By no means could I undertake a survey of candidates for Your Last Perfectionist-Quality CD player—so far, my ongoing series of reviews has focused on models from Audio Note, Bryston, EAR, Luxman, and Metronome—without including Naim Audio. After all, it was Naim that brought to market the first really good-sounding CD player of my experience: the two-box CDS, introduced in 1991 at a then-staggering price of $6999. In doing so, they convinced me that a digital future might not be so bad after all.

For all the stir over newly excavated tapes by Bill Evans (and the stir is justified), the heart of his discography—the stuff for which he's most celebrated now and will likely be for eons to come—beats in the albums he recorded on the Riverside label from 1956–62. All 10 of Evans' albums from this period, plus a Cannonball Adderley album featuring him as sideman, are included in a limited-edition boxed set by Analogue Productions—Chad Kassem's audiophile reissue house in Salina, Kansas—mastered at 45rpm (so the 11 albums are spread out on 22 discs).

Halloween Music: It Was a Graveyard Smash!

For some months now, I've lived mostly without music. To survive the dust and grit of the renovation of our Manhattan apartment, all electronics had to be covered with heavy plastic, the speakers encapsulated in large green lawn bags, and the listening room partitioned off with a temporary wall. We could listen to music with our little 3.1-channel TV system in the den (eh) or through headphones (not!), or we could decamp to our house in Connecticut, which we did as much as possible. I felt deprived. Now that it's all over, I'm grateful to have it back—and grateful for the improvements in the main system, some of them direct byproducts of the renovation.

Direct From Cleveland
Orchestral works by De Falla, Bizet, Tchaikovsky, Berlioz
The Cleveland Orchestra, Lorin Maazel (cond.)
Telarc 5020 DD1 (LP). Robert Woods, prod.; Jack Renner, sound eng.; Glenn Glancy, Michael Bishop, disc-cutting engs.

Potentially the best news for perfectionists in years is the announcement of the first stereophonic direct-to-disc recording (in the US, at least) of a major symphony orchestra. Advent records of Cleveland, in collaboration with Discwasher, Inc. of Columbia, MO put four complete and usable runsthrough onto two sets of lacquers. The program was a collection of potboilers—what Sir Thomas Beecham used to call "lollypops"—much of it musically rather trivial, but all ideally suited for demonstrating what a no-holds barred recording can do in terms of sonics: works with bass drum, percussion, deep double-bass material, rich string sonorities" and so on.

From a small regional show, Gary Gill's seven-year old Capital Audiofest has grown into the East Coast Show of 2017. Set for November 3–5 in the Hilton Hotel Twinbrook in Rockville, MD, CAF will offer 57 exhibit rooms spread over three floors plus the hotel Atrium. That amounts to 93 exhibitors and over 200 brands, including a CanMania with 20 headphone vendors. For a show that, just last year, maxed out at 40 rooms with 65 exhibitors and 85 brands, this represents major growth.

Did I really listen to and love the hi-rez (24/44.1k) file equivalent of four CDs chock-full of piano music written by and for the great Terry Riley (b. 1935)? Not only is the answer in the affirmative, but I can now honestly attests that pianist/pedagogue Sarah Cahill's Eighty Trips Around the Sun abounds in opportunities to take you on multiple mind-bending excursions through the mind of a true master.