporting parts to be laid out in three dimensions, for consistently optimized spacing and minimal electromagnetic interference. The active boards all plug into a passive motherboard that occupies most of the floor space of the chassis. The motherboard also plays host to various passive subboards dedicated to source selection and attenuation, as well as to a sprinkling of miscellaneous switches and sockets. Under the motherboard and parallel to it, a separate power-supply distribution board determines which outboard power supply can be used: one distribution board suits either the Primus or the Twin; a different one is required for the Six (footnote 1).

In standard trim, and regardless of power-supply options, the DNM 3D has inputs for three line-level sources, labeled Radio, Tape, and Direct; two more, labeled Aux 1 and Aux 2, can be installed by a DNM dealer at extra cost. In each case, signal input is by means of a 5-pin DIN socket in which pin 1 is unused, 3 and 5 are hot, and 2 and 4 are individual, channel-specific grounds rather than the usual common-ground pair of phono jacks. (Note that the Direct socket is next to the preamp's Output socket—yet whereas the labels for the other two inputs are directly beneath their respective sockets, the label for the Direct socket is above it, as is the label for the Output. Perhaps it's just me, but seeing the words direct and output next to one another is something I find almost boundlessly confusing.)

Input sockets (also 5-pin DINs) are provided for up to two phono sources, requiring that one or two pairs of plug-in phono boards be installed on the motherboard. The user can install either moving-coil or moving-magnet boards, switching between them by means of a front-panel toggle. Rather than a rear-panel ground lug of the usual sort, the DNM 3D has a pair of 2mm pin sockets for tonearm or turntable chassis ground leads.

In addition to the aforementioned phono toggle, the 3D's front panel has a similar toggle for tape-monitor switching, plus a 3.5mm headphone jack (directly driven by the line-amp boards), a pushbutton Mute switch that illuminates when activated, a skirted knob for source selection, and two more skirted knobs for channel-specific attenuation: the volume-control scheme I prefer above all others, for easy channel-balance adjustments without the need for additional parts. A final touch: Snugged between the latter two knobs is a two-position toggle for selecting between stereo playback and a mono blend. Amen!

As with the slightly downmarket 3D Twin, the 3D Six's outboard power supply is built into a full-size DNM acrylic case. Voltages are knocked down by a hefty Noratel frame-style transformer, fastened to the supply's own motherboard with a pair of nylon plates that seem intended to absorb mechanical strain. The trannie's two 27V output leads are directed to a single bridge rectifier, with the 0V center tap referenced to a central point on the star-ground board. DC from the rectifier is smoothed by a pair of DNM's own chunky T-Network slit-foil capacitors before traveling to a trio of dual-mono plug-in boards, for regulation and impedance control.

Three 45" ribbon cables exit the back of the power supply, each initiating its journey at one of the three subboards, and each ending with a 10-conductor plug pledged to a corresponding socket on the 3D preamp. There's also a pair of sockets on the back of the power supply for routing the audio signal to the power amplifier, but these don't function in a way that owners of older British separates might expect. Whereas the shielded cables that carry DC power to Naim preamps in particular are also used to carry the AC audio signals from them, thus making the outboard power supply the grounding center of the overall amplification system, the DNM ribbons are for DC only: Signal-transfer sockets on the back of the 3D Six power supply are provided only for the sake of convenience, for installations where cable- and gear-placement constraints make it difficult to do things any other way, and their use depends on two things: bringing the signal from the preamp to the power supply with an extra cable dedicated to that purpose alone, and installing a DNM Power Supply Transfer Board on the underside of the power supply's motherboard. Although my review sample was equipped with said board, I didn't try the alternate connection scheme, as it held no hope for a performance advantage.

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Pure Vinyl LP recording & editing software

As long as you're spinning an LP for your listening pleasure, and if digitizing it at a resolution of 24-bit/192kHz is transparent to the analog source, why not record and store the LP on your computer at that high sampling rate for future convenient playback via iTunes or for iPod use, or for burning to CD-R? And, while you're at it, why not record the LP unequalized and apply the RIAA curve in the digital domain, where you're not dependent on capacitors and resistors that are imprecise to begin with, and can drift over time? With no drift of phase or value, the virtual filter's results should be better than with any analog filter. And in the digital domain, you can program in any curve known, and select it at the click of a mouse. Aside from the sweat equity invested in programming it in the first place, it wouldn't add a penny to the program's cost.

