LATEST ADDITIONS

I went to Other Music yesterday and picked up a few records:

Chris Dingman’s Waking Dreams is a very big, pleasant surprise. I’d never heard of Dingman, who plays vibes and composed all but one of the CD’s 14 tracks. The label, Between World Music, is Dingman’s own, and this is its only release (usually a bad sign). I must confess that I probably put it on at all only after noticing that one of the musicians playing on the album (the only one in the sextet whose work I know) was Ambrose Akinmusire, the most exciting new trumpeter on the scene. And well, as I said, what a surprise.

Cedille Records, the label of The Chicago Classical Recording Foundation, has just released its first three high-resolution FLAC downloads. Available in 24-bit/44.1kHz sampling rate format (as well as 16/44.1 and 256 kbps MP3), complete with accessible liner notes and cover art, the titles are a treasure-trove for classical aficionados and collectors.

First up is Winging It: Piano Music of John Corigliano. Performed by Ursula Oppens, who has achieved legendary status as a new music virtuoso, the CD includes the world premiere recording of Winging It (2008), which the Pulitzer Prize-winning Corigliano wrote for Oppens.

Even newer are Capricho Latino, a disc from violinist Rachel Barton Pine of rare Spanish and Latin American music written solely for the unaccompanied violin; and The Pulitzer Project, performed by the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus under Carlos Kalmar and Chorus Director Christopher Bell. Pine's disc includes Alan Ridout's Ferdinand the Bull with narrator Héctor Elizondo, and 13 other works by composers familiar and obscure. You can sample a few of the tracks before purchasing.

As metaphors go, the silver bullet is somewhat ambiguous, given that it's used to represent both the reliably destructive and the reliably beneficial. (Who would have guessed that an idea from a Lon Cheney Jr. film would prove too subtle and complex for people in the 21st century?) Nevertheless, at Montreal's Salon Son et Image on April 2, those of us who comprised Stereophile's reliably responsive "Ask the Editors" panel—John Atkinson, Robert Deutsch, and I—volleyed it with the sort of sprightly, vernal abandon that is the sole province of men with gray hair. To wit: We agreed that no materials, technologies, or design decisions can either guarantee or prevent good sound. Not vinyl. Not star grounding. Not class-A circuits. Neither tubes nor transistors. Neither belt nor idler nor electrostats nor multiway nor single-driver nor copper nor silver nor silk nor beryllium. Not even harmonic distortion. Each of those ideas may mean something to someone, in the short term, in the narrow view, but that's all. There are no silver bullets.

Sometimes, the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls. Other times, their words and ideas are made manifest through a lifetime of diligent and thoughtful work. As an audio prophet, the late Jim Thiel was one of the latter type. For decades he stood in his pulpit, quietly preaching to the audio world the importance of time and phase coherence in loudspeakers. His commitment to these ideas led to speaker designs that exclusively used first-order crossover networks, and driver designs and layouts that made possible time- and phase-coherent response. The speakers he created in turn built his company, Thiel Audio, into one of the more recognizable fixtures of high-end audio.

I received a very kind note from Owen McCafferty, who, along with Ben Meadors, hopes to travel to Portland, San Francisco, Chicago, Cleveland, and New York City, meeting vinyl collectors, record store owners, and other vinyl enthusiasts, to discuss why vinyl is important. The duo will document their journey and publish a book detailing their experiences.

A week ago, when we first caught up with Owen and Ben, they were about $2000 away from the funds needed to support their Kickstarter project.

I was delighted to see so many people at the 2011 California Audio Show so attentively listening to music, as though listening to music on the hi-fi in 2011 is as much of an event as watching an episode of “True Blood” on Sunday night, or attending a concert at a music hall. Of course, we know that listening to music on the hi-fi is a special event, an active, enriching, and entertaining experience, worthy of our time and energy for the joy and nourishment it brings our minds and souls. It’s a lot of fun. If you were present at the California Audio Show, you experienced this.