Written by Joseph Held.

We talked last week about the Peachtree integrated being a great solution for a smaller area and a reasonable budget. Today I would like to introduce you to a great integrated amp for a larger more sonically demanding application, and yes we get to keep the reasonable budget part of the equation! Every once and awhile a piece of gear comes down the road that is more than the sum of its parts or even its spec sheet. We think of them as little gems, the rare and unique confluence of a great sounding and performing product that does really punch above its weight class. You may be surprised to hear this but there are not many of them, but when we find a gem it gets embraced!

The Anthem Integrated 225 is just such a gem. Before I tell you all about it I should probably say a bit about Anthem. Anthem is a North American company that builds most of their stuff on this continent and when built over seas the attention to detail and build quality is much higher than one would expect. They don’t use “off the shelf” components, they design and build their own. Anthem has built a reputation for bullet proof amps, best in class audio processing, and bulletproof reliability. I have personally pushed a few Anthem amps to levels that would punish other amps into distortion or protection mode. I like it loud!

Back to the Integrated 225, as you may have guessed the Integrated 225 is a 225 watt per channel solid state amp with a volume control attached! The 225 follows Anthems mandate that all their amps offer unreal power at unreal price points. The 225 features buffered inputs for critical inputs to minimize cross talk, a phono preamp that will handle both MM and MC cartridges with an interesting active/passive eq system to handle the RIAA process, and a huge toroidal transformer that feeds Nichicon capacitors that store an impressive 30,000 microfarads.

The upshot is an amp that has an incredibly low noise floor and always has enough juice for any application and the phono preamp isn’t just a tacked on convenience, but a well thought out design.

So how does it sound? In a word; great!

I have had the privilege of hearing the 225 on everything from Paradigm Signature 20’s, Golden Ear Triton 2s, Sonus Faber Liutos, an old pair of Mirage towers, and about a half dozen other speakers. What I am always surprised buy is just how open and dynamic it makes any speaker sound, even speakers that aren’t know for those characteristics. The 225 doesn’t mind if you put on a low efficiency pair of 6 ohm speakers. It just seems to shrug and push even harder. When other amps in the same category would close down the top end, collapse the sound stage and become shrill, the human equivalent of “I need a break!” the Integrated 225 just keeps truckin’ right along. Like a professional marathon runner at a local 5K, the Anthem Integrated 225 doesn’t seem to break a sweat.

I was recently in a client’s home to help set up a 225 to a Sonos ZP90 and a Nakamichi CD player to the pair of Mirage towers I mentioned earlier. We had to make some compromises for speaker placement. And the room was less than ideal for a two channel system but I was stunned never the less. We got a good solid image and even though we were in a room with floor to ceiling windows on 3 of the walls the sound was sweet and didn’t get fatiguing at normal volume levels.  Even the Sonos unit streaming internet radio was rich and full. Surprising for such a low resolution source, which are normally so tinny and weak sounding. Was it perfect? Certainly not but for internet radio I was stunned.

All in all the Integrated 225 is a great amp that offers both balanced and single ended connections, a great above class amp, a wonderful phono preamp and a straight forward robust design. I have yet to see one in for service and we see a lot of them leave for new homes! If you need tons of power, a decent phono amp and like it loud or just accurate at any volume, give a listen to the Integrated 225. I expect you will be as thrilled as I am!

And always remember; the proof is in the listening!

Do you have questions, ideas, or products you would like to see reviewed? Let me know what you want to see in this blog in the future! Contact me at JHeld@hifihousegroup.com

Written by Joseph Held

I am spoiled when it comes to listening to HiFi systems. I am surrounded by arguably some of the best equipment on the planet and can at a whim listen to anything from a $2500 pair of speakers to a 2 channel system with speaker wires that cost more than my current car! I am also human and occasionally take this wonderful perk of my livelihood for granted. The challenges I enjoy the most are helping a client with a down to earth budget maximize his or her audio experience. In fact, more often than not that is exactly what I am trying to help folks achieve, while making compromises to fit within a budget. Luckily for my clients there are tons of great pieces of gear available that offer an incredible value for the dollar. I have decided to profile two pieces over the next two weeks that do an outstanding job of maximizing performance for a reasonable investment. Up first is the Peachtree Nova, I chose the Nova because it has three of the most desirable things you could ask for at a great deal.

