2nd Edition
AXPONA 2022 Audio Show Live Report!
Stereophile's team of writers is wandering the halls of Chicago's Renaissance Schaumburg Hotel and Convention Center.
Luxman M-10X power amplifier
As I started to write this review, the news broke that Sound United, the owner of Boston Acoustics, Bowers & Wilkins, Classe, Definitive Technology, Denon, Marantz, and Polk, was going to be purchased by a corporation that makes medical instruments.
Fleetwood Sound Company DeVille SQ loudspeaker
Oswalds Mill Audio's products espouse a sort of steam-punk-meets-modern visual style, but the company's philosophies are straight from hi-fi's '50s and '60s glory days, an era when idler-drive turntables, low-power tube amps, and horn-loaded loudspeakers were the norm.
Analog Corner #321: EMT JSD Novel Titan MC cartridge, Fozgometer V2, Mat Chakra, WAM Wallyscope
Let's get right to it: The best way to set azimuth, as I recently wrote in this space, is to measure crosstalk using either a high-quality voltmeter or a digital oscilloscope and a good test record like Analogue Productions' The Ultimate Analogue Test LP (AAPT1).
Recording of May 2022: Strictly a One-Eyed Jack
You might think an artist with 22 Top-40 hits would identify his winning formula and stick with it. Instead, John Mellencamp's long career has been a tale of determined development and often improvement.
From Congo Square to Times Square: A Short History of Drums in Jazz
Celebrated New York City-based jazz drummer Billy Drummond recalls his first visit, with the group OTB ("Out of The Blue"), to the Mount Fuji Jazz Festival in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan. It was 1988.
1st Edition
On live music
There's a notion among audiophiles that we must be regular consumers of live music, especially live acoustic music. It's the only way, the thinking goes, to calibrate our ears to the sound we should all be aspiring to at home.
Cyrus CDi-XR CD player
In the 1990s, I was a globetrotter, interviewing musicians in diverse locales for several publications. My habit when arriving in London was to hit the duty-free shops for Cuban Montecristo cigars, move on to the newsagent for the latest issues of Hi-Fi News and Hi-Fi Choice.
Book/Music Review: Excavated Shellac: An Alternate History of the World's Music
Jonathan Ward, a historian of recorded sound, has some surprising news. Thousands of early 78rpm recordings were made not to preserve music but as disposable materials for selling gramophones. With manufacturers hoping to expand their sales globally, demo records featured regional music aimed at appealing to regional.
Engstrom Monica Mk3 line preamplifier
Have you ever walked through fresh snow in the woods with all your senses heightened? When I did, shortly before the New Year, it was as if I was seeing nature for the first time, through a fresh lens. Never had white-coated surfaces appeared so white.
Revinylization #28: Coltrane's Live at the Village Vanguard and Crescent, from Impulse! and Acoustic Sounds
John Coltrane spent his final years with Impulse! Records, from 1961 until his death, in 1967, at the age of 40. Those years were his most adventurous, as he sorted through every sound he could create in his spiritual quest, as he put it, to "get the one essential."
Final Words
This year's annual audio-industry cocktail/supper ceremony was held in a ballroom-like room that gave the proceedings a bit of an Oscar-night flair. (Our invitation to Will Smith was rescinded in light of current events.)
Source Stereophile
