Jersey Boys
Finally, a Replacements Live Album!
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LATEST ADDITIONS
Katz's Corner Episode 20: How Insensitive!
This story originally appeared at InnerFidelity.com
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These specifications confuse consumers, who would be forced to use logarithms and equations to answer the basic questions. We need to make headphone sensitivity and amplifier level specs more user-friendly, useable, interchangeable and effective. So I think it's high time to ditch both sensitivity approaches, and we can do better than both Sennheiser and the IEC if we start thinking outside the box!
Brahms Piano Trios from Ma, Ax, and Kavakos
Overflowing with heart, Brahms' three Trios for violin, cello, and piano are amongst the most venerated chamber works in the literature. Completed over a span of 35 years, they reveal Brahms forever true to his love and longing. Again and again it surfaces, expressed through an irrepressible love for melody, Hungarian and gypsy sentiments, romance and drama that sings and sighs at its most vulnerable in this special, two-disc Sony recording of the Brahms Piano Trios from cellist Yo-Yo Ma, pianist Emanuel Ax, and violinist Leonidas Kavakos.
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Tommy Keene 1958–2017
Indie Rock Guitar Hero Dead at 59.
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Maria Schneider's Jazz Orchestra: Thanksgiving Week at the Jazz Standard
For 13 years now, Maria Schneider and her Jazz Orchestra have played Thanksgiving week at the Jazz Standard in New York City, and, judging from the late set on Tuesday, they just keep getting better and better.
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Our Final Binaural Video Report from the NYAS
Here's our final report from the New York Audio Show. Thank you to everyone who watched our previous videos, all of which featured Herb Reichert (left above in JA's photo) and gave us feedbackpositive and otherwise. We started making these videos as a response to feedback, and will continue monitoring feedback to help improve our future videos.
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Pass Laboratories XA60.8 monoblock power amplifier
Years ago, when I was young and foolish (instead of old and foolish, as now), I was hanging out with a friend at a strip-mall strip club in a small southeastern city. A youngish lady approached our table in G-string and pasties and did a tableside dance. My friend's jaw scraped the floor; I, noting her lack of enthusiasm, was unmoved. The stripper noted my impassivity and stated, with irony that at the time I somehow missed, "You're a hard man."
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John Atkinson, too, is a hard man, at least when it comes to audio gear. When, in January 2014, he reviewed the Pass Laboratories XA60.5 monoblock amplifier, he concluded, "It is the best-sounding amplifier I have ever used." High praise.
Day 2 at the NYAS: a Binaural Video Report
Captured in the corridor: Music Hall's Roy Hall (left) tells Herb Reichert about a system tweak that always results in better sound.
Here’s our second (of three) video show reports from the New York Audio Show that took place earlier this month at Manhattan’s Park Lane Hotel.
Heed Audio Quasar phono preamplifier
As a kid growing up in Milford, Michigan, my big brother always had the classiest clothes, latest records, and sharpest gear. He danced in Cuban-heeled leather boots, I climbed trees in lace-up Keds. He spun Rolling Stones vinyl on a fabric-wrapped Zenith portable with detachable speakers, I blasted the Beatles from a tinny transistor radio. Ten years my senior, big bro drove a Buick bomb (which, late one night, mysteriously caught fire in the garage) and had a girlfriend, Gail, whose plump cheeks and smart clothes embodied modern mid-century Midwestern appeal. I like to think that my brother and I have both aged gracefully. And lately, he's taken to high-end hi-fi with a passion.
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Audeze LCDi4 in-ear headphones
Headphone listening has always been an important part of my audiophile life. In recent years I've been using at home Audeze's large, open-back, circumaural LCD-X headphones, which I bought after reviewing them for the March 2014 issue; and a pair of small Ultimate Ears 18 Pro in-ear monitors, which provide much better isolation on my subway commute to Stereophile's offices in Manhattan. I was intrigued by Audeze's iSine in-ear models, which were introduced in November 2016 and are unique in using planar-magnetic drive-units mounted outside the ear. I thought about reviewing a pair of the affordable iSines, but before I could get around to it, I heard that Audeze was to launch a cost-no-object version, the LCDi4, priced at a substantial $2495/pair. Aspiration got the better of frugality, and I asked for a pair to review.
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