2nd Edition
Ella The Lost Berlin Tapes Found (In Late Verve Founder Norman Granz's Private Stash)!
Verve will release on October 2nd, 2020 a never before issued Ella Fitzgerald concert performance recorded in stereo at Berlin's Sportpalast March 25th 1962. Ella recorded in Berlin 1960, one of her best known, most popular, double Grammy Award winning albums Mack The Knife: Ella in Berlin in which she bobbled the words.
Summer Vinyl Sweeps which features prizes from VPI/SVS/Nordost and Disney Music Emporium!
Register to win a complete vinyl playback system and stack of records (Value $4,682.44 total) we are giving away!
Coltrane's A Love Supreme and Ballads All-Analog Mastered Set For October 9th Release
Verve/UMe announced today the October 9th release of its second round of Audiophile Vinyl Reissue Series/ Acoustic Sounds pressings of two essential John Coltrane albums: A Love Supreme and Ballads, both in stereo, cut using the original analog master tapes.
Pro-Ject Today Introduces New Debut Carbon EVO Turntable
Pro-Ject Audio Systems today unveiled the new $499 Debut Carbon EVO turntable--a feature-packed priced-right addition to its Debut Collection.The new turntable incorporates a one-piece carbon fiber tonearm, electronic speed selection, suspension elements used in the more costly EISA award-winning X1 turntable and in America, a factory mounted Sumiko Rainier cartridge.
Everything You Know About Skating Is Wrong!
Well, that's a clickbait headline for sure, but unlike most it's probably true, especially if you've taken my word on this. Yes, skating begins with friction in the groove and it is caused by a "vector force", but skating is not the result of your tonearm's offset angle, either at the head shell or produced by an "S" shaped arm.
Audio Research Releases Ken Kessler's 50th Anniversary Book "Making the Music Glow"
Audio Research is honored to partner with author Ken Kessler in releasing a book timed to the company's 50th anniversary. Entitled, "Audio Research: Making the Music Glow", the book describes the people behind the company, designing, manufacturing, fine-tuning, and marketing the audio amplification and source components that have been regarded perpetually as among the best in the industry.
1st Edition
Everything You Know About Skating Is Wrong!
Well, that’s a clickbait headline for sure, but unlike most it’s probably true, especially if you’ve taken my word on this.
My Physics Teacher Was a New York Record Producer and I Had No Idea
I grew up and went to school in Hereford in the 1980s and 90s - a small, old, and averagely average rural English cathedral city with a bit of a leftie/peacenik 'muesli belt' that definitely included my family.
Rhino To Release September 18th Coltrane's Giant Steps 60th Anniversary Deluxe Edition on 2 LPs
AnalogPlanet readers need to introduction to this groundbreaking album, Coltrane's first for Atlantic recorded shortly after his participation in Kind of Blue. The packaging and presentation are "first class" and include a booklet with new, never before seen photos and an essay by jazz historian Ashley Kahn. The jacket and label art replicate the original's.
Direct-to-Disc Vinyl Explosion!
(Review Explosion is usually a recurring AnalogPlanet feature covering recent releases for which we either don’t have sufficient time to fully explore, or that are not worthy of it. Normally curated by AnalogPlanet contributing editor Malachi Lui, this particular Review Explosion has been hijacked by AnalogPlanet editor Michael Fremer and covers in capsule form Direct-to-Disc releases).
Hana introduces Umami Red MC Cartridge
Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda-san officially coined the term "Umami" in 1908, defining it as a very pleasing or delicious flavor on the palette, a synergistic effect resulting in higher taste intensity.
From the Musical Surroundings press release:
"When Hana decided to create a high-end cartridge, Master cartridge designer Masao Okada-san applied the concept of Umami combining brilliant materials and classic Japanese techniques with modern audio engineering."
WAM Engineering's New, Improved WallySkater V2.1
Skating, a pivoted tonearm’s tendency to “skate” towards the record center is real, is not created by “centripetal force” and is not best ignored because compensating for it somehow worsens sonic performance.
If you do not apply some kind of skating counterforce, the stylus will ride the inner groove throughout the record side, producing uneven record and stylus wear. And it can’t possibly improve record playback sound.
Meet Randy Thornton, Walt Disney Records’ Supervising Producer and Musical Historian
Annette Funicello’s The Doors connection, Walt Disney’s role in creating famed Sunset Sound Recorders and 15 year old Ron Howard’s role in “The Haunted Mansion” Record album released when the Disneyland attraction first opened are only a few among the many fascinating items gleaned from my interview with Randy Thornton, long-time Walt Disney Records Supervising Producer and Musical Historian.
Brian Wilson's And Van Dyke Parks' Orange Crate Art Makes Vinyl Debut
This year, Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks’ 1994 project, Orange Crate Art, turns 25 years old. To celebrate, Omnivore Records has reissued and remastered the album and brought attention and care to a somewhat disremembered historical artifact created by two musical luminaries. Of note, Omnivore’s campaign is the first time this album has been released on vinyl.
