There are more than two ways of bringing music to the desktop, but the
Role Sampan FTL and the Bose Companion II Series 2 are among the most compelling that I have found so far.

I have never liked a product that was mode by Bose until now. Their most diminutive and humble product, the Companion II Series 2 really does a lot to like. Oh sure, there’s plenty of the classic Bose sound (think a little beamy and soft on top and a bit of a boom down below). But, they capture the midrange surprisingly well. There’s a sense of organic presence that one would not expect of two plastic boxes that cost about $100 a pair.

Of course, I can’t leave well enough alone so I just had to do a side to side shoot-out with the Role Audio Sampan FTL.

Yes, the Sampan FTL costs more than the Bose and yes they need their own amplifier but that’s life: I intend to compare their sound and their musicality. It’s up to each user to determine what sort of configuration works best in their own office/computer system.

There’s a kind of science to the sound of the Bose. Their balance is a purposeful one. I can almost imagine a room full of engineers and marketing guys. The marketing guys are telling the engineers what their research says that little computer speakers should sound like and the engineers are taking it all in and trying to figure how they’re going to achieve the goal in a self-powered speaker that costs less than a pair of decent high end interconnects.

The result is smooth, fairly seamless and very easy to listen to for long stretches. The Bose will not subject the listener to a lot of fatigue yet they achieve a good quantity of detail. That said, the detail is a more than a bit homogenous. Harmonics are generic, if you will and the difference between recordings are minimized greatly.

The Bose-Bottom is a tad on the tubby side with little pitch definition. It would seem that the engineers were so enamored with what they could get out of the little plastic box that they went for a bit too much and the low frequency suffered as a result.

Moving the Role Sampan FTLs into position was a simple matter since they are scarcely larger than the Bose, just a bit deeper. There’s more than greater physical depth when it comes to the Roles. These are speakers designed to play music. The is no hive-like collective behind their development, just the mission of one guy who has a lot of good ideas.

The Sampan FTLs reveal what the Bose hides and then some. They will play at ridiculously high volumes without strain and plumb the low frequency depths in a way that makes their tiny footprint nothing short of unbelievable.

More than that, the Sampan FTLs breathe life into music the way a music lovers speaker should. You can again hear subtle differences in recordings that were lost with the Bose. And, while their top end would not seem to be quite as extended as that of the Bose, the Sampan FTL’s top end is far more musically integrated than with the Bose.

Do the Role Audio Sampan FTLs win the title of world’s greatest computer speaker? I can only say that I have yet to hear better. The funny thing is that they are so room filling that I am actually using them in a third system that feeding my breakfast area and kitchen for when I am cooking up my latest masterpiece. There’s no way I can convey just how well these tiny speakers play. Things can get pretty wild with the vent hood on, the pots and pans a rattling, and all of cooking’s other seranades. The little Sampans still handle it without a hint of discomfort. They are truly some of the most amazing dynamic speakers that I have ever used. You really owe to yourself to try a pair. If you’re like me, you’ll find yourself listening to them more than you ever imagined and in far larger rooms than you might believe possible.

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Good things most assuredly are worth waiting for. In the high end, all too often new acquisitions result in disappointment. There are sadly more sideways steps than forward ones. I have found this to be especially true with preamplifiers, especially full function preamps with onboard phono.

But, you will certainly want to read what I have to say about the Classé CP-500. It may, in fact, put an end to my own quest for a better preamp by being the very best preamp that I have ever used. There’s no doubt that it is most comprehensive, thoughtfully designed and user friendly product of its kind to grace my listening room. In fact, I will use this space to detail its set-up and use and will confine the review to sonic and musical issues exclusively.

Be sure and check back to see if the Classé is truly a glimpse of perfection in a world of mediocrity.

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I have only heard good things about Rogue Audio. Some ears that I trust said that Rogue’s products offered superb value and satisfying musicality. That’s a pretty handy combination, especially in tube amplification. It’s an easy assumption that a quality tube watt costs more than a quality solid state watt, but the Atlas may challenge that idea. The Atlas is Rogue’s entry level amp and is a basic EL34 Push-Pull stereo design.

As you’ll read in my full review, the Atlas is an amazingly well built product. Beyond the solid construction is a foundation of true design excellence. Things fit together well and there’s a logic and elegance to the way the amp looks and function.

