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The Neutron Five 2.1 System is now shipping!
I have seen the future and this is it..... The other night I was listening, on ADM 9.1s, of course, to Radio Bartok. I was marveling at the sheer wonder of an uninterrupted stream of Internet radio, coming around the world from Budapest to my house in the US at 320kbps. What’s even more marvelous is that the fidelity left nothing to be desired. The imaging, dynamic range, clarity, extension…it was all there. A couple of weeks ago, I downloaded Herbie Hancock’s “River - The Joni Letters” from iTunes. At 256kbps, the experience was much the same, as it should be, given the higher quality of AAC files compared to mp3s. But again, I heard no artifacts, even through reference headphones, and the quality was “high-end” by any objective measure. These experiences lead me to three conclusions: Audiophiles who talk of how awful compressed music is, are listening with their eyes. They couldn’t differentiate a 320kbps AAC file from a CD in a blind listening test to save their lives. And if they can hear 256kbps, they’re straining to hear artifacts, playing the most vulnerable passages over and over to identify problems when they should be listening to music. Someday, and it’s probably not far off, there will be no discs to speak of. This is good news for Steve Jobs, who will then rule the world. iTunes, which recently moved from a standard of 128kbps to 256 will, I suspect, move up to 320 when most of their customers have the bandwidth and hard drive space to handle it. They’re clearly not waiting for their non-audiophile market to demand higher quality; they are simply delivering it as soon as it becomes practical. Other online music suppliers will follow their lead. CDs will become a curiosity for the nostalgic, like vinyl. A few will continue to imagine that CDs are superior, but the overwhelming majority of music lovers will leave them behind, spinning their little discs in their lonely rooms. “Computer audio” will become the standard. Every audio manufacturer worth mentioning will be trying to figure out how to offer a solution as elegant, intuitive, and turnkey as the complete system that is the ADM 9.1s. Most will fall far short. The B&Ws, Sonus Fabers and Wilson Audios of the world will be rushing to catch up with little AVi. And me? You’ll find me sitting here at the leading edge of the technological curve, nothing but an Apple laptop and a pair of small speakers to clutter my listening space, reveling in Avro Klassiek, from Prague, at 256kbps, bathed in the still shocking clarity and magnificent imaging of the 9.1s. Phelonious Ponk
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