LATEST ADDITIONS

I followed the throng towards the Straight2Tape booth. A darkened entryway beckoned, promising access to a hidden music haven. But as I neared, the illusion shattered. The passageway was a masterfully crafted cardboard facade, complete with lifesize musicians frozen in mid-performance, a gleaming microphone outstretched, and a realistic pop filter catching the nonexistent light.

Jazz leads a hand-to-mouth existence. It was born in the red light district of New Orleans in the early 20th Century, and has never fully overcome its disreputable origins. Jazz lacks the support from governments, foundations, and rich donors that other, more decorous art forms enjoy. Jazz is too much of the street to be considered high culture, yet its audience is tiny compared to the masses who consume popular music. Pop stars like Taylor Swift perform in huge stadiums. Important jazz musicians play the Bar Bayeux in Brooklyn.

In the Tune Audio/Trafomatic room, the Tune Audio Marvel (€15,840/pair), a 97dB, 8 ohm nominal, two-way, horn loaded loudspeaker, stood sci-fi bold and fantastic looking in slate gray with a candy apple red horn. The Marvel’s single 8" full range driver joined to a folded back-horn was paired to a 1" compression driver given expression by an epoxy compound tractrix horn.

I get excited when a room showing “budget" gear knocks me for a loop. As is sometimes the case, a well-curated, carefully set up budget system can make music in spades, hitting the high notes of tone, staging, and dynamics.

I know from experience that the manner in which a sound system occupies its environment affects every listening session, its feel and its quality. Which is what first attracted my attention to Fern & Roby products: This is serious, quality audio gear that looks elegant and unpretentious. The component I'm about to describe, Fern & Roby's new, $8500 Amp No. 2 integrated amplifier, is bureau friendly. It looks more stylish than tech-savvy, and it is not big or heavy, but its sound quality would put the sound of many amp farms to shame. A system consisting of an Amp No. 2, a pair of Raven speakers, and a Montrose turntable exemplifies owner-founder Christopher Hildebrand's materials-based, simple-is-better, form-follows-function design ethic.

I sometimes joke about how audio designers create products that resemble themselves, not just in how they look, but also in the design approach used, and especially the way they sound. So, we have tall, cool, pragmatic Scandinavians making gear like the lean, elegant Børresen loudspeakers, while the Italians build luscious curvy equipment endowed with natural wood and leather, like Sonus Faber speakers and Unison Research amplifiers. Continuing this blatant stereotyping, we have Acoustic Signature founder Gunther Frohnhöfer, a stout German known for creating precision-built turntables that are as solid-looking as he is.

When I visited the Acoustic Signature factory in 2023, I watched as they hewed massive slabs of aluminum into beautiful, heavyweight turntables. This approach is the opposite of the lightweight-but-rigid philosophy embraced by Rega, and while the resulting performance has different strengths, I would argue that it is at least equally valid. As with Rega, Acoustic Signature products have a purposeful simplicity, in a way that would allow a nonaudiophile to instantly recognize what their function is.

For all its insidious ferocity, the COVID ordeal also spawned a new musical genre: pandemic records. Stuck indoors like everyone else, some musicians found ways to express their creativity at home, often exploring new repertoire. While some of the resulting albums were myopic and indulgent, others—McCartney III for example—confirmed that artists who need to create will find ways. Trapped indoors, New York singer/actor Hilary Gardner found her musical muse wandering toward an unexpected place. "The songs I was initially drawn to—because I'm in this one-bedroom apartment in downtown Brooklyn—were about life on the trail, out in the natural world, generally being alone," she told me in a recent Zoom call, recalling the claustrophobia of that time. "They were songs that either embraced that feeling or were kind of rolling around in the melancholy of solitude. I wanted that thematic thread of being on the trail to connect all the tunes."