MoFi MasterTracker MM Cartridge $800

One of the best phono cartridges on the market doesn’t get much attention. That would be MoFi’s MasterTracker.

MasterTracker sounds smooth instead of biting. Yet it has outstanding definition and plenty of output to run into your MM phono preamp. If you love the piano without sibilance, please consider the MasterTracker cartridge.

The name MasterTracker is derived from MoFi’s combination of choices to achieve superb groove tracing. MasterTracker mirrors the design of MoFi’s record cutting head in its studio in California. It uses a V-Twin dual magnet generator. That is, it uses TWO powerful magnets running parallel to the grooves. MasterTracker is literally the best tracking cartridge we’ve experienced.

• The body is formed from a solid billet of aluminum.

• Highest quality pure Ohno copper coils are used

• Stylus shape is Micro Linear- identical to the cutter head shape.

• Output is 3mV. (MM)

• Weight 9.7g.

• 47K ohms

NAD C-700 Streaming Integrated Amp $1500

(80×2, Bluesound streaming built in!)

If you’re looking for a small, simple musical solution that offers the right array of options, consider NAD’s new C-700. For most customers, just add speakers and you’re ready to go.

It is an integrated amp with MQA Bluesound streamer on board! Considering the streamer alone is worth $600, C-700 is looking like a steal.

The on board amplifier is 80×2 and a close cousin to NAD’s C-268 ($950, 80×2). This amplifier features NAD’s Hybrid design where the power supply is analog. Putting a tough amp in a convenient piece is conspicuously different from the wimpy amps NAD’s competitors build in.

The NAD is comfortable with the impedance of literally any speaker you’ll choose. If you read the fine print by the other guys, you’ll see they don’t like anything under 8 ohms. Every speaker goes well under 8 ohms during its impedance path.

C-700 supports Bluetooth and Airplay 2. You can shake hands with high end services like Tidal and Qobuz, as well as more main stream services like Spotify Connect and Tidal Connect.

There’s much more.

C-700 has a large 5” screen to display cover art and other music information. Nice.

Please also note, C700 has preamp outputs! This means you can connect it to a ferocious amp like NAD’s C298. Tuck that C298 away somewhere. Then you’ll have the beauty of a cool, very B&O looking piece like C700, with the fire breathing engine of a C298 under the hood!

Inputs include:

*2 analog RCA

*1 Coax digital

*1 Optical digital

*1 HDMI eARC

Outputs include:

*R&L RCA preamp out, YES!

*Subwoofer out. Yes!

You can hook up C-700 to your speakers and call it a day. Or…

Remember those pre out jacks allow you to connect a more powerful amp if you ever want to head down that road. Hence C-700 is fine for now, and fine to build with as the hobby bites harder.

Naim’s Unity Atom runs $3300, has 40×2, and a less reliable streaming platform without MQA. NAD’s C700 is a SMOKIN’ value!

Quad ERA-1 Headphones, $800

Headphones are among the most personal of transducers. How they fit and how they sound, is all in the head of the beholder.

Quad has had electrostatic speakers of great fame since the 1950s. Quad hasn’t made headphones- until about 2019.

ERA-1 is a Planar Magnetic phone of prodigious performance. We used to carry Audeze. They’re very nice. Yet ERA-1 at $800 competes apples to apples with the Audeze at $1800. Goodbye Audeze.

I’ll let TAS tell you about them:

TAS:

“First, the headphone exhibited powerful yet also extremely articulate bass, with an excellent combination of impact and pitch definition. Listen to the deep snarl of the bass and the thwack of the kick drum on ‘Prodigal Son’ from Billy Idol. Some might feel the bass is elevated in level, but it is presented in such a tasteful, musically uplifting manner that I think many will embrace it over a strictly neutral sound.

Second the ERA-1 has wonderfully well defined, nuanced, and revealing mids and highs, especially relative to the norms for its price. Many models in this class are either bright sounding or else dark sounding- and slightly softly focused, but the ERA-1 instead hews toward a more satisfying and accurate middle path.

