Happy Christmas: The Beatles Fan Club Singles
Connecting with your most loyal and engaged fans is not a marketing strategy that was born with the advent of Facebook and Twitter.
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LATEST ADDITIONS
ELO Vinyl Set Sweepstakes
Register to win a copy of ELO's 2LP collector's picture disc edition of Out of the Blue we are giving away.
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According to the company:
"One of the indisputable masterpieces--and most commercially successful titles--in the ELO canon, Out of the Blue, the group's seventh studio album, was originally released in October 1977."
[This Sweepstakes is now closed.]
Seattle and Dausgaard Welcome Us to Nielsen's World
For those unfamiliar with the symphonies of Danish composer Carl Nielsen (18651931)that includes methe startling opening of his Third Symphony, "Sinfonia espansiva," will undoubtedly come as a shock. Its relentless pounding chords, played at an accelerating pace by the entire orchestra on the same pitch, may owe more than a little to Beethoven's Third Symphony, "Eroica," but their language is far more modern, and reflective of an era profoundly unsettled. Heard in high-resolution stereo (24/96 WAV) in the new live recording of Nielsen's Symphonies No. 3 and 4 from the Seattle Symphony, conducted by their Music Director Designate, Thomas Dausgaard, the symphony's opening volley seems calculated to catch us off guard, and convince us to listen with care to whatever may follow.
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My Top 10 Jazz Albums of 2017
It's that time of the year when I shift away from the world's calamities to some of its finest achievements (for a minute anyway), which is to say, here is my list of the best jazz albums of 2017. Elaborations, with sound clips (often links to entire tracks) can be found in the version that I've written of this for my main gig at Slate, though followers of this blog will noteand will be reminded in some of the links belowthat I've covered some of these albums in this space over the year.
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Sennheiser HD 660 S Over-Ear Open Headphones
This story originally appeared at InnerFidelity.com
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For now it's sufficient to state that the Sennheiser HD 600 and HD 650 are probably the most highly regarded enthusiast headphone in the world, and I highly recommend both. The HD 650 is a bit too warm sounding for me (just a bit), and the HD 600 is my favorite of the two. Let's see if the HD 660 S can continue the legend!
Recording of August 1975: The Complete Firesign Theater Recordings
You have probably read speaker reports that suggested that you audition with natural sounds like clanking chains, storms, animals and other things that give an easy reference to live experience. The problem is that most sound-effects albums are a real bore, dominated by reject Walt Disney announcers with adenoid problems.
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Kuzma Stabi turntable & Stogi tonearm
I first learned of the Kuzma Stogi at the 1993 Winter CES in Las Vegas. In VPI's room at the Sahara, a portly, black tonearm was sitting proudly atop the new VPI TNT Series 3 turntable. Pointing straight at me from the center of its massive, exceptionally stout frame was a tapered armtube the diameter of a swollen thumb. The fact that this unknown (to me) tonearm was chosen to sit atop a turntable as respected as the TNT told me I was looking at a serious new product. VPI's Harry Weisfeld was standing nearby, beaming as usual, to answer the barrage of questions that sprang from my lips as I leaned over for a closer inspection. Who? What? Where? When? Why? How much?
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MQA Tested, Part 1
I don't think I've ever seen an audio debate as nasty as the one over Master Quality Authenticated (MQA), the audio-encoding/decoding technology from industry veterans Bob Stuart, formerly of Meridian and now CEO of MQA Ltd., and Peter Craven. Stuart is the company's public face, and that face has been the target of many a mud pie thrown since the technology went public two years ago. Some of MQA's critics are courteousa few are even well-informedbut the nastiness on-line is unprecedented, in my experience.
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MQA: Some Claims Examined
"The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point."Claude Shannon
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Since its announcement at the end of 2014, Master Quality Authenticated, the MQA encoding/decoding system, has spawned outspoken criticism. Some of the more thoughtful negative reactions have come from engineers such as Dan Lavry, Bruno Putzeys, and Daniel Weiss. Others have been expressed by manufacturers of digital products: the late Charley Hansen at Ayre Acoustics, for example, along with Jason Stoddard and Mike Moffat at Schiit Audio, John Siau at Benchmark Media Systems, and Jim Collinson at Linn Products. Some have been audio writers: Doug Schneider, at SoundStage!, and Paul Miller and Jim Lesurf, at Hi-Fi News. Most vociferous have been anonymous website posters. As Jim Austin remarks in his examination of MQA's decoding of impulse-response data elsewhere in this issue, "the nastiness online is unprecedented."
Headphone Event in Manhattan Tuesday
Tuesday, December 12, 27pm, New York retailer In Living Stereo (2 Great Jones Street, Manhattan, NY 10003) is holding a special headphone event featuring the entire line of Audeze headphones, Woo Audio tube headphone amplifiers and the Hugo TT, Mojo, and new Poly wireless streamer for the Mojo from Chord Electronics.
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