A Case of the Jitters
"How sour sweet music is / When time is broke and no proportion kept!"
William Shakespeare, King Richard II, V, v, 42
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William Shakespeare, King Richard II, V, v, 42
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Best Wishes for the New Year
I'm sitting here in front of the trusty Toshiba 286 laptop on December 31, 1992, stuck with apparently incurable writer's block; in a couple of hours, we will be taking off <I>en famille</I> for the latest of Larry Archibald's legendary New Year's Eve parties. I wish I had something to write about for this month's "As We See It" essay; I wish...I wish...you know, there are a number of things I really wish for right now, yet I don't believe there is a component out there that can give me what I want.
Beer of the Year
I've got to agree with my main man, Michael Lavorgna: Dale's Pale Ale from the Oskar Blues Brewery in Lyons, Colorado, wins the award for best beer of 2008.
Love Lockdown
Click the external link to hear (and see) JA's current fave demo track.
Eminent Technology LFT-16 loudspeaker
There is much to admire and to enjoy in this idiosyncratically charming hybrid loudspeaker. Eminent Technology has been around for about 25 years. Founder Bruce Thigpen was a pioneer in air-bearing technology, and ET's first product was a well-regarded air-bearing tonearm. The company later developed and was awarded patents for its Linear Field Transducers (LFTs): <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/308et">push-pull loudspeaker panels</A> that operate on the magnetic rather than the electrostatic principle. Arraying magnets both front and rear of the plastic-membrane diaphragm eliminates a problem inherent in many planar-magnetic designs: as excursion increases, the magnetic restorative force diminishes. As can be expected, this technology is not efficient at reproducing bass, so most such speakers have been hybrids.
Joint Recording of June 1991: The Oxnard Sessions, Vol.1
<B>MIKE GARSON: <I>The Oxnard Sessions, Volume One</I></B><BR>
Mike Garson, piano; Bob Summer, trumpet; Bob Shephard, sax; Rick Zunigar, electric guitar; Brian Bromberg, acoustic bass; Billy Mintz, drums<BR>
Reference Recordings RR-37 (LP), RR-37CD (CD*). Keith O. Johnson, eng.; J. Tamblyn Henderson, Jr., Marcia Martin, prods. AAA/DDD. TTs: 49:53, 75:51*
Joint Recording of June 1991: You Won't Forget Me
<B>SHIRLEY HORN: <I>You Won't Forget Me</I></B><BR>
Shirley Horn, voice, piano; Charles Ables, bass; Steve Williams, drums. With: Miles Davis, trumpet; Buck Hill, trumpet; Branford Marsalis, tenor saxophone; Wynton Marsalis, trumpet; Toots Thielemans, harmonica, guitar; Buster Williams, bass; Billy Hart, drums<BR>
Verve Digital 847 482-2 (CD only). Richard Seidel, Joel Siegel, prods.; David Baker, eng. DDD. TT: 71:13
Hi-Rez Downloads Ring In the New Year
The Deutsche Grammophon <A HREF="http://www2.deutschegrammophon.com/">webshop</A> and <A HREF="http://www.hdtracks.com ">HDtracks</A> have special New Year's gifts for audiophiles: more CD-quality and high-resolution downloads.
The Fifth Element #51
The Gini Systems "LS3/5a" is an unlicensed and inexact replica of the celebrated LS3/5a outside (remote location) broadcast monitoring loudspeaker originally developed by the BBC in the early 1970s. (For a précis of the LS3/5a's history, click <<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/thefifthelement/690">here</A>.)
Listening #72
I'm old enough to remember when "Made in Japan" was an insult. As a child, I saw that phrase on only the cheapest or craziest toys—some stamped out of tin and cupped together by a tab with a fiendish edge, some molded from a distinctively smooth, brittle plastic. The latter included a wind-up bunny on wheels that my father brought home one day: my favorite toy, ever. (It came with a double-barreled dart gun that I seldom used, partly because I loved the bunny too much to shoot it, and partly because the suction-cup darts didn't stick to that kind of plastic in the first place.)