5196105907

the amplifier to clip 1 to 2% of the time, which the speakers will probably toler-' ate and the listeners never notice. we can do even better.

The A-550. according to its speci-fications. has low-noise phono circuitry and good high-level S/N ratios as well. In addition. its continuously variable loudness control will be especially valu-able in an apartment. where we presum-ably will listen at fairly Iow volume lev-els much of the time so as not to disturb the neighbors. I won‘t bother to list all the specs and features here. but they will enable us to connect whatever additional equipment we may want in the futurę.

Most people would probably pick the tumtable next. but because the car-tridge has a greater eflect on the sound and may well put constraints on the turn-table. the pickup should come first. The choice often has a strong subjective pref-erence component. so no one should feel unduly bound by my selections. but I would try to limit the price to $150 or so. One possibility is the Micro-Acoustics 3002. whose resistive output impedance stands virtually no chance of undesirable interaction with the preamp input. And because this model is designed with a weight-matching system that lets it take

fuli advantage of a low-mass tonearm, it should do reasonably well in tracking warped discs. (Unfortunately, this is a necessary consideration.) But there are a great man) other cartridges. including the Shure V-15 Type IV. Pickering XSV-5000. Audio-Technica AT-14Sa. and Sonus Blue I.abel, that fali in this price dass and should perform very well.

Finally, the turntable. As our rangę of cartridge demands-or. at least. will work better in-low-mass lonearms. that will be the first element of choice. Unless your hands are very steady (even when you are sleepy. have had a few drinks. or are just plain not concentrat-ing). an automatic turntable will probably save enough discs to pay back its ex-tra cost. The Onkyo CP-1I50F appears to fil the bill. and its specifications for rumbie and wow and flutter are quite re-spectable. Its $320 price just about fits our budget. and its straight. carbon-fiber tonearm should suit our rangę of car-tridges handily. An added bonus is the microprocessor control of arm functions. which adds up to some extra conven-ience and possibly a little fun.

Our system cost totals $ 1.020 with-out discounts and somewhat less if dis-counts are available. Suggestions for blowing the budget include the addition of an Image Restoration System (IR-2100) from Sound Concepts for $250 or a Sonic Hologram Generator from Carver. available as a separate component for about $450. Fiither of these will make the musie sound morę realistic (the Carver somewhat morę so) and even enable you to position the speakers a few inches from your ears without producing an unpleasant “headphone" effect. This can be very useful for late-night listening in an apartment. Finally. to bring the speaker system a bit closer to the State of the an and inerease power-handling ca-pacity somewhat. consider adding a powered subwoofer. Actually. even a f issive subwoofer should improve bass _t erformance noticeably.

So there it is: a basie system that costs $1.000, morę or less. and that should never embarrass you. even if you add a digital audio player at some futurę time. In fact. this Systems major limita-tion is that it will tend to strain if played too loudly in too large a room. Naturally. some other components can be substi-tuted for the ones Fve chosen w ith little or no change in overall performance, but you can be reasonably confident that this system will work well.    h.a.r.

w

1,500

" advantageis that upgrading will be simple."

By handing mh $1.500 to buy a system, so to speak. High Fidelity caused me much soul searching. followed by a deci-sion to deal with “over-the-counter bucks'*-ihe real purchase price. not the suggested list price of the items I picked. After shopping around New York and Washington, D.C.—and in Denver. Los Angeles, and Chicago through friends—I determined that these components are available for $1.500. give or take $100, in most of the major marketing areas. at least if they are bought as a system.

I picked the Sony ST-J75 tuner ($450) for the simple reason that its audio performance, in all respects bul sepa-ration. is far and away superior to that of any transmitter and exciter presently available m commercial or public FM broadcasting. In RF (radio-frequency) reception it is. at the very least. the equal of the famous $2.000-3.000 tuners of a few years ago. It has noise as Iow as or lowerthan that of any of the other digital frequency-svnthesis FM tuners. and its station-programming feature is a joy to use.

To ensure this performance, how-ever. a price musi be paid. A directional

FM roof antenna is essential to minimize multipath and assure superior, noise-free. undistorted audio. My recommen-dation is the Finco CX-FM4G. available widely for less than $35. This 75-ohm an-

C. VictorCampos:

As a host of a radio show on audio, and as an electroacoustics | consultant, he has j encountered the § questions that this 1 system answers.

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DECF.MBF.R 1981