LATEST ADDITIONS

I first heard a CD player in my own system in 1984 or 1985, several years before I began writing for <I>Stereophile</I>. I was curious about the Compact Disc medium&mdash;I'd read about it, had listened to CDs in stores, and was eager to hear what they sounded like in my own system. I'd even bought a CD: the original-cast recording of <I>42nd Street</I>, which I already had on LP. One evening, a friend who worked for Sony and knew that I was an audiophile brought over his latest acquisition: a CDP-501ES, the second from the top of Sony's line of CD players. He also brought along a bunch of CDs, including some solo-piano discs, and Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Symphony's then-famous recording of Tchaikovsky's <I>1812 Overture</I> (Telarc CD-80041).

It has a fan, it won't work without a monitor, and it contains a 750GB hard drive&mdash;for some audiophiles, that's a trifecta of reasons <I>not</I> to buy the McIntosh MS750 music server ($6000).

I was listening to Radiohead’s new album, <I>In Rainbows</I>. It’s really as great as all the rock critics say. More than that (from this blog’s angle), it’s as harmonically and rhythmically sophisticated as just about any work of modern jazz. (I’m not saying it’s <I>like</I> jazz; rather, that on any musical level, the purest jazz purist has no grounds for looking down on it.) The album sent me to my music closet to take another listen to Brad Mehldau’s cover of Radiohead’s “Knives Out,” from his trio’s 2005 CD on the Nonesuch label, <I>Day Is Done</I>. I listened through all 10 tracks—which include, besides two Mehldau compositions, Lennon & McCartney’s “Martha My Dear” and “She’s Leaving Home,” Burt Bacharach’s “Alfie,” Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” and the title tune by Nick Drake.