LATEST ADDITIONS

It's a not untypical tale. Two veteran engineers, Jason Stoddard, who had extensive experience in product design, development, manufacturing, and marketing, and Mike Moffat, who had an impressive track record designing hi-fi products (footnote 2), got together in June 2010 to start an audio company. What wasn't typical was the new company's brand name: Schiit Audio. What also wasn't typical was the company's business strategy.

In the very first copy of Stereophile I encountered, back when issues were digest size, one review infuriated me. The writer went on at inordinate length about the fine wines he'd consumed during the review period. On and on he went, gushing about the costly drinks, until I exclaimed (in a sentence laced with expletives), "What in the world does any of this have to do with audio?!"

Here It Is: A Tribute To Leonard Cohen
Norah Jones, Peter Gabriel, Gregory Porter, Sarah McLachlan, Luciana Souza, James Taylor, Iggy Pop, Mavis Staples, David Gray, Nathaniel Rateliff, vocals; Bill Frisell, guitar; Immanuel Wilkins, alto saxophone; Kevin Hays, piano, Estey; Scott Colley, bass; Nate Smith, drums; Gregory Leisz, pedal steel guitar; Larry Goldings, Hammond organ
Blue Note B003552102 (CD, available as download, LP). 2022. Larry Klein, prod.; Adam Greenspan, eng.; other engineers for seven vocal tracks.
Performance ****½
Sonics ****

This is not just another Leonard Cohen tribute album. It is an ambitious, unified work of art. The performances are all new. They constitute a profound encounter with a towering figure among North American songwriters.

Tchaikovsky: Symphony 5, Rimsky-Korsakov: Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh—Suite, Mahler: Symphony No.5, Vaughan Williams: String Quartets 1, 2; Holst: Phantasy Quartet and John Luther Adams: Sila: The Breath of the World.

Ethan Philion: Meditations on Mingus, Jakob Bro, Joe Lovano: Once Around the Room: A Tribute to Paul Motian, Brother Jack McDuff: Moon Rappin', Miles Davis: That's What Happened 1982–1985 (The Bootleg Series, Vol.7), Marshall Gilkes: Cyclic Journey and Noah Garabedian: Consider the Stars Beneath Us.

CH Precision's P1 phono preamplifier, which I wrote about in the April 2017 issue, is not going back to its manufacturer. The longer I used it, the more obvious it became that I couldn't part with it, even though I said I couldn't afford it. The cost was stiff even at the accommodation price (at retail, the CH Precision P1 and its optional X1 power supply are $31,000 and $17,000, respectively, footnote 1), but I decided I could afford it, and bought it for myself as a 70th-birthday present. No, I can't hear as well as I did 30 years ago, but my listening is better than ever.