I recently purchased an Echo Indigo IO notebook soundcard (cardbus interface) and just hooked it up to my Sennheiser HD-600 headphones. It does a fantastic job driving the headphones with great detail, bass and overall sound quality. No need for a dedicated headphone amp with this soundcard. It also does a very good job with my Etymotic Research ER-6 earphones, but the HD-600s sound much better than the ER-6s. I have a pair of Grado Labs SR-225 on the way and will see how they perform on the card (the Grados require less potential to drive, but are more current hungry).

The card also does 24-bit/96kHz recording and comes with basic versions of professional recording software, just in case you want to crank out some albums too. I highly recommend it for hi-fi notebook listening or recording.

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Several audio companies have put together excellent raffles or auctions to benefit the charities providing hurricane relief along the gulf coast. Below is a list that notes a few details and links to the raffle/auction. It’s a great way to help out and have a chance at some great gear (people have really pulled out the stops on these items):

ACI has a raffle ($65 tix - ARC) for a $4,000 pair of Talisman SE speakers - http://www.audioc.com/raffle1/raffle4.htm

AV123 has a raffle ($100 tix - ARC and Salvation Army) for a $15,000 pair of Epiphany 12/12 speakers - http://www.av123.com/products_product.php?section=speakers&product=49.1

Black Sand Cable has a raffle ($25 tix - ARC) for a Rotel RMB-1075 ampifier - http://www.blacksandcable.com/gallery30.htm

Innersound has two charity auctions (ARC), one for a iPre preamplifier - http://cgi.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/auc.pl?preatran&1128130079&auc&3&4&
and one for a pair of Isis Mk3.5 speakers - http://cgi.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/auc.pl?spkrplan&1128128885&auc&3&4&

SORASound has an auction for a ZYX phono stage - http://cgi.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/auc.pl?preaphon&1128307916

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Dusty at Channel Islands Audio has announced that the VPC-2, the updated version of their VPC-1 passive pre-amp is now shipping and listed on the CI Audio website. It’s a straight-forward two inputs, two outputs passive pre-amp that has a nice feature of one output being configurable to either a fixed or variable output for flexibility.

I expect this is another product I’ll see at the RMAF, along with some of Dusty’s Hypex-based amps which have been receiving high praise.

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Recent announcements on the release of new AV123/Onix speakers in their Reference line (the Ref 0.5 and Ref 1.8) make this a good time to bring together a segment on the series of changes to the AV123 lineup and where the company may be taking their speaker lines.

The company began with their Rocket line, eventually adding their Reference line targeted at two-channel enthusiasts and then their ELT (Extremely Luscious Theater) line - a home theater line with a lower price-point than the Rocket lineup. While each line has enjoyed sucess, recently there have been some announcements on new models replacing existing ones and some restructuring of the lineups.

The introduction of the X line of speakers (initially XLS monitors at $199 and a small X-subwoofer at $199) seems positioned to potentially take over the budget end of the spectrum. While currently only a two-channel line, there were statements about expanding the line at the recent AV123 GTG (Mark has just made mention of 6 SKUs for this line - my speculation would be monitor, floor-stander, center, two subs and on-wall surrounds).

Within the Rocket line, the long-time core of the line (RS750 and RS550) are being replaced by new models (RS760 and RS450) while the smallest of the lineup (RS150) has been retired. The extended sale on the RSC100 center may be an indication that it will be retired as well. A massive center channel with powered woofers (RSC500) is approaching release. There is also talk of potentially having an even larger flagship speaker for this line (RS2000). The discontinuation of the ebony finish leaves this line in only its traditional rosewood for the immediate future. This line appears to be giving up a bit of its low-end to focus on bigger and, hopefully, better items.

Within the Reference line, there seems to be growth in all directions. The release of the Ref3 seemed to be the top-end speaker of the lineup, but now there is mention of a potential Ref4 (and even a “Ref Ultra”). A cabinet for a larger center channel (Ref200) based on the Ref3 drivers has been shown. The big-brother turned middle child Ref2 has been retired and replaced with a pair of products: the Ref 1.5 and Ref 1.8 which appear to be better options for multichannel surround/rear speakers. Most recently, an interesting twist in this line has been announced, the Ref 0.5. Counter to the retiring of the bottom-end of the Rocket line, the Reference line seems to be expanding its bottom-end. The speaker itself seems to be an evolution of the RS150 and ELT LRS. The addition of a rosewood finish in the entire line appears to have caught on as a permanent option instead of a temporary special edition.

Here’s a picture of the X-sub, XLS, RS760 and Ref 1.5 at the AV123 CO GTG in August:

The ELT line appears to be poised for an entire fade-out, but there has not yet been an official announcement of this. With the X line upcoming and the ELT dwindling, it seems inevitable that the future budget lineup will be under the X name. This was reinforced by Mark Schifter’s statement that the planned ELT PMM product would be released under the X line.

Lastly, but not least, the Strata line seem ready to finally make its debut. After years of proposed products and renderings, the Strata Mini made a static display debut at the AV123 GTG and Mark Schifter has said it will be the focus of the AV123 RMAF presence (playing, not static display). There still isn’t any concrete word on the other proposed models in this line, but there have been hints that news will come soon.