Peachtree Nova

The first thing you need to know about the Nova is that it has a real live 6922 tube in its preamp section. The tube really warms up the sound of a device that at its heart is all about digital music, which leads us to the second thing the Nova has that makes it a fantastic piece of gear. An onboard Saber ESS 9006 DAC that up samples at 24/96 and reduces jitter incredibly well for a product in this modest price range. The third thing that really makes the Nova shine is a wonderful little amp that produces 80 watts per channel and will drive a pair of 6 ohms speakers with less than 1% THD. A considerable feat, in a unit, that takes up such a modest amount of desk space. The Nova is only 5 inches high and 14 inches in width and depth and weighs in at a svelte 26 pounds.

To put the Nova through its paces I decided to hook it up to my work laptop, a Dell running Windows 7 business and 4 gigs of ram. I run iTunes and rip my CDs using AIFF at 16 bit and 48 khz, this resolution is a good compromise because it streams well with the right gear and is a lossless format. It does take up some space though, I have 9 hours of music but those 9 hours consume nearly 6 GB. As I discussed last week there are right and wrong ways to do computer audio and for my listening sessions I broke a big rule and decided that I couldn’t live with the issues it created, but more on that later…The rule I broke is that I am NOT using an external hard drive. I ran USB directly from the PC to the Nova and connected a pair of Paradigm Millenia One satellite speakers with high quality 14-2 bulk wire from Transparent. I wasn’t shooting for a best case scenario but for a real life office setting. The Paradigms are about 3 feet apart and lying on their sides and I plugged the Nova directly into an electrical outlet. In short what we have built is a really nice desk stereo that I could see in a work or home office, a bedroom, a sewing room or some other environment where you want better sound but don’t want to spend huge sums of dough or take up half the room with audio gear!

Paradigm Millenia One with iTunes

So how was the listening? Well I have to let you know that HiFi house can be an environment that is noisy in a rather confusing manner. At any one time there may be 5 or 6 different audio sources playing at everything from a whisper to reference levels to really freaking loud! My office isn’t shielded from the cacophony even a little bit and truth be told I do on occasion get distracted. Having said that there isn’t a dedicated audio system in my office on a regular basis and I was interested to see if having one would make matters worse or insulate me a bit. In a word it was awesome and I may have to “test” it for a while longer! In fact I am enjoying this little system as I type this!

What was so great?

I am glad you asked.

From the pictures you can see that everything is really close and no I didn’t spend much time setting anything up! It was a five minute job and my expectations were really low. I expected sound quality only a little better than really good computer speakers. The first thing that whacked me in the head was Diana Krall’s voice coming right out the laptop monitor and the richness of it. Have I heard better? Certainly, but “Frim Fram Sauce” was lively and had good movement. The bass was rich and textured and the overall warmth from such a small pair of speakers was stunning. So much so, that I dragged Anthony and Derek in for a listen. Anthony is a big Paradigm fan and wasn’t too surprised with the performance of the little Satellites but was impressed with the ease with which the Peachtree drove them. Granted I didn’t have it very loud, maybe a two or three out of the famed eleven, but the detail was remarkable at such real world “I’m at work” volume levels. As my work day moved on I was constantly turning the volume down to answer the phone but would catch myself immediately turning the music back up. Having the music on created a little zone that was all my own and made my work day zip right by.

Then it happened. Led Zeppelin came on, “Four Sticks” to be exact and my left hand whipped out to crank up the volume of one of my all time favorite Zeppelin tunes and I was thrilled with the results! John Bonham’s drums sounded huge in my tiny space, Robert Plants voice was intimate in a way that was shocking for the size of the speakers and rated wattage of the amplifier. It was a truly exciting and immersive music experience.

So I have spent the last few paragraphs raving and just as everything that goes up must come down, every system has some downsides to it. In fairness this goes back to what I said earlier about breaking one of those cardinal rules. Because I am using the internal hard drive for play back, every time the PC needed to do something, like save a file or send an email, there was a short and annoying blip in the music. Frankly it reminds me of trying to play an LP while someone is doing jumping jacks! Just a little intermittent skip that breaks up the flow of the tune playing and always made me think….I really need an external drive.

My advice to you when building a digital music system is to get yourself a fire wire based hard drive. I know that by using an external drive this issue disappears completely and at the rate you’re going to be eating up space why wouldn’t you want an external drive? The reason you want fire wire is that if you get a USB based hard drive you run into timing issues and CREATE jitter. And we all know that you don’t want that!

All in all the Peachtree Nova and the Paradigm Millenia speakers deeply impressed me and even shocked me when it came to accuracy and fidelity!

Peachtree Nova with Paradigm Millenia One

I have really enjoyed having the Nova in my office for the last few days and in fact right now Diana Krall is telling me that it is “all or nothing at all” but lucky for us it doesn’t have to be that way in HiFi thanks to great products like the Peachtree Nova and the Paradigm Millenia Ones!

And always remember; the proof is in the listening!