These are the questions that Rob Robinson—musician, audiophile, software programmer, and former Bell Communications Research Scientist (he was responsible for designing their first scanning tunneling microscope)—asked himself in 2002. Robinson has answered them all with Channel D's Pure Vinyl recording and editing software for Apple Macintosh computers, and has continually revised, updated, and tweaked the program since its launch in June 2006.

For instance, because hard-drive storage was still relatively expensive when Robinson first envisioned Pure Vinyl, he built the program around burning to CD-R and DVD-R discs. This meant that the editing functions (track starts, stops, splits, etc.) occurred only in less-than-full resolution. Today, with each terabyte of storage costing around $100, Pure Vinyl edits, stores, and plays in up to full 24-bit/192kHz resolution directly to and from a computer's hard drive. The Pure Vinyl software will only run on Macs with OS10.5 or later and is available at an introductory price of $229, which will rise to $299 at some point in the near future.

Necessary Hardware
The minuscule electrical output of an analog signal from a moving-coil cartridge needs to be boosted before it can be converted to digital and equalized in the digital domain. Of course, you could use your current phono preamplifier and record an equalized signal to hard disk, but then you wouldn't get to experience Pure Vinyl's digital RIAA correction—nor would you be able to avail yourself of all the equalization curves provide by Pure Vinyl, of which there are almost too many to count.

When I first wrote about Pure Vinyl in the March 2009 "Analog Corner," Robinson recommended using a good microphone preamplifier to provide the appropriate amount of flat amplification. But even without RIAA compensation, the cartridge still requires the optimal resistive loading, so he supplied his customers with pre-loaded RCA-to-XLR adapters. While that's still a viable if limited option, Robinson has now designed and manufactured, in America, four standalone Channel D phono preamplifiers, two of which I auditioned for this review: the AC-powered Seta Nano ($1599) and the battery-powered Seta Model L($3799, or $4798 with internal RIAA compensation module).

Whether you use your own phono preamplifier or one of the Setas to rip LPs, you're also going to need a good 24-bit/192kHz-capable soundcard—or, if you're using a laptop, a good outboard A/D converter. When I first wrote about Pure Vinyl, Robinson suggested I buy for my Mac G5 tower an L22 PCI soundcard ($675) from Lynx Studio Technology. I did. Unfortunately, should I upgrade to a new Mac, that card will be unusable—Apple has changed the internal interface. Love those computers! Given how little used computers fetch, I've decided that when the time comes, I'll just keep the old one and use it as a music server and D/A converter.

So to jump with both feet into the Pure Vinyl world, you're looking at an investment of around $5000 for the Seta L preamp, the software, and a suitable soundcard. Or, using your own phono preamp and an inexpensive converter, you can get started for a few hundred bucks.

Open Channel D
The final version of Pure Vinyl v.3.0, which performs hi-rez 24/192 recording and editing, should be available by the time you read this. Once you've downloaded and installed it in your computer's applications folder, and either added an internal soundcard or connected an outboard USB one (Channel D has a list of devices it has tried with Pure Vinyl here), you'll need to configure the computer's AudioMIDI Setup and the soundcard's supporting software.

If you're not friendly with computers, the task can be daunting, in part because it just is, and in part because Robinson has written the instructions almost exclusively in the passive voice.

Double-click the Pure Vinyl icon that you've placed in your dock and, unlike other powerful programs—you can make and eat a sandwich while waiting for Photoshop to open—Pure Vinyl quickly opens on the desktop. You'll see a virtual LP with a blank label, above which scroll the three available functions: "Click LP spindle to record," "Click iTunes icon for music server" (more about that later), and "Drag and drop Pure Vinyl recording to play."

JL Audio Fathom f212 powered subwoofer

By Larry Greenhill   •   April, 2010

It's been over two years since I reviewed a pair of JL Audio's Fathom f113 subwoofers. Kalman Rubinson and I both gave the f113 top marks for delivering clean, powerful bass in a wide variety of full-range systems. At the end of the review period, JL Audio's Carl Kennedy told me that they wouldn't send me another subwoofer for review until they had developed one that outperformed the Fathom f113 (footnote 1). To this day, the Fathom f113 tops the subwoofer category inStereophile's "Recommended Components."

