LATEST ADDITIONS

Cary Audio CAD-805RS monoblock power amplifier

Art Dudley Dec 20, 2018

There's no place for fashion in epidemiology, aeronautical engineering, or the mining and storage of uranium. Fortunately, domestic audio is less serious, its goals more scattered and ambiguous, than those and a thousand other pursuits.

And so, throughout the 20th century, any number of trends in domestic audio popped up their heads, some remembered as fads, others as legitimate approaches to playback. Among the latter are amplifiers whose output sections operate in single-ended mode, in which the entire signal waveform is amplified by a single device.

Integrated Amp Reviews

Cambridge Audio Edge A integrated amplifier

Ken Micallef Dec 20, 2018

One summer in the mid-2000s I purchased a pair of Cambridge Audio components for my red-headed, tango-dancing Texas girlfriend. She quickly saw through my ruse to install some solid hi-fi in her New Jersey home away from homebut eventually she acquiesced, and soon Michael Martin Murphey (she), the Beatles (me), and Miles Davis (us) filled our weekends with music. Inspired by a Sam Tellig column I read around that time, I paired a Cambridge Azur integrated amplifier and CD player with a pair of Triangle Titus XS minimonitors. The sound produced by this quartet was clean, precise, and altogether pleasurablefor a total of about $1300.

As We See It

If Either of These Amplifiers is RIGHT . . .

John Atkinson Dec 18, 2018

It was January 1986. Stereophile's then publisher, Larry Archibald, and I were driving in his diesel 'Benz sedan from Las Vegas to Santa Fe. We had shaken hands at the just-concluded Consumer Electronics Show on my replacing J. Gordon Holt as the magazine's editor, and now, during the 750-mile drive, we mapped out the strategy to take what was then an "underground," digest-format, somewhat irregularly published magazine to the position of dominance in audio publishing it still enjoys.

Recording of the Month

Recording of January 2019: Into the Fire

Jason Victor Serinus Dec 18, 2018

Joyce DiDonato: Into the Fire
Works by Heggie, Strauss, Debussy, Gruber, Lekeu
Joyce DiDonato, mezzo-soprano; Brentano String Quartet
Erato 573802 (24/96, CD). 2018. Jeremy Hayes, prod.; Steve Portnoi, balance, mastering. DDD. TT: 77:38
Performance ****½
Sonics ****½

On the 2017 Winter Solstice, the astounding Joyce DiDonatothe coloratura mezzo-soprano from Kansas who zips through impossible runs of Rossinian roulades faster than anyone can shuck corntook a break from opera to present a song recital in London's famed Wigmore Hall. With Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer's moving song cycle Into the Fire as its centerpiece, this live recording of DiDonato with the Brentano String Quartet confirms that she is a song interpreter of rare distinction.

Fred Kaplan Music and Recording Features

The Best Jazz Albums of 2018

Fred Kaplan Dec 17, 2018

Sorry I've been away from this space for so long. My day gig (national-security columnist for Slate) has kept me busy (as you can imagine), and I've got a tight deadline on a new book. Still, as Congreve observed, "Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast," and there's plenty of breast-beating savagery out there, so I've continued to listen, and here is my dispatch on the Best Jazz Albums (10 new and two historical discoveries) of 2018.

Jason Victor Serinus

Jordi Savall and Le Concert des Nations Dance, Dance, Dance

Jason Victor Serinus Dec 15, 2018

Terpsichore, the Greek goddess of dance and chorus. How appropriate that her delight in dancing should be honored in Terpsichore: Apotheóse de la Danse baroque (Alia Vox), the latest beautifully produced and packaged Alia Vox SACD from Jordi Savall and his baroque orchestra, Le Concert des Nations. Filled with high energy orchestral music by Jean-Ferry Rebel (16661747) and the even longer-lived Georg Philipp Telemann (16811767), the recording exalts the exuberant French style of instrumental dance music that became popular during the rise of the baroque orchestra in the courts of Kings Henry IV and Louis XIII in the early 17th century.

Integrated Amp Reviews

Cary Audio SLI-100 integrated amplifier

Herb Reichert Dec 13, 2018

My Russian neighbor's blind grandfather, Vlad, has very discriminating earsbut only when I tell him what to listen for. If I don't, he just bitches about my choice of music. And he refuses to listen to "weak" American orchestras.

Not surprisingly, Vlad worships Mikhail Glinka. "Herb! Play Russlan and Ludmilla!" When he asks for "Pyotr Ilyich," I groan and quietly put the vodka back in the freezer.

Gramophone Dreams Phono Cartridge Reviews Phono Preamp Reviews Turntable Reviews

Gramophone Dreams #25: Dr. Feickert, Jelco, Koetsu, My Sonic Lab

Herb Reichert Dec 13, 2018

I needed one black tiddledywink (not provided) to use Dr. Feickert Analogue's three-speed, two-motor, two-armboard Blackbird turntable. The tiddledywink was for covering the Blackbird's painfully bright power-on LED so that it didn't blind me when I cued up a record. The first night, in my dark listening room, this tiny indicator sprayed the wall behind and the ceiling above with more light than a bright-emitting 845 vacuum tube.

News

Dealer Events in New Hampshire & Florida, Friday & Saturday

Stereophile Staff Dec 12, 2018

Friday December 14, at 3pm and 6pm, Fidelis (460 Amherst Street, Nashua, NH 03063) are presenting "An Afternoon with Michael Fremer" (above). Saturday, December 15, 11am3pm, House of Stereo (8780 Perimeter Park Ct #100, Jacksonville, FL 32216) are hosting their 2019 KEF Product Launch event.

Interviews Music and Recording Features

Wayne Shorter: How the Future Would Be

Ken Micallef Dec 11, 2018

Wayne Shorter is 85. His mind moves at warp speed, a million miles from Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, who rescued him from Newark, New Jerseyor the Miles Davis's second great quintet, for which the saxophonist wrote the compositions that would establish his genius. Shorter's constellation of classic Blue Note recordings from 196467Night Dreamer, JuJu, The All Seeing Eye, ETC, The Soothsayer, Adam's Apple, Speak No Evil, Schizophreniais now but a dim cluster of stars in his ever-expanding musical galaxy.