To appreciate how this plays out in musical terms, listen to the hauntingly beautiful ‘Nublado’ from Sera Una Noche. It features delicate, shimmering percussion and the solo voices of guitar, cello and wind instruments. In every case, the ERA-1 deftly captures the defining tonal colors and textures essential to each instrument’s sonic character, not to mention the reverberant acoustics of the recording venue.

In short, ERA-1 now stands as one of the finest sub $800 headphones that money can buy.”

• Open back

• Planar Magnetic

• SPL 94dB

• 420 grams

• 20 ohms

• 10-40kHz

Taylor Swift

Has been named the most charitable musician by Money Inc. Also on the short list are Elton John, Rihanna, Beyonce, Garth Brooks, Dr Dre, Sean Combs, Gwen Stefani & Alicia Keys. Famous musicians… generous people!

NAD M33 Integrated Amp $5000 (200×2)

NAD’s M33 is perhaps THE BEST BUY in a high end integrated amp for a pile of reasons. $5k is a steal for this magnificent integrated amp/streamer. That’s right, it has an on board MQA streamer!

NAD’s M33 is among the first products in the world to use the innovative Eigentakt amplifier circuit design. In short, M33 is impedance invariant and will drive ANY speaker you like. Due to Eigentakt, M33 sounds the same from watt one to clipping.

Almost every speaker on the market will sound better with more power than less power. We can debate this a bit if you own Klipsch LaScalas with 105dB SPL efficiency. But I can tell you that low powered amps with high distortion all sound NOISY into high SPL speakers.

You might choose to LISTEN THROUGH THE HISS- I do NOT.

As a classical piano and female singer fan, there’s lots of quietude going on between the notes. I won’t go along with the Emperor’s New Clothes and pretend noise isn’t there – if it is. Hiss and hum are obfuscating information.

Since the vast majority of us own speakers with an SPL of 86-96, power IS an issue. M33 is rated at 200×2, which M33 easily exceeds. When you combine its big power with stability into any impedance, you’re guaranteed to get a great handshake with your speakers.

M33 measures over 500 times less in THD than traditional integrateds or power amps. Check the fine print and you’ll discover that many highly touted amps out there measure .1 to .35% in distortion at their rated power. M33 measures a scant .00017%.

Perhaps you’re a tube amp fan. Here are some interesting TESTS from Stereophile.

Cary makes a $6k integrated amp, rated 100×2, it clipped (1% !!) at 3.2 w.

Jadis makes a $5k integrated, rated 40×2, it clipped at 14w.

Line Magnetic makes a $4950 integrated, rated 22×2, it clipped at 2w.

Vac has a $10k integrated rated 85×2, it clipped at 11.8w.

I’m fully aware that scores of audiophiles love their amps- whatever they may be. That’s fine. Suit yourself. Listen blissfully into the night if it floats your boat.

But if you have one of these super high efficiency speakers I’ll bet the Moonlight Sonata’s opening movement can barely be heard above the rushing of amplifier noise. No thanks.

If you have a hungry speaker you can be sure high THD amps will sound grainy. Nonetheless, we all love our own children and if your buddy thinks his combination is great (he bought them, they’re his kids) then it IS to him.

Yet I’m thinking… most of us CAN handle the truth! We don’t want to put our heads in the sand and pretend. We’d actually like to hear low level information in our music. And here is where M33 is amazingly clean, quiet and revealing of mellifluous musicality.

While $5k isn’t cheap, it’s not insane money. When you consider what all you get for $5k, it’s actually a very fair price.

What else do you get but a great amp in M33? You get a superb Bluesound streamer with full MQA decoding built in! Yup, you don’t have to buy an outboard streamer. Bluesound (made by NAD) has been making streamers for almost ten years. It knows how to support them and keep them running smoothly without interruption. There are a couple hundred music services out there. There are plenty of good ones for you to choose from. I’ll take Tidal, thank you.

Making a streaming box is just the start of the job folks. It is vital that you’re capitalized well enough to keep the party going and can update technology as needed. NAD has been doing that for almost a decade. Most of its competitors have made boxes for a couple years and struggle to keep them behaving in customers’ homes. I’ve heard buffering and sputtering from some of the highest touted names in our biz when visiting customers. You’ll have no such worries with M33. NAD has support staff to keep the updates rolling as needed.

