LATEST ADDITIONS

No one likes to be fooled, least of all those of us whose job it is to sort the real from the imagined: a tightrope walk, the audience for which reliably contains one or two rustics who delight in the occasional splat.

Such were my concerns in the days following last November's New York Audio Show, where I first encountered High Fidelity Cables—an exhibitor that generated considerable (figurative) buzz by promoting the use of magnets in an audio system's interconnects, speaker cables, and power cords. Indeed, by the end of the first day, more than one showgoer had asked me, "What did you think of the guy with the magnetic cables?"

In Lost Highway, published soon after he was introduced to Sam Phillips, in 1979, Peter Guralnick said he had long dreamed of meeting the Sun Records founder, who produced the hits that introduced Elvis Presley and other pioneering rock'n'roll performers. He dedicated Lost Highway to Phillips and the blues singer Howlin' Wolf, calling them "the real heroes" of the musical genre, and a quarter-century relationship between Guralnick and Phillips followed. This long, densely detailed biography is its affectionate culmination.

As part of his preparation for reviewing Merging Technologies' NADAC Multichannel-8 networked D/A processor in the March 2016 issue of Stereophile, Kal Rubinson talked with the Swiss company's Dominique Brulhart.

Was a sunny day. Not a cloud was in the sky. (With thanks to Paul Simon.) A good day for a drive. But where? "Is there some audio store you haven't been to for some time that you'd like to visit?" (My wife is well-acquainted with my interests.)

But of course! Aardvark Boutique Audio, in Orangeville, Ontario.

August 26, 1944: The liberation of Paris. Imagine ranks of tattered Canadian soldiers marching past the Moulin Rouge à Paris. The voice of Édith Piaf singing "Ou sont-ils, mes petits copains?" (Where are my boyfriends?). Maurice Chevalier crooning "Ça sent si bon la France" (It smells so good in France). A Canadian army tank with the words Kaput and Finito painted in white above the word Montréal, motoring past the Eiffel Tower. Remember the fresh, celebratory taste of fine Champagne.

How do you know that the vinyl revival is universal? When Port Townsend, WA, a little arts community with under 9500 inhabitants that is situated NW of Seattle, on the Quimper Peninsula at the gateway to the larger, breathtakingly beautiful Olympic Peninsula, is having a record show of its own—The Port Townsend Record Show is taking place Saturday, March 5, 11:00am–5:00pm in the American Legion Hall at 209 Monroe Street facing Port Townsend Bay.

I'm a jazz lover. To be specific: I'm a lover of jazz on vinyl. I'm referring not to my sexual proclivities but to 33¹/₃rpm LPs from such venerable labels as Blue Note, BYG Actuel, Contemporary, ECM, ESP-Disk, Impulse!, Prestige, and Riverside. Nothing hits the sweet soul spot of this former jazz drummer and devout jazz head harder than Tony Williams's riotous ride-cymbal beat, Hank Mobley's carefree tenor-saxophone shouts, Charles Mingus's gutbucket double-bass maneuvers, or Bill Evans's haunting piano explorations. Jazz and vinyl both may constitute narrow slivers of music sales, but millions of us around the globe are on a constant hunt for exceedingly rare, grail-like jazz LPs, which we spin on our turntables with an equally holy reverence for the musicians' achievements.