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Two of the five loudspeakers reviewed in our July issue were designed by Andrew Jones: the $29,800/pair TAD Evolution One and the $129.99/pair Pioneer SP-BS22-LR (footnote 1). I did the math. You can buy 229 pairs of the Pioneer for the price of a single pair of the TAD. Which is the better deal? Which would result in more happiness? Imagine keeping one pair of the Pioneers, and delivering the other 228 pairs to friends and family. Or donating them to schools. The possibilities are great. How much fun can you have with just a single pair of speakers, anyway?

JAMES WELCH: Magnum Opus
James Welch, Organist, and D.A. Flentrop, Organ-builder.
Wilson Audio W8111 (LP). David Wilson, eng.

Hearing this organ gives one delusions of grandeur! How wonderful to be rich as Croesus and be able to commission an organ like this for one's (baronial) home. At any rate, those of us who don't live in Seattle can hear it at home, thanks to this superb recording.

True to its title, this is as much a recording of the organ as it is of the organist. Full specifications are given on the back, and although it is not Flentrop's largest organ in terms of number of ranks of pipes, it is physically the largest: it contains a 32-foot Pedal Prestant which emits a floor-shuddering 16Hz!

Julianna Barwick has released a live video for “The Harbinger,” from her new album, Nepenthe.

Curiously, the album version always&#151always&#151reminds me of the opening chorus to The Rolling Stones’ 1969 hit, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Here, though, whatever hint of triumphant rock’n’roll that may exist in “The Harbinger” is replaced by the impressionistic strokes of cold, windblown colors and sheer textures. We hear the crunch of gravel beneath footsteps, the lapping of waves, sniffles, the chimes of an iPhone&#151all of these elements are captured, looped, and folded into the piece.

Volcano Choir’s sophomore record, Repave, was released by Jagjaguwar on September 3rd. Justin Vernon of Bon Iver returns as lead vocalist.

I was disappointed by the band’s 2009 debut, Unmap, which felt more like a Bon Iver side project, made of fragments and sketches that promised greatness&#151and had some great moments&#151but rarely delivered the kind of focused and resolved songs that I had hope for. I liked Unmap, but I wanted to love it&#151and I didn’t.

Repave, though, is something different. If Unmap was the sound of a band finding its way, Repave is a band that has arrived, fully formed and full of joy. There’s an interesting story behind the making of Repave, which you can hear in this ten-minute documentary.

Register to win a VPI HW 16.5 Record Cleaning Machine from Soundstage Direct (MSRP $649.99) we are giving away.

According to the company:

The HW-16.5 is the standard in affordable record cleaning machines but neither its build quality nor its cleaning power has been compromised. Its high-torque, 18 RPM turntable motor is more than capable of withstanding the pressure of heavy scrubbing during extended cleaning sessions, and its 35-second cleaning cycle per side makes quick work of even the dirtiest records. Now with self aligning vacuum suction tubes for even more accurate cleaning, the HW-16.5's high-powered vacuum ensures quick, deep cleaning.

[This Sweepstakes is now closed]

By now, you’re familiar with Record Store Day, the annual event that celebrates independent record stores and vinyl records. Now, we can celebrate another special music format: the cassette! The first Cassette Store Day will be held tomorrow, Saturday, September 7th.

Even as the gulf narrows between the sounds of the best solid-state and the best tubed amplifiers, most listeners remain staunch members of one or the other camp. Similarly, when it comes to video displays, the plasma and liquid-crystal technologies each has its partisans, though that conflict's intensity is relatively mild, perhaps because video performance, unlike audio, is based on a mastering standard that establishes color temperature, gray-scale tracking, color points, and the like (I'm deeply in the plasma camp). But in audio, the "standard" is whatever monitoring loudspeaker and sonic balance the mastering engineer prefers, which makes somewhat questionable the pursuit of "sonic accuracy." Still, in a power amplifier, a relative lack of coloration is preferable to amps that Stereophile editor John Atkinson has characterized as "tone controls"—usually, if not exclusively, of the tubed variety.