Those who know me likely recall my fondness for two-tube pentode amplifiers. Some of my favorite tube amps used that combination including the classic Audio Research D-70 MKII, the Music Reference RM-10 and later the oft misunderstood RM-200.

The D-70 MKII and the RM-200 used 6550s, one of my favorite tubes when employed properly (read: well flogged). The RM-10 used a unqiue topology based on the Yugo EL-34/6BQ5 but that is tale for another time.

The Rogue Atlas uses a pair of EL34 and also uses a 12AX7 input followed by a 12AU7 that drives an EL34 per channel. The 12AU7 and the EL34 raised my eyebrows a tad. The 12AU7, in the past, has had some issues in certain circuits and the EL34 can sound a little pale at times.

If you want to read the full review, just subscribe today. You’ll have the PDF of the full review in your In Box next week.

Listen well, but listen happy.

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My reviews of the Rotel RCD-1072 CD player and the Salamander Designs Synergy30 A/V rack will be on their way to loyal Ultralinear subscribers today. Why wait for them to hit the archives? Subscribe today. It only takes a few seconds and you’ll be reading the very best reviews of some of the most interesting high end gear on the market.

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I am usually not one to be impressed by things like audiophile feet. But, my initial experiences with the Stillpoints system mark a noteworthy exception. It is truly a system, and in ways a rather complex one. I must say that the sophistication of their products is not matched by the instructions they supply for their use. The user is pretty much on his own…
What is impressive is the detail of design and the sophistication of the execution. Each Stillpoints product is machined to amazing levels of precision. It is obvious that the folks who design and make these products have done work outside the audio industry. The average audiophile is likely to think that precison machine work is a 1″ thick faceplate made from garden variety T6 aluminum.

I have now managed to integrate the Stillpoints system into my own system and will be reporting on the results soon.

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Loyal readers of mine over the last 20 years know that I am very difficult to impress when it comes to loudspeakers. Of late, the Role Audio Enterprise has redefined what I believed was possible in an elegant, unobtrusive $3,000 speaker. The Enterprise was hardly the first speaker from Role Audio’s Erol Ricketts to catch my attention. His Model 10s, from Role’s sister company, NSM, are among the most musically faithful minis that I have ever heard.

While Role is clearly related to NSM, its products are really quite different. Both the diminutive Sampam FTL and the Enterprise share a common technology that Ricketts has perfected, the Folded Transmission Line. The single driver, time coherant Sampan FTL is a very small and exceptionally light speaker. From a distance it could be confused for a computer speaker. Upon closer examination it’s clear that this is a high end product.

While small, the Sampan FTL is as solidly made as Role’s full-sized speakers. It features design and construction elements found only in true high end products such as hand soldered components and my favorite Superior 5-Way binding posts.

With Mr. Rickett’s encouragement, I decided to position the Sampans on a shelf, of all things. They are a part of a modest system that will do little to help their sound quality. I felt badly about putting the Sampans at such a disadvantage. But then I put on a CD…

The Sampans slam and boogie like nobody’s business. And, I don’t have to add the proviso, for a little, tiny speaker. The have a big, bold, expansive sound that comes right at you. It really takes some time to come to terms with just how much energy they can put into a room. There’s always a tendency to look up and say to yourself, “all of this is coming from those two little boxes? That can’t be right!”

But it is right. The Sampans make me wonder what they could do on some purpose built stands in a proper room, driven by appropriate electronics. But maybe I’m missing the point. Maybe I should simply enjoy the Sampans for the wonders they can create, even with all of the hinderances that I have heaped upon them.

I now have three distinctly voiced systems. There’s my office system with its very rare, but oh so cool, Eminent-Technology LFT-11s. My main system belongs to the panache and elan of the Role Audio Enterprise. Now, the humble but musical third system is ruled by the tiny speakers with the big sound, the Role Audio Sampan FTL. Each system has its own character, its own sound (sorry, purists, but that’s life).

The more that I listen to the Sampans the more I am convinced that Erol Ricketts is doing the very best work of his distinguished tenure as a speaker designer. It is my sincere hope that more people discover just what can be done with speakers so small that one’s first instinct is to dismiss them as mere toys. I see the Role Audio Sampans FTL as a challenge to other speaker companies to get as much music out of their products as Role Audio achieves.

