Just Biber
Rachel Podger, baroque violin; Brecon Baroque
Channel Classics CCS48525 (Reviewed in DSD128 and 24/96 PCM). 2025. Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, Prod.; Jared Sacks, Eng./Edit/Master
Performance *****
Sonics *****

YG Acoustics and Supreme Acoustic Systems set up a massive, no-holds-barred system at T.H.E. Show in Southern California.

It's a spring day, midweek, and I'm behind the desk of the small-town library where I work part-time. A woman comes in, late 60s, maybe 70. There is a quietness about her, as if time has asked her to shrink a little. She's local, but we've never met. "Laura," she offers. Her handshake is firm.

Laura tells me she's heard through a mutual friend that I have a high-end music system and write for Stereophile. Her husband, Ted, loved the magazine.

Why should we worry about the conservation and preservation of old analog master tapes when they've long ago been transferred to digital? It's a reasonable question—especially since AI-powered digital signal processing is on the horizon, promising perfect repair of bad-sounding digital audio files. Musicians and many audiophiles are skeptical that DSP could ever perform authentic correction on natively analog domain-transferred music files, the way (eg) Plangent Processes can. A forceful argument for better preservation of the surviving tapes is that when they're gone, we'll have lost not only the absolute (if also decaying) reference but also vital information that can be essential to applying authentic corrective processes.

David Bowie: Young Americans; Lucy Dacus: Forever Is a Feeling; Gabe Dixon: Parts I've Played; Neal Francis: Return To Zero.

Harvey Diamond/John Lentz: how strange the road should be so easy; Frank Kimbrough: The Call; Ivo Perelman & Matthew Shipp String Trio: Armageddon Flower; Dan Weiss: Unclassified Affections.

Black Oak Ensemble: Dance Of The Night Sky; Dvořák Piano Quintet 2, Price: Piano Quintet, Marc-André Hamelin, piano; Takács Quartet; Mendelssohn: Symphony 3 (Scottish), Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt, Three Lieder ohne Worte, Rotterdam Philharmonic/Lahav Shani; Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau: A Centenary Tribute.

A friend who sells high-end audio gear once pointed out that people who shop for separate tonearms are very different from those interested in phono cartridges or turntables in general. If you think about it, this makes sense. Almost everyone buying a new turntable needs a cartridge to go with it, and most turntables come equipped with a tonearm. Tonearm shoppers are more avid enthusiasts than general consumers.

It wasn't always that way. In earlier days of high fidelity, 60 or more years ago, people putting together a cutting-edge phono playback system would typically buy what was known as a motor unit: a Thorens TD 124, Garrard 301, or a few years later the Garrard 401 or Technics SP-10. They would match it up with a tonearm from a company like SME or Ortofon.

Chad Kassem knows what it takes to make an immortal blues record. "Somebody who lived down in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, the South. They lived through it. Their story is real, and their voice is real."

The founder/owner of Analogue Productions and longtime blues true believer, Kassem's record label, mail-order warehouse, and vinyl plating and pressing plant—all headquartered in Salina, Kansas—were recently profiled in The New York Times ("The Wizard of Vinyl is in Kansas," March 5, 2025). Among his many business ventures, Kassem is part of the new Craft Recordings vinyl-reissue series of titles drawn from the Bluesville catalog, which is owned by Craft's parent company, Concord Records.