LATEST ADDITIONS

Natalie and I spent this afternoon searching for treasures at Iris Records, on Brunswick Street in downtown Jersey City. It had been weeks since my last visit, and I was happy to see that things had been busy. The small store was overflowing with new arrivals, crates and boxes covering almost every square inch of the floor and arranged neatly on several tables, all titles meticulously organized by genre and price. To offer all of this new stock in the best possible condition, store owner Steve Gritzan has even purchased a VPI HW-16.5 record-cleaning machine—an indispensable tool that every record store should have on hand. Even better: In addition to all their great used titles, Iris now carries a small selection of new LPs. Gritzan says he can order just about anything I might want—if I bring him a list, he'll get started on it. This is dangerously convenient; Iris is only a few steps from my apartment.

There are a lot of reasons to love Gotham—most of them having to do with humans `cause let’s face it there just aren’t many mountain vistas here—but the one that tickles my fancy the most is what Billy Joel (sorry) famously called, the “New York State of Mind.” Jay–Z would have it “Empire State of Mind,” but you get the idea. After a premiere showing of Sounds and Silence, Travels with Manfred Eicher, the new film about the ECM founder, owner and inspiration, there was a brief Q&A period chaired by WNYC's Julie Burstein (left in JA's iPhone photo). The first hand up was in the back of the IFC Center in the West Village.

Today is my birthday; it's the blog's birthday, too.

Another year older, stronger, healthier, happier. Thanks for sharing it with me.

Word went out among the small, frightened woodland animals in this part of upstate New York: If you come down with rabies, go to Art Dudley's place and die under his shed. The latest was a raccoon that showed up last Saturday morning with a face full of burdocks and a head full of pain. Before wedging himself beneath the floor of my freestanding shed, the dying animal produced a series of moans and yips that frightened even my dog, a Jack Russell terrier who appears to have been a Somali pirate in a previous life. For the remainder of that sunny afternoon, my family and I holed up inside the house, unenthused about being bitten by an unpredictable animal with a diseased brain and a foamy mouth. (Feel free to imagine your own political joke in this space. God knows I did.)

I began my July column by talking about how quickly things are changing these days in multichannel audio. What I didn't pay enough attention to is that some things can change quickly enough to create inefficiency. Given that most multichannel digital products are based on digital signal processing (DSP), and many are network-enabled, they can be updated with relative ease. Almost every preamplifier-processor or A/V receiver I've reviewed has needed a firmware update during the reviewing process, and such updates are de rigueur for Blu-ray players, as more and more features (!) are added to new releases. And in addition to providing new performance features, firmware updates often also include corrections for operational glitches that have slipped by the designers and their alpha and beta testers, no matter how assiduously they've done their work.

I’ve been playing games with myself, attempting to set limits and impose rules around my furious, nearly uncontrollable, record-buying spree. I told myself that for every dollar I spent on a record I would deposit a dollar into my savings account. (I tried it for a few days, but became bored. Saving is not nearly as much fun as record-shopping.) Then, a few weeks ago, after dropping a few hundred dollars during binges at Other Music and the Princeton Record Exchange, I told myself that I would impose a strict moratorium: No more records for me until after the New Year. With few exceptions, I had already purchased just about every new record I wanted, or so I tried to convince myself. But then the new Thundercat album hit stores and I had to have it. And then it was the new Girls record. How could I live without that?

Here’s another:

Today, Peachtree Audio announced their new flagship asynchronous preamp/DAC, the Grand Pre, the first in a series of “Grand” products (a power amplifier and an all-in-one integrated amplifier will come later) and the first Peachtree component to have its design, final assembly, and final QC all take place in the US. For audiophiles hoping to "buy American," this should come as interesting news.