The RA1 is compact, 5 inches wide, 5.5 inches deep, and 1.5 inches high – and elegantly encased in solid mahogany wood. Connectivity is easy. It will work with anything with line-level output to RCA analog input. It has a 1/4 inch headphone input, but a 1/8 inch adapter can be used for mini-buds.

The RA1 is available in both a DC and AC version. The DC version requires two 9 volt batteries that will drive the amp for up to 50 hours.

You will get optimal performance from the RA1 when used with Grado headphones, but other brand headphones will also have noticeably better performance. The RA1 HG (high gain) may be a better choice if you are using a headphone from another manufacturer or headphones with an impedance of 100 ohms or more.

The only complaint I’ve found on the RA1 is that there is a “thump” when you turn off the amp. Hint; take off the headphones first.

“Without music, life is a mistake.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche

But shouldn’t it sound good?

When the choleric German philosopher listened to music, it was in parlors and concert halls and there is nothing as moving in music as a live performance.  The digital revolution has given us access to a huge archive of music at the touch of our fingertips, but the quality is suspect.  When played through a good stereo or home theatre system, the MP3 cannot equal the quality of a good CD player.  It is fine for background music, but most of us want something more than what we hear at the dentist office.   Concurrently, more and more of the music available to us is stored on a hard drive or streamed on the internet.  It is like having an endless supply of food, but it is all McDonald’s.

The Peachtree Audio  Nova, iDecco and Decco 2 Integrated Amplifiers offer a solution to provide near-audiophile quality to your digital music.  The heart and soul of these units is the ESS 9006 Sabre DAC.  According to the Peachtree web site,  the Sabre DAC has a patented jitter reduction circuit that re-clocks the digital signal to almost zero jitter before passing it through a high-resolution 24/192 upsampling processor that’s also capable of 122dB s/n ratio.    It will take even the most compressed digital signal and make it sound as if it were playing through a high end CD player.  If you are still thinking about food, it will turn whatever it is McDonalds serves into grass fed beef.

All three models can be used as a standalone DAC with multiple inputs.  Though the DAC is the same in all three models, they differ in the number of inputs and power.  All three models have USB inputs to allow you to play digital music files directly from the computer, and optical and coaxial inputs for digital sources like a CD player, musical streamer and music server.  All have pre-amp outputs to use with a powered subwoofer or outboard power amplifier. All have a class A tube in the pre-amp to take the edge off of digital music and a class A tube headphone amp that will rival the best headphone amps on the market.

The iDecco is ideal for the ipod user.    It has a built in iPod dock with true digital to digital connectivity.  All the iPod docks on the market today have analogue outputs forcing you to use iPod’s internal power supply and DAC.  The iDecco has a high current 40 watt amplifier.

The Decco 2  is similar to the iDecco, but it does not have the built in iPod dock.  It has a 50 watt amp and an internal bay for the Sonos ZonePlayer 90 for wireless connectivity with a Sonos system

The Nova has an 80 watt amplifier and additional optical and coaxial digital inputs.    It also has a third analogue output the doubles as a “home theatre bypass” so you can integrate the amplifier with your home theatre system.  Like the Decco 2, the Nova has an internal bay for the Sonos Zone Player 90.

The iDecco and Decco 2 are available in special priced kits with the Peachtree DS4.5 speakers.  Both kits offer an outstanding all in one solution for the office or small room.  The DS4.5 speakers provide great sound and a small footprint.

The Toshiba Regza SV670 Cinema Series is Toshiba’s first foray into the back lit LED technology. The advantage of the back lit LED technology is that it can provide deep blacks without compromising the whites.  The fluorescent lit LCD and the side lit LED technologies are capable of excellent contrast ratios, but they steal from Paul to give to Peter.  A deeper black will dim the whites; brighter whites lighten the blacks.  The Toshiba LED’s use “local dimming” which controls the contrast ratios throughout zones on the screen.  The result is an excellent contrast ratio without compromise.  During a recent demonstration, the transition from the screen to the black bezel of the set was seamless.  The shadow detail and color rendition were excellent.

