Assuming that this recording is successful, and that the reaction is positive, I do want to do at least one classical piano project in this manner. I'd like to do all the Chopin études. Note-perfect direct-to-disc! It's finding the right artist to do that.
Atkinson: Reference Recordings has an amazing roster of artists, from Red Norvo to The Blazing Redheads to Albert Fuller to Minoru Nojima. How do you choose artists to record?
Henderson: What motivates me is to get a wide variety of kinds of music. I couldn't possibly be happy working in this business having to deal with the…
Robert Deutsch reviewed the Eileen Farrell CD in November 1989 (Vol.12 No.11):
Eileen Farrell: Sings Harold Arlen
Eileen Farrell; Loonis McGlohon, piano & arrangements; Joe Wilder, special guest artist
Reference Recordings RR-30 (LP), RR-30CD (CD). Keith O. Johnson, eng.; J. Tamblyn Henderson, Jr., prod. AAA/DDD. TT: 47:36
In an interview with JA in the June 1989 issue, Reference Recordings' Tam Henderson describes working with Eileen Farrell as "more than a dream come true." Endowed with one of the glorious soprano voices of our time, Farrell is best known for her…
If you asked me to name a single specific high-end audio component that could make or break a system, I'd name the Linn LP12 turntable. Of all the thousands of hi-fi products I've heard over the years, not a one of 'em—not a speaker, amplifier, or digital processor—has been able to draw me into the music, no matter what the associated componentry, like the LP12. I've heard the most highly regarded speakers/amps/processors fall flat in certain situations due to a lack of synergy with their surrounding systems, but I've never heard an LP12-based system that didn't put a smile on my face and…
But there's "quite liveable" and then there's "YEAH!" In comparison with similarly priced analog setups, the WTRP/Blue Point Special combo sounds terrific, offering truly high-end sound for under two grand. The $6000 Linn rig, however, offers a much more detailed, rhythmically powerful, rock-solid sound. That's why, when I reviewed eight promising affordable cartridges in Vol.16 Nos.3 and 4, I used the Linn rig as my He-Man reference. Because while the best cartridge of the bunch, the Sumiko Blue Point Special, sounded better than even the best digital I've heard yet when mated with the WTRP…
As for the two cartridges' HF performance, the Klyde had a bit more emphasis in the low treble and a brighter, more cutting high end than the Blue Point Special, which sounded smoother and more musically natural. The Klyde had very good HF detail, but at the expense of a degree of sibilance that the less expensive cartridge was free of. On some recordings, the Klyde's more tipped-up low treble gave it a more detailed and forward character, but the added bite that went along with it stuck out in comparison with the Sumiko's smoother yet no less detailed high end. And in terms of throwing up…
The Basik LP12 most closely resembles the Linn's original incarnation. The motor, a 60Hz synchronous AC job not that much different from what used to come in the AR turntable, is plugged directly into the wall AC. The Basik's motor—and thus its belt, platter, arm, cartridge, and eventually the speaker cones—has to deal directly with frequency jitter and other hash riding on the never-clean, never-precise AC line. The soft belt supplies a measure of low-pass filtering to reduce the effects of all the junk on the AC, but some of it still manages to get through to affect the platter's moment-…
Sidebar 1: Review System
The Linn Klyde cartridge and LP12 'table were auditioned in my He-Man reference rig. The phono stage was mostly an Exposure Model XVII preamp with moving-coil board installed; a Sonic Frontiers SFP-1 phono stage (footnote 1) was used briefly toward the end of the review period. The Melos SHA-1 headphone amp was used as a line stage, joined at various times by my own buffered passive preamp and the Exposure XVII's own line stage. Amplification evolved from a pair of VTL Deluxe 225 tube amps at the start of the review period to the solid-state Aragon 4004 Mk.II and…
Sidebar 2: Specifications
Linn Klyde: Low-output moving-coil phono cartridge. Tracking force: 1.55–1.75gm. Compliance: 10cu. Recommended load: greater than 50 ohms. Output at 5cm/s at 1kHz: 150µV. Stylus: Vital. Weight: 8gm. Separation at 1kHz: greater than 30dB. Channel balance at 1kHz: within 0.5dB. Recommended arm: rigid, medium mass. Can you use a non-Linn arm? Wal sure ye KIN, laddie, bu' why wou' ye use innythin' bu' a LINN, ya git?!
Price: $1095.
Linn Sondek LP12: Belt-drive two-speed turntable in Basik, Valhalla, and Lingo versions.
Prices: LP12 Basik: $1395–$1495,…
Wandering through Tower Records the other night, I was struck by the amazing diversity of music available to us. There's music from every part of the globe, for every taste and interest, from "show-me-the-good-parts" compilations of classical highlights to obscure releases by unknown artists. There's music for the ecstatic, music for the angry, music for the straight, the gay, the bent, and the twisted. The subcategories replicate like rabbits, as if in a demographer's nightmare. Genus spawn species, which quickly mutates into subspecies, race, tribe: cult begets subcult.
The rock…
It is a widely held belief that musicians do not assess hi-fi equipment in the same way as "audiophiles." I remember the British conductor Norman Del Mar—an underrated conductor if ever there was one—still being perfectly satisfied in 1981 with his 78 player, never having felt the need to go to LP, let alone to stereo. And some musicians do seem oblivious to the worst that modern technology can do. I was present at the infamous Salzburg CD conference in 1982, for example, where Herbert von Karajan, following one of the most unpleasant sound demonstrations in recorded history, announced that…
