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Media Server Reviews, Stand Loudspeaker Reviews

Jim Austin | Jul 17, 2018 | 27 comments

It's after 5pm on Wednesday, and I'm finishing up the listening part of my review of Apple's wireless speaker, the HomePod ($349). On a whim, I've just asked Siri to play me some drinking songs.

I mention this because the HomePod's "smart" features—its integration with Siri and the Apple Music streaming service—is a big part of its appeal. In its natural element, the HomePod provides a way of accessing music that, although as old as our century, to me is still new and unfamiliar: Forget your hoary music collection, your Rolling Stones and Beethoven. Decide what kind of music you want to hear—a genre or a mood—then leave the choice to Siri and her algorithmic minions.

Roon Labs Nucleus+ music server

Media Server Reviews

John Atkinson | Jul 17, 2018 | 15 comments

Sssssshhhhhh—I forget what music was playing, but as the sound faded away, I could hear a loud hissing coming from the 2011 i7 Mac mini I was operating headless with Roon 1.3 to play files over my network. Checking the mini's shared screen on my MacBook Pro revealed that it was completely unresponsive, so I yanked its AC cord, after which it wouldn't boot up.

This was the second time the Mac mini had died. The first time, in 2015, the local Apple Genius Bar had repaired it. This time, the hipster at the Genius Bar turned me away: "We don't offer repair work on vintage computers."

Exquisite Art Songs from Sandrine Piau

Jason Victor Serinus

Jason Victor Serinus | Jul 15, 2018 | 61 comments

Given how much fuller and more natural I find hi-rez audio sounds, I rarely review recordings that are only available in Red Book quality in the US. But when the soprano is Sandrine Piau, whose voice conveyed the essence of springtime when I heard her live at UC Berkeley a little over six years go, and she sings as marvelously as she does on Chimère, her latest song recital with pianist Susan Manoff, I throw such self-imposed strictures out the window.

This Magic Moment

As We See It

Steve Guttenberg | Jul 12, 2018 | 66 comments

I remember the Tuesday night that music broke free of my hi-fi. The sound stirred my soul—everything was so right that I was tempted to call over my audiophile pals to earwitness its magnificence. But I didn't, fearing that sharing the sound might break the spell cast first by the Allman Brothers Band's At Fillmore East (2 LPs, Capricorn ST-CAP 712223 VSRP), then by Jimi Hendrix's Live at the Fillmore East (CD, MCA MCAD2 11931). By the time Hendrix got to "Machine Gun," I could almost smell the pot wafting up to the Fillmore's top balconies.

Recording of August 2018: The Gershwin Moment

Recording of the Month

Kalman Rubinson | Jul 12, 2018 | 41 comments

Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue (1924 jazz-band version, orch. Grofé). ¹ Piano Concerto in F. ² "Summertime." ³ Gershwin-Wild: "Somebody Loves Me," "I Got Rhythm," "Embraceable You."⁴ Oscar Levant: "Blame It On My Youth." ⁵
Kirill Gerstein, piano; ^1–5 Storm Large, vocal; ³ Gary Burton, vibraphone; ⁵ David Robertson, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra^{1, 2}
Myrios Classics MYR022 (CD, 24/192 FLAC). 2018. Kirill Gerstein, prod.; Stephan Cahen, prod.,1-5 eng.; ^{1, 2, 4, 5} Paul Hennerich, ^{1, 2, 4} Doug Decker, ³ engs. DDD. TT: 73:45
Performance *****
Sonics *** (CD), **** (24/192 FLAC)

I grew up with Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. I was the youngest in a family not particularly interested in music, and whose record collection consisted of pop music and three oddly assorted classical recordings, all on 78rpm discs: Enrico Caruso singing "Vesti la giubba," Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring (on four 12" 78s), and the 1927 recording of Rhapsody in Blue with the Paul Whiteman Concert Orchestra and Gershwin at the keyboard.

TAD Dems in Manhattan Thursday July 19

News

Stereophile Staff | Jul 11, 2018 | 0 comments

Thursday July 19, 12–8pm, Manhattan specialty audio retailer NoHo Sound (62 Cooper Square, New York, NY 10003) will be having an open house. Special guests Jonathan Derda and Ben Newhall from MoFi Distribution will be on hand to demonstrate the TAD Micro-Evolution One loudspeaker (above), which received a rave review earlier this year, the TAD Compact-Evolution One loudspeaker, and TAD D1000 Mk.II DAC/SACD player, which was a "Greatest Bits" Award winner on our sister site AudioStream.com.

HDCD: Keith Johnson, Pflash Pflaumer, Michael Ritter

Features, Interviews, Reference

Robert Harley | Jul 10, 2018 | First Published: May 01, 1995 | 11 comments

The men behind HDCD (L–R: Pflash Pflaumer, Michael Ritter, Keith Johnson

High Definition Compatible Digital^® (HDCD^®), the proprietary process for improving the sound of 16-bit digital audio, has finally arrived. More than a dozen digital processors using the technology are on the market, and the professional encoder used to master HDCD discs is following closely behind.

Recording of December 1966: Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake & Sleeping Beauty

J. Gordon Holt, Recording of the Month

J. Gordon Holt | Jul 10, 2018 | First Published: Dec 01, 1966 | 0 comments

Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake & Sleeping Beauty Selections
New Philharmonia Orchestra, Stokowsky
London Phase-4 SPC 21008 (LP); Ampex LCL-75008 (open-reel tape). Tony D'Amato, Marty Wargo, prods.; Arthur Lilley, eng. TT: 46:50.

These are exciting, lilting, concert-style (as opposed to ballet-style) performances of the best-known excerpts from Tchaikovsky's second- and third-most-popular ballets. (First, of course, is the Nutcracker.) The recording is a surprise, after the excesses we've heard on earlier Phase-4 recordings.

Play It Again, Siri

News

Stereophile Staff | Jul 09, 2018 | 55 comments

Okay, we know that Humphrey Bogart didn't utter that immortal instruction in Casablanca, but we couldn't resist, given that this issue includes Jim Austin's adventures with Apple's HomePod, the first smart speaker with hi-fi pretensions, which is featured on our August issue's cover.

July 4 Weekend Special: John Williams at the Movies

Jason Victor Serinus

Jason Victor Serinus | Jul 07, 2018 | 8 comments

For a major, decidedly American change of pace from our usual fare of Prokofiev, Debussy, Xenakis, Berg, and Beethoven (for starters), let's lighten up with Reference Recordings' latest hybrid SACD, John Williams at the Movies? Also available as a 176.4/24 download —the format in which it was recorded and which I auditioned for this review—the performances by the Dallas Wind Band under Jerry Junkin are so vivid and color-saturated that RR has chosen them for their first hybrid high-resolution wind-band SACD.

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