In the beginning, I had a room adjacent to my office—a room filled with bicycles, hi-fi gear, and assorted crap I'd never gotten around unpacking since our last move. Feeling ambitious, I thought I might turn it into a guest room, and emptied it.
Revolver? More like <I>evolver</I>: 80 years after the first electrically driven record players became available, professional and amateur engineers continue to seek new ways to spin LPs with ever-greater steadiness and precision.
In the January 2010 issue of <I>Stereophile</I> I <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/integratedamps/marantz_pm5003_integrated_amp… effusively</A> about the $450 Marantz PM5003 integrated amplifier. Not only was I impressed with the sound, build quality, and features of this very affordable component, but, intrigued by how it might be combined with other gear to build a complete entry-level system for about a thousand bucks, I began to ponder other entry-level components that might nicely complement it. My goal here, of course, is to inspire a new generation of young audiophiles. I felt a turntable would be a good place to start.
The guitarist John Fahey was born on February 28, 1939, and died just days before what would have been his 62nd birthday, on February 22, 2001. Like so many other beautiful things that continue to have enormous impact on my life, Fahey’s music was introduced to me by <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/clouds_taste_metallic/">Miche…;. The album was 1997’s <i>City of Refuge</i>. We were in our second year at Fairleigh Dickinson University, in the second year of our relationship. Michelle had claimed the album from our campus radio station and brought it back to our dorm room and played it for me.
Though the recordings sell in <A HREF="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/29/AR20100… numbers</A>, the real thing continues to thrive. Do you attend classical music concerts?
The relationship between the internet and music continues to evolve in new and bizarre ways. The latest is Guvera, a site that offers free music downloads, that the principals say uses the sponsorship model in new and they hope successful ways and keeps everyone—from artist to label to consume—happy. When you register for the site, they ask you a battery of questions about your likes and dislikes and then you’re free to search for a song or an artist. The site will then direct you to a channel or channels, sponsored by an advertiser, which has what you’re looking for. Using the information from those initial customers’ surveys and then your subsequent download history, the site’s algorhythms find the target audience for certain advertisers and grab their eyeballs in a better way than pop up or strip ads. They also tell the advertisers what music the customers they want to reach listen to. The advertiser pays the royalties on the music to whoever holds the copyright. In other words, either the record label or the artist gets paid. It ain’t stealing.
The March 2010 issue of <i>Stereophile</i> is now on newsstands. Open it up and you’ll see that Steve Guttenberg has rediscovered his faith in vinyl. Hooray! What did it for him? A new turntable: the VPI Classic. “Coming back to vinyl,” Steve writes, “I now see that digital’s primary fault is that it encourages passive listening.”
Last night at <a href="http://lepoissonrouge.com/">Le Poisson Rouge</a>,<br>
<a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/four_tet_there_is_love_in_you… Hebden</a> made all the kids<br>
slither and groove.
It’s been nearly a week since PBS’ broadcast of the White House concert of music from the civil-rights era, and its sounds and images keep popping up in my brain.