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Death Row Discs
John Swenson  |  Mar 16, 2021  |  11 comments
My music is keeping me alive.

I have terminal cancer, which is like Bergman's chess match with the Grim Reaper: You know you're going to lose, but with skill, determination, and luck, you can delay the inevitable, move by move. Determination is key, because it's all too easy to give up. My music—a collection I've amassed over the last 60 years—inspires me to keep going, to keep listening.

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Analog CornerPhono Preamp ReviewsRoom Treatment ReviewsSolid State Preamp Reviews
Analog Corner #286: StillPoints Aperture II, VPI Voyager, Bespoke Passive Preamplifier
Michael Fremer  |  Mar 15, 2021  |  First Published: Jun 01, 2019  |  3 comments
VPI Industries Voyager phono preamplifier
Following my auditioning of Channel D's Lino 2C current-mode phono preamplifier, back in the world of voltage amplification, here's another phono preamp from another company based, like Channel D, in New Jersey. Probably not since Dynaco manufactured its electronics in Pennsauken has the Garden State enjoyed such riches of analog electronics!
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Interviews
"Listening": a Video Tribute to Art Dudley
Jason Victor Serinus  |  Mar 14, 2021  |  10 comments
Listening, an extraordinary video tribute to the late writer Art Dudley's taste, vision, and devotion to music, premiers this month on Stereophile's YouTube channel. The video follows the unusual path of Art's beloved Altec Lansing Flamenco loudspeakers from their home in Upstate New York to their current residence, the listening room of deaf audiophile Bob Lichtenberg in Port Orchard, Washington.
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InterviewsThink Pieces
Why John Atkinson Believes Measurements Matter
John Atkinson  |  Mar 13, 2021  |  32 comments
Back in 2013, I took the train to Stamford to give a presentation to the Connecticut Audio Society to help celebrate their 30th anniversary. On March 6 I returned to the CAS, but this time via Zoom. I talked about a subject close to my heart: measurements and their connections with accuracy and/or musical enjoyment. The video is now posted to the CAS YouTube channel—it runs for 2+ hours but I think Stereophile readers will find what I had to say stimulating, perhaps even sometimes controversial.

My presentation takes up the first 21 minutes and is followed by a Q&A with the CAS members. (Great questions, guys!) At 1:18:00 I give a tour of my listening room, where two of my cats decide to make a cameo appearance.

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Music and Recording Reviews
March 2021 Classical Record Reviews
Kurt Gottschalk, Jason Victor Serinus, Stephen Francis Vasta  |  Mar 12, 2021  |  3 comments
Dame Ethyl Smyth: The Prison, Tristan Perich: Drift Multiply, David Greilsammer: Labyrinth and Violins of Hope: Live at Kohl Mansion.
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Music and Recording Reviews
March 2021 Jazz Record Reviews
Thomas Conrad, Fred Kaplan  |  Mar 12, 2021  |  2 comments
Michael Feinberg: From Where We Came, J. Peter Schwalm/Arve Henriksen: Neuzeit, Andrew Hill: Passing Ships and Sonny Rollins: Rollins in Holland.
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Music and Recording Reviews
March 2021 Pop/Rock Record Reviews
Phil Brett, Anne E. Johnson, Dan Ouellette  |  Mar 12, 2021  |  3 comments
David Bowie: ChangesNowBowie, Alaska Reid: Big Bunny and John Hurlbut & Jorma Kaukonen: The River Flows.
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Music and Recording Features
The Reservoir Story
Thomas Conrad  |  Mar 11, 2021  |  5 comments
Full Disclosure: All jazz writers fantasize about owning a jazz label. These fantasies persist even in our post-CD, download era, when the record industry as we knew it has been laid to waste. It is reasonable to speculate that, as a reader of this magazine and therefore a music junkie, you may have had an entrepreneurial record label fantasy or two of your own. For us, it should be interesting to hear from Mark Feldman, because he actually did it. In fact, he did it twice.
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Phono Preamp Reviews
Plinius M14 phono preamplifier
Michael Fremer  |  Mar 10, 2021  |  First Published: Sep 01, 1997  |  3 comments
You think Watergate was a momentous break-in? You should hear what a good electronic Rolfing does to the sound of this meticulously built, full-sized, full-featured, and full-priced ($3495) phono section imported from New Zealand by Fanfare International. Out of the box, the Plinius M14 sounds like what it looks like: all silvery, hard, and steely. Just leaving it powered up doesn't do the trick, nor does playing music through it—unless you're prepared for endless hours of truly bad sound before the sonic clouds begin to break.
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Analog CornerPhono Cartridge ReviewsTonearm Reviews
Analog Corner #285: Top Wing Suzaku, HiFiction Thales, Analysis Plus
Michael Fremer  |  Mar 09, 2021  |  First Published: May 01, 2019  |  37 comments
For a phono cartridge to generate current and voltage, something must move: a coil of wire (as in a moving-coil cartridge), or a magnet (as in a moving-magnet type), or a tiny piece of iron (a moving-iron type). In those rare cartridges that depart from the electricity-generating principle of the ones described above, it can be a displacement-measuring device in which a moving shutter modulates a light source to vary a supplied voltage (as in an optical cartridge), or one in which voltage is modulated when a tiny chip of silicon crystal is squeezed by a moving element, which varies the chip's electrical resistance (as in a strain-gauge cartridge). But regardless of what it is that moves in a cartridge, something has to.
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