Cary Audio Design CD-500 CD Player

Jim Milton

Every so often I get to review a product that sets itself apart from the "other guy" stuff. You know, the mass produced stuff that we often see in the brick-and-mortar stores. The special products are ones that are intelligently designed and built to exacting standards. It's sort of like comparing a Mercedes to a Chevy. Nothing wrong with a Chevy, but just slamming the door on the Mercedes can make you go, "Whoa! Now that's quality"! In this review, we cover the Cary Audio Design CD-500 CD Player.

CD Players

Zildjian 22″ A Custom Ping Ride Cymbal

John E. Johnson, Jr.

Classic jazz drummers have tended to use ride cymbals where the sound of the ping is just above (in loudness) a broad wash, with the wash being dark. Often, this is a 20" cymbal that is medium or medium thin in weight. Jazz drummers still use this type of cymbal, but there are also a number of modern jazz drummers, and certainly drummers in the rock scene, where a distinct ping sound in desired. Especially at a metal rock concert, where the amp stacks are maxed out on volume, unless the ride cymbal has a strong ping, it simply will not be heard by the audience. Zildjian makes several ride cymbals that have strong ping sounds to them, but this one is focused on the ping, at the expense of the wash (i.e., making it sound "dry"), for that certain drummer who really loves the ping sound. It is the 22" A Custom Ping Ride.

Cymbals

Home Theater Movie Renter’s Guide – May, 2011

SECRETS Movie Review Team

The Greatest Story Ever Told (Blu-ray), The Way Back (Blu-ray), Mob Rules (DVD), The Kings Speech (Blu-ray), All Dogs Go To Heaven (Blu-ray), Mystic Pizza (Blu-ray), Benny & Joon (Blu-ray), Material Girls (Blu-ray), De-Lovely (Blu-ray), Teen Wolf (Blu-ray), Legally Blonde 2: Red, White, and Blonde (Blu-ray), The Green Hornet (Blu-ray)

Movie Reviews

Axiom M3 v3 Bookshelf Speakers

Greg Z

Bookshelf speakers – a loved and hated niche in the audio industry. A step up from cubes or soundbars for certain. But to the purist they are a "unacceptable" compromise vs. floor standers for primary listening. Be that as it may - they still provide massive sales volumes in the industry and often benefit greatly from technology trickledown from a manufacturer's reference level systems. Since most of our music is produced on "bookshelf" sized monitors – why shouldn't bookshelf speakers receive just a little more respect? Well, here are two that deserve respect: Axiom M3 v3 (version 3 of the M3).

Bookshelf Speakers

Marantz NA7004 Network Music Streamer

Robert Kozel

Almost every manufacturer these days is including some type of network support in their products. From receivers that connect to home music servers and disc players that stream music and video from the internet, we have lots of options for enjoying content with our home entertainment systems. While Marantz has been including network support in their products for a while, they have not offered a stand-alone network streamer until now: The NA7004 streams music from your computer, the Internet, and even USB thumb drives.

Media Streamer

Sunfire

Secrets
Carver's earliest years of validating the latest audio technologies and looking for unconventional approaches to amplifier design The year was 1972.
AV Directory

Sunfire SDS-10 Subwoofer

John E. Johnson, Jr.

Sunfire didn't build the first small subwoofer, but they did begin the trend towards small, powerful subwoofers, characterized by having drivers with long excursion and high power class D amplifiers. The SDS-10 is the 10" model in a line that also has 8" and 12" versions. It uses a front-firing driver with a 10" down-firing passive radiator. The amplifier is rated at 250 watts RMS. For $500 MSRP, I was pretty amazed at its performance. It won't crack the plaster, but it will party hard.

Subwoofers

An Interview with Violinist Christian Tetzlaff

By Jason Victor Serinus

Seventeen years into their founding, appearance by the Tetzlaff Quartet remain extremely rare. One glance at the schedule of the quartet's founder, renowned violinist Christian Tetzlaff, and the reason becomes clear. In the months preceding the quartet's seven-city U.S. tour in April, Christian Tetzlaff will perform orchestral, small chamber, and solo concerts in Berlin, Salzburg, Miami, Strasbourg, St. Petersburg, Lübeck, Zürich, Boston, New York's Carnegie Hall (one of three Carnegie appearances this year), London, Paris, and several other European cities.

Musician and Vocalist Artist Interviews

Maxonix Zero-G Drumstick Holder

John E. Johnson, Jr.

An issue that all drummers deal with is where to put all their sticks so that they are easy to grab, quickly. Bags and cups will hold a lot of sticks, but (1) they have to be vertical, and (2) you have to fish through a number of sticks to come up with the pair you want. Maxonix has solved that problem with a device they call the Zero-G Drumstick Holder. It only holds one pair of sticks, but what makes it so invaluable, is that you can mount it anywhere, and the stick holding plate can be rotated so that the sticks are in any position you desire. Enough said . . . let's take a look.

Accessories

Zildjian 18″ K Custom Fast Crash Cymbal

John E. Johnson, Jr.

The "K" line of Zildjian cymbals have a characteristic "dark" sound, meaning there is quite a strong low frequency component. The K Custom line is stated to retain some of the original K sound, but with the addition of modern hammering techniques that "enhance the K character." The Zildjian 18" K Custom Fast Crash Cymbal has the K hammering, plus some bolder hammer strokes. The bell is a bit different than other K cymbals, which gives it a faster response, and also a quicker decay.

Cymbals

3-D Squared

Secrets
If you are investing in a high-end audio system, then your system will never perform up to it's potential without the proper acoustical treatments installed in your room.
AV Directory

A Collection of New Vinyl Releases for the Audiophile – April, 2011

Jason Crawford

I spent the better part of my formative years in Georgia. By that, I mean most of them. Went to middle school and high school in Augusta until a brief (although not brief enough) layover in Gainesville before finding the Promised Land which is Athens. If you like music, there is no better place to be. As I've never met anyone that doesn't like music, it seems like we could all agree, in consensus, that Athens, Georgia is at least one of the best places in the world to be, live, love, fight, fume, whatever.

AV DirectoryVinyl Music ReviewsVinyl Reviews