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The idea of using special feet beneath audio gear was started as a commecial venture by Steve McCormack of Mod Squad fame. However, interesting materials have been used by end users long before the era of the Tip Toe.

When I was a kid, the tube guys used wooden furniture knobs. Some guys liked hardwoods such as oak and ash while others preferred the softer woods including fir and pine. Later, and we’re talking 20 years ago, I knew guys who created feet from small bags of sand, bicycle inner tubes and hot water bottles.

The essence of this dichotomy still exists: There are companies who seek to couple devices to their foundation and there are designs intended to decouple the two masses. Not wanting to take sides (yet) I have elected to look at products that fall in both camps and will be reporting my results here in a couple days.

The first contenders are from Vibrapod and PolyCrystal and I hope you’ll drop by to read my findings. And, then I will turn my attention to the very interesting products from Stillpoints…

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Of late I have found myself listening to my music here at my Mac or with my iPod. I do not know if that’s a good sign or not but it’s happening. The problem is that fidelity matters no matter where I listen so I’ve begun to think about a better headphone amp for my Sennheiser HD-650.

I have a great sense for small companies. It’s easy for me to differentiate the real-deals from the me-toos (it’s even easier to recognize the wanna-bes). Shellbrook Audio Labs makes some very interesting and seemingly well-engineered portable headphone amps and I am looking forward to doing a full review and subjecting it to my inherently snobbish high end biases.

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This telling of the high end story was motivated by the befuddlement of my girlfriend of two years over what this business is all about. This is a fable, consisting largely of facts, but sprinkled with my own subjective (and sometimes gleefull paraphrasing of reality) take on the history of audio universe as we know it today. Don’t waste your time arguing with me, I probably know the story better than any one of you so just read on, learn and be amused.

In the beginning there was music, and it was good. Following WWII, some clever folks adapted Western Electric theater equipment into home use and the first high end (albeit mono) systems were born.

As the 50s faded away, two things happened: First, transistors made their way into home electronics and stereo recordings became the standard. Though born of tubes and mono, it was the transistor and stereo that served as the critical elements needed for coming of the high end.

In the 60s and 70s, the high end gear of the world was made by companies who built their empires on the transistor and stereo. Companies like Sansui, Kenwood and Marantz ruled like the dinosaurs of their era. They were big and powerful companies that made gear that sometimes sounded OK and was always very heavy.

As disco waned and punk waxed, the high end came into its adolescence. During this time, the industry genuinely grew for the only time in its brief existence. In the early 80s, John Bau (founder of Spica) went to CES with a prototype of the classic TC50 and came home with more than 20 dealers. To the uninitiated, this may not sound like a big deal but believe me it never happened before and it will never happen again.

Bau was the prototype of the high end entrepreneur / engineer. He had a good idea, worked hard to make it into a product and the world (at least by high end standards) beat a trail to his door. His small company was emblematic of the very best that the high end has ever offered to its faithful. Think of it, this was a time when the very best was being attained by some of the smallest companies ever created.

The likes of Bau was followed by men named Thiel, Pass, D’Agostino, Thigpen, Klyne & Modjeski and the high end entered its Golden Age. Technology now mated with the clever. The musical truth slept with engineering maxims and all was well. The God of Audio was in his heaven.

During the 80s and early 90s the high end flourished. There was a minimum of bullshit, and genuine excitement filled the hearts and ears of devotees around the world. High end designers could explain their designs in engineering terms yet their love of music told of something more, of something magical. The industry was a brotherhood, if an odd one, and the small American high end companies ran the fraternity.

Sometime in the middle of the 1990s digital began to slowly poison the high end and no one noticed until it was much too late. Enthusiasm was replaced by talk of bit rates and error correction. Worst of all, people spoke of CD’s limited life span as a technology in a way that had never happened with analog. Search around for a fascinating interview of Bruce Brisson (of MIT cables fame, for those of you who are too young to know the players) wherein he postulates how much better the world would have been had CD been delayed by a decade while the art and science of the LP had been allowed to continue its rightful evolution. The perversion of home theater rose from the ashes of what was the high end’s destiny in another, sadly lost, dimension. And, we all got really sad while some clowns got rich.