Do you have questions, ideas, or products you would like to see reviewed? Let me know what you want to see in this blog in the future! Contact me at JHeld@hifihousegroup.com

Written by Joseph Held

Last week we touched on the Great Debate; Vinyl vs. CD. Like everyone else that has ever talked about it we didn’t resolve anything. I did however suggest that you can have your cake and eat it too,and thanks to DACs, you can.

But first, a confession, I have been dragged kicking and screaming into the digital audio world. I love analog in all of its forms, from my Engl tube guitar amp to vinyl. There is no denying the convenience of digital music. Being able to see your entire collection in one fell swoop allows one to rediscover and listen to more music. I have watched it creep into my life via my car, the iPod (my wonderful wife bought me years ago), and the streaming music on our video game systems. And the entire time I have been complaining about it. As though there were some honor to be the last analog hold out, I proudly regaled clients and friends with stories of my trips to the local record store and looked down my nose at my nephew’s gigantic digital music collection. In short I was an analog snob. Then I took home an Ayre QB-9 DAC and had an epiphany. This blog started as a discussion of that experience. I thought that first we should talk a little bit about DACs and digital music in general. In the coming weeks I will do an in depth article on the doorway to my new digital world.

The back of a DAC

WARNING-The following is NOT intended as a master class in DACs and digital music, rather, think of this as us dipping our toes in the water…..

In general, the purpose of a DAC is to take digital music and make it better. There are innate issues with digital music that make high fidelity reproduction problematic even with the best amps and speakers. Issues like jitter and compression are the biggest issues, so let’s break down these main issues and look at why they are an issue.

Jitter- Jitter is the result of the digital source, think PC/MAC or CD/BR player, and the playback equipment not being in time with one another. The end result is that imaging, depth, spatial coherence and instrument separation are impacted. By not having a solid time lock between devices you end up with a situation where your system is unable to effectively and consistently suspend your disbelief. Jitter can also occur during the D/A conversion through poor processing. I always complained about jitter by saying things like; “This sounds like a bowl of mush.” or “It sounds like the bass player is standing inside the singer, I wonder how she felt about that?” Those that know me, know that I can, on occasion, be sarcastic.

Just a little.

Occasionally.

As you can see from my terrible quips jitter can have a deep and devastating impact on the sound stage and image of a recording.

Compression- Most digital files are compressed to some level and there are only about a gazillion different compression schemes. A detailed dive into compression schemes is best left to another time. But the upshot is that when music is compressed or stored you need to give up or remove data to convert the music into a digital file. As you can imagine not all codecs are great and when you are messing with music that much there are bound to be issues. If you wanted to make a live band sound like a standard MP3 just get a large, soaking blanket and cover them with it. Then put cotton in your ears. Or have them set up in a swimming pool. A pool that is full of water. Am I over stating things, maybe a little, but if you have been listening to live music or hi resolution sources like SACD, Vinyl or even a well mastered CD and then listen to the same track as an MP3 you will know what I am talking about.

Bryston High End DAC

Two of the most important things that a DAC do are correct these issues.

DACs correct jitter by “re-clocking” the data in real time, this opens up the sound stage, returning depth and space to imaging. It also allows your playback system to give you the most accurate and lifelike playback that it can. They also “upsample” and “add” back data to the file to fill it out. The end result is more warmth, depth and top end clarity in your music.

When I tested the Ayre QB-9 on my home system I just couldn’t get past how much more there seemed to be when I used the DAC on the computer files. I also tested CD vs. AIFF files through the DAC and came away liking the sound of the DAC better than my reference CD player. Keep in mind that you can run a CD player into a DAC! I tried and the sound was unreal! What I heard made me a believer that you can have the best of both worlds. I came away believing that a DAC and a properly set up digital audio system can and does sound better than vinyl. I still feel that part of the enjoyment of vinyl is the ritual of playing it back, but it comes with some serious downsides. The Ayre DAC gave me the convenience of digital music with the warmth, space and emotional engagement of vinyl. What more can you ask for as an audiophile?

Peachtree with built in DAC

I guess what I am trying to share here is that I was dead set against computer based audio and DACs, however the QB-9 won me over. I learned that I can have my cake and eat it too. I can rip all of my CDs to my MAC and play them back so that they sound BETTER than CD! And real soon now I will be able to rip 180 gram vinyl to my MAC and sacrifice nothing.

In the coming weeks we will wade deeper into the Ayre QB-9 I mentioned today and I will share some tips on digital music setup, and some basic do’s and don’ts.

As always, remember that; The Proof is in the Listening!

