LATEST ADDITIONS

Around the last decade of the previous century, something significant happened in jazz. Suddenly, many of the best players were no longer Americans. Actually, it was not sudden. It was a gradual flowering that achieved critical mass and could no longer be overlooked.

At the end of April, it will be time to renew the lease on my quaint Kensington duplex. Over the past three years, a cast of typical New Yorkers rotated residency within these plaster walls: stand-up comedians, chefs, and real-estate agents; art handlers and opera singers; venue managers and musicians. Claiming residential seniority over this home of interchanging misfits, it was time to stake claim on the room my system most deserved.

There has been a lot of buzz lately generated by show demonstrations of DSD recordings played directly from files and as the opportunity to download DSD files is expanding. The reactions of our writers have ranged from "impressive," to an "epiphany," to my own delight reported in the upcoming May issue of Stereophile. The hardware used has been mostly professional (Sonoma workstation) or semi-professional (Mytek Stereo 192-DSD) or, at the very least, costly enough for the unconvinced to hesitate. Now, in one fell swoop, Oppo has made this possible at no cost at all for those of us who own an Oppo BDP-103 or BDP-105.

Sarah Lois Vaughan was born on this day in 1924, in my hometown: Newark, NJ. In this clip, taken from a 1958 performance, she sings “Tenderly.”

Thanks must go to Lester Perkins and Jazz on the Tube.

Are there too many audio shows? With the Chicago AXPONA having been held two weeks ago, the Montreal SSI having just concluded, and the New York Audio Show coming up in what their website currently indicates is 16 days, 21 hours, 51 minutes, and 9 seconds away, people are starting to wonder whether we're getting an overload on audio shows. This is a sentiment that I've heard expressed by manufacturers and distributors—and, from the business point of view, their concerns are well founded. Participating in shows is an expensive endeavor, and the benefits in terms of additional business, while real, are difficult to measure.

One of the most memorable musical events of SSI 2013 was the "live-plus-recorded" mini-concert by cellist Vincent Bélanger, presented by MBL. There were several of these every day of the show; Art Dudley wrote about it in an earlier blog posting. I had attended one of these events last year, and ended up playing the cello—after a fashion. This time the special guest was Stereophile publisher Keith Pray, and, as you can see in the picture, he had a great time.

The English translation of the French word image in Salon Son & Image is "picture," or, well, "image." But it's been an open secret for some time that the show is much stronger on the son (sound) than on the image. I saw just one projection video setup at SSI 2013, and there were a few LCD/LED monitors, but no one seemed to pay much attention to them. However, SSI managed to enlist as an exhibitor Photo Service, a major camera store, which offers a wide range of products related to photography. This worked out extremely well for all concerned.