Strata Mini at AV123 CO GTG 2005:

There have also been references made online to AV123 carrying completed versions of the new GR Research LS series of line arrays. This would be an interesting joint project as there would be both kit versions of the speakers sold via GR Research and complete versions sold via AV123.

So, that leaves us with bigger Rockets, more Refs, a currently unknown number of X speakers, the retirement of the ELT line, the beginnings of the Strata line and a bit of a wildcard with a GR Research line array series. And the electronics are a whole ‘nuther story…..

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Danny Ritchie has announced his partially open-backed version of the RAW/GR Research RA-8. The yet-to-be-named speaker uses the same WWMTMWW arrangement and drivers, but opens the back of the MTM section and adds a GR Research SW-12A 12″ driver with plate-amp to the bottom. The additional 12″ driver brings the -3db point down to 25Hz, making it essentially a true full range speaker. The speaker is also shorter and the 12″ driver has its own sealed compartment, but the speaker is also deeper which likely makes up for woofer cabinet volume that would have been lost otherwise.

This is yet another speaker I am looking forward to seeing/hearing at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest.

See details in this AC thread.

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Jon O on the Ascend forum referenced a whitepaper from Harman International recently (if you aren’t familiar, Harman is the parent company of several companies including Harman Kardon, JBL, Infinity, Revel, Lexicon, Mark Levinson, AKG and more) and it has me poking around their whitepaper repository.

Over the years, Harman and its child companies have employed many of the great minds of audio, so the repository has some good stuff.

Jon O was linking to a paper on room acoustics at low frequencies for multichannel audio. It covers some good concepts about modes and placement of both the speakers and listener. (PDF here)

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There are a couple of updates from AV123. First, they appear to finally be shipping their Extended Response Tweeter (ERT) which was demoed at CES in Jan. It’s an add-on tweeter for covering ranges from ~10kHz to ~45kHz and is intended to be used with any speaker. While I have seen the demo units in person, I have never heard them playing. $349/pair in gloss black.

The second item is an announcement of an expanded agreement with Melody for resell/co-branding of their tube pre-amps and amps. AV123/Onix currently sells Melody integrated amps (the H34 and SP3) and are now arranging to begin selling more of their products. In particular the Melody I60 integrated amp (does not appear to be listed on the Melody website) for $1995.

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I downloaded OGG and FLAC plugins for Adobe Audition available here. I used the OGG encoder that comes with CDex and the FLAC encoder v1.1.2 from the FLAC site.

Here are the results (same segments of songs from the last post) including relative file sizes for Cold, Cold Heart.

Cold, Cold Heart - Norah Jones ‘Come Away with Me’

FLAC 47% of original
OGG 128kbps 8% of original
OGG 256kbps 16% of original

Sweet Child O’ Mine - Guns N’ Roses ‘Appetite for Destruction’

FLAC
OGG 128kbps
OGG 256kbps

As expected, there aren’t any noticable differences with FLAC (just as we saw with WMA lossless). OGG is an interesting one. Obviously instead of focusing on cutting the upper frequencies straight off, it seems to cut out lower volume bits and pieces.

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Since I have been doing a bit of spectral analysis of music to learn about the frequency distribution of the content, I started looking into the changes made by digital music compression. I took short (20-30 seconds) sections of two songs and made charts. I ran the full songs through various compression techniques to get the file sizes (this was previously stated incorrectly). The results are below (file sizes are given as a percentage of the original for reference).

Cold, Cold Heart - Norah Jones ‘Come Away with Me’

Original WAV file
MP3 128kbps CBR 9% of original
MP3 256kbps CBR 18% of original
MP3 VBR preset-extreme 16% of original
WMA 128kbps CBR 9% of original
WMA 135-215kbps VBR 19% of original
WMA Lossless 44% of original

Sweet Child O’ Mine - Guns N’ Roses ‘Appetite for Destruction’

Original WAV file
MP3 128kbps CBR
MP3 256kbps CBR
MP3 VBR preset-extreme
WMA 128kbps CBR
WMA 135-215kbps VBR
WMA Lossless

As you can see, there is an obvious loss of high frequency information in all forms of compression except for the WMA lossless. Some, like MP3 256CBR, only lose a small amount, but others, like WMA 128CBR, lose a significant amount (everything above 16kHz in this case).

Of course, these images don’t show enough detail to see other potential impacts of compression. Perhaps we’ll visit that another time.

Spectral charts done using Adobe Audition 1.5. MP3 compression done using LAME 3.92 via CDex. WMA compression done using Windows Media Player 10.

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No sooner than I had finished my last post about the Hagerman Tech Chime DAC, Jim came out with two more interesting pieces of news. First, there will be a touring Chime DAC and a touring Clarinet pre-amp. See this AudioCircle thread for information.

Second, Jim has released the HagUSB, a TI PCM2704 based USB device that outputs S/PDIF and has a headphone jack. This is exactly the type of work the PCM2704 was designed to do - both the S/PDIF and headphone outputs are native capabilities of the chip

Like other HagTech products, it comes in half-kit ($39) and full version ($129).

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