Obstacles!
You readers don’t know how hard it is to sort through all the great hi-fi gear these days. There are numerous obstacles in my way.
Glenn just came into my office and proclaimed- “You won’t believe what I just found!” I’m thinking, he found a Mac MR78 in mint condition, or a pair of Maggie Tympani 1-Ds that don’t need to be rebuilt. Nope. Glenn went on. “My house was built in 1977. One of the toilets is beige. I’ve never been able to find a matching seat. I went to Ace to buy the lights for the elevator that you told me you needed, and there it was- at the end of the aisle- a single beige toilet seat!”
Alchemy Electronics Are In!
Elac has made quite a splash in the performance per dollar speaker market. In just a few short
years, they’ve tipped over the apple cart for old line brands. Well, are ya ready?!
Elac has just decided to dive into the ELECTRONICS market. Their brand is called ALCHEMY. On top of great performance, these sleek guys are under 2” tall and don’t run hot. The price points are north of NAD and south of McIntosh.
Rave reviews are sure to follow. Initial response from the magazine guys/gals who’ve heard Alchemy is audio ecstasy!
Alchemy DPA-2 Power Amp (210×2 or 625 monoblock! 2H, 17.5w, 15d, 15 lbs) $1500
Holy acceleration! If you’re after a battleship of a power amp at an affordable price, with the option to add even more by bridging- look no further than DPA-2! While DPA-2 sounds good by any audiophile standard, its Ferrari like dynamic range is its calling card.
DPA-2 is a stellar power amp with some unique technology to pull it away from the field. As you’ve read above, it offers huge power. The power supply is non switching analog. The output section is Class D employing the highly regarded Hypex design. Designer Peter Madnick of Alchemy has his own secret sauce for this design. He doesn’t use the Hypex as it lays. He bypasses the op amp filtering feature of the Hypex and employs his own discrete filtering network.
DPA-2 offers power LEDs, which are not only fun to watch dance (or they can be turned off), but they give you potentially valuable feedback on how hard you’re driving. It has a switch for high or low gain so it can interface with any preamp.
DPA-2 has RCA and BALANCED inputs. Holy smokes! That puts DPA-2 in the big time- especially because it hand shakes with the DDP-2 preamp, BALANCED. At only two inches tall, why not buy two and run 625 per channel?!
Here’s another consideration for this amplifier. Suppose you have an elderly Threshold, Levinson, ARC, Hafler, B&K type power amp that you paid a bundle for many years ago. To buy an apples to apples power amp today, would be $6-7k! The beauty of DPA-2 is, for just $1500 you can replace the old man with a brand new, smaller, lighter, cutting edge amp, with balanced or single ended inputs. And… you’re actually improving your sound!
Alchemy DDP-2 DAC/Preamp/Streamer $2500 (2h, 17.5w, 15d, 14 lbs)
This slick new piece checks most of the boxes that need checking! First of all, it’s a fine stereo preamp/DAC with a nice array of inputs spec’d below. I will BRAG UP here that it has BALANCED inputs and outputs, as well as RCAs. THAT … puts it in a different league from anything that doesn’t support balanced operation!
The DAC is 32/384. It upsamples 16 bit to 24, and 24 to 32.
DDP-2 has built in streaming en point that shakes hands with Roon. It has a home theater bypass loop if you’re THAT guy.
*Analog inputs: 2 RCA, 1 Balanced
*Digital inputs: USB-B, 2 OPT, 2 Coax, XLR
*Outputs: 1 Balanced, RCA Variable, RCA Fixed
*Ethernet with MQA decoding
*Bluetooth Wi-fi
Alchemy PPA-2 Phono Preamp $1000 (2h, 17.5w, 15d)
Alchemy puts a unique spin on the phono preamp as we know it. In addition to traditional loading features, it supports BALANCED operation! It has:
*Toroidal transformer
*Discrete circuity
*MM/MC
*Has adjustments for cartridge loading: 5-999 ohms
*Stereo/Mono
*Rumble filter- selectable settings
*Has two RCA inputs and ONE BALANCED input!
Repeat:
*Has RCA outs and BALANCED outs!
*Liquid Crystal Display for clear user info
*Gain: 42dB Single Ended, 48dB Balanced
Super Woman! Clara Schumann (1819-1896)
So you think YOU’RE busy? Clara puts us all to shame!
Clara worked like a dog from early childhood to be a world class pianist. By age 13 her piano teaching father was showing her off around Europe with enormous fanfare. Think, an older Mozart family dynamic.
Clara was tough as nails. By age 18 she wanted to marry composer Robert Schumann. Her father wasn’t on board. She would have to wait until she was 21 to marry without dad’s consent. She sued her father and won. She married Robert a day before her twenty first birthday. TAKE THAT pops!
Life with Robert was no walk in the park. Undeniably a musical genius, Robert was bi-polar and died by age 46 after three years in a mental asylum. Clara had 8 children within a span of 13 years.
Somebody had to make a living! So she hired child care when she performed in the UK, Paris, Vienna and other stops along the way. Yep, she cared for 8 kids and an insane husband … while practicing arduously to be the best pianist in the world.
The Manchester Guardian wrote, “Comparing Madame Schumann with the leading pianists of the day, we would say at once that she surpasses them all in the great quality which we sum up expressively by the word ‘soul.’ She is all music, and as she bends over the instrument, it is very easy to see from her expressive gestures, that the wooden instrument… has become a golden gate through which her spirit passes into the purest regions of harmony.”
Clara was a composer, highly esteemed by no less than Brahms and Joachim. She was Robert’s musical muse, critic and editor. Every masterpiece we know from Robert, and it’s a mountain of the highest romantic quality, passed through Clara’s eyes & ears.
Clara Schumann probably didn’t have an easy day in her life. Her accomplishments are nothing short of amazing!