Obstacles!

You readers don’t know how hard it is to sort through all the great hi-fi gear these days. There are numerous obstacles in my way.

Glenn just came into my office and proclaimed- “You won’t believe what I just found!” I’m thinking, he found a Mac MR78 in mint condition, or a pair of Maggie Tympani 1-Ds that don’t need to be rebuilt. Nope. Glenn went on. “My house was built in 1977. One of the toilets is beige. I’ve never been able to find a matching seat. I went to Ace to buy the lights for the elevator that you told me you needed, and there it was- at the end of the aisle- a single beige toilet seat!”

Alchemy Electronics Are In!

Elac has made quite a splash in the performance per dollar speaker market. In just a few short
years, they’ve tipped over the apple cart for old line brands. Well, are ya ready?!

Elac has just decided to dive into the ELECTRONICS market. Their brand is called ALCHEMY. On top of great performance, these sleek guys are under 2” tall and don’t run hot. The price points are north of NAD and south of McIntosh.

Rave reviews are sure to follow. Initial response from the magazine guys/gals who’ve heard Alchemy is audio ecstasy!

 

Alchemy DPA-2 Power Amp (210×2 or 625 monoblock! 2H, 17.5w, 15d, 15 lbs) $1500

Holy acceleration! If you’re after a battleship of a power amp at an affordable price, with the option to add even more by bridging- look no further than DPA-2! While DPA-2 sounds good by any audiophile standard, its Ferrari like dynamic range is its calling card.

DPA-2 is a stellar power amp with some unique technology to pull it away from the field. As you’ve read above, it offers huge power. The power supply is non switching analog. The output section is Class D employing the highly regarded Hypex design. Designer Peter Madnick of Alchemy has his own secret sauce for this design. He doesn’t use the Hypex as it lays. He bypasses the op amp filtering feature of the Hypex and employs his own discrete filtering network.

DPA-2 offers power LEDs, which are not only fun to watch dance (or they can be turned off), but they give you potentially valuable feedback on how hard you’re driving. It has a switch for high or low gain so it can interface with any preamp.

DPA-2 has RCA and BALANCED inputs. Holy smokes! That puts DPA-2 in the big time- especially because it hand shakes with the DDP-2 preamp, BALANCED. At only two inches tall, why not buy two and run 625 per channel?!

Here’s another consideration for this amplifier. Suppose you have an elderly Threshold, Levinson, ARC, Hafler, B&K type power amp that you paid a bundle for many years ago. To buy an apples to apples power amp today, would be $6-7k! The beauty of DPA-2 is, for just $1500 you can replace the old man with a brand new, smaller, lighter, cutting edge amp, with balanced or single ended inputs. And… you’re actually improving your sound!

 

Alchemy DDP-2 DAC/Preamp/Streamer $2500 (2h, 17.5w, 15d, 14 lbs)

This slick new piece checks most of the boxes that need checking! First of all, it’s a fine stereo preamp/DAC with a nice array of inputs spec’d below. I will BRAG UP here that it has BALANCED inputs and outputs, as well as RCAs. THAT … puts it in a different league from anything that doesn’t support balanced operation!

The DAC is 32/384. It upsamples 16 bit to 24, and 24 to 32.

DDP-2 has built in streaming en point that shakes hands with Roon. It has a home theater bypass loop if you’re THAT guy.

*Analog inputs: 2 RCA, 1 Balanced
*Digital inputs: USB-B, 2 OPT, 2 Coax, XLR
*Outputs: 1 Balanced, RCA Variable, RCA Fixed
*Ethernet with MQA decoding
*Bluetooth Wi-fi

 

Alchemy PPA-2 Phono Preamp $1000 (2h, 17.5w, 15d)

Alchemy puts a unique spin on the phono preamp as we know it. In addition to traditional loading features, it supports BALANCED operation! It has:
*Toroidal transformer
*Discrete circuity
*MM/MC
*Has adjustments for cartridge loading: 5-999 ohms
*Stereo/Mono
*Rumble filter- selectable settings
*Has two RCA inputs and ONE BALANCED input!
Repeat:
*Has RCA outs and BALANCED outs!
*Liquid Crystal Display for clear user info
*Gain: 42dB Single Ended, 48dB Balanced

 

 

Super Woman! Clara Schumann (1819-1896)

So you think YOU’RE busy? Clara puts us all to shame!

Clara worked like a dog from early childhood to be a world class pianist. By age 13 her piano teaching father was showing her off around Europe with enormous fanfare. Think, an older Mozart family dynamic.

Clara was tough as nails. By age 18 she wanted to marry composer Robert Schumann. Her father wasn’t on board. She would have to wait until she was 21 to marry without dad’s consent. She sued her father and won. She married Robert a day before her twenty first birthday. TAKE THAT pops!

