ALPHASON: What happened?

“Made the HR100S and HR100s MCS arms in the late 80’s early 90’s, it’s a medium compliance unit featuring a ultra rigid design machined from titanium right from the bearing to headshell as a one piece, features a ceramic gimbal bearings and was designed by Mike Knowles, the Xenon was a slightly cheaper version of […]

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AMPLIFIER STRESS: Is this why 4 Ohm loads stress amplifiers?

There have been quite a few questions lately regarding the safety (or otherwise) of driving 4 ohm speakers from amplifiers only rated to drive 8 ohm loads. Rather than just add to the mass of unsubstantiated conflicting opinions (e.g. “amplifier XXX is built like a tank, so it must be able to drive 4 ohm […]

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CONVERSATIONS WITH COLIN: Audiophile industry heroes

Hi Colin. Who if any are your audio designers heroes and why? Thanks. Nigel Beethoven (no jokes please) Hello Nigel. Heroes is a bad thing to have as it puts normal humans on a dais and yet they are human. But the gents and ladies in this complex industry that I put up with; the […]

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IMPEDANCE: How to measure it?

Dear Colin, Zero autoformers; how to measure impedance please? I got a pair of Speltz zero autoformers recently but when I measure the total impedance, my multimeter sees only 0.4-0.6 ohm no matter what I do. It seems the multimeter could only read the DC resistance from the autoformer itself but not the total impedance […]

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Howard Popeck speaks at length to people with interesting things to say: Mr. Dominique Mafrand, the driving force behind French audio maker l’enceintebleue

Hello Dominique. How did your interest in music reproduction start? It began when I was very young. One of my four brothers studied electronics at school and found a job in a French company called Ferisol manufacturing professional electronics equipment for the industry. It was back in 1960/1965. It was the beginning of pop music […]

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HARBETH: Spendors comparable to Harbeth C7ES3?

Hi all. It seems like Spendors and Harbeths share a lot of qualities, while the Spendors seem to be less expensive. Are any Spendor models comparable to C7ES3s? I really like what I’ve read about the Harbeths, but they aren’t available in my area while Spendors are. Any other similar speakers to consider? Please click […]

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CABLES: Low inductance, low capacitance and moderate impedance speaker cables?

Hi Guys, Roger Sanders of Sanders Sound Systems Ltd sells purpose made coaxial design speaker cables for Electrostatic speakers. They are made to be low inductance, low capacitance, and moderate impedance cables. As I cannot afford his $600 per pair asking price, does anyone know of any other cables (as cheap as possible) that fulfill […]

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