October 2021 Classical Record Reviews
Trio Mediæval: Solacium, Victoria: Officium hebdomadae sanctae, Ieva Jokubaviciute: Northscapes and Anna Thorvaldsdottir: Enigma.
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LATEST ADDITIONS
October 2021 Jazz Record Reviews
Nina Simone: The Montreux Years, Dmitry Baevsky: Soundtrack, David Helbock: The New Cool and Roy Hargrove/Mulgrew Miller: In Harmony.
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October 2021 Rock/Pop Record Reviews
Grateful Dead: Grateful Dead, Scritti Politti: Cupid & Psyche 85 and Stone Temple Pilots: Tiny Music...Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop.
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Hi-Fi Lo-Fi: 20 Years of the Best-Sounding Indie Rock
As the title of a fan blog puts it, indie is not a genre. It is potentially every genre. It's an attitude, an approach, a commitment to self-expression without regard to, or in spite of, mainstream demands. It's the blend that nobody can label, the outré, the ahead-of-its-time, the defiantly retro.
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Gramophone Dreams #53: RAAL-requisite HSA-1b headphone/loudspeaker amplifier
Today is Monday. Since Saturday, I have changed the amplifier driving my Falcon Gold Badge LS3/5a speakers three timesfrom the Parasound Halo A21+ (250Wpc into 8 ohms) to the Pass Labs XA25 (>25Wpc into 8 ohms) to the Elekit TU-8600S (9Wpc into 8 ohms). Now I am listening to the Falcons via the just-arrived RAAL-requisite HSA-1b headphone and speaker amplifier. This unusual, made-in-Serbia amp is priced at $4500. It's specified to produce 10Wpc into 8 ohms, 20Wpc into 4 ohms, 40Wpc into 2 ohms, and 55Wpc into 1 ohm, these values from the loudspeaker output
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Lou Reed's Dirty Boulevard of Dreams
New York City is a dream you can't haveglitz, glamor, grime, too much to take in from within, too much to understand from afar. It's a metropolitan manifestation of the Heisenberg principle, its nature changing with how you look at it. No matter how you try, you can't see the forest for the skyscrapers.
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Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Déjà vu Sweepstakes!
Register to win one of two Rhino Déjà vu 50th Anniversary Deluxe D2C Vinyl Editions (value $250.00 each), or a limited edition 16"x20" Henry Diltz photo signed by all four members of CSNY (value: $1,500/priceless) we are giving away.
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According to Rhino:
"Presented as a 5 LP set in a beautiful box with a 12 x 12 softcover book, the collection comes illustrated with rarely seen photos from the era and annotated by writer/filmmaker Cameron Crowe, whose revealing liner notes recount the making of the album through stories told by the people who were there, including David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, and Neil Young."
[This Sweepstakes is now Closed.]
Stenheim Alumine Three loudspeaker
The made-in-Switzerland Stenheim Alumine Three floorstanding loudspeaker sells for $32,900/pair. It is not only the most expensive component I've reviewed for Stereophile; it costs more than 10 times (!) as much as my $3000/pair reference Falcon Acoustics Gold Badge LS3/5a speaker. So naturally I wondered: Will it sound 10 times better? And if it does sound 10 times better, what might the nature of the improvements be?
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Re-Tales #13: Getting your hi-fi fix(ed)
Lately I've been hearing stories about people getting back into hi-fi, often from the people themselves. Some are buying new gear, but others have dug out and dusted off older equipment. Demand for electronics repair services was surging even before the pandemic. Once it struck, once and future audiophiles stuck at home plumbed their basements, attics, and storage units and pulled out old hi-fi components, hoping to resurrect them, only to find they weren't working, or not well.
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Should they get 'em fixed?
Antipodes Audio K50 music server
On the face of it, playing and streaming digital music files is a straightforward process. You direct data from various sourcessome local, some "in the cloud"perhaps via a reclocker/signal conditioner to a digital-to-analog converter (DAC). "And the music comes out here."
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Not so simple. Bits, it seems, aren't bits, or not only. A digital datastream is also an analog signal. Noise and other signal errors endemic to multi-function computers not designed primarily for music playback can affect how music sounds. And then there are the practical issues of setting up and connecting everything optimally, and then organizing music files correctly, which can be especially difficult when ripping files from multidisc sets.