The Fathom f212
Finally, they offered me a pair of their newer twin-driver model, the Fathom f212. The Fathom f212 resembles the Fathom f113: both are self-powered, sealed-system subwoofers whose drive-units have prominent rolled surrounds, and both feature an automatic internal room optimizer for single-band adjustments. Both models also feature the same reference sensitivity of 166mV in to produce 105dB SPL at 50Hz output at 1m. All inputs are separately buffered and can be used simultaneously (to connect, for instance, a single sub to separate two-channel and surround systems). The rear panels of both models boast the same sets of inputs, outputs, and controls.

However, the Fathom f212 uses two smaller 12" drivers wired in parallel rather than the f113's single 13.5" unit, and has a more powerful (3kW peak) amplifier, with "massaged" electronics to manage the twin drivers. The f212's larger total diaphragm area is said to allow it to produce more output for less relative excursion, with greater ultimate dynamic-range capability than a single-driver sub. As a result, the f212's cabinet is about 12" taller, 2" narrower, and 1" deeper than the f113's, and weighs 90 lbs more.

In an e-mail to me, JLA senior research engineer Brett Hanes said: "Comparing diaphragm configurations, the f212's 168 square inches of cone area (effective displacement of 574 cubic inches) means it has 57% more cone area than the f113's 107.35 square inches of cone area (effective displacement of 286 cubic inches). The combination of larger cone area, greater displacement, and higher amplifier power output gives the f212 a distinct edge in the lowest octave. This encompasses not only higher ultimate output, but also more linear operation for a given output."

Rugged build
The subwoofers JL Audio makes for trucks and boats take beatings and shakings never experienced by home audio gear. As a result, JLA's loudspeaker drivers must be mechanically rugged. The Fathom f212's 12" drivers are built to the same massive scale found in the Fathom f113's driver; ie, they offer a maximum 3" peak–peak excursion, with a large-radius roll surround that covers the mounting flange to maintain control of the cone, along with what JL calls a Floating-Cone Attach Method to maintain optimal voice-coil alignment at all sound levels. To handle the internal stress of high-powered subwoofing, JLA uses an enclosure reinforced with two donut braces parallel to the front baffle and built of CNC-cut, 1"-thick MDF. The f212's class-D amplifier is attached to the inside of the rear panel.

Controls in front, plugs in back
Like the Genelec HTS4B subwoofer, which I reviewed in November 2005, the Fathom f212 lacks a high-pass filter to shape the bass response of the main speakers. This is because all surround-sound preamplifier-processors perform the high-pass filtration and bass management before the audio signal reaches the sub.

The Fathom f212's controls are under its removable grille, on a narrow panel of brushed aluminum at the top of the front baffle—very handy. The controls are identical to the Fathom f113's: toggle switches for Power (On, Off, Auto Sensing); JLA's Automatic Room Optimization, or ARO software (Demo, Defeat, Calibrate); and Polarity (0°/180°); and rotary controls for Phase (0–180°, continuous), Low-Pass Filter (30–130Hz), and Extended Low Frequency (ELF), the last for adjusting the slope of a 25Hz filter within a range of –12dB to +3dB, to damp subsonic room modes. There is also a ground-lift switch to reduce hum with unbalanced inputs.

Also supplied are a well-written manual, a calibration microphone attached to a 20' cable, a pair of gloves, and four 50mm sliders to allow the subwoofer to be moved across wooden floors without scratching its finish or the floor.

Footnote 1: I suspect that JL Audio did know of a better subwoofer, and that it might have been their Gotham g213, with its twin 13.5" drive-units, huge size (34.13" H by 21.5" W by 24" D) and weight (305 lbs), and 3800W RMS peak output. But though I tried to convince them otherwise, JLA refused to lend me a pair of Gothams for review, stating that the logistics of shipping, delivering, and setting up two such behemoths were too daunting.