Still, as long as there are garages there will be high end designers. The problem with the high end of today is that bullshit largely rules and there is ever more focus on what gear looks like, on how thick the faceplate is, and ever less on whether it makes music. It has become all too easy to make a piece of gear that looks and feels the part yet sounds abundantly mid fi. It is the perfect analog to the values of the bibliophile who judges a book only by its cover and never by its content.

The genuine believers, the true music lovers of the high end are getting old now. At 45, I am among the youngest of the tribe. As our days and nights are cut into ever smaller pieces by the technologies that rule our lives, the subtle charms of music herself, alone, glides sadly into a darkened corner. I doubt that she’ll be coaxed back out into the light, but if she does it will be by the sheer guile of a clever guy working in his garage. Here’s to a happy ending to this tale…

Dedicated to Will and Ariel Durant, authors of The Story of Philosophy.

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Of late, I’ve gotten a lot of emails asking which recordings I use and why. I usually keep this type of informationn to myself, for my own odd reasons. But in this case, I will relent:

In the early 70s, before the term audiophile had come into common use, a recording was made that unknowingly adhered to every audiophile convention that are now the subject of so much of the hype that infects today’s audiophile labels. The record is Joni Mitchell’s Ladies of the Canyon (Reprise RS 6376). First of all, this LP is among the last of the big label LPs that were lovingly pressed on only the finest vinyl. My pressing is pushing 30 years old, is free of pops and ticks, and tracks just as it did lo those many years ago. Here we have the most challenging registers of the female voice, trading focus with cello, clarinet, piano and more. Can you hear the shadings that make the clarinet stand clear from the voice? Do you hear the floor boards resonate beneath the cello? The truth is in the details, and this LP has a wealth of them. The recording is beyond reproach, and the compositions are sublime and timeless. The bad news? This baby will be very hard to find in decent condition.

Sorry for follow up one needle in a haystack LP with another, but this one is another LP that will become an essential part of your collection, if you can get a hold of a copy. It is the 1984 release by guitarist George Cromarty, Wind in the Heather (Dancing Cat Records {a division of Windham Hill} DC3001). This is an amazing collection of short solo guitar pieces. Each of the 13 original compositions are melodic masterpieces in their own right, and the recording is simply lucious…easily the finest recording of acoustic guitar that I have ever heard. The mastering was done by Bernie Grundman and you will never hear a cleaner pressing. Like the Mitchell LP, this LP is invaluable for listening to a system’s critical ability, or sometime unfortunate inability, to render both a natural sound space and retrieve the essence of the acoustical truth of the music. Does the guitar emanate from clear space, or does it seem bound to the speakers? Do the overtones of each note connect to the fundamental pitch of the note, or does one come from here and the other from a over there? Acoustic instruments demand coherence, and this is always a challenge for a multi-driver
loudspeaker.

But what, you may ask, about the non-acoustical truth? Find yourself (this will be much easier) a copy of the 1975 classic from Steely Dan, Katy Lied (ABC Records ABCD-846). Again, here we have audiophile sensibilities before audiophile pretensions. The back cover of the album notes not only the use of a Neumann VMS 70 lathe, but also advises strict adherence to the RIAA curve. Who says the ‘70s were an empty decade? This is great stuff, rock with wit and intelligence played by some of the hardcore studio guys of the era (including Rick Derringer, the late Jeffery Porcaro, and a pre sellout Larry Carlton). My friends, these guys could play. If your system is unable to play “Chain Lightning” with Derringer’s sharp & wicked guitar riffs and Porcaro’s thundering drum fills both loudly and with ease please resign as an audiophile and take up bowling.

Here’s something you can buy new that represents the state of the art in vinyl today. The artist is Sonny Landreth, bayou slide guitarist extraordinaire. The LP is called Outward Bound and you can buy a new pressing of this from none other than Classic Records (RTH1032-1), and while you can also get it on CD, why would you? For a modern rock recording, Outward Bound is dynamically challenging for a system. The players showcased here don’t spend much time tacking it easy. Mastering, once again is by Grundman, and while the pressing is good, it doesn’t measure up to the oldies that have discussed previously in this section. Again, this material needs to be recreated at full volume, yet always in complete control and with all of its original tonality and timbre intact.

