FiiO M27 Headphone DAC Amplifier Released

Audio Advice Acquires The Sound Room

LATEST ADDITIONS

As We See It

Cholera in the time of love

Art Dudley Jul 25, 2012

I was recently reunited with an old friend from high school. My best friend from high school, in fact. Our families got together, everyone got along, and as the dust of conversation settled toward the rug of companionable silence, talk turned to work. And when the inevitable happened, and my old friend and his wifeclassical-music lovers bothasked how much a person had to spend these days in order to get a good music system, I answered their question with a questiona question that, crazily enough, just popped into my head...

Stephen Mejias

Chelsea Light Moving: "Groovy & Linda"

Stephen Mejias Jul 25, 2012

And speaking of birthdays, today is Thurston Moore’s. To celebrate, let’s groove and flail to Chelsea Light Moving’s latest track, “Groovy & Linda.” The song, like most from Thurston, is a twisted love story.

Stephen Mejias

100 Waltzes for John Cage

Stephen Mejias Jul 25, 2012

Composer Kevin James looks a bit tired of making field recordings. Recordings for 100 Waltzes for John Cage were captured during 45+ nearly continuous hours of driving around New York City. Photo: The [kāg] ensemble.

Tuesday&#150Thursday, August 2123, 7:30pm: In celebration of John Cage’s 100th birthday, The [kāg] ensemble will perform Kevin James’s 100 Waltzes for John Cage at the DiMenna Center, Mary Flagler Cary Hall (450 West 37th Street, New York).

Inspired by Cage’s 49 Waltzes for the Five Boroughs, for which a score was created by randomly selecting 147 locations on a New York City map, James’s work is said to answer the question, “What would Cage have done with the advanced technologies that have shaped our ever-expanding information age?”

I'd like to think he'd have thrown them out the window and made a score from their shattered bits and pieces. Kevin James, it seems, feels similarly:

CD Player/Transport Reviews

Philips CDR880 CD-R/RW CD recorder

Wes Phillips Jul 20, 2012

Back when the CD was a pup, I used to hear people say, "I refuse to buy a CD player until they can record." Ha ha, I thought, smart-ass audiophile that I was, they're gonna wait for a long timethat's never gonna happen. I was half rightit has been a long time coming. But I was also, as my football coach used to insist, half-fast. "Never" has arrived.

Tube Power Amp Reviews Audacious Audio

Jadis Defy-7 Mk.II power amplifier

Martin Colloms Jul 20, 2012

Owning a powerful tube amplifier is like owning a classic automobile. Great pleasure may be had, but ownership involves a little more care and maintenance than usual.

Jadis, an audiophile company specializing in all-tube amplifiers and operating out of a small French town, has enjoyed a good reputation for some years, even if some of its models have suffered from the reliability problems that occasionally afflict the largest tube amps. Another problem area is that of power consumption and heat output. In common with class-A amplifiers and high-bias A/B types, including solid-state models, larger tube amps give off substantial heat. The Defy-7's 240W idling consumption may or may not be welcome, according to your location and the season.

Stephen Mejias

Looking Forward: The xx’s Coexist

Stephen Mejias Jul 19, 2012

I approached The xx’s self-titled debut with caution. The hype surrounding it was enough to turn me away. I remember talking about the record with Karen at Other Music. “It’s definitely one of those albums that polarizes people,” she said.

Soon, though, it became unavoidable. I might be able to hide from it at home, but I couldn’t escape it at work. By the middle of 2010, a hi-fi show wasn’t complete without The xx.

Ariel Bitran

L’Arpeggiata: Memory and Music Collide

Ariel Bitran Jul 19, 2012

Lenny Abramov thought he found immortality in Eunice Park, the woman who gave him the will to live. He thought he found it in his job, where he sweat endlessly soaking through his acrylic shirts while mindlessly serving Joshie, a back-stabbing “friend”. Eunice would leave him too. In fact, the only true happiness Abramov ever found and returned to were the sounds of his mother and father’s native Russian tongue, their coddling words and thick, laborious accents. In their speech, he could reconnect to the compassion they shared, the basketball they played, and his basement bedroom. Abramov’s parents were the only thing he had, until they died. He was left with bells “tolling, deep and sonorous and thoroughly Russian.” Lenny never chose his parents. He never chose their boundless affection. It was the sound of bells at their deathbeds that reminded him he was loved.

Features J. Gordon Holt

Workin' on the Railroad

J. Gordon Holt Jul 19, 2012

Most audiophiles know Mobile Fidelity as the record company with the philosophy of resurrecting old, important, recorded performances and re-releasing them with (hopefully) the kind of sound they should have had in the first place. Few audiophiles are aware that Mobile Fidelity is also the name of a (different) recording company which collects sound effects in four channels for motion picture and television post-production.

FM Tuner Reviews

Marantz ST551 FM tuner

Don Scott Jul 19, 2012

The Marantz ST-74 tuner, reviewed in Vol.8 No.7, was described as having "butter-and-marmalade appearance and AM performance, but dry-toast FM." The latest offering from Marantz, the ST551 (footnote 1), has not quite as sweet AM or appearance, but its more palatable FM makes it one of the best-sounding tuners encountered. It doesn't lack features eitherremote control of manual tuning, scan, band selection, and presetsall at a fairly low price.

Stephen Mejias

Looking Forward: Flying Lotus’s Until the Quiet Comes

Stephen Mejias Jul 18, 2012

Cosmogramma, Flying Lotus’s adventurous 2010 release felt, and still feels, like a sonic joy ride, a fusion of jazz, pop, funk, and electronic music styles. Complex, playful, and sophisticated, Cosmogramma conjures 8-bit video games and Saturday morning cartoons as much as it does 1950s sci-fi, 1970s Impulse jazz, 1990s house&#151all while sounding entirely advanced, connected, soulful.

How do you follow up something like that?