LATEST ADDITIONS

Tom Fine  |  Jan 07, 2025
A quick survey of 1977's rock albums shows a vibrant genre, pushing in many directions at once. British punk went major label, with debut albums from The Clash, The Damned, Wire, and The Sex Pistols (their only studio album). The Ramones released Rocket to Russia. David Bowie explored a new direction with both Low and Heroes. Mainstream blockbusters included Rumours by Fleetwood Mac, News of the World by Queen, Slowhand by Eric Clapton, and Pink Floyd's Animals. Not to mention Meat Loaf 's Bat Out of Hell and the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever (footnote 1).

Amid all of this, there was a distinct new sound, quickly labeled New Wave. It wasn't rock like Queen, Pink Floyd, or anything coming out of Laurel Canyon. And it wasn't manufactured in the disco-pop factories. But it wasn't punk. It was NYC-centric, but there was also Brit brat (before brat was a thing), Elvis Costello, introducing himself with My Aim Is True. Back in the Big Apple, two seminal new wave debuts dropped in 1977: Television's Marquee Moon, and Talking Heads: 77.

Robert Baird  |  Jan 06, 2025
For musicians' sake, the terms "sure thing" or "a hit" should be permanently stricken from the music business lexicon. Like Beetlejuice, if you say it enough, bad things are sure to occur. But in the long annals of the music business crushing the dreams of artists who were a "sure thing" and singles or albums that were guaranteed to be "a hit," few have risen higher and fallen faster than Lone Justice. Rising stars on the Los Angeles music scene in the early 1980s, they melded punk-rock attitude and ethos with a love for classic country music. The New York Times called them "Impressive, ingenious, and forceful." After seeing them, both Linda Ronstadt and Dolly Parton genuinely praised their sassy young singer, Maria McKee.
Jason Victor Serinus  |  Jan 03, 2025
No fewer than eight boxes, powered by six after-market power cables, comprise my current reference front-end. As much as separate boxes can afford superior isolation and provide far more room for visionary engineers to work their magic, the advantages of a single box, which requires a single power cable and far fewer after-market interconnects, are obvious.

Enter Simaudio's Moon 891 network player/preamplifier ($25,000; footnote 2). Also called a "streaming preamplifier,"it includes a DAC that converts PCM and MQA files up to 32/384 (with 24-bit files upconverted to 32-bit) and DSD files up to 256. It also includes what Simaudio company co-owner Costa Koulisakis describes as "a fully configurable" MC/MM phono stage. Both theoretically and practically, it's an ideal solution for someone with space and/or budget constraints.

Kalman Rubinson  |  Jan 02, 2025
I was fascinated by Herb Reichert's adventures with the KEF KC62 subwoofer, so I borrowed one. Beautifully engineered, contoured, and finished and chock-full of cutting-edge technology, it would be welcome in any room and easily integrated into any system. However, it struck me as not just small but miniaturized, like the meticulously functional samples made for the traveling salesmen of a century past. Since its two force-canceling 6.5" radiators were the same size as or smaller than the midrange drivers in my main speakers at the time, I had low expectations and returned it without comment. That was in 2021.

I asked for a pair of KEF KC92s in early 2024 in the hope that these two relatively small subs would improve my system. Like the KC62, the gloss white cube with radiused edges and white diaphragms is an aesthetic match to our redesigned room, and the KC92 ($1999.99) is chock-full of the same cutting-edge technology.

Herb Reichert  |  Jan 01, 2025
Like romance or car racing, the act of playing records is tactile by design. Like drifting through curves or making out, spinning vinyl is a learned skill that requires users to touch everything with practiced assurance.

To play a disc with Technics' new SL-1300G record player means pushing its round On button, then touching one or more of its rectangular speed selector buttons, then pushing the big square [Start:Stop] button, then unclamping the tonearm and using its cue lever to raise it up.

Next comes the part where my heart beats a little faster: using the headshell's fingerlift to position the arm over the disc and lower it into a groove.

When the needle contacts the groove, the whole system kicks in and sound comes out.

Tom Fine  |  Dec 31, 2024
Before the bits and bytes, before the streams, the music business and its most talented artists, producers, and engineers conjured up a notion of musical-sonic holiness: the perfect album side.

Remember albums? The idea is quaint in the era of streaming, a time of "summer songs," one-hit wonders, meme songs, song snippets on TikTok, songs tied to viral videos, robot-generated playlists, and whatnot. Those of us older than the World Wide Web itself, we remember albums. They were 12" slices of happiness, sadness, escape, epiphany—all the feelings.

Robert Baird  |  Dec 30, 2024
The return of vinyl, which has stayed popular and profitable since its resurgence, has now developed a surprising nuance. Pierre Markotanyos, the owner of the reissue label Return to Analog and Montreal record store Aux 33 Tours (which refers to the speed at which an LP spins), has noticed a distinct change in the makeup of who's buying vinyl these days. "In the late 2000s," Markotanyos reflects, "it was mostly 55-to-70-year-old guys who were coming in, buying records to play on their high-end stereos that they bought at the audio show in Montreal." [Sound familiar, Stereophile readers?] "They were the purists and the true believers."
Sasha Matson  |  Dec 27, 2024
What's in a name? Denmark-based Gryphon Audio Designs laid down a marker when company founder Flemming Rasmussen chose that name in 1985. Browsing through the current Stereophile Recommended Components list, I only found one other manufacturer that utilizes an animal moniker. The imagery summoned by the use of the mythical treasure-guarding Gryphon seems appropriate; a hybrid creature combining features of the eagle and the lion, creatures of strength and speed—this choice underlines some of the aesthetics and performance Gryphon Audio has become known for. The handsome hardcover user's manual for the Diablo 333 simply states in gold "The Gryphon," along with a side-on profile of that winged lion-tailed creature, as a logo.

The Gryphon Diablo 333, a solid state, stereo integrated amplifier ($24,900 without optional DAC and phono stage modules), replaces the Gryphon Diablo 300, which was in production since 2016.

Ken Micallef  |  Dec 27, 2024
On Thursday, December 12, New York City’s Innovative Audio presented the North American debut of four Dynaudio loudspeakers, two of which are brand-new. The event, held at the store’s Midtown location, featured presentations by Dynaudio executives John Quick and Michael Manousselis. Attendees had the opportunity to experience the sound quality and design of these new models.
Ken Micallef  |  Dec 26, 2024
In midsummer 2022, I reviewed the German-made Clearaudio Reference Jubilee turntable, a $30,000 vinyl virtuoso that played music with clear-headed realism, brain-opening transparency, and lifelike speed and dynamics. Its performance was nothing short of exhilarating. It was one of the top three turntables I had ever laid my ears upon.

Clearaudio's house sound, whether from the affordable to the mortgage-busting, is one of refinement, lucidity, clarity, precision, and quietness. Which brings us to the Clearaudio Signature turntable, a joint offering from Clearaudio GmbH and its US distributor, Musical Surroundings.

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