LATEST ADDITIONS

New recordings of Julius Eastman compositions aren't as rare as they were a decade ago. Eastman's profile has grown with each repetition of his story, which seems to become more dramatic with each iteration. Trained at the Curtis Institute of Music; worked with Peter Maxwell Davies, Meredith Monk, and Petr Kotik; composed significant works often for instrument multiples (four pianos, 10 cellos); then drugs, homelessness, and dying alone in a hospital at the age of 49. A recent resurrection has brought new recordings, new research, and new visibility. An exciting recent realization of his 1974 composition Femenine, recorded jointly by Talea Ensemble and Harlem Chamber Players, offers fresh perspective. It led me to listen to some older releases, some with the composer himself performing.

In 1989, I bought my second pair of Rogers LS3/5a's from a guy on Staten Island who had them hooked up to a Musical Fidelity A1 integrated amplifier. After playing the speakers for me, he began removing his zip-cord speaker cables and paused to show me how, at the amplifier end, his red-plastic Pomona Electronics banana plugs had partially melted from the A1's heat. We both laughed.

After it first appeared in 1985, the A1 quickly became famous for its hot top plate. The top plate got as hot as it did because it was used as a heatsink for the output transistors, which were biased highly into class-A. The A1's hot top made tabloid headlines, but for me it was its bold, sinewy, un-transistory sound and timeless, sharply drawn styling that distinguished it from cooler running Brit-fi competitors such as Audiolab's 8000A, Creek's 4040, A&R Cambridge's A60, and NAD's 3020.

Now it's back, priced at $1779, looking and feeling cooler than before.

It started one evening when I was killing time watching YouTube videos and stumbled across a 2017 talk given by Jonathan Carr, Lyra's brilliant cartridge designer (footnote 1). After discussing his design and Lyra's manufacturing processes for about 18 minutes, Carr opens the floor to questions. Someone asks which of the many cartridge setup parameters he feels is the most important. I was floored when the first thing Carr said was that "horizontal tracking error is not very important at all." What? I couldn't believe I was hearing this from the guy who writes owner's manuals with super-specific specifications, like tracking force measured to a 100th of a gram and loading recommendations with wide but oddly specific ranges like 97.6 to 806 ohms. Did he really believe that the tonearm geometry calculations of Löfgren, Stevenson, et al, weren't such a big deal?

For decades I have painstakingly used the best tools available to perfect these settings with every cartridge I install; now a guy whose opinion I respect deeply is saying it's not very important.

Every product listed here has been reviewed in Stereophile. Everything on the list, regardless of rating, is genuinely recommendable. Occasionally we get letters of complaint from manufacturers who object to being included in, say, Class B—but inclusion in Class B is a thing to be proud of.

Within each category, products are listed by class; within each class, they're in alphabetical order, followed by their price, a review synopsis, and a note indicating the issues in which the review, and any subsequent follow-up reports, appeared. "Vol.47 No.7" indicates our July 2024 issue, for example. "WWW" means the review is also posted online.

The "Bowers" in the name of British manufacturer Bowers & Wilkins (B&W) refers to founder John Bowers, whom I got to know fairly well before he passed in 1987. In recent years, I've reviewed two Bowers & Wilkins loudspeakers: the 705 Signature two-way standmount in the December 2020 issue and the Diamond Series 804 D4 three-way floorstander in the January 2022 issue. More recently, Tom Fine reviewed the three-way, floor-standing Signature Series 801 D4 in March 2024.

Currently there are two models in the Signature Series, which was launched in 2023 to pay tribute to the company's groundbreaking John Bowers Silver Signature from the early 1990s: the 801 D4 and the subject of this review, the two-way 805 D4 standmount, which B&W describes as its "highest performance standmount ever."

North Carolina hi-fi dealer Audio Advice has been busy lately. As I reported in last month's Industry Update, the company recently acquired The Audio Lab, a longtime dealership based in Wilmington. As this issue went to press, Audio Advice was getting ready for Audio Advice Live, the show they put on annually at the Sheraton Raleigh Hotel. Just before showtime, Stereophile spoke with Audio Advice CEO Scott Newnam and COO Gregg Chopper via Zoom. We asked about the expansion and their approach.

Jerome Sabbagh: Heart
Sabbagh, tenor saxophone; Joe Martin, bass; Al Foster, drums
Analog Tone Factory ATF 001 (LP). 2024. Jerome Sabbagh, Pete Rende, prods.; James Farber, Pete Rende, Aki Nishimura, Ben Miller, Bernie Grundman, engs.
Performance ****
Sonics *****

It's rare for an artist to win Recording of the Month honors for consecutive albums released within a few months of each other, and frankly, I don't feel great about it. But I cannot pass over Heart, the latest album from Jerome Sabbagh, which he recorded in a distinguished trio with Joe Martin on bass and the legendary Al Foster on drums.