I had a wonderful afternoon today at the home of Michael Hobson, who was playing for me a wide variety of Classic Records 45rpm reissues.
Michael Hobson, who founded Classic Records in 1994, is somebody to whom each of us very likely owes a large debt of gratitude. When most people were applauding and audiophiles were decrying the death of vinyl Michael made available once again on vinyl the greatest recordings from the golden era of stereo, with original cover art, pressed on 180 gram vinyl and remastered from the original RCA master tapes by Bernie Grundman.
Michael has a very large, dedicated, purpose-built listening room with gently curved corners and shallow V-shaped walls to minimize standing waves. His analog playback system and electronics are located in a large closet with fully closing doors on the right side of the room so that the equipment is largely insulated from vibration by the sound coming from the loudspeakers.
Michael’s vinyl front-end consists of a Kuzma XL DC turntable, with Kuzma 4Point and Air Line tonearms, and Kuzma CAR-60 cartridges.
The loudspeakers are High Resolution Technologies Stage 8 speakers. Originally conceived of as an extremely high-end computer speaker, Michael had the ingenious idea of fitting eight of them in a vertical line source array on a custom Sound Anchors stand. Each speaker module, consisting of three woofers and one tweeter, is fed a full range signal.
http://www.hirestech.com/product/?pid=1207
Michael supplements these Stage 8s with a Muse 18, a gigantic, down-firing subwoofer, in each corner.
Michael finds that these speakers uniquely project the soundstage into the room rather than developing the sound at the plane of and behind the speakers.
Overall the system was transparent, pleasantly rich-sounding (not analytical or bright at all), extremely dynamic, with great speed, dynamic range and “jump factor.”
Thank you, Michael, for your time today, and for patiently introducing me to a very wide variety of classical music on your amazing 45rpm reissues!
Michael Hobson, who founded Classic Records in 1994, is somebody to whom each of us very likely owes a large debt of gratitude. When most people were applauding and audiophiles were decrying the death of vinyl Michael made available once again on vinyl the greatest recordings from the golden era of stereo, with original cover art, pressed on 180 gram vinyl and remastered from the original RCA master tapes by Bernie Grundman.
Michael has a very large, dedicated, purpose-built listening room with gently curved corners and shallow V-shaped walls to minimize standing waves. His analog playback system and electronics are located in a large closet with fully closing doors on the right side of the room so that the equipment is largely insulated from vibration by the sound coming from the loudspeakers.
Michael’s vinyl front-end consists of a Kuzma XL DC turntable, with Kuzma 4Point and Air Line tonearms, and Kuzma CAR-60 cartridges.
The loudspeakers are High Resolution Technologies Stage 8 speakers. Originally conceived of as an extremely high-end computer speaker, Michael had the ingenious idea of fitting eight of them in a vertical line source array on a custom Sound Anchors stand. Each speaker module, consisting of three woofers and one tweeter, is fed a full range signal.
http://www.hirestech.com/product/?pid=1207
Michael supplements these Stage 8s with a Muse 18, a gigantic, down-firing subwoofer, in each corner.
Michael finds that these speakers uniquely project the soundstage into the room rather than developing the sound at the plane of and behind the speakers.
Overall the system was transparent, pleasantly rich-sounding (not analytical or bright at all), extremely dynamic, with great speed, dynamic range and “jump factor.”
Thank you, Michael, for your time today, and for patiently introducing me to a very wide variety of classical music on your amazing 45rpm reissues!
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