The language of audio (and now video) is critical if we are to make ourselves understood. The bad news is that most of our vocabulary is borrowed from photography and other visual arts. Terms like imaging and focus really have no place in a audio, but they have become terms of art that we all use without thinking about them. Even the oft used term bright refers to brilliance of light rather than anything even remotely related to sound. Still, it’s just too late to buck the semantical system, so here are some notable CDs that I use. Please note that some of these will be easy to find, while some a bit rare. A good starting place is Amazon.com as their search system allows you to find CDs by a number of different criteria from performer, piece of music, ensemble, label and catalog number. Tone, timbre and ambiance: Three tests, one CD One Minute and thirty-four seconds! The Cowboy Junkies / The Trinity Sessions (RCA 8568-2-R) Track 1: “Mining for Gold.” This classic traditional tune, sung a cappella by Margo Timmons will tell you more about what your system can and can’t do than any other minute and a half of recorded music can. It was recorded using the famed (notorious?) Calrec Ambisonic microphone in the Church of the Holy Trinity in Toronto. What you should hear, what you must hear, is the sense of the church’s physical size and space even before Timmons starts to sing. In the center of the space you should hear Timmons’ earthy, smoldering yet sweet voice at once anchored and yet floating in the center of the soundstage. Can you hear it? If you can you’re already most of the way there. If you can’t, well, “Houston. we have a problem.” Until you can get this most basic test right, your system will be stuck in neutral.

Midrange pitch precision and speed of attack and decay: Laurel Zucker & Susan Jolles / Images for Flute & Harp / Sonatine for flute & harp Victor Frost (1952-) (Cantilena Records 66016-2) Track 14 Moderato e deciso. Lots of luck finding this gem…it took me weeks to find it. The flute and harp cast their notes squarely on pitch and the interplay between the distinct voices create quite a challenge. Listen for any tendency for the flute to sound wispy or tonally dispersed. It is not a function of the recording. The harp’s strings start and stop quickly so any sense of slowness or muddying tells you that something bad is happening. As an aside, this is a truly fine piece of modern classical music in a sea of amusical junk. This CD is worth the trouble of finding it, and trouble you will have.

Small scale ambiance & image placement: Gabriel Fauré The Two Piano Quartets / The Ames Piano Quartet (Dorian DOR-90144). The entire CD is the very pinnacle of the genre in both performance and recording. A good system has to place each of the three string instruments in their own sound field with the piano well focused, yet expansive. A weak system will have the notes of the piano jumping (seeming to come from different positions as the pitch changes) and the strings may become crowded together or unnaturally spread out. Again, not the easiest CD to find, but it’s out there and in print.

Large scale ambiance & image placement: Brahms-Schoenberg Piano Quartet in G minor / Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (Vox Cum Laude MCD 10018). Again, not an easy one to find but a treasure. To my knowledge, the only current release featuring Schoenberg’s orchestral transcription of this seminal piano work by Brahms at the height of his creative powers. The job of recreating the sense of a full orchestra in one’s listening room is at once irresistible and impossible. The scope and sweep of the dynamics are just too much, not to mention the sheer space and complexity that the music presents. Still, we must try: What we want here is a sense of size and majesty without strain. A great system will be able to approach this ideal and lower volume levels and the poor system won’t be able to get it right at any level. Listen also for a natural portrayal of shifts between the loud and the soft and everything in between. Any tendency to draw the presentation of the music toward the speakers, like light from a flashlight, is bad and is illustrative of a system that has reached its limits.

Dynamic shifts, tonal consistency & complexity: Beethoven-Liszt Piano Transcriptions Symphony No.6 / Glenn Gould (Sony SMK 52639). Want to hear Beethoven’s Pastorale symphony as if for the very first time? That’s what it’s like to hear this wonderful Lizst transcription of this sadly overplayed, yet marvelous piece. By giving a solo piano virtually all of the symphony’s themes, Liszt strips the melodies and harmonies of this piece bare. One can hear much further into the piece without all of the timbre and voices of the full orchestra. A system will also reveal if it has any problems recreating a sense of tonal complexity without a feeling or tendency toward confusion. Gould’s playing and the recording are beyond reproach. A superb system will keep the tonal nature of the piano consistent whether the notes are played fast or slow, loud or soft. How does your system capture these essentials?

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but rather a sampling of recordings I trust to ask and answer basic questions of system musicality.

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