There are two people in the world with whom I willingly speak on the phone on a regular basis: my daughter and SoundStage! Solo senior editor Brent Butterworth. My little girl makes the cut for obvious reasons. Brent, on the other hand, is my mentor and sounding board and one of my best friends, but since he lives on the left coast and I live in the armpit of Alabama, I get to see him once or twice a year at most. Hence the reliance on that damned infernal contraption.
It may seem a bit strange that we’re reviewing Rotel’s CD11 Tribute at a time when the compact disc is practically on life support. We’ve all seen the sales figures. In 2020, the music industry sold a measly 31.6 million compact discs in the US—the format’s worst showing since 1985, just two years after its debut. Overall, physical media represented just 9% of music sales last year, and CDs made up just over 56% of physical media sales in terms of units shipped and 42% in terms of revenue. Let’s split the difference and call it half. 50% of 9% is . . . well, you can do the math. The format represents an ever-smaller piece of an ever-shrinking pie.
In response to my recent love letter to integrated amplifiers, I received some interesting feedback that came in the form of a question: isn’t there some contradiction in the fact that I use integrated amps almost exclusively in my dedicated two-channel system while relying on separates in my main home-theater system? Why not use an A/V receiver in my media room instead of an A/V preamp and multichannel amp if I’m so enamored with one-box solutions?
If you haven’t noticed already, there’s a bit of a theme being established with my new and upcoming reviews for SoundStage! Access. To call it “all integrated amplifiers, all the time” would be a bit of a stretch, but not by much. I recently took a deep dive into Marantz’s PM-KI Ruby, and I’m following that up with reviews of Rotel’s A11 Tribute and Vincent Audio’s SV-500. And those will hardly be the last integrated amps to cross my threshold in the coming months.
Read more: (What's So Great About Peace, Love, and) Integrated Amplifiers?
These days, most of the better room-correction systems give you the ability to set an upper limit for the frequencies being “corrected.” And for my money, it’s not only the most useful feature of such systems but also the most misunderstood.
Read more: This One Room-Correction Trick Could Breathe New Life into Your A/V Receiver
To paraphrase the titular character of the film V for Vendetta, “who” is but the form following the function of “what,” and what I am is a great big AV geek.
If you regularly read my turntable reviews, you should already have a pretty good idea of the albums and cuts I use when I’m reviewing a table for SoundStage! Access. But you probably don’t know why I use them. Here’s the scoop on the five albums I use most frequently and a couple of outliers that occasionally see the platter.
Wikipedia defines the term ghosting thusly: “A colloquial term used to describe the practice of ceasing all communication and contact with a partner, friend, or similar individual without any apparent warning or justification.” As a matter of principle, ghosting is not something I’d do. As I explained in this feature on our sister site SoundStage! Ultra back in mid-2019, I just needed a change. It wasn’t you, it was me. But to be clear, I’m just making a cameo appearance here as the search continues for a permanent steward and champion for SoundStage! Access.
Putting together a quality audio system for $1500 (all prices USD) is easy. It’s also hard. For audiophiles on a budget -- people like me -- these days it’s easy to find high-quality audio components for not much money. But today there are so many high-quality components that it’s hard to narrow down the choices.
Read more: How to Assemble a Quality Hi-Fi System for About $1500
In November 2019, I wrote a feature for SoundStage! Access in which I discussed a few recordings I use to evaluate loudspeakers and subwoofers. This month I write about the reference tracks with which I evaluate how well a pair of speakers can reproduce aural images of singers, instruments, and other sound-producing objects, and to create a three-dimensional soundstage on which to accurately position those images.
Read more: The Music I Use to Evaluate Soundstaging and Imaging