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PSB BP7 Subwoofer Unveiled

Apple AirPods Pro 3: First Impressions

LATEST ADDITIONS

Digital Processor Reviews

Chord Electronics Qutest D/A processor

John Atkinson Dec 27, 2018

Back in the mid-1990s, I believed that the design of D/A processors was fundamentally a solved problem. The resistor-ladder, multi-bit DAC chips of the 1980s, with their linearity errors, had been replaced by sigma-delta types that had minimal linearity error down to the lowest signal levels. All that remained for the designers of PCM D/A chips was to increase resolution and dynamic range to the theoretical limits, and to improve the mathematical precision of oversampling digital filters to match the performance of the 20- and 24-bit recordings that had just begun to be released.

Interviews Music and Recording Features

Bill Charlap: Life, Love, Songs, and Pianos

Sasha Matson Dec 27, 2018

Autumn in New Yorkwatching Central Park change colors. Also time to catch the Bill Charlap Trio during their annual residency at the Village Vanguard: Charlap at the piano, Peter Washington on bass, and Kenny Washington at the drums in the Church of Jazz, the room the Bill Evans Trio called home in the 1960s and '70s. Exploring the great traditions of jazz and American song has become a Charlap trademark.

Recording of the Month

Recording of June 1963: Music for Strings

James W. Keeler Dec 24, 2018

Music for Strings
Couperin: Concert Pieces for Cello and Orchestra; Mozart: Divertimento in D, K.136; Corelli: Concerto Grosso No.4, Op.6; Britten: A Simple Symphony
Solisti de Zagreb, Antonio Janigro, cello and director
RCA Victor LSC 2653 (2 LPs). Richard Mohr, prod., Lewis W. Layton, eng, TT: 47:56

From the standpoint of content and musicianship this is a superb collection of delightful music performed with the consummate authority and artistry for which Mr. Janigro and I Solisti de Zagreb are justly famous. The recording, too, while by no means perfect, is at least pre-Dynagroove, which as far as I'm concerned is now a compliment to any RCA Victor release.

Recording of the Month

Recording of August 1963: Nielsen: Symphony No.5

James W. Keeler Dec 24, 2018

Nielsen: Symphony No.5, Op.50
New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein, conductor
Columbia MS-6414 (LP). John McClure, prod. TT: 33:10

This is surely one of the most exciting works written in the twentieth century. and if there is going to be an upsurge of interest in the works of this great Danish composer as a result of this recording, then Mr. Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic will have rendered music lovers an invaluable service.

Jason Victor Serinus

A Christmas Greeting from Bach Collegium Japan

Jason Victor Serinus Dec 22, 2018

Although I'm far more of a "Happy Holidays" audiophile than anything else, the prospect of a high-resolution Christmas-themed recording from Masaaki Suzuki and his superb Bach Collegium Japan led me to their new hybrid SACD issue from BIS, Verbum caro factum est: A Christmas Greeting (BIS-2291). Auditioned as a 24/96 stereo downloaddownloading or streaming are the only ways to access the recording immediately, and in format choices that include surroundMasaaki Suzuki's recording managed to bring smiles, warmth, and good cheer to this admittedly down-on-religion Grinch.

Audacious Audio Tube Power Amp Reviews

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.