LATEST ADDITIONS

If album sales, longevity of career, position on the leading edge of audio technology, reputation in the music business, and involvement in many of the most important albums in history are the measurements, Bob Ludwig is the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) of music mastering.

"I'm an old goat, anyway," he joked during our multiday, many-hours conversation, centered around his recent retirement announcement and his five-plus decades as a mastering engineer.

If Bob Ludwig is the Michael Jordan of music mastering—and the case can definitely be made—then this is big news. I'll repeat it for emphasis: Bob Ludwig is retiring. Ludwig stopped taking new work on June 30, 2023.

If music reflects the life of the person who created it—if, for example, we can hear Mozart's inner turmoil in his operas—then Warren Zevon's song catalog is uncommonly revealing. Headless mercenaries, killer rapists, and yes, impeccably dressed werewolves with a taste for pina coladas are all part of the colorful world of WZ's twisted imagination and especially of his masterpiece, 1978's Excitable Boy, recently reissued by Mobile Fidelity on two 180gm LPs cut at 45rpm.

The first true high-end component I owned was an Audio Research SP-10. I reviewed this two-box, tubed preamplifier in the May 1984 issue of the English magazine Hi-Fi News & Record Review. "The SP-10 presented [recorded] information in a more coherent, less distorted manner than any preamp I've tried," I wrote in the review, concluding that "the SP-10 made me realize how many good records I owned." I purchased the SP-10 and brought the preamplifier with me when I moved to the US. Four decades later, I still have that SP-10. "Every now and again, when I want to be reminded of the magic it brings to my music, I set it up, plug in the tubes, and spend an evening spoiling my ears," I wrote for an article in Ken Kessler's 2020 book on the history of Audio Research.

I was planning to review the latest product from Audio Research, the I/50 integrated amplifier, which costs $5500, earlier this year. However, with the uncertainty back then about the company's ownership, I postponed the review. When the news broke in June that Audio Research had been acquired by AR Tube Audio Corporation, a privately owned corporation that includes Valerio Cora of Canadian loudspeaker manufacturer Acora Acoustics as a director—see Industry Update in this issue—I unboxed the I/50 and set it up in my listening room.

Henry Threadgill Ensemble: The Other One
12-piece ensemble; Threadgill, conductor
Pi PI97 (CD, available as download). 2023. Liberty Ellman, prod.; Stephen Cooper, Eric Shekerjian, engs.
Performance ****½
Sonics ****½

At 79, Pulitzer Prize winner and NEA Jazz Master Henry Threadgill is one of the last men standing among the founding fathers of the jazz avant-garde. Because his output of recordings is not voluminous, every new Threadgill release is an event. The Other One is more of an event than most because of its ambition (it is an album-length suite) and its scale: It introduces a new 12-piece ensemble.

In the excellent My Back Pages essay that closes this issue, Londoner Phil Brett writes, "I bought my first albums in my teens for £2 then sold them off years later for 50p each."

Why did he sell his records? "[I]n those days, most vinyl had the thickness of a butterfly wing without the quality. As I grew older, I went through—ahem—several relationships hence several changes of residence. The hassle of carting boxes of records around grew wearisome; CDs were so much lighter, and often, they sounded better."

Phil predicted Stereophile readers would be horrified by what he did those many years ago. Maybe so—but for many, the horror will arise from regret—at the memory of doing the same thing themselves back in the day. As I did.

I was surprised to see, in the window of my local charity shop in a corner of north London, a display of 1980s Melody Maker magazines featuring some of my favorite bands. Nestled alongside second-hand frocks and pieces of crockery were The Redskins, Scritti Politti, Johnny Marr, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

The Redskins produced one rather fine album, which attempted to marry left-wing politics with northern soul. Frankie was seen as outrageous in its day; "Relax" was banned on several radio shows, and some record shops refused to stock it. Now both appeared proudly in the window of a second-hand shop that raises money for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Intrigued, I went in to find out what the story was. I was in luck: The person responsible for the display was working behind the counter. It wasn't, as I had assumed, a middle-aged bloke reliving his youth, reminiscing about a time when he had a full head of hair (that was me), but a young woman, probably born 20 years after those Melody Makers were published.

Four products were subjected to second opinions in recent issues: Herb Reichert reviewed the Mk.II version of Klipsch's Reference Premiere RP-600M loudspeaker (above left); Ken Micallef wrote about his time with the MoFi Electronics SourcePoint 10 loudspeaker (above right); John Atkinson lived with the CH Precision I1 Universal integrated amplifier (above); and Julie Mullins auditioned Triangle's Antal 40th Anniversary Edition loudspeaker.