Vitus Audio MP-P201 Masterpiece Series phono preamplifier By Michael Fremer   •   July, 2010

This massive, two-box beauty from Denmark costs $60,000, and I wish I could tell you it wasn't really better in most ways than the already outlandishly priced and sonically superb Boulder 2008. I can't.

No one spends this kind of money on a phono preamp unless its appearance and functionality are commensurate with its sound, and in the MP-P201 they are—even if there's only the RIAA curve, and no Mono button. However, what will get wealthy enthusiasts to drain $60k from their bank accounts will be the Vitus's unmistakably astonishing sound. Plug it in, play it, and compare it with whatever you own, and unless you are a confirmed tubeaholic, if you've got the krone, prepare to shell out. Designer Hans-Ole Vitus claims that this method has already sold more than a few units of his mundanely named product.

The Vitus includes switchable, independently configurable balanced and single-ended inputs and a single balanced output. Pushbuttons select and save input sensitivity (125–500µV for MC) and loading for each input, the name of which can be selected from a list of 10 popular cartridge brands—or, in Text mode, you can enter your own.

Vitus offers a choice of four dealer-installed modules for resistive loading, only one of which can be installed at a time. Each includes 16 different resistances,. Two are MC only, and two offer both low impedance loading and 47k ohms, for those who have MC and MM cartridges. No alternate capacitive loadings are offered, but really—how many buyers will use an MM cartridge with a $60,000 phono preamp?

Oh, no!
In direct comparisons with the Boulder 2008, the Vitus MP-P201 produced more of everything that anyone would want to hear from a solid-state phono preamp—and for twice the price but with considerably less functionality, it had better well! The first late evening I spent with it had me yelling, loudly and often, to no one in particular, "Are you f***ing kidding me?"

Just when I thought the dynamic and spatial potentials of an LP had been fully expressed, just when I thought the resolution of inner detail of the other top contenders I've heard had revealed all that was engraved in the grooves of some overly familiar vinyl, the Vitus proved me so wrong. Even casual listeners—such as my skeptical next-door neighbor, who visits periodically to hear the latest insanity—exclaimed profanely when he heard his requests through the Vitus.

Often, great amplifiers are described as "gripping" and "holding" the loudspeakers. The Vitus MP-P201 did that to the signal coming from the cartridge as no other phono preamp has in my experience. That effect rippled through the signal chain, improving the performance of everything it touched, and finally tightening its grip on the speakers themselves. It wasn't at all subtle—as a visiting speaker manufacturer heard the other day. Nor did it sound too mechanical or dry or "electronic"—though again, if you primarily value the continuousness and flow of tubes, while you'll be respectful of what the MP-P201 achieves, you might not be as impressed as I was.

The MP-P201's dynamic presentation at both ends of the scale was nothing short of ridiculous. Its bass extension, control, and weight were granitic. Its ability to tonally and spatially retrieve and resolve instruments and voices within a narrow frequency band produced a constant barrage of new information from some very familiar recordings.

Unexpected voices and instruments appeared in three-dimensional space from the most familiar recordings. These familiar recordings are almost part of my DNA, so suddenly hearing something completely newand obvious produced many "WTF" moments. Even after having sat mesmerized by that Shostakovich LP through both Boulders, hearing it now through the Vitus MP-P201 was yet another revelation of what's possible from vinyl playback specifically, and from musical reproduction in the home in general. The Vitus drew a line in the sand of its soundstage that produced images of the fronts of orchestras way back in space, with an unprecedented solidity and certainty of location. Every aspect of the spatial picture was equally solid and convincing, including the front-to-back layering of orchestral sections—even though this Melodiya/EMI is a very distant recording.

Nor did such a degree of delineation sound artificial. It sounded as natural as when I hear the New York Philharmonic in Avery Fisher Hall, with imaging, soundstaging, and depth just as easily audible—not as compartmentalized musical workstations, but as part of an organic whole that some skeptics claim doesn't exist when you hear symphonic music live. It does.

The Vitus MP-P201's speed, transparency, three-dimensionality, frequency extension, rhythmic ability, musical grip, and any other parameter you could name—with the exception of what only tubes can do—took the overall sound to a new, exalted level. That Shostakovich performance sounded as convincingly "live" as I've ever heard from a recording—except through the Ypsilon VPS-100 tubed phono preamp ($27,700), which I reviewed in my August 2009 column.