Though you do not get internet widgets or built in memory with menus, the SV670 Cinema Series is loaded with useful features including:

My favorite feature, besides the outstanding picture quality, is the Dolby Volume Sound Leveler.   This is a non- prescritive remedy for the millions of Americans who suffer IRRITABLE VOLUME SYNDROME  when an advertisement shatters whatever peace and tanquilty you have earned at the end of the day by raising the volume 20 decibels. The Dolby Volume Sound Leveler cannot eliminate advertisements, but it prevents the advertisers from shouting at you.

Currently available in 55 and 46-inch screen sizes as the 55SV670U and 46SV670U models from Toshiba.

Want more information? Call our friendly, factory trained sales team at 1.866.919.4773 or post your comments and questions here on the OneCall Blog.

The occasion was a training and demonstration by Martin Logan, the speaker company. We had a training once before with Martin Logan, but there were no speakers available for the demonstration due to a late delivery. We knew the history of the company and the technical advantages of the electro-static design, but for those of us who work in the call center the proof is in the pudding. It is very difficult to communicate real knowledge and enthusiasm for a product based on theory and specifications. For this training Martin Logan wanted us to know what their speakers are capable of. The trainer hooked up a pair of Vantage speakers to the Musical Fidelity A5.5 Integrated Amplifier. The source was an Adcom CD player. To use a widely used quote that has multiple attributions, “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture. It’s stupid.” Writing about how music sounds through a system may be just as futile, but I will try.

We chose the Musical Fidelity A5.5 Integrated amplifier over the numerous home theater receivers on display at our retail store because it would provide the best power source. Form follows function. The integrated amplifier is designed for two channel stereo. The Martin Logan Vantage speakers like power. The sound was outstanding. The bass was handled by eight inch woofers that have their own 200 watt power supply. Otherwise, there is no voice coil or enclosure or crossover filters to influence the sound. There was a sonic transparency I have never heard before from a speaker. The highs soared and the midrange was precise and detailed. We turned the volume up to levels you would never use if you have neighbors. There was no distortion. No doubt the windows of the retail store were vibrating far more than the rigid panels of the Vantage speakers. Though the replication of a live performance is still the Holy Grail of high fidelity, this demonstration was the closest I have ever been to that goal.

Last Christmas I tried an experiment. I switched out the CD player with an HD-DVD player. The HD-DVD was reputed to be an excellent source for CDs and would be the equivalent of using a Blu-ray or high-end DVD player for listening to CDs. Nobody knew what I had done. At first, I was impressed by the results. The HD-DVD seemed to perform just as well as the far more expensive CD player. But within fifteen minutes my wife requested that I turn down the volume. Then, my son the musician said the stereo sounded “terrible” and suggested we turn it off. Unheard of in this household!

The problem was listener fatigue. Listener fatigue is why even your mother doesn’t want to talk to you for more than five minutes when you call her on your cell phone and/or speaker phone. (I’m sure she still loves you.)

Listener fatigue is also why many people do not listen to music as often as they thought they would on their new home theater system. For home theater applications the system will surpass most people’s expectations. A good surround sound system really does create a new dimension in the experience of watching a movie. Explosions are visceral; dialogue is crystal clear; when a door opens you can hear the hinges creak behind you. The sound is outstanding because DVD and or Blu-ray players compliment the receiver and speakers.

Music is different. With the exception of a well recorded SACD and SACD player, it will sound better in two channel stereo rather than surround. As my experiment suggests, the source is critical. If you want to know if your source is good, turn up the volume and sit down on the couch with your favorite brew. Even a bookshelf radio can play background music. The volume will reveal the strengths and weaknesses of your source. If you are still listening and enjoying the music when your cup is empty, you have a good source.

The reason the HD-DVD player sounded fine at first in my experiment is because it performed the essentials; there was a sound stage; the bass and the separation of instruments was articulate. The human brain has great software to compensate for the deficiencies in sound as long as there is rhythm and hooks. The Beatles conquered America on AM radio playing through cardboard speakers. Given time the software failed. Fatigue set in. The distortion was subtle enough that we could not identify it, but eventually it was irritating.

The problem we experienced with the HD-DVD player would have been amplified if the source had been an MP3 player. The iPod is unsurpassed for convenience and versatility. Two hundred hours of music in a device that can get lost in your coat pocket! It will sound great on your computer, earphones and in the car, but it cannot compare to the CD on a high end audio system. Technically, the difference is 1411.2 kbits of information on the CD as opposed to a maximum of 320 kbits in an MP3. This is significant. On a high end system the MP3 will steal the thunder from Keith Moons drums and mute the highs of an Itzhak Perlman violin solo.

