2nd edition
DJ Club Sound Systems of Brooklyn
"Young people don't listen to music together like we used to do." I have been running into various versions of this opinion in the audiophile world ever since 'personal listening' critical mass was first achieved by ear-buds and iPods in the early 2000s. Hi-fi buffs who are now banking those Senior Discounts think back fondly to that particular dorm room, where they first heard that Van Dyke Parks album their friend turned them on to. (Substitute your own title here . . .)
Regine Crespin Sings Berlioz and Ravel Live
My excitement upon discovering the heretofore unavailable two-CD set, Regine Crespin: Rare Broadcast Recordings, in the catalog of historical performance specialist Norbeck Peters & Ford can only be partially conveyed through words. Crespin's London/Decca studio recordings of Berlioz's Les Nuits d'ete and Ravel's Sheherazade, accompanied by Ernest Ansermet et L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, which were captured in Victoria Hall, Geneva in September 1963.
Joe Lovano & Dave Douglas: Scandal
Sound Prints, the quintet co-led by trumpeter Dave Douglas and tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano, is one of the most exciting small jazz bands around. You wouldn't know it, necessarily, from their first, eponymously titled album, recorded live at the 2013 Monterey Jazz Festival and released on Blue Note, which has long been Lovano's label.
Gramophone Dreams #21: EMT, Koetsu, Miyajima
I spent a snowy New York City evening at Rhapsody Music & Cinema, talking with the proprietor, Bob Visintainer, and watching my friend Michael Trei install a Lyra Etna SL moving-coil cartridge in a Graham Engineering Phantom III tonearm mounted on a TechDAS Air Force 3 turntable tethered to a Zesto Tessera phono stage.
From the Archives: Counterpoint SA-7 preamplifier
In appearance the Counterpoint SA-7 tube preamplifier is quite attractive, possessing the thin, low-profile look currently in vogue. There is a mute switch which (if you remember to use it) protects your amplifier from the preamp's turn-on and turn-off thumps. Unfortunately, the volume control on my unit didn't track accurately, and it was necessary to adjust balance with each change in volume.
From the Archives: Recording of October 1972: Lincoln Mayorga & Distinguished Colleagues Vol.II
Ever wonder just how much sound quality is lost by recording stuff on tape before making a disc? Here's your answer. This program of soft rock and cool jazz arrangements was recorded straight from studio to disc, and the sound is incredible! Suddenly, a veil that we never realized was there has been lifted, and we had the feeling we were listening to a direct-wire transmission rather than to a recording.
From the Archives: Museatex Hybrid 6 loudspeaker
I find quite appealing the image invoked by Museatex to describe its Real Time Ripple Effect (RTRE) loudspeaker line: a stone rippling the surface of a "still pond on a warm summer afternoon." Replace the stone with a voice-coil attached to the center of a stretched Mylar diaphragm and you begin to get a glimpse of the RTRE technology's conceptual beauty and promise. The idea of cohesively covering at least the midrange and treble with a single driver, without crossover filters, quickens my audio pulse.
1st Edition
A Visit to Focal in France
There is a particular art that many Americans have mastered, involving the collective lamentation of the unwelcoming nature of the French towards American tourists--whether this has been experienced firsthand or not is irrelevant--coupled with inexplicable, unwavering desire for all that the French stand for.
A World Premiere Stravinsky Recording & a Rousing Rite
Why review another recording of Stravinsky's great ballet score for the 1913 season of Diaghilev's Ballet Russes, Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring)?
Prism Sound Callia D/A headphone amplifier
I have long been aware of English audio company Prism Sound, both from my use at the turn of the century of their excellent PCI card-based DScope2 measurement system, and from some of my friends' enthusiasm for Prism's SADiE digital audio workstation.
Listening #184: Zu DL-103 Mk.II phono cartridge
On at least one occasion that I can recall--in 1996, in the early days of Listener magazine--a US publicist for the Japanese manufacturing company Denon told me that they planned to discontinue their DL-103 moving-coil phono cartridge, an enduringly popular model that had been in production since 1962.
Todd Rundgren's 1972 Classic
One format that is often an afterthought in discussions about downloads, LPs, and every other music storage and playback medium is the SACD. Fiercely beloved by a determined minority, most of them audiophiles, SACDs continue to be manufactured, most recently by Mark Piro's New York-based Analog Spark label.
Montreal Audio Fest 2018 Coverage!
Art Dudley and Robert Schryer dig deep and find everything of audio note at the latest Canadian music reproduction extravaganza!
Constellation Inspiration Stereo 1.0 power amplifier
I've found that some audio amplifiers have sonic signatures so subtle that they emerge only over weeks of listening; yet other amps sound so distinctive--more vivid, more transparent, more dynamic--that their signatures are immediately apparent. Can those latter qualities really be inherent in the recording, or are they colorations produced in the amplifier?
Sound of Mind
The loudness wars are over. The valiant but hopelessly outnumbered forces that stood against squashing the dynamics and life out of recordings, all in the name of almighty loudness, have been vanquished. Scattered across the smoking battlefield are the lifeless bodies of thousands of disappointed listeners, many so young they will never now know what it's like to hear a natural, uncompressed recording.
Source Stereophile
