December 2021 Jazz Record Reviews
The Cookers: Look Out!, David Sanford Big Band: A Prayer for Lester Bowie, Orrin Evans: The Magic of Now and Marcin Wasilewski Trio: En Attendant.
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LATEST ADDITIONS
December 2021 Rock/Pop Record Reviews
Steely Dan Live: Northeast Corridor, Saint Etienne: I've Been Trying to Tell You and Adia Victoria: A Southern Gothic.
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Getting Better Bass From Your Loudspeaker System - Live Discussion Presented by Sonus faber
LIVE: Thursday, December 16, 2021 - 12:00PM ET
Sonus faber’s American Branch Manager, William Kline, and Product Marketing and Experience Director, McIntosh Group, Joshua Dellinger, discuss how to extract the best bass performance from your loudspeaker system.
UPDATE: This webinar is now available for replay!
Revinylization #24: Blue Note Classic Vinyl: Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage & Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch!
In the mid-'60s, modern jazz pivoted. Charlie Parker, the previous era's key revolutionary, had been dead for a decade. "Hard bop," the soul-and-back-beat variant of Parker's bebop, was running out of steam. The Beatles were rocking the world, and jazz would never recover as a branch of "popular music." In response or indifference to these tough transitions, jazz musicians set sail on several experimental paths. In those first few years, the most adventurous voyages were mapped and carved out at Blue Note Records.
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The Importance of Tells: Installing a Phono Cartridge By Ear
In poker, "tells" are subtle physical or verbal actions that give away the strength of players' hands.
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I am not a poker player, but I am an audiophile, and I use a variety of "tells" as my prime tools in critical listening. You know my worn-out line: "You can't hear what you're not listening for."
Analog Corner #274: SMc Audio AC Nexus power conditioner, Kuzma 4Point 9 tonearm
Why am I once again falling down the rabbit hole of alternating current? A while back, I committed to listening to SMc Audio's AC Nexus power conditioner, designed by SMc founder Steve McCormack and distributed by dealer Hi Fi One.
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Technics SU-R1000 integrated amplifier
Technics, an arm of the Japanese giant Panasonic Corporation, has long been a major player in the hi-fi world, even if, in some recent decades, it stayed below the radar.
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In the 1970s, analog-centric audiophiles particularly praised the Technics SP-10, the world's first direct drive turntable. Created by Matsushita engineer Shuichi Obata in 1969, the SP-10 and its successors became the standard in vinyl playback for American radio stations during that heyday of broadcast radio.
Gramophone Dreams #55: Mola Mola Tambaqui D/A processor
Since the plague arrived, several of my closest audio friends have been chattering and bugging me constantly, not about masks, vaccines, Trump, or Biden but about Bruno Putzeys's digital-to-analog converter, the Mola Mola Tambaqui. They've been sending emails and texts like pesky kids:
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"Herbie! Have you tried the Mola Mola? Come on man, what's taking you so long? Is Putzeys's DAC better than my MSB? Or the dCS Bartók? Or the HoloAudio May?"
A Wolf Howled in Chicago
In the early 1970s, my hometownChicagowas a hotbed of blues. I discovered the blues in high school via the Rolling Stones, and I began to frequent the city's blues clubs as a college student, at first while still underage. From Theresa's, the South Side tavern where Junior Wells performed, I progressed to the West Side, where on weekends I would head down Madison Street to see Howlin' Wolf at Big Duke's Blue Flame Lounge.
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Analog Corner #316: Analog Relax EX1000 phono cartridge, Luminous Audio Technology Arion Mk.II phono preamplifier, WallyTools cartridge inspection service
So glad to be back in business with superclean electricity! Especially having spent the last few weeks listening to the remarkably pure-sounding Analog Relax EX1000 cartridge ($16,000).
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The brochure asks, "Have you heard of YAKUSUGI Cedar?" No. I had never heard of Analog Relax, either. If you have heard of it, you're at least one step ahead of me.