This is not a fair assessment of his reviews or his opinions. Clearly you haven’t spent much time on his site.
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You are bang on, Chris. It is fact. I remember it well. I used the amplifiers from the late 70s to 85. The amplifier manufacturer was Naim Audio in the UK. And as you said it had to do with the Zobel network. Due to the lack of output inductor on early model Naim amplifiers a minimum length of speaker cable was required or the amplifier became unstable. The minimum speaker cable length was specified at either 10ft or 12ft?
When Russ Andrews in the UK took on distribution of Kimber Kable in 1979 that’s when Naim amplifier problems really started! Kimber’s platted and braided woven cables have higher parallel capacitance and the Naim chrome bumper NAP250 stereo and NAP300 mono block power amplifiers of the day went into high frequency oscillation then carnage ensued. The amplifiers at the best of time were on a knife-edge: plug-in shorter lengths of higher parallel capacitance speaker cables, and if you were a lucky one, only the tweeters fried - but it usually damaged the power amplifier as well…
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That Naim bursting the floor is the offending amplifier. I had a full size poster…!
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The above poster is from Ken Christianson’s listening room at Pro Musica in Chicago. He and John Schwarz have been selling my brother and I British gear for a while. And John, God bless 'im, repaired my Quad 988’s repeatedly.
Ken has done a bunch of True Stereo Recordings for the NAIM Label over time, with a pair of mics and a Nagra recorder, so nota bene, Purist Recording Enthusiasts:
He is also a professor at Columbia College Chicago, hence the educational bent of the above website.
I would like to suggest that anyone who is Axpona-bound this weekend stop in and say hi at the Pro Musica room, which typically is amongst the Few rooms that have both great sound and great music, but sadly, shows are becoming less and less affordable for craftsmen, so they will not be there. They are not the only ones missing.
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Very interesting. I will read it in depth later on as I have to go out now and collect my wife and her friend from the railway station.
I have several Naim recordings scattered around the CDs racks - I will attempt to find them now that you’ve put the idea in my head… Just found a few in a rack next to the computer.
One of the funny stories from Ken is his being hired to do a recording (at that point likely based on his reputation/catalogue) and he would arrive with a single bag in his hand, and some stands. The client would look around and ask where the “rest of the gear” was. He would smile and say, “This is It”.
Pair of vintage 1970’s AKG C414’s and a Nagra (either reel to reel or digital, depending on the year). The analogue Nagra would require as much or more annual maintenance as my Quad 988’s ; )
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Sorry, Elk. I meant to post them on the music thread. Hurrying to get out the house and attached them here by mistake.
That’s funny - as they very well may be Ken’s recordings. He has done many recordings for NAIM for both Haden and Forcione.
Here’s the store website:
The last time we were there, he had a lovely lovingly-restored vintage Steinway where the couch is in the photo, and has been doing some nice salon-type performance/recording shows there. I tickled the ivories a bit, and they were fab.
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I agree, Brodric. That sounded goofy. Why spend the money, or even if he got them free, why be so ambivalent as to not even try them for years? That sounded rather precious.
Very interesting. It was a good read. He sure does stock a lot of British equipment.
AND: He was the main man in the recording of the Charlie Haden & Chris Anderson CD. He assisted with the other recordings and even took the photographs. I have more Naim CDs, I just have to track them down!
I have quite a few Linn recordings on Vinyl and SACD/CD, although they are good quality recordings, I always found the Naim recordings to be more natural and vibrant with a sense of the acoustic space. Linn CDs sound denser and slightly compacted - hence less engaging than the Naim’s… The Linn SACDs do sound excellent but overall I still preferred the Naim CDs…!
It’s the best format in the world… ; )
I would think Ken’s True Stereo work would be better known amongst audiophiles who are always complaining about the quailty of recordings. Hard to fault his approach, as it is minimalist in the extreme, and…true stereo. He moves the PLAYERS to create the “mix” in the venue, in front of a stereo pair. The room plays a huge role in these, and imparts a great deal of the character of the recording for good or ill.
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Not necessarily defending him, but I feel for anyone who has to do reviewing as a vocation. I can see where you could quickly have more bits than you could possibly devote the proper time to. And on top of that, trying to keep all the changes straight and sort out what it all means…
I currently have six different speaker wires to compare, half of which I only have for about 10 days. Thank god its only for me. The added pressure of a deadline while trying to give manufacturers a fair shake would be a daunting task.
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Not to mention the fact that side-by-side comparisons of audio equipment seems like one of the least joyful things someone can do with their time: just me sayin’.
I’ve been curious for a while now why the reviewers don’t maintain a spreadsheet or some other form of organizational matrix for their readers/viewers (and themselves) to refer back to.
Is it that they don’t want to remind us of previous reviews in case they change their mind? A friend reminded me that weather reporters used to have their “batting averages” posted on screen. I myself am a qualitative researcher, so I appreciate that reviewers like Darko don’t provide numbers or measurements.
But, I would like a running list of attributes of particular components. That would be useful. And, as he maintains making fine grained distinctions is his job. I’d like to know what’s better than what at particular things. Surely, he is making that comparative analysis.
It often feels that every review is a brand new page and there is no history of prior reviews.
My two cents.
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Agreed - yet also in a very real sense I think most reviews are a brand new page. Trends, gear tech, thought processes about how you evaluate them and talk about them…then there’s the fact that I think it is unlikely that anyone doing this has and keeps a Reference System that does not change. After all, you’re always finding “better” things that improve this or that - why would you not “improve” your reference?
Some famous reviewers have (or have had) compromised rooms, independent of the quality of their reference systems. I do believe it is possible to “hear around” a lot of things, but suffice to say that much of this is a moving target, and you just have to sort out if you hear “ear to ear” with a particular reviewer.
The language they speak isn’t widely understood with any certainty either. Certainly not like a sheet of music might read to any musician on the planet and be understood, or any mathematical formula might be understood by any mathematician on the planet either. I have not a clue what some of them say much of the time. Until they get their language standardized what hope do the readers of reviews have?
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Same as always - I think some want more measurements and scientific/design justification, some simply want subjective experiences of the sound of various sorts of music through the gear, as measurements are not important to them. Filtered through a reviewer’s tastes, you then gravitate toward those whose tastes harmonize with your own. Then perhaps you have a sense of what to audition.
If you are looking for someone to tell you “the answers” to the question of what to buy - that can never be. It requires work, as there’s only one you, and you’re ultimately the only one that matters. Even those who are in the same camp and like the same reviewers will not end up buying the same things. Though certainly some folks seem to simply take recommendations and don’t fret over it afterward.
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Another observation (forgive me, as I’m in the midst of evaluation of wires) is that if one’s bias is toward a particular source - Analog, Disc Spinner, Streaming - speaker cables may be chosen based on that. I’m surprised at not only the differences between cables when switching them, but between other sources subsequently, even when playing back the same volume-matched recordings.
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