Relax, Listen, and Learn
Because it's rad.
Continue Reading »
I found this over at Mark Betcher's "Unearthed in the Atomic Attic" blog, where you can actually hear the album's entire second side. Fun stuff.
LATEST ADDITIONS
Long Live High-End Audio
While we contemplate high-end audio’s long, slow, and stinking death, Magico, manufacturer of high-performance, high-priced loudspeakers, is in the mainstream press: USA Today ran an article earlier this week, which asked, “How much would you pay to bring music to life?”
Continue Reading »
Buy Music, Get Hi-fi at In Living Stereo
From now until the end of time, 15% of all record purchases made at In Living Stereo will be credited toward stereo equipment and accessories.
Continue Reading »
R.I.P High-End Audio?
Slowly, painfully, high-end audio seems to be dying. We all know it but we're apparently unable to resuscitate the patient. US dealers are closing at alarming ratesit must be the economy. Women continue to avoid the High Endit must be the technobabble combined with male equipment fetishism. Younger people aren't hopping aboardit must be all those other things competing for their money. (Then again, it might be the High End's abhorrence of rock'n'roll.)
Continue Reading »
Bruckner: Symphony 9 (with Finale)
This reconstruction of the Ninth's Finale is the result of 30 years' work by Bruckner scholars Nicola Samale, John A. Phillips, Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs, and Giuseppe Mazzuca (SPCM). (See March 2010 feature story.) For this new "Conclusive Revised Edition 2012," SPCM shortened by 18 bars the coda, of which little of Bruckner's writing survives, and reworked it to include, based on Bruckner's description, a development of the trumpets' "Alleluia" in bar five of the Adagio. This works well, though the coda now seems a bit short. A further "final" edition is in the works.
Continue Reading »
Scott and Pat, Bound by Ink
Congratulations to Scott Leslie of Portland, Connecticut winner of the Pat Metheny The Orchestrion Project Blu-ray Sweepstakes. Robert Baird named the original recording our February 2010 Recording of the Month. Scott's copy of this Blu-ray was signed by Pat himself. Everyone give a big hand for Scott! Now who wants some Fela Kuti?
Continue Reading »
Fela Kuti Box Set Compiled by Ginger Baker from Turntable Lab Sweepstakes
Register to win the Fela Kuti Box Set Compiled by Ginger Baker from Turntable Lab (MSRP $99) we are giving away.
Continue Reading »
"The second curated box set of long-awaited reissues from Fela Kuti is finally here! This time around, Knitting Factory Records has enlisted frequent Fela collaborator Ginger Baker to take the honors in selecting 6 classic LPs from the godfather of afrobeat's illustrious catalog. Baker's selections for this set include his own collaboration record, Live with Ginger Baker from '71, Roforofo Fight from '72, Confusion and Alagbon Close from '74, He Miss Road from '75, and Na Poi from '76."
[This Sweepstakes is now closed.]
Another Year, Another CES
Photograph: John Atkinson
Las Vegas? Why bother to fly across the country or around the world when you can visit New York City, Venice’s Grand Canal, and Egypt’s Great Pyramid in one easy, smoke-filled, retail therapy-rich, constantly stimulating stop? Why search out music on the net when, in Las Vegas, it constantly bombards you in elevators, from outdoor loudspeakers, and at your free lunch at T.H.E. Show?
Ah, Las Vegas. In his wrap to CES 2012, Stephen Mejias did a beautiful job of asking the simple but profound question, “Why?” Why, of all the god-forsaken places on Planet Earth, has the Consumer Electronics Association chosen this compulsion-driven, ecologically devastating, one-stop tourist and gambling destination as the site for the largest industry trade show in the US?
And That Was the End of the 2013 CES
And then there were five. At the end of the show on Friday evening, the remaining members of the Stereophile crew met for dinner at the same BLT Burger restaurant at the Mirage where they had eaten the night before the Show opened. Larry Greenhill, Michael Fremer, Kal Rubinson, Jon Iverson, Tyll Hertsens, and Jason Victor Serinus had already departed, so remaining were (left to right) myself, John Atkinson, Michael Lavorgna (AudioStream.com), Stephen Mejias, and Tom Norton (Home Theater, erstwhile Technical Editor for Stereophile). We don’t even look too tired!
Continue Reading »
Wilson–D'Agostino–dCS–Transparent
Over dinner one evening at the 2013 CES, I was being grilled by other magazine editors about my measurements of the Wilson Audio Specialties Alexandria XLF speaker that Michael Fremer reviewed in the January issue. In vain did I point to the XLF's superb in-room response; in vain did I emphasize that no one measurement fully describes a speaker's sound; in vain did I point out that the best way to integrate all the measurements was to listen to the thing. What I should have done was bid my peers to visit the dCS suite on one of the Mirage's penthouse floors where Wilson's Alexia loudspeaker ($48,500/pair), which incorporates much of the XLF's technology, was being demmed with Dan D'Agostino Momentum monoblocks and dCS's new Vivaldi digital system, wired up with Transparent Audio cables.
Continue Reading »