If you can look yourself in the eye and spend $60,000 on a phono preamp, you need to hear Vitus Audio's MP-P201. You need to hear it even if you haven't got the $60k—just so you know what awaits you, should you strike it rich.

Dynaudio Excite X12 loudspeaker

I miss the High End Shows. Not the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas—no thanks. I can do without the overpriced hotels, the 45-minute taxi lines, the frantic racing from venue to venue. No, it's theStereophile shows I miss, with the centralized location, the rubbing shoulders with readers ("Hey, you're the cheap-speaker guy! Check out room 206!"), the listening to live music, and maybe even playing a little of it.

There was always a number of manufacturers who regularly displayed their wares at the Stereophile show and always achieved good sound, no matter what they demoed. One was the Danish loudspeaker maker Dynaudio. Over the years, I spent many hours listening to splendid sound in Dynaudio's rooms—the kinds of spaces where you just want to kick back, listen for an hour, and throw your notebook away.

There hasn't been a Stereophile show since 2007, and I haven't listened to Dynaudios for a while, save for the speakers in my friend's Volvo (footnote 1). Invariably, the Dynaudio speakers I heard at shows were their more expensive lines, but I began to wonder: Does Dynaudio make an affordable bookshelf model? The answer was a resounding yes, and soon a pair of Excite X12 loudspeakers ($1200/pair) were headed my way.

Dynaudio designs
The X12 is the entry-level speaker of Dynaudio's Excite series, which includes three other models ranging up to $3600/pair. The rear-ported, two-way X12 sports a 5.7" cone made of a proprietary magnesium-silicate–loaded polymer (MSP), with a voice-coil and die-cast basket both made of aluminum. The cone's material is designed to offer an optimum combination of stiffness, inner damping, and low mass. This drive-unit also features a longer voice-coil excursion than previous Dynaudio designs, to allow higher dynamics at high volume. The 1" silk-dome tweeter is made with a proprietary doping compound that benefits from a new precision coating process intended to achieve a more natural high-frequency response. The X12 also includes an impedance-correction circuit that is claimed to make the impedance completely linear above 100Hz. This presents the amplifier with very small inductive and capacitive loads; the X12 should be easy to drive for a wide range of amplifiers.

The X12 is available in real-wood veneers of Maple, Cherry, Rosewood, or Black Ash; high-gloss white or black are available for another $75/pair. My Cherry sample looked quite elegant and unassuming. I set the X12s on my Celestion Si stands, and though I felt the speakers' timbre was the same with or without their grilles in place, their resolution of detail and retrieval of ambience were dramatically better with the grilles off. Off they stayed.

Listening
Even as I began setting up the Excite X12s, I had some reservations. In the past five years I've reviewed many speakers at or near the X12's price, most of them bookshelf models. All have been excellent in different ways, and I was concerned that this review would be yet another repetition of "amazing bass and dynamic slam for an affordable bookshelf with no meaningful colorations." These days we're blessed with an embarrassment of riches, as creative manufacturers churn out more and more compact, affordable loudspeakers that can reproduce music with surprising realism. I hoped there'd be something special about the Dynaudio Excite X12 that would set it apart from all the other affordable bookshelf models I've heard recently.

That something special arrived during my very first listening session. The layers of detail revealed by the X12's rich, glorious, silky midrange made me want to listen to female singers. There was a quality in the lower end of the alto range that made particularly luscious Cassandra Wilson's rendering of Robbie Robertson's "The Weight," on Belly of the Sun (CD, Blue Note 35072). Further up the frequency range, there was a rightness to Madeline Peyroux's voice on Careless Love (CD, Rounder 11661-3192-2) that made her the perfect foil for Larry Golding's upper-register colorings on Hammond organ. I speak here of rightness of harmonic structure. From the mid-midrange to the lower highs, the X12 had such a "rightness" of timbral reproduction that I could almost see the drawbar settings on Golding's instrument.

Electrocompaniet AW400 monoblock power amplifier

One of my favorite parental duties is dispensing advice that's calculated to make me sound wiser than I am. Among those pearls: Every so often you should change your point of view—yourphilosophies—just to see if your opinions can stand the strain. In doing so, you may discover a few things that are better than you expected them to be!

