I’ve listened to Herbie Hancock’s new CD, <I>River: The Joni Letters</I> (on Verve), three times now, and it gets better with each spin. This is a Joni Mitchell tribute album, with Hancock on acoustic piano heading a straight-ahead jazz quintet (including Wayne Shorter on soprano sax and Dave Holland on bass), fronted on six of the 10 tracks by various singers.
You can do it with <a href="http://www.converse.com/index.asp?bhcp=1#home_red_2007">Chuck Taylors</a>, you can do it with <a href="http://www.miniusa.com/#/build/configurator/mini-m">Mini Coopers</a>, you can do it with <a href="http://www.cobworks.com/workshops.htm">Cob Houses</a>, and now you can even do it with <a href="http://www.stereophile.com/news/101507martinlogan/">loudspeakers</a>. MartinLogan, ever fashion conscious, has launched a Custom Shop, allowing music lovers to style their own loudspeakers.
On the eve of the film's UK release, Neil Gaiman muses on how he came to write <I>Stardust</I>.
It's just outside, looking in.
This Gay Talese <I>Esquire</I> profile of the chairman of the board is frequently cited as the best celebrity portrait ever published. I don't know about that—I'd rate both Wolcott Gibbs' <I>New Yorker</I> deconstruction of Henry Robinson Luce and Lillian Ross' Hemingway profile just as highly.
Ray Kimber of Kimber Kable strongly believes that audiophiles need to be exposed to live music. He arranged for one of the ensembles he records with his Isomike system, the Fry Street Quartet, to perform a series of concerts at RMAF. After the players finished a Haydn Quartet in the Marriott's lobby, the audience went into the Kimber listening room across the corridor to hear the same piece on Ray's $500k reference surround system, described <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/rmaf2007/101307isomike/">earlier in the blog</A>.
It was 5:30 p.m. on Saturday. As Day Two was coming to a close, this sleep-deprived audiophile determined to end the day on a high note. Ah, the Cary/Dali room. That's sure to be a winner. Thank God, it was.
Walter Liederman and Danny Richie next showed me the mammoth LS9 (named for its nine planar magnetic drivers). Priced at an unbelievable $6000/pair considering their size and complexity, the LS9s were coupled with Al Stiefel's fine Red Rock Audio 50Wpc Renaissance Monoblock amplifiers ($39,750/pair), Red Rock prototype preamplifier, Abbingdon Music Research CD-77 player ($8500), Grand Prix Audio Monaco turntable ($19,500), and Red Rock Audio cables. Components were supported by the Monaco Modular Isolation Rack ($4750) and Monaco Amplifier Isolation System ($1499). Grand Prix designer Alvin Lloyd says of these plexiglass shelf stands, "I will argue that our stands are the most efficient and highest-performing isolation products in the industry."
Mark Schifter and Walter Liederman of AV123 continue to blow my mind. To their astoundingly low-priced line of quality loudspeakers, only available through the AV123 website, they have added two large loudspeakers from GR Research. Designed by Danny Richie, who previously designed the Epiphany Loudspeakers and is now redoing the crossovers in the Ushers—I am told that Wes Phillips will be reviewing one of Danny’s Usher make-overs for <I>Stereophile</I>—Danny is shown standing next to the GR Research LS6. Priced at $4500/pair, the speakers feature eight 6.5” woofers and six planar magnetic drivers. The LS6 not only boasts a 20Hz–20kHz frequency response, but also features bass drivers that are adjustable according to what the room and system can handle.
Driven by the Triode Corporation Japan's TRV-M300SE 20W 300B parallel single-ended monoblocks ($4199/pair) and TRV-4SE tube preamp ($1799), and fed by a very-slow-to-cue dCS SACD player, the Cain&Cain Wall-O-Sound (W3) ($3300), designed by Gordon Rankin of Wavelength Audio, did a superb job reproducing the true timbre of a piano. Throwing a huge soundstage, with wonderful height and depth, this little system had me writing "really beautiful" in my notebook.