Recommended Components: Fall 2020 Edition

Recommended Components: Fall 2020 Edition

All products listed here have been formally reviewed in Stereophile. We consider all the products listed, regardless of rating, to be genuinely recommendable.

Products are listed in alphabetical order within classes, each followed by a brief description of its performance characteristics and a note indicating the issue of Stereophile in which its review, and in some cases Follow-Up reports, appeared; ie, "Vol.42 No.6" indicates our June 2019 issue.

Re-Tales #1: George Vatchnadze's Newest Gig

Re-Tales #1: George Vatchnadze's Newest Gig

Access to musical information isn't guaranteed, whether it's limited by the resolution of a recording, your audio system, or an oppressive political regime. George Vatchnadze, concert pianist and dealer in high-end audio equipment, has experience with all three.

A Real, Live, In-Person Hi-Fi Event in Pennsylvania, with Actual Humans!

A Real, Live, In-Person Hi-Fi Event in Pennsylvania, with Actual Humans!

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania–based hi-fi dealer Now Listen Here is holding a real, live, non-Zoom event this coming weekend, September 26 and 27, 2020, at the Hyatt House in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, next to the King of Prussia mall.

A Musical Inheritance

A Musical Inheritance

When I was a child, my father was a dealer in black-market records. We lived on what was then the outskirts of Moscow, in what was then the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It was the 1970s, and our nation's record stores only sold discs of domestic manufacture, most of them wooly-sounding classical recordings on the Melodiya label. This meant that a healthy contingent of Muscovites valued records smuggled from what they referred to in hushed tones as "The West" more than just about anything else their rubles could buy.

Revinylization #10: Bill Evans's Live at Montreux

Revinylization #10: Bill Evans's Live at Montreux

The late pianist Bill Evans may be the most reissued jazz musician in the catalogs of audiophile record labels. There are reasons for that: He played standards, mainly ballads (many audiophiles shun the avantgarde), almost never in groups larger than trios (stereo systems often do best with small-scale ensembles). Whether by design or chance, his best recordings were miked by superb engineers. Perhaps because of that, proprietors of high-end labels have cherished Evans's music with heightened passion.
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