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PSB BP7 Subwoofer Unveiled

Apple AirPods Pro 3: First Impressions

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News

Sony Goes All-Out with High-Resolution Audio

Jason Victor Serinus Apr 24, 2014

On Thursday April 24, Sony announced a new round of reasonably priced products, all of which are capable of high-resolution audio playback. Sony's unequivocal embrace of high-resolution audiothe acronym HRA seems to have become the mutually accepted, industry-wide termwas the main order of business. Defining HRA as everything greater than Red Book CD (16/44.1k) Jeff Hiatt, the company's Director of Home Audio (above), began by stating, "We have sacrificed quality in order to get convenience. MP3 has been degrading the quality of music, and was a quantum leap backwards. The young generation doesn't even realize that they're not listening to music as the artist intended it be heard."

Turntable Reviews Phono Preamp Reviews Phono Accessory Reviews The Entry Level

The Entry Level #41

Stephen Mejias Apr 24, 2014

What I failed to make absolutely clear in my April column is that I really, truly, thoroughly enjoyed all three USB DACheadphone amps that I auditioned: the Audioengine D3 ($189), the AudioQuest DragonFly v1.2 ($149), and the Cambridge Audio DacMagic XS ($199). Each offered a slightly different perspective on the music, but none could be accused of closing lanes on the George Washington Bridge, dumping several feet of snow on top of our car, or doing anything especially wrong.

Art Dudley Listening Phono Preamp Reviews

Listening #137

Art Dudley Apr 24, 2014

Except for a few titles I've combined with the ones in my listening room, and a few others that I intend to sell, the record collection I bought last year remains in three rows of boxes on the floor of our guest room. Because that room is spacious and comfortable, and equipped with a small refrigerator and a flat-screen TV, it is also the place where my 16-year-old daughter and her friends have their slumber parties and Dr. Who marathons. Thus, as you can imagine, I must sometimes explain to our young guests the Tao of collecting records.

News Ariel Bitran

Gralbum: Re-Thinking the Concept Album

Ariel Bitran Apr 23, 2014

Many music lovers share a moment in common. On a cloudy evening, you put on a record. Hopefully, it was Rush’s Hemispheres. Most likely, it was Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. The LP sleeve rested in your lap. The receiver’s meters bobbed gently, and the lights were dimmed just enough so your eyes could transfix on the junction of prism and light that refracts into a rainbow wrapped in black. As those guitars and synthesizers roared, the artwork and its melding with the music allowed you to transcend conceptual planes by uniting abstract visuals with word, rhythm, and melody. For just a moment, the world wasn’t so bland.

The Gralbum Collective are trying to recapture this enlightening experience with the Gralbum, or graphic album, a packaged release of image, word, and song for iPad and iPhone.

As We See It

New Sensations

Steve Guttenberg Apr 22, 2014

Here's what I've learned in my 35 years in the High End, first as a hi-fi salesman and then as a full-time reviewer and blogger: No hi-fi, no matter how expensive or exalted, will ever deliver the holy grail. While there have been considerable advances over the years, I can cite two 50+-year-old loudspeakersQuad ESL electrostatics and Klipsch's big hornswhose transparency and dynamic range, respectively, blow away those of many contemporary high-end speakers. The very best of today's speakers, electronics, and source components don't zero in on a single perfected sound indistinguishable from the experience of being in the same room as the musiciansno, every one of them sounds different from all the rest. I want to experience as many of those flavors as I can.

Recording of the Month

Recording of May 2014: The Imagined Savior . . .

Robert Baird Apr 22, 2014

WANTED: Jazz Hero. Must be willing and able to bring stunning new creative energies to a musical genre in danger of becoming stale and repetitive. Must be comfortable with a Marsalis level of celebrity. Saxophone or trumpet players preferred. Old men need not apply.

In 2011, jazz prayers were answered with the release of When the Heart Emerges Glistening, a brilliantly inventive mainstream jazz album led by Ambrose Akinmusire, a photogenic, 28-year-old trumpeter from Oakland, California. The young man had lots of fresh ideas, speed and dexterity to burn, and a unique tone, the combination of which brought back a flood of memories: Miles Davis, Clifford Brown, Pops.

News AXPONA 2014

AXPONA Chicago Starts Friday

Jason Victor Serinus Apr 21, 2014

The 2014 AXPONA (Audio Expo North America), scheduled for April 2527 in Chicago's completely refurbished Westin O'Hare, promises to the biggest and most comprehensive US consumer audio show east of Denver. How about, for starters, at least 56 known product introductions, with many more intentionally unannounced; 75 active exhibits in "standard" hotel rooms, whose dimensions are a far-from-standard 14.9'x19' with 8.5' high ceilings; 35 significantly larger meeting rooms and suites, spread over numerous floors, often filled with more than one active system per room; an Ear Gear Expo with exhibits from 23 headphone and headphone amp/accessory manufacturers; and a lobby level marketplace that promises 70 displays from 30 different vendors?

Headphone Reviews InnerFidelity

A Sum Greater Than Its Parts: The Outstanding Phiaton Chord MS 530 Bluetooth, Noise-Canceling Headphone/Headset

Tyll Hertsens Apr 19, 2014

This story originally appeared at InnerFidelity.com

I've never heard a Bluetooth, noise canceling, headphone/headset that sounds good---or even the same---in all modes...until now. This is a really cool, jack-of-all-trades, general purpose headphone/headset!

Robert Baird

Record Store Day 2014

Robert Baird Apr 18, 2014

A month ago, flying to South By Southwest 2014, the numbers on paper were grim.

Features

Book Review: Kansas City Lightning

David Lander Apr 17, 2014

Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker by Stanley Crouch (New York: Harper, 2013), 365 pp. Hardcover, $27.99.

A section of this biography, which documents the early life of the dazzling bebop saxophonist Charlie Parker, starts with a four-page meditation on "the truth and myth of railroads" in America: the figurative underground railroad that comprised a web of escape routes for slaves fleeing the South; the "black-smoke-puffing iron horse" that galloped into the West and "would eventually carry the brutal and legendary Apache chief Geronimo and his people . . . to Florida"; the trains "that inspired the legend of Casey Jones"; and the trains steaming through the blues tunes that echoed their melancholy nocturnal sounds.

Crouch views the train as "a vehicle and a dream source" in a culture where children were once tantalized by ads that pictured toy trains looping around "bright ovals of miniature track." As every jazz fan knows, Charlie Parker's playing traveled along bright ovals of its own. So does Crouch's prose, and his intellectual excursions carry readers well into the realm of African-American history, which is a significant dimension of this book.