John Marks

The Fifth Element #59
Floor Loudspeaker ReviewsThe Fifth ElementMusic and Recording FeaturesIntegrated Amp Reviews
John Marks  |  Apr 26, 2010  |  0 comments
There's a fantastic new two-SACD/CD set of a demonstration-quality live recording of a rather obscure work you really should get to know, not only for its own merits, but also for what I believe is its underappreciated but major influence on music and on popular culture. The piece is by 20th-century composer Arnold Schoenberg, but trust me—it's more than "listenable." It (or, at least, the music on the first disc) is beyond engaging; it is compelling—a revelation, even. The work is Gurrelieder (Songs of Gurre), Gurre being a castle in medieval Denmark that was the setting of a real-life doomed love triangle, the story of which has since loomed large in the moodily brooding artistic consciousness of Danes. The 19th-century Danish poet Jens Peter Jacobsen wrote a collection of poems based on medieval legends, including this one, and a German translation by Robert Franz Arnold provided Schoenberg's dramatic texts.
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The Fifth Element #58
The Fifth ElementHi-Rez Disc Player/Transport ReviewsHeadphone Reviews
John Marks  |  Feb 26, 2010  |  0 comments
February is traditionally the month for music features, so I start this column with some recordings you really should hear. This year I had a greater-than-usual number of worthy candidates for "Records To Die For." Which discs got named as R2D4s and which got column coverage was, to quote the Iron Duke, a near-run thing.
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Denon SC-CX303 loudspeaker
Stand Loudspeaker ReviewsBudget Component Reviews
John Marks  |  Jan 05, 2010  |  First Published: Dec 05, 2009  |  0 comments
The companion loudspeaker to Denon's RCD-CX1 SACD/CD receiver is the SC-CX303 ($1200/pair). The SC-CX303 is a ported two-way with a 1" soft-dome tweeter and a 5" carbon-fiber–cone woofer. Denon claims a sensitivity of 86dB and an impedance of 6 ohms. Instead of a formal frequency response, Denon instead gives an unreferenced figure for frequency extension that, at 35Hz–60kHz, is neither helpful nor credible.
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The Fifth Element #57
Stand Loudspeaker ReviewsThe Fifth ElementBudget Component Reviews
John Marks  |  Dec 23, 2009  |  0 comments
Ah me, another year gone by. The rest of my holiday-gift suggestions are at the end of this column, but I wanted to kick off with a hearty recommendation of Aja, a book by Don Breithaupt. You may recall Breithaupt as a co-author (with his brother, Jeff) of the survey Precious and Few: Pop Music in the Early '70s, which cracked me up in my October column.
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ATC SCM 11 loudspeaker
Stand Loudspeaker ReviewsBudget Component Reviews
John Marks  |  Dec 14, 2009  |  0 comments
The venerable British company ATC Loudspeaker Technology was founded in 1974 by Billy Woodman, and is famous within the professional community for developing the first soft-dome midrange driver, and for their well-regarded line of active (powered) studio monitors, the user list of which is a veritable Who's Who of mastering engineers. ATC loudspeakers are all still made in the UK, and were a favorite of the late J. Gordon Holt.
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Aerial Model 5B loudspeaker
Stand Loudspeaker Reviews
John Marks, John Atkinson  |  Nov 20, 2009  |  First Published: Jun 20, 2009  |  0 comments
In October 2005's "The Fifth Element." I said of the Harbeth HL-3P-ES2, a descendant of the BBC LS3/5A, "Gloriosky, these little speakers are just great to listen to!" Later, in April 2007, John Atkinson endorsed that remark.
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The Fifth Element #56
The Fifth ElementIntegrated Amp Reviews
John Marks  |  Oct 23, 2009  |  0 comments
There have been lots of great, and even some fabulous books of music criticism or reportage, and I've recommended several in these pages. So far, however, only one has made me chuckle, chortle, or laugh out loud, time and time again.
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The Fifth Element #55
The Fifth ElementBudget Component ReviewsIntegrated Amp ReviewsComputer Audio Reviews
John Marks  |  Aug 24, 2009  |  0 comments
When I was a kid, I saw the Marlon Brando remake of Mutiny on the Bounty. I'm sure you know the story—lots of bad-guy/good-guy tension between Captain Bligh and Fletcher Christian. There's also an overlay of class conflict, but with a twist: The up-and-comer is the sadist, while it's the aristocrat who is nature's nobleman.
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Commonsense System Strategies
As We See It
John Marks  |  Aug 18, 2009  |  0 comments
There's an old Russian folktale about a farmer who goes to a fair. He buys a bread roll from a vendor. He eats it, but he's still hungry. So he buys and eats another roll, and then another. Still hungry. Next, he buys a donut from a different vendor. At last, he's no longer hungry. The farmer then says to himself, "I wasted the money I spent on the rolls—I should have just bought the donut first!"
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The Fifth Element #54
Stand Loudspeaker ReviewsThe Fifth ElementMusic and Recording Features
John Marks  |  Jun 19, 2009  |  0 comments
Back when there were bricks-and-mortar retail record stores to speak of in tenses other than past, I used to participate in new-release conferences. Retail-store buyers—the people who decided whether consumers would see your CDs as they browsed in the stores—would gather at a nice destination, such as Lake George, New York. The various labels would then make presentations about their upcoming new releases.
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