Sound

The MartinLogan Motion 4 answers the question, can a speaker be considered a high-end design if it retails for $499 a pair? Jeff Dorgay at Tone Audio magazine thinks it can!

MartinLogan made a splash with audiophiles in the early 1980s with its electrostatic panel speakers. The clear, 5-foot-tall panels were remarkable for their "see-through" transparency of sound. The company still makes big-panel speakers but has branched out into home theater, and now with the Motion 4, it's making overachieving small speakers.

The Motion 4's tweeter is pretty special; its Folded Motion transducer works by moving air, similar to the way an accordion works. Its low-mass diaphragm "squeezes" air and produces almost 90 percent less back and forth movement than a dome tweeter. The Folded Motion tweeter also has a large surface area; eight times that of a 1-inch dome tweeter. The Folded Motion technology is said to minimize distortion.

The Motion 4 is a small bookshelf design, 5 by 5 inches and just over a foot tall; it has a 4-inch woofer.

Dorgay listened to the Motion 4s with a few different amplifiers: a Naim Uniti receiver, Prima Luna Prologue 1 vacuum-tube integrated amp, and a Denon AVR 3910 receiver. In a small room placed near a corner, the Motion 4s had a surprising amount of bass. MartinLogan concentrated on making a great speaker that only goes down to 75 Hz cleanly, instead of a mediocre speaker that goes down to 50 Hz. Need more low-end oomph? Add a subwoofer to provide deep bass. … Read more

This was my third Head-Fi "meet," and at each one I've met lots of great people sharing a common passion for hi-fi. I'm not sure why, but Head-Fi members are a lot younger than most audiophiles. You see a lot of under-30 members, and it seems like under-40 Head-Fi-ers are in the majority! The weather outside on Saturday in Queens, NY, was frightful, but inside the vibes were warm and inviting. This event was hosted by my friend, Aaron Kovics (Head-Fi username Immtbiker).

Head-Fi meets gather Internet friends at a place, in this case a hotel, where they can listen to each other's headphones and headphone amplifiers. Some amps are home-built designs, some are commercial units. And unlike regular hi-fi shows, you can listen to what you want, with your own music, as loud as you want.

I met one guy with a set of vintage Grado Signature HP-2 headphones, probably from the early 1990s. They had a very dynamic, bold sound, and a special something I can't quite put my finger on. I'm a big fan of John Grado's current line of headphones (and phono cartridges), and I sold a lot of those early Grados (designed by John's uncle, Joseph Grado) when I worked as a salesman at a high-end audio store.

As I recall the original Grado headphones sold for $400 or $500, but used ones now go for $1,300 to $2,000! That's what I love about the best high-end gear; it sounds amazing, it's built to last, and it goes up in value! Think anybody will want to buy a 30-year-old iPod for a premium price in 2040 to actually listen to? I doubt it. … Read more

"American Idol" it's not, so instead of Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson, Kara DioGuardi, Mary J. Blige, or Neil Patrick Harris, The Audiophiliac is the sole judge for The Audiophillie Music Awards For Excellence In Recorded Sound contest.

I keep hearing that every kid with a guitar or a mic can make a great recording. Bands record their own tunes all the time. Well, here's a chance to get your music heard and a buzz going on the Audiophiliac. Oh, and six winners will each receive a set of Monster Turbine Pro Gold ($299) or Pro Copper ($… Read more

Sure, iPods and Zunes can sound perfectly fine, but no one ever claimed they were bona fide portable high-end audio devices. Their "good enough" sound isn't entirely their fault: they're too small to house a battery potent enough to power a high-quality headphone amplifier and a high-resolution 24-bit/96kHz digital-to-analog converter.

The Hifiman High Fidelity Music Player HM-801 is the Hummer of portables; it's big enough to get the job done. It's 3 inches wide, 4.5 inches high, and 1 inch thick; that's about the size of an old Walkman cassette player from the 1980s. Hifiman doesn't say how much the HM-801 weighs, but it feels substantial.

If Apple wanted to build something as good or better, it could, but the potential market for something that sounds better than an iPod is probably insignificant, and certainly too small for Apple or Microsoft to bother with. They're too busy jamming more features into their players, and sound quality never makes the cut. Besides, the market demands ever cheaper products, and real quality is never cheap. so the HM-801 is downright pricey.

That's another way of saying it's aimed at the sort of music lover who's already invested in a set of top-of-the-line Etymotic, Grado, Klipsch, Monster, Shure, or Ultimate Ears headphones. If you have and you're using an iPod or Zune, you're not hearing all the sound quality you paid for with those headphones.

