Tour guide Harley, who seems to have acquired the title "Tone Poet," has been central to the reissue of countless well-known and lamentably obscure Blue Note titles engineered by Rudy Van Gelder. He picked quite the system: Acora Acoustics VRC speakers in Blue Pearl Granite ($218,000/pair as shown), Boulder 2150 monoblocks ($128,000/pair), Boulder 2110 Line Stage $76,000), Nagra Classic Phono Package w/PSU ($42,950), and TW-Acustic Raven LS-3 turntable ($24,000) and10.5 tonearm ($6,000), with Lyra Etna Lambda SL cartridge ($9995) and Erodian EVO step-up ($6000). I don't think we heard the Innuos Statement 2TB music server/streamer with Next-Gen PSU ($22,100) or the Nagra HD DAC X ($70,875), but we did enjoy Cardas Clear Beyond, Clear, and Nautilus cabling and a Shunyata Sigma USB cable.
The Acora Acoustics VRC, which was launched at AXPONA, is Acora's new reference speaker. The drivers are modifications of commercially available ScanSpeak designs, but the granite cabinets are unique. Specified sensitivity is 95dB, which is almost as astounding as the claimed frequency response of flat from 18Hz to 40kHz and the weight of 430lb each. Four different granites are available to match décor.
Harley, who introduced remastering engineer Kevin Gray (above right) at the start of his presentation, began with a capsule history of Blue Note as the creation of two German immigrants who arrived on these shores in 1939, on the last boat out of Germany, and initially sold boogie woogie jazz out of the trunk of their car. The first track he played, "This Time the Dream's on Me" from Introducing Kenny Burrell, was a 1956 live to one-track mono that Van Gelder mixed on the fly in his parents' living room in Hackensack, New Jersey. Not only was the sound very warm and lovely, but the percussion sounded astoundingly you-are-there real. The veracity in this regard calls for an adjective favored by John Atkinson—I'll let you guess which one. Harley reported that when he first heard the master tape of this recording, he was astounded to hear things that he could not hear on the master lacquers.
Then we heard a test pressing of a forthcoming reissue from the Herbie Nichols Trio. Whether the distant, slightly muffled and boomy bass was on the master or a product of room interactions, I do not know. But the music was pretty radical for the time and is sure to open eyes and ears. Again, the sound on this system was something to behold.
My thanks to Acora and Joe Harley for time well-spent.
COMMENTS
As a vinyl noob, I've been on a deep dive over the past six months, catching up on the past couple of decades of technology advances and album reissues. It is stunning what great contributions Harley, Gray, and a small number of others have made to audiophile listening. They are heroes
Thanks Jason for attending! Couple of things: "Tone Poet" is a nickname the great tenor sax master Charles Lloyd gave me many years ago. Don Was at Blue Note heard that and liked it as a name for our LP reissue series. Re that wonderful system Acora had put together for the show: I didn't choose it... I assume that Valerio Cora chose the various components. Sounded most excellent!
I greatly appreciate these footnotes, Joe. Thank you.
I actually interviewed Charles Lloyd once. As far as I'm concerned, what he says goes. Hey, when someone gives you a name as good as "Tone Poet," by all means run with it. And that title fits you better than "The Pavarotti of Pucker," the name SF Chronicle critic Gerald Nachman gave me, fits me. After all, I whistle in the piccolo range. The only way Pavarotti's singing would have resembled my supra-soprano whistling, which resides in the piccolo range, was if he had been castrated.
I would strongly encourage all serious listeners to compare any recent jazz reissue against a Japanese reissue of the same title. I am more than confident—one could even say certain—that the Japanese reissue will sonically surpass the recent reissue in every way. As a jazz lover offering advice, skip the recent reissues.
I have tons of Toshiba and King BN reissues. While most sound "good" and the vinyl is generally excellent, I haven't found them to be in any way better than the reissues cut direct from the master tapes. (None of the Japanese BN LP reissues have been cut direct from the master tape btw, not a one.) But, to each their own. If you dig the Japanese reissues, enjoy!
I have tons of Toshiba and King BN reissues. While most sound "good" and the vinyl is generally excellent, I haven't found them to be in any way better than the reissues cut direct from the master tapes. (None of the Japanese BN LP reissues have been cut direct from the master tape btw, not a one.) But, to each their own. If you dig the Japanese reissues, enjoy!
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