Every product listed here has been reviewed in Stereophile. Everything on the list, regardless of rating, is genuinely recommendable.

Within each category, products are listed by class; within each class, they're in alphabetical order, followed by their price, a review synopsis, and a note indicating the issues in which the review, and any subsequent follow-up reports, appeared. "Vol.46 No.7" indicates our July 2023 issue, for example. "WWW" means the review is also posted online.

Resurrecting musical treasures is a tough business. The explosion of vinyl-reissue labels, ranging from superlative to second-rate, has made it increasingly difficult for newcomers to stand out—to make the kind of splash that serious LP buyers will notice. Even more elusive is endurance and turning a profit. The affable, musically savvy James Batsford, owner of a pair of vinyl-only UK labels, New Land Records and Omerta Records, can't help but laugh over our New York–to–London Zoom connection when I ask why an obviously intelligent person with taste, like himself, would jump into the vinyl-reissue tarpit?

PJ Harvey: I Inside the Old Year Dying
PTKF (auditioned as 16/44.1 FLAC stream on Qobuz). 2023. Produced by PJ Harvey, Flood, and John Parish.
Performance ****
Sonics ****

In 2022, PJ Harvey published an epic poem called Orlam. Harvey's 10th studio album, I Inside the Old Year Dying, isn't exactly a musical setting of Orlam's English- and Dorset-dialect poetry; rather, it's an interpretation of the poem with added improvisation. The result is as bizarre and fascinating as one could hope.

It's an error commonly made in evaluating hi-fi–system performance: the failure to listen differentially. Differential as in compared to something else. "Something else" could be a different recording on the same system or (especially this) the same recording on a different system. The question is, what are you comparing it to? The point is: Do you really know what that recording sounds like?

C.P.E. Bach: Württemberg Sonatas (6), Wq. 49, Keith Jarrett, piano; Mahler: Symphony No.5, Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, Rafael Payare, cond.; Schubert: Symphonies Nos.5 & 7 (Unfinished), Freiburger Barockorchester, Pablo Heras-Casado, cond.; Robert Schumann: Dichterliebe • Kerner Lieder, Florian Boesch, baritone; Malcolm Martineau, piano.

Arne Jansen/Stephan Braun: Going Home; Joe Farnsworth: In What Direction Are You Headed?; Darcy James Argue's Secret Society: Dynamic Maximum Tension; Dave McMurray: Grateful Deadication 2.

Pit Pony: World to Me; Marc Ribot's Ceramic Dog: Connection; Duane Betts: Wild & Precious Life; Galen & Paul: Can We Do Tomorrow Another Day?