Art Dudley

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Revinylization #4: Sundazed Music/Modern Harmonic and Speakers Corner

Art Dudley | Apr 09, 2020 | 2 comments

Singer/actress Nancy Priddy's sole commercial recording, a 1968 album titled You've Come This Way Before—originally issued on Dot Records and now reissued by Sundazed Music/Modern Harmonic (Dot/Modern Harmonic MH-8044)—is a period piece. The arrangements, in which strings, flutes, Herb Alpert–esque trumpets, a harpsichord, a Vox Continental organ, and New Christy Minstrel–style backing singers all appear, are somewhat dated. (Indeed, the opening bars of the title song sound like the sort of cheesy electric pop that the producers of This American Life use as incidental music, apparently to express their limitless stockpiles of irony.) And some of Priddy's lyrics make the listener thankful for her poor enunciation.

Revinylization #5: Craft Recordings & Charlie Parker's Savoy LPs

Revinylization

Art Dudley | Apr 30, 2020 | 18 comments

I was well over 50 when I first heard an original copy of Charlie Parker's "Ko-Ko." It was a happy accident. I received a call from the family of a well-to-do neighbor who had recently passed away, asking if I'd be interested in having his record collection. Three minutes later, I was parked near the servants' entrance of their centuries-old brick mansion—how quickly we forget our proletariat resentment when there's vinyl to be had—loading a few cartons of LPs and 78s into my car.

Revinylization #6: Acoustic Sounds Bach & Vivaldi Reissues

Revinylization

Art Dudley | May 20, 2020 | 8 comments

I'm not in perfect agreement with my colleagues and friends who believe that RCA's Living Stereo LPs from the late 1950s and '60s are the best-sounding commercial classical recordings ever made. To me, the Decca SXL catalog outshines them sonically, in addition to showcasing the talents of an even greater roster of artists. But that's not to say I'm immune to their charms.

The RCA catalog contains some real gems.

Robert Lighton Audio Showroom Open in NYC

News

Art Dudley | Jun 08, 2015 | 5 comments

Earlier this year I pried myself from my upstate-New York home long enough to visit Robert Lighton Audio: a beautifully decorated suite on the 12th floor of 37 West 20th Street in Manhattan's Chelsea district, in which an Audio Note Ongaku amplifier shares space with a Suzanne Guiguichon armoire, and from which the view of the Empire State Building is stunning.

Rocking Rockville: Late Day One and Early Day Two

Capital AudioFest 2018

Art Dudley | Nov 04, 2018 | 5 comments

Listening to music in the Emia Labs room was one of those moments when I was reminded of how very little I know—that and how distressingly easy it has become for me to acclimate to different levels of audio goodness when confronted with different levels of build quality and design ingenuity. Earlier in my first day at Capital Audiofest 2018, I had heard other things I had thought were very good—and they were, in their way. But listening through the Emia system to recordings I know well—especially LP reissues from the Electric Recording Company, which co-sponsored the Emia room—was an experience far in advance of most.

Rockport's Avior: 220 pounds of joy

RMAF 2012

Art Dudley | Oct 18, 2012 | 3 comments

The three-way, 220 lb Avior loudspeaker from Rockport Technologies ($29,500/pair) uses the same beryllium tweeter as the company's $225,000 Arrakis, complemented with all-new midrange and bass drivers that are built around Rockport's proprietary carbon-fiber sandwich/composite cones. The Avior sounded truly impressive with a Playback Designs MPS-5 CD/SACD player/DAC ($17,000), Electrocompaniet EC4.8 preamplifier ($5129), BAT VK-655SE amplifier ($14,000), and cabling from Transparent Audio. A representative from the Omaha, Nebraska dealer The Sound Environment demonstrated the system with humor, charm, candor—and good music.

Rocky Beginnings

RMAF 2012

Art Dudley | Oct 12, 2012 | 3 comments

Barring the unlikely resurrection of either the summertime Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago or this magazine’s own fondly remembered movable feasts of the 1990s, there is only one hi-fi event for which I would board an airplane: Welcome to Denver. And while this non-flyer is already considering renting a car and driving home Monday, I’m glad as hell to be here: I think this is going to be fun.

Rogers High Fidelity EHF-100 integrated amplifier

Integrated Amp Reviews

Art Dudley | Nov 09, 2012 | 2 comments

I can imagine the gaiety and mirth that filled the halls of the electronics industry in the 1950s, as engineer after bespectacled engineer realized that the transistor would soon consign to the outposts of oblivion those ancient technologies that had preceded it. Before long—surely no more than a decade—the hated vacuum tube would vanish from the Earth, along with the tube socket, the tube tester, the tag board, the high-voltage rail, and that lowest rascal of them all, the output transformer. What a jubilant time!

I can't imagine what went wrong.

Rogue—EgglestonWorks

AXPONA NYC 2011

Art Dudley | Jun 27, 2011 | 2 comments

It’s okay to like R.E.M. again, and not just because their latest single (“Uberlin”) is the band’s best in over a decade: In the exhibit sponsored by EgglestonWorks and Rogue Audio, R.E.M.’s “How the West Was Won and Where it Got Us” sounded so good and so clear and so utterly fresh that I literally did not, at first, recognize the music. The combination of Rogue Hera II preamplifier ($7995) and Apollo monoblock amplifiers ($10,995/pair) plus Eggleston Andra III loudspeakers (ca $24,000 per pair) contributed to my wondering if the album from which that single sprung—1997’s New Adventures in Hi-Fi—might be better than I thought. I guess I’ll give the LP version another try (although I maintain that NAIHF represented the very nadir of the group’s covert-art pretentiousness). The Axpona experience renewed, in particular, my admiration for Rogue Audio’s persistence in making superb tube electronics at sane, fair prices.

Roksan Kandy K2 integrated amplifier

Budget Component Reviews Integrated Amp Reviews

Art Dudley | May 15, 2010 | 0 comments

Besides my 20th wedding anniversary and the 15th anniversary of Listener magazine's first issue, this year marks the 25th anniversary of Roksan Audio Ltd., easily one of the most innovative design and manufacturing firms in British audio. Before Roksan came upon the scene in 1985, none of us had ever seen a loudspeaker whose tweeter was isolated from its surroundings by a sprung suspension. Or a commercial phono preamplifier designed to fit inside a turntable, just a centimeter away from the tonearm base. And who among us could have guessed that the Linn LP12's hegemony—among flat-earthers, I mean—would be broken by a turntable from outside of Scotland? Yet the Roksan Darius loudspeaker, Artaxerxes phono stage, and, above all, Xerxes turntable accomplished those things and more, to the genuine surprise of nearly everyone—and to the benefit of our industry at large, as other firms took those ideas and ran with them.

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Art Dudley

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