Thursday, February 19, from 5–8pm: Sound World (3015 West Wisconsin Avenue, Appleton) will host a Music Matters event. Featured gear will include Cary Audio's new TL-300d tubed preamp, CAD-211FE monoblock power amplifiers, SA-500.1 monoblock power amplifiers, and DCM-600SE digital media center; MartinLogan's Neolith loudspeakers; NAD's Masters Series M12 preamp, M22 power amplifier, M17 processor, and M27 multichannel amplifier; and AudioQuest's NightHawk headphones.

The March 2015 issue has arrived. And it’s an issue of contrasts. Featured on the cover is Theta’s Prometheus monoblock, a class-D tower of power offering 320W into 8 ohms. You’d think that at $12,000/pair the Prometheus was expensive, but its price pales in comparison to the $54,000 Boulder is asking for its state-of-the-art 2110 preamplifier! Fortunately, the 132-page March 2015 Stereophile also features reviews of a very affordable turntable from Pioneer and a high-value tower loudspeaker from DALI.

Back before the ring-a-ding-ding Reprise records, where the brass blew and the fingers snapped, Francis Albert made a lot of overtly sad records for Capitol.

I have to eat crow. I must retract a Record to Die For I handed out this time last year. [sigh] This has never happened before.

The pick in question is the recording, "remastered at Abbey Road" and bound as a book, of David Oistrakh playing the Brahms Violin Concerto and Double Concerto and Beethoven's Triple Concerto, with cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, pianist Sviatoslav Richter, George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra (Brahms), and Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic (Beethoven) (2 SACD/CDs, EMI Signature Collection 9 55978 2).

Why take back an R2D4? I will explain. First, some necessary background:

During last September's Brooklyn Audio Show, a thoughtful and amiable hobbyist explained to me his views on the purpose of an audio system. It seems that, for a great many years, he was told—by the powers that be, the holy on high, the gurus du jour (whose jour seems to have ended without anyone really noticing)—that a home audio system should transport the listener to the concert hall. Yet now he has come to realize that the very best gear brings the performance venue into the listener's living room.