LATEST ADDITIONS

Resonance Records has put out some of the most vital, previously unreleased (in some cases, unknown) historical jazz sessions in recent years, and the latest is one of the sweetest: Shirley Horn, Live at the 4 Queens, recorded at a now-defunct Las Vegas hotel-casino of that name in 1988. It's Horn's best live album, and one of her top few albums, period—which says a lot.

What do Prince, David Bowie, Merle Haggard, Gato Barbieri, Phife Dawg, Frank Sinatra Jr., Keith Emerson (Emerson Lake & Palmer), Dan Hicks (Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks), Maurice White (Earth, Wind & Fire), Paul Kantner and Signe Toly Anderson (Jefferson Airplane), Glenn Frey (Eagles), Dale Griffin (Mott the Hoople), pianist Paul Bley, bassist Rob Wasserman, sopranos Susan Chilcott, Phyllis Curtin, and Denise Duval, countertenor Brian Asawa, composers Steven Edward Stucky and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, and conductors Pierre Boulez, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Gilbert Kaplan, Gregg Smith, and Royston Nash have in common? Besides the fact that all were musicians who made multiple recordings and who died in 2016, their recorded legacies rarely, if ever, get airplay at dealerships or audio shows.

Every time a new audio technology enters the marketplace, a debate begins about its relative merit. That debate never ceases, even decades after the technology first came (and sometimes went). Turntable platters driven by belts vs rims vs idlers vs directly by their motors. Analog vs digital. Tubes vs solid-state. Triodes vs pentodes, Single-ended vs push-pull. Objectivism vs subjectivism. The power and seriousness of each of these debates has splintered our global hobby into diverse tribes, cults, and subcults—and therein lies one of the chief joys of being an audiophile: participating in cult rivalries.

Last week, John Atkinson and I attended "The Audeze Sensory Experience," Audeze's official launch party for the iSine10 ($399) and iSine20—the world's first in-ear planar magnetic headphones, which will be available in November.

And as the Beatles later mused, he’d done it alone.

Saturday September 17, from 12–7pm, Audible Images (1610 Pineapple Avenue, Melbourne, FL 32935) will be hosting Bill Peugh from Wilson Audio, Bill McKiegan from Dan D'Agostino Master Audio Systems, and Trent Suggs from Audio Research Corp. This event will be the Florida debut of the Wilson Yvette speakers, the D'Agostino Progression monoblocks, and the Audio Research Ref 3 phono preamp and Ref 6 preamp. The music will be accompanied by complimentary food and wine. For more information call (321) 626-3898.

Editor's Note: 40 years before it became a reality, J. Gordon Holt predicts music streaming and predicts the Compact Cassette will become the dominant prerecorded music medium.

Traditionally, the New Year is the time when editors light their pipes, tilt their chairs back, fold their hands and shut their eyes, and make bold predictions about The Future. It is said that prognostications are always risky, because events have a nasty habit of making fools of those who prognosticate. It has been our observation, though, that the only prognosticators who are remembered are those who were proven right, so we are going to do some fearless limb-climbing about something that is coming to worry increasing numbers of stereophiles: Namely, which of all the current recording media is going to become The Standard for home use, and which are going to be left stranded on the shoals of obsolescence?