M33 has a 32b DAC on board. It has a fine MM/MC phono section on board so you vinyl fans won’t need an outboard phono pre. Of course it has a preamp out to run a sub or larger amp (you won’t need one). It’s got Bluetooth, Airplay 2 and a partridge in a pair tree. (Dirac, Headphone amp MDC technology to add HDMI or something else as NAD evolves.)

There are a lot of nice amps on the market. I don’t pretend to carry them all. But if you evaluate what you get for $5k, it’s impossible to beat the value of M33. NAD is finally starting to make a dent in catching up to demand for M33. They’ve been 90 plus days behind in delivering since introducing this great piece. Now, it’s more like 30 days – and that’s if we don’t have them in stock- which we often do.

NAD’s Bluesound Node Streamer $550

The smartest streaming buy in our business just got smarter. The Bluesound Node 2i has been improved to a version 3. Due to marketing brilliance or confusion… the new Node has just been dubbed NODE.

It isn’t Node 3 or Node V3… Just NODE. Greater minds than mine, apparently, are at work in the marketing department.

The power supplies are more advanced. The operating system is faster. The DAC within is an improvement. It’s an evolutionary move that NAD felt… was time to implement. It now has an HDMI ARC input as well.

But the main reason to buy Node is the same as it has always been. It’s a great sounding streamer at a fair price. You can hook it up analog out into your system. Or if you have a fancy schmancy DAC, run OPT or Coax into THAT. You can operate wired (please!) or Wi-Fi (please don’t.)

My contention is that you don’t need to spend more money on streaming device. That’s because your streaming device is only as good as the SUPPORT the streaming company can provide. That means you want a big international company with plenty of engineering power to keep the platform running. Streaming takes much more than a smart designer making a box. That’s just the start.

I have heard big name streamers in customers’ homes buffer, cough and sputter- as they try to find music. The problem isn’t the box they bought. The problem is the support behind the curtain. NAD has been supporting streaming with it’s Bluesound line successfully since 2016. That’s like dog years in technology. Those cute start up companies with streamers and servers for $2k on up are gonna face some harsh realities as they try to provide you a solid signal to shake hands with!

NAD has long proven that they’ll do it. Anyone can start a company tomorrow and promise they’ll support you forever too. I’ll bet- they can’t.

PowerNode $900

PowerNode is the new Node WITH an 80×2 NAD amplifier built in! This guy is ideal for driving a pair of speakers in an additional room to your main hi-fi rig.

Run a Node to your hi-fi in the Living Room or Man Cave. Add PowerNodes to drive other speakers around the house. PowerNodes and the Bluesound system sound significantly better than Sonos, its main competitor.

Record Care By Last

The Last Factory makes our favorite LP and stylus care products!

$32: All Purpose Record cleaning kit: includes fluid and brushes, don’t keep using that nasty Discwasher brush.

$55: Record Preservative: Your LPs are made of boulders of vinyl pressed together. This product makes the top layers lock together. It minimizes friction for better sound and lesser wear. You only have to treat an LP once in its lifetime.

$29: Stylus Cleaner: It’s a brush with fluid. You need a solvent to dissolve the crud that accumulates on your stylus. This is the correct product to use- and won’t damage the elastomer that holds your cartridge’s cantilever in place

$55: Sytlast: You apply this product to your stylus after every side of an LP. It diminishes wear on your diamond. We assume you have a fine cartridge. Get the most life and best sound from it.

Hadi Karimi

Karimi was born in Tehran in 1990. He is an artist with a special gift for musicians and celebrities. His craft is as a 3D sculptor with CG mixed in. He uses drawings, paintings and death masks in his quest for accuracy. Wouldn’t we like to know how Beethoven really looked?

Most interesting, says me, is that he does a number of musicians that existed before photography. Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Mendelssohn are examples.

Also interesting are renditions of people of whom we have photos, but they’re of poor quality. Chopin, Robert & Clara Schumann, Brahms and Tchaikovsky are examples.

He also does striking work of people we’ve known well, as you see with Audrey Hepburn.

Mr Karimi’s website