Life with Robert was no walk in the park. Undeniably a musical genius, Robert was bi-polar and died by age 46 after three years in a mental asylum. Clara had 8 children within a span of 13 years.

Somebody had to make a living! So she hired child care when she performed in the UK, Paris, Vienna and other stops along the way. Yep, she cared for 8 kids and an insane husband … while practicing arduously to be the best pianist in the world.

The Manchester Guardian wrote, “Comparing Madame Schumann with the leading pianists of the day, we would say at once that she surpasses them all in the great quality which we sum up expressively by the word ‘soul.’ She is all music, and as she bends over the instrument, it is very easy to see from her expressive gestures, that the wooden instrument… has become a golden gate through which her spirit passes into the purest regions of harmony.”

Clara was a composer, highly esteemed by no less than Brahms and Joachim. She was Robert’s musical muse, critic and editor. Every masterpiece we know from Robert, and it’s a mountain of the highest romantic quality, passed through Clara’s eyes & ears.

Clara Schumann probably didn’t have an easy day in her life. Her accomplishments are nothing short of amazing!

Bob Carver Crimson 275 Power Amp: $2750 (75×2, 7h, 14w, 9.5d, 19 lbs)

The new Bob Carver Crimson 275 tube power amp is now here! It is made in the state of Washington. It has a five year warranty which includes the tubes themselves! Who else warranties tubes for more than a few months?

Crimson 275 sounds almost exactly how you would expect it to. It sounds tubey, warm and has many layers. It’s quite enveloping. Do you want to appreciate the nuances of a human voice? A guitar? A piano? That’s what Crimson 275 is designed to communicate.

The topic of tube power amps in audio gets quite heated- just like the amps themselves!

Crimson 275 is a game changer in many ways. First of all, it offers 75×2 of horse power. Most $6k, 75 pound amps offer just 50×2. It’s just not enough power for most speakers.

> Crimson 275 offers 75×2 of power and weighs just 19 lbs! Crimson 275 runs KT-120 tubes.

> Crimson 275 doesn’t run HOT. It’s barely warm to the touch. We can thank Bob Carver for innovative circuitry that nobody else has, to achieve this.

> Crimson 275 also runs very QUIET. Even when run into the efficient Klipsch line of speakers, it never adds noise to infringe on music. You can’t say the same about competing big dogs.

Most of us long time audiophiles have considered tube amps, or had experience with them.
Since 1977 I’ve dealt with numerous tube vendors. The story with their amplifiers is virtually identical.
There have always been bugaboos with such designs.

They’re:

> Big-Heavy
The average 50×2 power amp is a big chunk running 60 pounds plus. Most 75×2 or 100×2 amps run more like 75 pounds plus. Crimson 275 is only 19 pounds!

> Hottt
Heat is the killer of all things electronic. Whether it’s components on a board, or the traces themselves, heat is a killer and virtually every brand out there runs way hot. Crimson 275 is barely warm to the touch.

> Noisy
All big boy tube amps have annoying hum/hiss- recognizable within music or at idle. It’s quite rare to find an exception. Crimson 275 is quiet. It won’t be an issue regardless of your speaker. We have run Crimson 275 with the Klipsch LaScala AL5, 105dB SPL! It’s a marriage made in heaven. Check it out with the $4k per pair Forte 3s! It’s another perfect tandem.

> Unreliable
With massive heat comes massive, expensive failures. Every company making these behemoths says they’ve got the problems licked. Nope. Never. I’ve not seen one of these big boys that didn’t break your heart.

> Tube Life
All these big, hot competitors, run your tubes hot as blazes. It makes tubes fail, typically within a couple years. Often less. Carver warranties his for FIVE. Why? He can. He doesn’t run them HOT.

> Modest Power
Almost all speakers sound better with a SWIFT KICK. Power of 50×2 plus sure helps. Power of 75×2 is really getting there. With Crimson 275, we have a solid 75×2. Mac’s 75×2 is a great amp. It weighs 75 lbs and runs $6k!

Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Tchaikovsky is second to no composer in writing beautiful music, regardless of the form. He wrote some of the most popular symphonies ever. His violin concerto and first piano concerto are as good as they come!
But alas… he was rarely confident and almost always second guessed himself. He kept lifelong diaries with intimate details of his life and sketchings of musical ideas. In a tizzy shortly before his death, he burned all of his diaries. Along with his thoughts and worries, undoubtedly great music went up in smoke.
With Chopin, we were luckier. When he died, he left a box of approximately 20 compositions for his sister (a fine pianist in her own right). He said he didn’t think any of the pieces were worth keeping. SHE thought so and some of his most valued works are among them, including his great Fantaisie Impromptu.