Recent content by Stephensank

In the 80's thru mid 90's, when I was still in retail environments, we, as a "high end" dealer(mac, nak, yamaha, c-j, apogee, nothing crazy exotic) in Philadelphia, we did our best to provide every customer as thorough a/b testing between two or more pieces as we were able to in the...

I was servicing & selling McIntosh, Nakamichi & Yamaha gear in the early 80's, and would like to voice a concern about your *apparent*(my perception after just a few days of reading this forum) opinion that "measures great must mean sounds great". Part of the reason that companies like ARC &...

Apologies then. In the case of this PS dac, though, the damage from WILDLY mismatched & POOR quality transformers is vastly beyond even the most colored tube stage that ain't just flat out defective. Quite obviously, PS chose the low 2.8/1.4Vrms max output deliberately, as they found that the...

Sorry, but you show a lot of prejudice there- Any *properly* designed/built tube buffer or linestage is capable of beyond -120dBV below 1V. I know, because I've built such units numerous times. Certainly will say, though, that 95% of "tube dacs" are simply ss dacs with a token tube stage at the...

Not only does JA share too little on tests, I've caught him *numerous* times over the years just flat out *lying*, seemingly at the behest of a treasured, very profitable advertiser. This is an old one, but happened to come up in emails with a client recently, from JA's review of Levinson 31.5...

I'll qualify my answer by saying that I have my feet planted as much in the neurotic audiophile world(card carrying Audiomaniac, as Gizmo Rosenberg called us) as I do the ribbon microphones & recording gear. And, especially given that I firmly believe that we have yet to figure out even 60% of...

As much more of an expert on signal transformers than most, I'd like to weigh in here. What the measurements & audible results show is not *endemic* to using a transformer. Rather, it is primarily a result of using a VERY poorly selected and/or shockingly bad transformer, as far as specs and/or...