Technology taketh away, but then it giveth back again. I have no doubt digital storage and MP3 compression is the future of music. The manufacturers have begun to respond to the quality issue. Peachtree Audio, for example, has recently introduced the Peachtree Nova, an integrated amplifier and DAC converter that will output your iPod and MP3 files to near audiophile quality. You can use it as a standalone unit in the music room, or integrate it with your existing home theatre receiver to handle two channel music and digital files.

The Nova really is an exciting product. You can see it at OneCall.com and read some of the buzz it is creating in the audio world on the AVS Forums http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1095832. Now you can have the convenience of digital storage and near audiophile quality sound.

In the din of excitement and information, we sometimes lose track of what makes a good picture. A few years ago a colleague of ours – Brian Lackey – was in a fishing event that included a photo contest. He is an enthusiastic fisherman, but at that time he was at best a novice photographer. He had an inexpensive point and shoot digital camera. He was a David amongst the Goliaths of SLRs and pro lenses. He submitted a single photo of an eagle just as it had scooped a fish from the river. It is a great shot. He was in the right place at the right time. No doubt the judges reviewed hundreds of technically superior images of men and woman dangling trophy fish, but Brian captured the very essence of what the event was celebrating. He won the first prize.

The moral of this story is that the best and most sophisticated equipment does not necessarily translate into great photos. Brian’s shot was the result of serendipity and good fortune. For the rest of us great photos are the result of patience, composition , imagination

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started

Ok, maybe TS Elliot wasn’t writing about Vinyl records. Nonetheless, many audiophiles who began listening to music on LPs and moved on to the CD format, are now returning to vinyl records. There have been recent industry reports that LP sales, though they represent a small part of music sales, have increased 38%.

In part this is a backlash against the relatively poor quality of downloaded music. People who have invested in high quality speakers and receivers are often disappointed by the sound quality when the source is an iPod. They will begin by upgrading their CD player. Once they begin reading the audiophile forums and magazines, they will read more and more about turntables and LPs as being the “best” source. The basic argument is that sound is inherently anaolg and that when we attempt to “digitize” sound, elements of the waveform will be lost. Some audiophiles will argue that even the most sophisticated sampling rate and digital-to-analog converter in the CD player cannot replicate the true anaolg sound.

Perhaps. I own both a turntable and CD player and the only definitive answer to what is better is that they are different. What follows, of course, is subjective. The LPs seem smoother, warmer, and mid-tones are more open. CDs tend to be brighter and there is a better separation between instruments. Some music, the Beatles for example, just sounds better on LP.

A friend of mine recently received a collection of close to a thousand vinyl albums from an eccentric aunt. It is an eclectic collection of everything from Bo Diddly to Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison to Verdi’s Operas. He dug out his old turntable and began playing the albums. Then he upgraded the cartridge on the turntable. Then he upgraded the turntable. Now he is buying some of the new releases in vinyl.

Audiophiles are always searching for the best sound. In truth, vinyl never really went away because there is so much great music archived on LPs. However, the resurrection of vinyl in the marketplace is because it offers a quality of sound not available in the digital domain. If you currently have an old turntable that has been sitting in the attic, try upgrading to a Grado or Shure cartridge that can make an old turntable like new. There’s also a wide variety of turntables available from Denon, Sony and Thorens, for everyone from the beginner to an advanced user.

The flash is an essential accessory for outdoor events. Whether you are shooting a wedding party or the soccer team, the flash will provide the light you need when the sun doesn’t show up, or fill in the shadows beneath the eyes when the sun is at noon. In difficult light situations, the flash will provide the white balance for natural skin tones and accurate color rendition.

I recommend the Photoflex DL42MULTIKIT to enhance both available light and flash photography. It will be an essential accessory both outdoors and in the home or studio. It includes a sturdy light stand, an adjustable disc holder, a five-in-one multidisc and a carrying case. The discs are gold and soft gold to provide a warming effect, silver to increase contrast and add specular highlights, white to take advantage of natural light and translucent to diffuse the light and produce a soft effect. The translucent disc is great when doing portraits in direct sunlight so your subject doesn’t have to squint.

Again, the sun can be a lousy date. However, if the photographer comes prepared, he or she can still get some great photos.