USB DONE RIGHT: Two magic boxes that let computer audio ...

UHF Magazine No. 92 was published in September, 2012.
All contents are copyright 2012 by Broadcast Canada. They
may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form, or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system,
without written permission from the publisher.
EDITORIAL & SUBSCRIPTION OFFICE:
Broadcast Canada
270 rue Victoria
LONGUEUIL, Québec, Canada J4H 2J6
Tel.: (450) 651-5720
E-mail: uhfmail@uhfmag.com
World Wide Web: www.uhfmag.com
PUBLISHER & EDITOR: Gerard Rejskind
EDITORIAL: Paul Bergman, Steve Bourke, Toby Earp, Reine
Lessard, Albert Simon
PRODUCT PHOTOGRAPHY: Albert Simon
ADVERTISING SALES:
Gerard Rejskind (450) 651-5720
CANADA/US NEWSSTAND DISTRIBUTION:
Disticor Magazine Distribution Services
695 Westney Rd., Suite 14, AJAX, ON L1S 6M9
Tel: (905) 619-6565
SINGLE COPY PRICE: $6.49 in Canada, $7.69 (US) in the
United States, $15 (CAN) elsewhere, including air mail. In
Canada sales taxes are extra. Electronic edition: C$4..00
plus applicable taxes
SUBSCRIPTION RATES:
CANADA: $62.50 for 13 issues*
USA: US$75 for 13 issues
ELSEWHERE (air mail): CAN$118 for 13 issues
ELECTRONIC EDITION: C$40, 13 issues*
*Applicable taxes extra
PRE-PRESS SERVICES: Transcontinental
PRINTING: Interglobe-Beauce
E-EDITION: www.uhfmag.com/maggie.html
FILED WITH The National Library of Canada and
La Bibliothèque Nationale du Québec.
ISSN 0847-1851
Canadian Publications Mail Sales Product No. 0611387
UHF invites contributions. Though all reasonable care will
be taken of materials submitted, we cannot be responsible
for their damage or loss, however caused. Materials will
be returned only if a stamped self-addressed envelope is
provided. It is advisable to query before submitting.
Ultra High Fidelity Magazine is completely independent of
all companies in the electronics industry, as are all of its
contributors, unless explicitly specified otherwise.
4 ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine
Editorial
Happy birthday to us
It happens every five years — we get a birthday that is evenly divisible by
five. So here we are at the age of 30. The prime of life, some would say, though
others might think that, for magazines, you should multiply by seven, as you
do for dogs.
And I’ve been around for the whole ride, since I was the original editor
(though not the original publisher). Of course I’ve seen a lot of changes,
in audio gear, in technology, in marketing, and in music itself. In all that
time, though, UHF (or Hi-Fi Sound as it then was) has changed relatively
little. Adapted, yes, because we’ve had to, but our quest has remained largely
untouched.
And you know what that quest is, because chances are you share it: to find
ever better ways to reproduce music at home so that we can feel the emotion
we could expect if we were hearing it live.
Products for review
Over the years I’ve been asked this a lot: how do we choose products we
review in the pages of UHF?
There is actually quite a list of criteria. We want products that are interesting,
and ones that are actually available (which rules out startup companies
in their first days). We like to have a certain mix of products, some of which
may be extraordinarily expensive, but others more affordable. We also strive
to get an advance idea of how good the product may turn out to be. We figure
you would rather read about products you should go out and listen to, rather
than products we think you should avoid.
Some of the products we review are ones that eventually wind up in our
Audiophile Store. In this issue we listened to two USB interface boxes, the
M2Tech HiFace and the Stello U3, which we made efforts to acquire because
we liked them and we thought you would too. But the evaluation always comes
before the listing.
The final criterion is one you might not anticipate: availability.
You probably expect that manufacturers and distributors would be breaking
down our doors to get us to review their products. Sometimes that’s true. All
too often it’s not. In the current issue we expected to review a high-profile
loudspeaker from a company whose name begins with the letter “T.” We were
given what seemed to be a green light, but then we were refused.
That put us in difficulty. The Eximus DP1 had been pencilled in for our
next issue, but the unavailability of the “T” speaker left us with a hole. It
worked out fine, because we liked the DP1 enough to put it on our cover.
But we don’t intend to be caught like that again. There is, after all, another
criterion to make our review list. We need to be able to trust you.