Hefner, Hi-Fi, and Jazz
Hugh Hefner relentlessly promoted Hi-Fi gear in the pages of Playboy because it was hip and cool and part of living the good life.
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LATEST ADDITIONS
Cecile McLorin Salvant, Dreams and Daggers
It was almost exactly a year ago that I first heard Cecile McLorin Salvant at the Village Vanguard. I came home and wrote a blog for this space, wondering how I could have missed her ascent (she'd already won a Grammy and other prizes) and deeming her the best jazz singer around, standing among the greats of all time. I went back to see her, dragging along my wife and two friends, the following Sundaythe late set, the final set of his week-long stintand she was better still . . .
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Dan D'Agostino Progression Mono monoblock power amplifier
For as long as I've known about high-end audio, I've put Dan D'Agostino, co-founder of Krell, on the same pedestal reserved for the likes of Frank McIntosh, Saul Marantz, Avery Fisher, H.H. Scott, and Sidney Harman. The reason is simple: Dan's the man whose achievements at Krell led me from the harsh sound of my first high-end amp into another dimension, one of truly musical sound reproduction.
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Dan D'Agostino's Progress to Progression
To accompany my review of the Dan D'Agostino Master Audio Systems Progression monoblock amplifier elsewhere in this issue, I talked to Dan D'Agostino about the amplifier's design. I started by asking him what were some of the major differences between the Momentum and the Progression monoblocks?
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Dan D'Agostino: I took the best parts of the Momentum's more sophisticated and complex circuitry and put them in the Progression, without using the same high parts count. Each stage of the Momentum's gain amplifier is separate, with input stage and driver stages on separate rails. All of the Momentum's devices are designed for maximum performance in a small package, which requires a lot more of them, and a significantly bigger input card than the Progression's. These differences create subtleties, because I'm able to run much higher current in the Momentum's front end.
Linear Tube Audio ZOTL40 Mk.II power amplifier
I have always been fascinated by audio power amplifiers. I even tried building about a hundred of them. My best friend in high school, Bill Brier, taught me the basics of soldering, wire management, and reading schematics. He loaned me his Dynaco Stereo 70, and gave me a hot-running, 20W, class-A transistor amp that he'd built on his mother's kitchen table. Bill took me to concerts, and taught me about classical and jazz music. He had perfect pitch, tuned pianos for money, played every instrument in the orchestra, and had memorized the complete keyboard works of J.S. Bach before he turned 16. And this stuff was all on the sidemainly, we built drag race cars together.
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PS Audio DirectStream Memory Player universal transport
The first time I heard a CD player in my own system was in 1983, the first year of the format's introduction in the West. CD players were generally hard to come by, but I had a friend who worked for Sony, and he came over with his new toy: Sony's next-to-top-of-the-line CD player. (I think it was a CDP-501.) We connected it to my systemat the time, Quad ESLs driven by a Luxman tube amplifier, with a Linn turntableand listened to some Sony demo CDs.
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Murray Head's Nigel Lived 2-Disc 45 RPM Set Sweepstakes
Register to win a copy of Murray Head's Nigel Lived 2-Disc 45 RPM Set from Intervention Records (retail value $38) we are giving away.
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According to the company:
"Murray Head's Nigel Lived is a groundbreaking classic and one of the boldest, most daring and inventive albums of all time. Recorded by the great recording engineer Phill Brown, Nigel Lived is from the golden era of all-analog recording, a sonic and musical masterpiece that every music lover and audiophile simply must have."
[This Sweepstakes is now closed.]
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Sounds & Clouds: Like Everything and Nothing Else
How to describe music that is so personal, so deeply reflective and rooted in Buddhist contemplation that only listening to the music itself, without distraction, will suffice? Such is the conundrum that, hopefully, will lead you from this page to Channel Classics' hybrid SACD, Sounds & Clouds: Works by Hosokawa & Vivaldi.
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Life is Fine: Paul Kelly Goes Electric
An old hand from Down Under returns to rock . . .
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KEF Reference 5 loudspeaker
Of all the speakers I have most enjoyed in recent years, two were from British manufacturer KEF: the LS50 Anniversary Model ($1500/pair), which I reviewed in December 2012; and the Blade Two ($25,000/pair), which I reviewed in June 2015. Though these two speakers lie at opposite ends of the price scale, they have in common KEF's unique Uni-Q drive-unit, in which the tweeter is mounted on the front of the midrange unit's pole piece, so that the lower-frequency cone acts as a waveguide for the higher-frequency output.
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