LATEST ADDITIONS

The strange trembling vocals, warm synth sounds, and chamber pop movements of Konkylie, When Saints Go Machine’s full-length debut, appealed to me in unusual fashion: slowly at first, confounding my senses for a time, before finally winning me over. With time and repeated listening, the album became one of my very favorites of 2011.

Sarah Lois Vaughan was born on this day in 1924, in my hometown: Newark, NJ. In this clip, taken from a 1958 performance, she sings “Tenderly.”

Thanks must go to Lester Perkins and Jazz on the Tube.

Are there too many audio shows? With the Chicago AXPONA having been held two weeks ago, the Montreal SSI having just concluded, and the New York Audio Show coming up in what their website currently indicates is 16 days, 21 hours, 51 minutes, and 9 seconds away, people are starting to wonder whether we're getting an overload on audio shows. This is a sentiment that I've heard expressed by manufacturers and distributors—and, from the business point of view, their concerns are well founded. Participating in shows is an expensive endeavor, and the benefits in terms of additional business, while real, are difficult to measure.

One of the most memorable musical events of SSI 2013 was the "live-plus-recorded" mini-concert by cellist Vincent Bélanger, presented by MBL. There were several of these every day of the show; Art Dudley wrote about it in an earlier blog posting. I had attended one of these events last year, and ended up playing the cello—after a fashion. This time the special guest was Stereophile publisher Keith Pray, and, as you can see in the picture, he had a great time.

The English translation of the French word image in Salon Son & Image is "picture," or, well, "image." But it's been an open secret for some time that the show is much stronger on the son (sound) than on the image. I saw just one projection video setup at SSI 2013, and there were a few LCD/LED monitors, but no one seemed to pay much attention to them. However, SSI managed to enlist as an exhibitor Photo Service, a major camera store, which offers a wide range of products related to photography. This worked out extremely well for all concerned.

Kudos Audio is a line of British speakers designed by Derek Gilligan, formerly of NEAT, which uses custom drivers made for them by SEAS. The one demoed at SSI 2013 was the X2 ($2900/pair), a modestly-sized floorstander, in a system that included a Mimetism 15.2 integrated ($6690). The source was a CD in a laptop—not conforming to audiophile ideals, but the sound did not seem to suffer from it.

French manufacturer YBA has kept a low profile for several years now, but the brand has been re-launched, with Yves-Bernard André still in charge of design. The reference line products are made in France, but the production of the other YBA products is in Asia. I know that production of YBA's affordable Audio Refinement had problems with that arrangement, but they've apparently learned their lesson, and the new production will have much greater control effected by Yves-Bernard himself. The Passion 650 amplifier ($6999), shown in the photo, was on static display.