Playback Designs was founded less than three years ago. However, with the release in 2008 of its MPS-5 Music Playback System—a slim, full-featured SACD/CD player and DAC that costs $15,000 and is built in the US—the company has since established itself as a significant player in high-performance digital audio.
If you’re a fan of John Fahey—a fan of his music, his writing, his thoughts on life, whatever—and especially if you’re sort of sad, like I am, about having never met him, then you’ll enjoy this disc. The Three Day Band is Fahey and musician <a href="http://www.myspace.com/ayalsr">Ayal Senior</a> who, in addition to capturing Fahey on four-track here, also edited much of Fahey’s second collection of stories, <i><a href="http://www.dragcity.com/products/vampire-vultures">Vampire Vultures</a></i>. (Senior’s also got a bunch of good-looking cassettes available.)
Almost every assumption you might make about Vienna Acoustics' Klimt The Kiss loudspeaker by looking at it would be wrong. It is <I>not</I> a stand-mounted two-way loudspeaker. It's a three-way, with a coincident tweeter-midrange. And that ain't no stand—it's an integral part of the speaker. It does <I>not</I> have a conventional cabinet—there are two separate enclosures, complete with micrometer control of both vertical and horizontal axes. And those sure aren't plain-vanilla drive-units—they're about as unique as they come.
There is a proper procedure for taking advantage of any investment.<br>
Music, for example. Buying music is an investment.<br>
To get the maximum you must
Clearly, many of you still cherish your cassette decks, but what about <A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reel-to-reel_audio_tape_recording" target="new">open- reel</A>? Do you own, or have you ever owned and used a reel-to-reel or open-reel tape deck?
<B>Pat Metheny <I>Orchestrion</I></B><BR>
Pat Metheny, guitars, orchestrion programming.<BR>
Nonesuch 516668-2/-1 (CD/LP). 2010. Pat Metheny, prod.; eng. AAD? TT: 52:06<BR>
Performance ****<BR>
Sonics ****
A group of people sit along an old, grimy bar, doing things. Watching, waiting, aspiring. Every single one of them, in one way or another. Watches, waits, aspires. One of them—the strangest looking one of all—is a black dude with hair like the wind through a California Cypress. Eyes like two half moons. With more care and concern than any of the others, he watches. He watches the man on stage, a fellow named Henry Vestine. Henry is playing guitar, bass, and drums all at once, all by himself.
I love my job, I love my office, I love a whole lot of other things. But, when the sun is shining through my living room windows the way it was this morning, it is very hard to leave home.
A crime of passion? Depraved indifference to the importance of tuneage? Death by music? The simple fact is that most audiophiles got that way by having too many records. That's right—very few got into this rewarding, non-contact sport because they were aroused by shiny brushed-steel boxes or supersexy speaker grilles. It's because they wanted to hear their piles of music—their Mahler, Monk, or Rick James—sound the best it could. (And, okay, yes: It <I>is</I> cool to show drooling friends your designer gear.)