Recording - March 2010 - 55

the ideal speaker for educational situations, for example—I wish I’d had these speakers in my days of teaching synth programming, sampling, MIDI orchestration and such. When you need to know exactly what’s going on, at sane levels that you can occasionally goose to exaggeration without ill effect, the 2325 (or the larger 2328) with the 2310 will deliver. That goes for a home-theater system as long as you don’t have your ears trained to expect smiley-curve responses (although you could force these speakers to produce those, of course ). I’ve had experience with other JBL models, from the larger 4328 to the smaller 6325, and I’ve always appreciated the unveiled directness of what I heard. No exaggerations, no sizzles and honks, just a carefully measured and honest response that holds up to extended and critical listening, for work or for pleasure. The same is true for this new system. As soon as I had the sub in place, I went for some of my most bass-loaded music that still has finesse low down—Victor Wooten’s CD What Did He Say? and Erykah Badu’s Baduizm stood the test of time and the test of the mighty sub. It’s easy to crank rude and crude low-end audio in a big box designed to do nothing but, but feed the 2310 some really musical bass tracks and it comes away sounding just as musical even when rumbling the furniture! The sub’s massive rear port can contribute to bass production in the room depending on the distance from a rear or even side wall, so keep your options open when you search for the ideal setup, and keep in mind the Low Frequency Trim on the 2325 (or 2328)—they shelve at 120 Hz and the sub bass-management crossover can also be set to provide a 120 Hz-highpassed signal to the left and right speakers; careful evaluation is recommended to make this most versatile combination of speakers produce just the right sound for your particular room. Keep the fullrange speakers at equal distance from each other and from your head, then sit back and enjoy—you are bound to hear new nuances in your mixes and audio library, nuances that you will think you should have heard long ago. If it hadn’t been for the glorious Colorado weather between Xmas and New Year’s I wouldn’t have found my way out the front door—I sat there for hours on end, riveted by the combination of the pleasingly accurate LSR2325P cabinets and the most musical LSR2310SP sub—they kept reminding me of what good sound can be like. Prices: LSR2325P, $249/each; LSR2328P, $439/each; LSR2310P sub, $499 More from: JBL Professional, www.jblpro.com. Sony PCM-M10 BY LORENZ RYCHNER Sony rules the history of on-the-go music listening. At the end of the Seventies, the Sony Walkman cassette player changed the way the general public listened to music. The Walkman fitted into a coat pocket, came with lightweight headphones, and became a cultural phenom, being responsible for the solitary listening habits of generations of commuters, gym rats, and assorted other classes of humans. At first the Walkman had no record function (although it was based on the Pressman, a mono recorder), but soon enough record-enabled versions of the Walkman followed. Since then, Sony has been bringing us similarly portable recorders of the evolving (and fading) DAT and MiniDisc technologies. Today’s recorders are expected to span the range from lowly MP3 to high-end audio at 96/24 as we’re reviewing the third—and so far the most portable—of the latest generation of Sony’s portable PCM recorders. Ancestry—D1 and D50 For the immediate ancestry of the PCM-M10, check out our reviews of the PCM-D1 (April 2006) and PCM-D50 (April 2008). In brief: The D1 immediately claimed flagship status, costing around $2k; it is coat- but not shirtpocket-sized at 3x7x1.4", records and plays PCM and SBM (Super Bit Mapping) formats up to 96/24 but not MP3, has two built-in electret condenser mics with protruding capsules of outstanding quality (mounted on a swivel), and has USB (for file exchange with a computer only). The only regret I expressed in my review (other than that I couldn’t afford one ) was that there is no remote control. The D50 is priced at around $500, has two built-in (also protruding but nonswivel) electret condenser mics of supposedly lesser quality (but, in truth, they are quite excellent), is just a bit shorter than the D1, also does 96/24 and SBM (only for 16-bit files), and can play back MP3 files (but not record—they must be imported over USB). Accessories available as separate purchases: a wired remote control, and a module that converts two XLR mic inputs to a single stereo miniplug: the XLR-1, reviewed in our December 2009 Gift Guide. RECORDING MARCH 2010
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Recording - March 2010

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