February 2022 Jazz Record Reviews
Edward Simon: Solo Live, The Wonderful World Of Louis Armstrong All Stars: A Gift to Pops and Fred Hersch: Breath by Breath.
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February 2022 Rock/Pop Record Reviews
Ben Lamar Gay: Open Arms to Open Us, Pretenders: Pretenders and Pretenders II (40th Anniversary Deluxe Editions) and Damon Albarn: The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows.
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Forget about the sound of the recording
Hello, and Happy New Year! I'm greeting you in October 2021just before Halloween, in anticipation of Stereophile's publication deadlinebut by the time this magazine arrives in your mailbox, it'll be after the holidays.
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Re-Tales #17: Going where the music lovers are
Is combining a record store with a hi-fi dealership a radical idea? Maybe not: It could be a way to reel in new, music-loving hi-fi customers where they're most comfortable, in record stores searching for music.
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Analog Corner #272: Kuzma CAR, Miyajima Madake Snakewood, TechDAS TDC01 Ti phono cartridges
At Stereophile, we don't generally allow Mulligansreview do-overs. Usually, we take a second look at a product we've reviewed only when the first sample turns out to have been defective, especially if it was damaged in shippingand we rarely do even that.
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Questyle Audio M12 portable USB D/A headphone amplifier
There are words that, for reasons I can't fathom, I cannot stand. One such is "dongle." So when Bluebird Music's PR rep emailed me to ask if I would be interested in reviewing a new dongle from Chinese company Questyle Audio, I shuddered. But I must admit that "dongle" rolls off the tongue a lot more readily than "portable USB D/A headphone amplifier." I put aside my grammatical quibble and agreed to a review.
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ReDiscoveries #2: Joe Henderson, Blue Note and Beyond
Called "the phantom" by fellow musicians and dubbed the "bearded, goateed astronaut of the tenor sax" by a close friend, trumpeter Kenny Dorham, the enigmatic Joe Henderson recorded five albums for the Blue Note label that are uniformly regarded as jazz classics. Mosaic Records has gathered those recordsPage One, Our Thing, In 'n Out, Inner Urge, Mode for Joeplus Henderson's sideman dates and alternate takes for Blue Note for a limited-edition, five-CD box set, The Complete Joe Henderson Blue Note Studio Sessions (Mosaic Records MD5-271).
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Revinylization #26: Two Charles Mingus LPs
In the annals of jazz, Charles Mingusbassist, pianist, composer, bandleader, unique, headstrong, and deeply influential in every categoryoccupies the transit point between Duke Ellington and the post-'60s avant-garde, a station he carved out deliberately.
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Fyne Audio F500SP loudspeaker
In my April 2020 review of Fyne Audio's inexpensive F301 standmount loudspeakers, I wrote, "The Fyne F301s impressed with their exceptional rendering of soundstage width and depth, reasonably wide dynamic range, extended low end (for their size), and exuberant, I-can't-stop-spinning-records presentation. The Fynes presented a finely layered, spatially convincing soundstage with images that were solid, if small."
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Gramophone Dreams #57: Ferrum OOR headphone amplifier and HYPSOS power supply
I'm deep into audio power amplifiers because they remind me of race car engines. Both power sources are wildly inefficient, converting only a small percentage of their stored energy into work while dissipating the rest as heat and vibration. Mainly though, I love how race car engines sound. How they shake the air. Just like amps and speakers.
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