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PSB BP7 Subwoofer Unveiled

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LATEST ADDITIONS

Stephen Mejias

Diogenes: Digital Home for Experimental Music

Stephen Mejias Aug 17, 2012

Over at AudioStream, my man Michael Lavorgna mentions Diogenes: Digital Home for Experimental Music. I stumbled upon the site yesterday. Thinking that ML would love it, I forwarded the link to him immediately. I was right!

For the adventurous music lover who craves new, unusual sounds&#151stuff that might challenge, that might delight, and that will certainly expand your mind&#151and for the audiophile who primarily uses a computer as a source, Diogenes is an online heaven.

Fred Kaplan

John Abercrombie Quartet, Within a Song

Fred Kaplan Aug 15, 2012

The guitarist John Abercrombie's latest, Within a Song (on ECM) is something of a high-wire act: delicate music of an uninsistent intensity, a quiet swing, that hangs together or collapses on the ensemble's sustenance of balance. The musicians hereJoe Lovano on tenor sax, Drew Gress on bass, Joey Baron on drumsare masters at this sort of thing (and many other things too), and so it's a riveting album. Even when they coast, swish, and twirl along the slightest thread, you're carried along (or I was anyway).

News

Enzo Natali R.I.P.

John Atkinson Aug 14, 2012

Just a brief comment to note the passing on Saturday August 11 of Italian audio distributor Enzo Natali, pictured at the 2012 CES second from left above with UK distributor Ricardo Franassovici (left) and Enzo's two sons Luca and Marco (right and far right). (My thanks to Ricardo for allowing me to publish both this picture and the one below.)

Budget Component Reviews Digital Processor Reviews Computer Audio Reviews

Musical Fidelity V-DAC II D/A processor

Sam Tellig Aug 13, 2012

There's so much uncertainty and confusion surrounding computer audio and high-resolution downloads. Which hi-rez formats will win out? How do you store the downloads you've bought? (Easy. Don't buy them.) How do you access them? Will digital rights management (DRM) cramp your style, or data-storage fees for cloud computing crumple your wallet?

Tube Power Amp Reviews

McIntosh Laboratories MC275 power amplifier

Sam Tellig Aug 13, 2012

Tubes, tubes, tubes.

The amps (and preamps) keep coming.

McIntosh Laboratories is back in the act with a limited-edition revival of the MC275 tube amplifier, the original of which was produced from May 1961 through July 1973one of the longest model runs in hi-fi history.

New companies devoted to tube gear keep cropping upin recent years, America's VAC and Cary and Canada's Sonic Frontiers. The same thing appears to be going on in the UK. The pages of British magazines are filled with new tube gear.

Ariel Bitran

Getting Back into Vinyl, Part 2

Ariel Bitran Aug 13, 2012

“Hi, Ariel? This is Steve Cohen at In Living Stereo. I just opened up your turntable box. There are some sweatpants in here. Oh, and the tonearm cable is missing.”

“MISSING?”

“Yes.”

Ariel Bitran

Getting Back into Vinyl, Part 1.5

Ariel Bitran Aug 10, 2012

Kyle studied Film and TV at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. He had a freakish obsession with penguins and spent hours at a time glued to his Macbook watching downloads of Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing. I studied marketing at NYU’s Stern School of Business, counted down the days till the release of Guitar Hero I for Playstation Two, and once paid $20 for a broken drummer monkey known as Trick Star because I wanted to feel free and alive. In the summer of 2006, Kyle and I decided to start listening to vinyl. Why? Because vinyl was cool, and we were not.

Stephen Mejias

U-Turn Audio’s $150 Orbit turntable

Stephen Mejias Aug 10, 2012

Stereophile’s editorial assistant, Ariel Bitran, directed my attention to this USA Today article on an interesting turntable from U-Turn Audio, a company founded by three close friends&#151Ben Carter, Bob Hertig, and Peter Maltzan&#151all in their early 20s, who were tired of playing records on cheap USB turntables.

Fred Kaplan

Ella & Louis Again, Quality Records Pressing, 45rpm

Fred Kaplan Aug 10, 2012

Last December, I posted a swooning review of Acoustic Sounds' two-disc, 45rpm, 200-gram Quality Records Pressings of Ella & Louis, the 1956 Verve album of duets with Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong (backed by Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown, Herb Ellis, and Buddy Rich), which may be the most delightful vocal album everand, in this pressing, perhaps the most amazing-sounding.

Now Chad Kassem, the reissue house's proprietor, has come out with the 1957 sequel, Ella & Louis Again (same cast, but with Louis Bellson replacing Rich on drums, for the better). It's swoon time all over. . .

Headphone Reviews InnerFidelity

The Inexpensive and Terrific Noontec Zoro

Tyll Hertsens Aug 10, 2012

This story originally appeared at InnerFidelity.com

Out of the blue I get an email from an operations and logistics manager at an electronics distribution company I've never heard of about a headphone made by a company I've never heard of claiming these $100 Chinese Beats Solo look-alike headphones will likely make it to my Wall of Fame. Yeah, right.

Then I heard them.