TOM CONRAD
FRED HERSCH: At Maybeck
Fred Hersch, piano
Concord Jazz CCD-4596 (CD). 1994. Nick Phillips, prod.; Dave Luke, eng. DDD.
TT: 67:32
Whoever (Elvis Costello? Frank Zappa?) said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture was right. And the defiantly subjective, shamelessly sentimental, megalomaniacal act of designating a "Record To Die For" is even more so. At Maybeck, Concord's series of beautifully recorded solo-piano concerts in Maybeck Recital Hall in Berkeley, California, eventually reached 42 volumes. Almost all are now out of print, but as…
Except for the modest aluminum plate to which the tube sockets are fastened, the D'Yquem's casework—the mass and stiffness of which are also elements in the voicing of this and other Shindo models—is formed from steel and finished, on all surfaces, in the company's trademark shade of green. The transformer cover and tube cage share a distinctly sculpted look, with neatly curved edges and ventilation openings that manage to be both functional and attractive. (Unfortunately, the D'Yquems sound considerably better with the tube cages removed: something that's true of every Shindo amp I've…
I then returned the preamp's balanced interconnects to the CR-1's main stereo inputs, to once again access low- and high-pass filtering. I set the filters' 6dB corner frequencies to 80Hz, 24dB/octave. Playing the same digital file of uncorrelated pink noise, I set each sub's Master Level control to match its acoustic output to the Salon2's output by ear, and confirmed this setting using Audio Tool's RTA display. I ran separate FFT measurements of the room response of the high-pass-filtered Salon2s with subs muted (fig.3), to confirm the 24dB/octave rolloff of the CR-1's high-pass filter.…
The Compact Disc needed a big win—and fast. During its first few years in the marketplace (footnote 1), the format wasn't living up to lofty expectations. Part of the problem maybe was that most of the CDs released up to that time came from analog sources.
But then on May 17, 1985, the CD's savior arrived: Brothers in Arms, the fifth studio album release by British rock stalwarts Dire Straits. Trumpeted as one of the first "full digital recordings" in the pop/rock oeuvre, Brothers in Arms was an undeniable smash international hit from a band that had struck it big already. Exactly 40…
On the mantel sat a stuffed Culo snake from Nuevo Laredo, with a red rubber tongue in freeze-frame flick. Above the bookcase hung the mounted head of a wild poi dog, killed in self-defense in Sri Lanka with only a Phillips-head screwdriver. A table-lamp made from a shellac'd, puffed-up frog wearing a sombrero and playing the contrabassoon bathed the room in a soft cream glow.
But the only living thing in this pack of once-proud beasts was the young man sitting at the kitchen table, slowly pecking at the keys of a rundown Bondwell laptop and blowing soap bubbles out of the antique ivory…
Listening
Tackling the "simplest" format first, the Linn Unidisk SC did a brilliant job with most of the old-fashioned music CDs I tried. Celibidache's live recording of Bruckner's Symphony 9, from 1995 (EMI 5 56699 2), was nothing short of mesmerizing through the Linn. The phrasing of every line was infused with feeling—appropriately—and the Unidisk had a natural, organic sense of flow: In that respect alone, the Unidisk SC actually made PCM digital sound more like DSD. It allowed Celibidache's occasionally broad tempos to work with the flow of each line, rather than seeming to fight…
This tonal crispness didn't otherwise detract from the Li'l Rascal's extended and natural high-frequency performance. Classical violins and the upper partials of woodwinds were extended, natural, and airy. In particular, I was smitten by the Rascal's performance of percussive high frequencies. George Crumb's chamber works make considerable use of cymbals, bells, and unorthodox percussion, and I found myself following each cymbal attack and decay in Night Music (Candide 31113). Crumb's scores often incorporate long silences, and long decays of the sounds of solo instruments; the combination of…
Hank Bordowitz
THE WHO: Quadrophenia
MCA2-10004 (LP/CD). The Who, prods.; Ron Nevison, eng.; Ron Fawcus, mix. AAA/AAD? TT: 91:54 A compositionally ambitious record, Quadrophenia holds together. The story smacks of reality, the playing caught the band at a creative peak, and John Entwhistle's bass rises to formidable levels. Townshend wrote the whole thing, making remarkable use of four themes representing the protagonists' four personalities, and bringing them together at the climax. The self-production could have caused sloppy sonics, but the synths and horns create a nearly…
"I have an interesting loudspeaker for you to review," said John Atkinson.
Uh-oh. I know what interesting means. I had a barber once who told me that, at barber school, he'd actually taken a course in conversation...
"What the heck do they teach you in a class on conversation?"
"They taught us there was one thing you could say to any statement a customer uttered, no matter how bizarre."
"Which is . . . ?"
"'That's really interesting.'"
So when JA told me that the Canton Vento 809 DC was "interesting," I reckoned he just had nothing else to say…
"No, the Dynaudio Confidence C1 isn't a small loudspeaker, but it is a stand-mounted two-way monitor." I was struggling to explain to Fred Kaplan what I was working on for this month's deadline.
"So it would be good for people with smaller rooms?"
"That's what I thought at first, so I set them up in my small listening room, where they were fantastic, but later I decided I had to hear them in my big room, too. So I brought the C1s upstairs—and darned if they didn't shine in a room that most 'monitor' speakers can't fill."
"So let me get this straight," said Fred…