Analog Corner #123
Record weights and clamps cause a sonic difference that’s difficult neither to hear nor to explain. A stylus coursing through the grooves stamped on a slab of vinyl releases a tremendous amount of mechanical energy, some of which does not exit the system as it’s supposed to: up the cantilever. Instead, it gets reflected back into the vinyl, where it can cause the record to resonate unless it’s damped in some way. There is also potential vibrational energy coming the other way—from the tonearm, the motor, and the bearing—but the better your arm and turntable, the more likely that the problem that needs solving is that of vibrations coursing through that thin slab of vinyl.
Lou Reed's Raw, Essential New York Gets Rhino Deluxe Reissue Treatment
Lou Reed's Sire Records debut New York first released in 1989 gets the deluxe Rhino treatment in a new box set scheduled for September 25th release. The original was a gold record-selling, Grammy nominated album with the memorable "Dirty Boulevard" a #1 hit on the Modern Rock charts.
Pat Metheny's 11 LP ECM Album Catalog Available For Streaming and Downloading July 31st
This just in: Pat Metheny’s complete ECM catalog of 11 albums, which includes Bright Size Life, Offramp, and 80/81, will be available for the first time on July 31st as high-resolution masters for download and streaming.
Unreleased Blue Note Title Just Coolin' In the Can For 60 Years Finally Surfaces
This previously unreleased March 9th 1959 session recorded at Rudy Van Gelder’s Hackensack home studio is a “must have” for Blue Note “completists”, especially for those with an affinity for car and plane crash videos. If you are just getting into the rich Blue Note catalog, your money is best spent elsewhere as this session, despite the stellar group, often sounds listless and forced. Grooves get glossed over in favor of speed.
Accentus Music's Má vlast D2D Release Update
According to Accentus Music, which will release this 3 LP 45rpm direct-to-disc set, the 1,111 copies limit has no particular significance. It just seemed like a 'nice number'. The significance I see is that it will probably quickly sell out!
Say Hello To a "Little Disco Fwend" For Technics Direct Drive Turntables
Though today's Technics Direct Drive turntables are for audiophile not disco use, not surprisingly "Little Fwend"'s playful Norwegians wood name their specially designed for Technics turntables end-of-side arm lifter "Little Disco Fwend".
HiFiction Introduces Innovative X-quisite Cartridge Line
Switzerland-based HiFiction, best known for its line of Thales tangential tracking pivoted tonearms and high-performance compact turntables recently announced a new, high technology cartridge line called X-quisite (in July of 2018 HiFiction announced its acquisition of EMT’s cartridge assets).
Emil Berliner Studios Records For Accentus Music Smetana’s “Má vlast” Recorded Direct-to Disc!
The Emil Berliner Studios Direct-to-Disc recording team supervised by Rainer Maillard, responsible for the D2D Brucker 7th symphony with Bernard Haitink conducting the BPO, shipped its entire disc cutting system exactly one year ago to Bamberg, Germany (the first time the gear had left Berlin) to record for Accentus Music at Konzerthalle Bamberg, Joseph-Keilberth-Saal D2D at 45rpm Czech composer Bedřich Smetana’s symphonic cycle “Má vlast” (My Homeland), best known for including “Vitava” (“The Moldau”), with The Bamberg Symphony, conducted by its musical director Czech-born Jakub Hrůša.
Pianist/Composer/Arranger Michael Weiss’s Long Soul Journey to Vinyl
Suave, swinging and exuberant, Michael Weiss’s self-produced Soul Journey sounds something like a big band playing on a Blue Note Records date, but it’s really a small ensemble making like a big one thanks to Weiss’s deft, harmonically-rich, rhythmically neck-snapping arrangements and free-spirited yet tightly drawn, well-meshed performances by the three man veteran horn section of saxophonist Steve Wilson, trumpet and flugelhorn player Ryan Kisor and trombonist Steve Davis.
All-Analog Reissues of Early Reprise-Era Fleetwood Mac LPs Coming From Rhino
Rhino will release on September 4th two new early Fleetwood Mac box sets: an 8 CD set Fleetwood Mac 1969-1974 that includes 7 studio albums plus an unreleased 1974 concert, and two versions of an all analog 4 LP+ 7" single set cut from the original master tapes by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering.
Block Audio's C-Lock Solves Wall Jack Woes
Leaving aside for the moment the numbskulls who are so certain that A.C. power cords cannot possibly affect the sound of their audio systems that they can’t be bothered to actually listen for themselves—never mind that science is predicated upon observation— (plus of course they don’t believe anything they see, hear, taste, smell or touch unless it’s done under controlled “double-blind” conditions), there’s a big problem with heavy power cords: because of their heft, they often partially or sometimes fully pull out of the wall jack.
Source AnalogPlanet