I admit that, when I made up that nonsense, I had certain vegetables in mind. But late one night, when an unpleasant bout of thinking kept me awake, I realized that there are a great many older people, such as myself, whose belief systems could also stand a bit of shaking up. Surely, if there's more to heaven and earth than is dreamed of in our philosophies, it's far easier to change the latter than the former.

And then it happened: Mere days later, I was offered the chance to write about a powerful solid-state amplifier, the likes of which I hadn't experienced in ages. How could I say no?

Electrocompaniet
Among the historically well-regarded makers of solid-state amplifiers—Mark Levinson, Krell, and Threshold come to mind—one of the most notable of all is from a nation with fewer inhabitants than the city of Baghdad: the Norwegian firm Electrocompaniet, whose 1973 premiere gained it recognition in virtually every hi-fi market around the globe.

That debut product, snappily named The 2-Channel Audio Power Amplifier (footnote 1) also heralded the arrival of Matti Otala, a Finnish college professor and electronics engineer whose work is also associated with Philips, Harman/Kardon, Nokia, and Robert Bosch GmbH. In 1973, Dr. Otala presented to the Audio Engineering Society a paper in which he described a distortion mechanism called transient intermodulation, or TIM, and which had otherwise gone undetected, apparently because the standard measurements of the day relied overmuch on steady-state test tones (footnote 2). Dr. Otala proved that the nonlinearities he described were audibly present in solid-state amplifiers that used global feedback to reduce other, more commonly known distortions.

For the technically minded, Otala's work influenced the way we look at feedback loops and amplifier slew rate; for those more interested in audio philosophies—there's that word again—Otala and, by extension, Electrocompaniet underscored the danger in suggesting that any existing suite of measurements can say all that needs to be said about an amplifier's musical performance, and reminded us that measuring without listening is of limited value. (So, too, is the opposite—for the designer, at least.)

Matti Otala never actually worked for Electrocompaniet; today he's a professor of Technology Management at the University of Technology in Tampere, Finland. But the Norwegian engineer Terje Sandstrom, who was instrumental in turning Otala's theories into a practical commercial amplifier, continues as mentor to Electrocompaniet's design team—whose recent fruits include the AW400 monophonic amplifiers ($12,500/pair). The AW in the model designation is a subtle reference to Electrocompaniet's Ampliwire models of bygone years, while the 400 signifies that this solid-state amp is capable of passing 400W, without clipping, across an 8-ohm load (not to mention 765W across 4 ohms and 1010W across 2 ohms).

The Electrocompaniet AW400 has the added distinction of being fully balanced: From its tidy input boards through the appropriately rugged banks of heatsunk output devices, each AW400 is as symmetrical an amp as I've seen—although I could see less of their innards than I'm used to, given the manner in which the circuit boards and RF shields are arranged. (A telltale bolt betrayed a toroidal mains transformer, but other parts of the puzzle remained unseen.) I was very impressed with the AW400's mechanical construction: The sheet-metal chassis, in tandem with a pair of metal straps between the two banks of heatsinks—not unlike the crossbars one sees in the engine compartments of certain high-performance cars—provide the requisite rigidity, without the kind of crazy-high mass that adds far more to the cost than to the performance (in my opinion). And the front panels are nicely finished sheets of clear acrylic, backlit in blue—beautiful, but not, in the manner of other high-end amps, pointlessly so.

Setup and installation
Anxious though I was to try something from outside my usualphilosophy, there was a catch: The Electrocompaniet AW400 is optimized for true balanced operation, and my reference system is not. In particular, the output of my Shindo Masseto preamplifier, though sensibly low in impedance, is decidedly single-ended.

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Footnote 1: I've often decried the silliness of fitting domestic amplifiers with rack-mount faceplates, but in this case there was a good reason: That name wouldn't have fit on a narrower panel!—Art Dudley

Footnote 2: "An Audio Power Amplifier for Ultimate Quality Requirements," by Jan Lohstroh and Matti Otala, presented at the 44th AES Convention (March 1973), Paper H-6, available from www.aes.org.—Ed.