Do you have questions, ideas, or products you would like to see reviewed? Let me know what you want to see in this blog in the future! Contact me at JHeld@hifihousegroup.com

Written by Joseph Held

The world is a funny place. Last week I ended Hifi Meditations wondering how a turntable might sound on the Audio Research/Sonus Faber system. The very next day I got a call from a client asking to hear the difference between a turntable and a high quality CD player. We set an appointment and I brought some vinyl selections to work that I also have on CD. The client’s conundrum is familiar to anyone that has been a Hifi hobbyist for any length of time; is vinyl better than CD? Which translates into where should I invest my budget? Do I buy a good turntable or a good CD player, if I can only get one?

To try to find an answer to this question we used our system from last week;

A Bryston BP-6 preamp connected to an Ayre CX-7eMP for CD playback. The Sonus Faber Liutos to the VS115 with Musicwave plus speaker wire from Transparent and single ended AudioQuest Columbias run from the BP6 to the VS115.

For this listening session we added a Pro-ject XPERIENCE CLASSIC turntable. To remove as many variables as possible I used AudioQuest Columbia interconnects from the turntable to the Pro-Ject PHONO BOX MKII and from the phono box to the BP6.

First a few words about the Xperience Classic turntable. Pro-ject has long had a reputation as offering a great “bang for the buck” product and the Xperience Classic is no exception. In fact it may be the pinnacle of this philosophy. The table comes equipped with a carbon fiber tone arm and a Blue Point 2 cartridge. The tone arm is light, ridged and is designed to break up resonance and standing waves. It also looks wicked awesome. The Blue Point 2 is a moving coil cartridge that is known for offering up excellent dynamics and fine detail at a relatively sane price! In my humble opinion the tone arm and cartridge are worth the price of admission but you also get a 2kg platter, a record clamp and a simple yet effective platter mounting system. On the Sumiko/Pro-ject web site there is a lot of talk about pivots and bearings and so forth. For those that know me, I believe that the proof is in the listening. So let’s do some listening…..

Up first was a run of the mill copy of Dire Strait’s Communique, as I put the tone arm down we got the normal clicks and pops you get from vinyl before Mark Knopfler’s guitar came in. The sound was delicate, lush, detailed and deep all at the same time. In other words; the sound of a vintage Fender Stratocaster through an early Fender tube amp. Yes, that would be guitar heaven brought to earth. The music itself moved with ease and commanded attention. After the track “Once Upon a Time in the West” ended I switched to the CD version. The noise floor dropped several miles below the Earth’s crust and the clarity was absolute. The client and I looked at one another and shrugged. Something was wrong. There was none of the immediacy, the sense that something important was at hand. The music didn’t pull and tug at our consciousness. Were we hearing an incredible reproduction? Undoubtedly. Was it technically more solid? Oh yes…. But something was missing. Must be a bad digital transfer, the CD copy must be flawed. After all the Ayre is a celebrated CD player that wins rave reviews and cost double what the Pro-ject table does……

Next up is Peter, Paul and Mary’s 10 Years Together album. I careful dropped the Blue Point 2 onto “Too Much of Nothing” and BAM! The drums were alive and immediate, the music flowed and sensuously carried us with it. The trio was in the room in their own places, the harmonies easily defined with a sense of space that belied the size of the room. I put the CD in. Perfection, no noise no pops or clicks. A perfectly, precisely imaged reproduction. But no life either, no sensual pull, no raging rapid pulling you into the music, catching you up into the funky back beat and the beauty of the harmonies.

We did this for awhile, with various tracks from these albums and others, always switching back and forth between the two with the same results. Then my client said what I had been thinking. “The Pro-ject isn’t perfect but it is REALLY exciting!” He took it.

Did we solve the riddle, the constantly nagging question of digital vs. analog? Of course not! What is right for me may not be right for you. The point of this entry isn’t to say that one is better than the other. In every way that technically matters the Ayre CD player is hands down the winner. But the Pro-ject won on the strength of emotional connection. My client was willing to put aside the clicks and the pops and the getting up every 15 minutes to flip the record so that he could be captured and moved along with the music. Those compromises aren’t for everyone and I suspect my client will be back for the Ayre at some point in the future. But this experiment does beg the question…is there a middle ground? Can we have our cake and eat it too? I suspect we can and we will talk about it next week.

And always remember; the proof is in the listening!