The HM-801 was conceived as an audiophile player, so non-sound-oriented features are pretty scarce. The HM-801 has a user removable headphone amplifier circuitboard/module that makes future upgrades easy as pie. Hifiman already has one such upgrade in the works, a $170 board specifically designed to maximize detail and resolution of high-end in-ear headphones. Looking inside the HM-801--it has removable panels--so you can see it features top quality components, like a Burr-Brown PCM1704U digital-to-analog converter and Burr-Brown OPA627 Op-Amp. This is a level of technology normally found in audiophile home componentry, and never before used in a portable music player. … Read more

Apple introduced iTunes on January 9, 2001, but it wasn't that big a deal; world domination took years to fully develop. I admired the effort, and Apple figured out a way to get people to pay for downloaded music. That's a good thing.

My biggest problem with iTunes is that it doesn't sound as good as a CD or LP, and Apple hasn't even bothered to offer high-resolution FLAC downloads for those who care about sound quality. No, Apple instead spearheaded the race to the bottom for sound quality. Worse yet, you can sometimes buy the CD for less than the price of the iTunes album; I paid $7.99 for the new Spoon CD, "Transference," on Amazon.

Why would anyone pay more for lower-quality sound? Or why does iTunes regularly charge the same price; downloads should always be a lot cheaper than physical product, shouldn't they? I guess not; buyers happily pay a premium for instant gratification. I don't get it.

So I'm left wondering, would CD sales have tanked if iTunes never appeared? Maybe Tower Records and a lot of great local record stores would still be around. I don't know about you, but I discovered tons of great music in small, neighborhood record stores. In NYC it was easy to score great deals on used CDs, at lower prices than on iTunes.

Maybe that's what I find so unpalatable about iTunes, the way it crushed the retail side of the record biz. In the pre-iTunes era you probably bought your tunes in your town, didn't you? … Read more

There are two Oscar categories for best sound: best sound editing and best sound mixing. The sound editor designs and pre-plans the sound for the film. If it's a special-effects movie like "Avatar," the sound editor supervises the crew charged with creating the film's soundscape, including all of the sound effects.

Sound editors and mixers are the Rodney Dangerfields of the film biz; they don't get any respect. Look for their names at the very end of the credits, way, way down there with the caterers, hair stylists, and dog wranglers. Yet their mission is near impossible: create a seamless soundtrack that is, in fact, constructed from thousands of sonic fragments.

It's a colossal multichannel jigsaw puzzle, except a lot of the pieces don't fit. It's the mixers' soundtrack machinations that thrust the audience into the reality of the film they're experiencing--the subterfuge totally works--most viewers believe they're watching a literal record of what the camera "saw" and what the microphones "heard." Depending on the type of movie you're watching, most, sometimes 90 percent of the sound was recorded after the film was shot.

The mixers typically work on 15- to 20-second sections of a film, running the sequence over and over, constantly tweaking the balances. They might get hung up on a single music cue for 2 hours. Movies still run at 24 frames per second, and each frame of picture might have hundreds of sound elements. There are background tracks (traffic, wind noise, etc), specific effects tracks (gun shots, birds chirping, etc), foreground dialogue tracks, background dialog (for crowd scenes), plus lots and lots of music tracks.

Music mixing always requires finesse, moving the music in relationship to the picture as little as two frames can completely shift its impact on the scene. Moving a bar here, a downbeat there--it's all about how the music blends with the effects and dialogue--it's easy to lose it. Changes in the music's equalization, balance, and volume can change from picture cut to cut.

Mixing a film is a highly technical endeavor, but at the end of the day, it's not a nuts-and-bolts medium, the film has to feel right. Picture editing dictates the internal rhythms, but sound pushes the film; it has all the little engines that make things happen. It's what gets you caught up in the emotions of the story.… Read more

Maybe it's an American thing; we love big stuff. We equate size with quality, and think that exquisitely designed, silly, expensive products are always better than more affordable alternatives. Is the new iPod always better than last year's model? Then again, how do you define "better"?

A lot of audiophiles believe more watts, more power, higher digital sampling rates, higher resolution, heavier turntable platters, speakers with more drivers, bigger drivers, or more channels of sound will always produce better sound. It ain't necessarily so.

Don't get me wrong, I love high-end audio. But I … Read more

When I first met Dennis Yetikyel at Park Avenue Audio last year, I didn't realize he was the owner of the store. He's so laid-back and easygoing I just thought he was one of the guys who worked there. The store was founded in 1976 as a family business by Yetikyel's granddad, so it's definitely a mainstay in the New York City high-end audio scene. Yetikyel started working at Park when he was 16; he now heads a staff of eighteen people.

Park has a welcoming vibe and a carefully selected roster of brands for its … Read more

Sonus Faber may be a small Italian speaker company, but you can literally see its influence in the curvy look of various B&W, KEF, Magico, Tannoy, Wharfedale, and countless other speakers. Thanks to Sonus Faber, the box is out and round is in.

Looking straight down on the top of the Liuto's cabinet, you can't help but notice its curves mimic those of a classical lute (liuto is the Italian word for lute). The shape has graced a number of Sonus Faber speakers, but instead of the company's traditional solid-wood cabinets, the Liuto's is … Read more