Do you have questions, ideas, or products you would like to see reviewed? Let me know what you want to see in this blog in the future! Contact me at JHeld@hifihousegroup.com

Pro-ject Turntable

Ayre CD player

Bryston Preamp

Audioquest Interconnects

Written by Joseph Held

I love music. My love of music brought me to where I am in life today. I play it, listen to it and to earn a living as I guide clients in their Hifi and home theater quest. Quest may seem a lofty word, but I have noticed a trend in the last few years that I believe makes the word “quest” ring true. What I have noticed is that many people, including yours truly, don’t take the time to actually listen. We are consumed by numbers, like frequency response and watts and THD and bit rates and well, you get the idea. But we don’t listen. In other words, the quest has become more important than the goal. This is a little tale about how someone surrounded by music learned to listen again and the reward he received!

Simply put, the technical goal of a Hifi or home theater system is to reproduce, with as little distortion as possible, a full range of frequencies that recreates an original performance. I prefer to think of it as a kind of time travel; listening to music should either bring the performers to you or transport you to them.

I have noticed that I have recently lost focus on just sitting back and listening. For months I would catch myself checking my phone, wondering about the price of a system, actively listening for faults that I was supposedly listening for, sitting there analyzing, searching for issues while the music became a backdrop. Last month I decided to make a conscious effort to take a step back, and just listen to music, either on one of the systems in our Wilmington location or to my system at home. My goal was to listen with focus, with mindfulness, and to pay close attention to the music being played. It took a bit of effort not to fidget with the i-device or wonder about technical issues, but it was well worth it. Otherwise I may have missed an incredible experience!

On Saturday, I decided to move an Audio Research VS115 into our two channel room. The VS115 is a stereo tube amp that produces 120 watts per channel from 20Hz to 20kHz. At 1 kHz THD is typically 0.5% at 120 watts and below .05% at 1 watt. There are both 4 ohm and 8 ohm taps so you have some flexibility when matching speakers. Power is provided by four matched pairs of KT120 power amp tubes while four 6H30 tubes power the gain and driver sections. Both Balanced and Single Ended inputs are available. The unit is not light weighing in at 62lbs, the three large transformers and eight Nichicon capacitors could have something to do with that!

I connected it to a Bryston BP-6 preamp with AudioQuest Columbia interconnects, and used an Ayre CX-7eMP for CD playback, also with AudioQuest Columbia interconnects. I then connected the Sonus Faber Liutos to the VS115 with Musicwave Plus speaker wire from Transparent. After moving pieces around I always give a quick listen, to make sure I have everything sounding their best and to listen for minor errors in setup, like a phase or speaker placement issue. We move things around A LOT in a HiFi store so this process becomes a daily occurrence and I get caught up in just listening for issues rather than for enjoyment. It becomes a clinical experience rather than emotional exercise.

After letting the VS115 warm up a bit, I started with my normal reference demos to get a feel for the system. As has become my practice over the last month before I hit the play button I took a second to remind myself to really listen. This increased focus really paid off, and the results were stunning! I am glad I didn’t miss it!

With the VS115 powering the Sonus Faber Liutos they opened up as I had never heard them before. The soundstage was deeper, wider and effortless! On the first track, Bach’s Violin Concerto in Am, Isaac Stern’s violin had a warmth and presence that made me think he was right there in the room with me. The various violin and viola parts were effortlessly identifiable and were clearly on different parts of the stage and the harpsichord was clear and precise. Having listened to this piece many times on many different systems, the harpsichord part tends to get buried under the sheer number of string instruments present.

Next I turned my attention to Jeff Buckley’s Grace. On the track “Mojo Pin,” Jeff’s voice was immediate, intimate and intense. The kick and the snare drum slammed and cracked with detail and nuance but with no loss of force. The guitars that were on the very edge of breaking into distortion came through crystal clear on the tube amps. The chorus was huge, wide open, and with an intensity that was stunning.

I listened to several other pieces that I consider reference points, then, almost subconsciously, I started listening to some of my favorite pieces, not to see how the system handled my reference material but, for the sheer joy of listening to music.

The journey had ended; rather than being engaged in the quest I was engaged in the goal.

Was the system perfect? No.

Could fault be found with it? Certainly.

Are there more expensive pieces of gear with better technical specifications? Absolutely.

I can, however, say with certainty that the proof was in the listening experience.

The VS115 had turned a clinical listening session into a fun romp through some of my favorite material. I even found myself bringing CDs to work that I hadn’t heard in years. By listening solely as a fan of music, rather than from a technical perspective, I have regained a sense of wonder and excitement that I haven’t had in years. The VS115 helped reopen a world that I had taken for granted for much too long. Now I wonder what some of these same recordings will sound like in vinyl….Well that sounds like a good topic for next week!

And always remember; the proof is in the listening!

Do you have questions, ideas, or products you would like to see reviewed? Let me know what you want to see in this blog in the future! Contact me at JHeld@hifihousegroup.com.

Séura December/January 2012 Installation Feature

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