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My great friends, Omar and Mikey, striking The Audiophile Pose, at Audio Connection in Verona, New Jersey.
See these two smiling faces? That's my uncle Omar on the left. He's standing with John Rutan of Audio Connection in Verona, New Jersey, a short and happy drive from downtown Jersey City, along the Parkway and up good old Bloomfield Avenue, dotted with trees and liquor stores, pizzerias and movie theaters. A very fine place, indeed.
What's Omar so happy about?
This was my first time at Audio Connection. I'd been meaning to visit ever since I noticed their ad in Stereophile, five six seven maybe almost eight years ago. I was not disappointed. We walked into the quiet…
George's smart remote. It's great. I only wish it was smaller and more comfortable to hold.
George's back panel offers an Aux input, headphone output, preamp output, USB port, and bass level control.
George uses a pair of three-inch woofers with coaxially mounted tweeters.
At some point during my time with George ($499), I lost a neighbor. The IT guy who sat in the cubicle immediately outside my office suddenly wasn't around anymore. Weeks later, I learned that the music had been bothering him. It had been too loud, I suppose. Or there had been too much of it. I'm not sure. I started apologizing to people: "Sorry about the music. It's just that I've got this new radio in my office. It's a lot of fun. His name is George."
"George?"
As it turned out, most people really liked George once they got to know him. Co-workers who'd never…
Adam Kolker’s Flag Day (on the Sunnyside label) is a knotty pleasure. It may leave your head in a coil (take two tracks of hard bop to unwind), but ride with the twists while they’re winding; it’s a soft-toned heady trip. Adam Kolker, who plays tenor sax, soprano sax, and clarinet, is known mainly as a sideman, and he doesn’t try to get out in front of his bandmates on this session—John Abercrombie on guitar, John Hebert on drums, and the irrepressible Paul Motian on drums. I promised when I started writing this blog that I wouldn’t dwell excessively on any individual musician, but Motian is…
My ears had been bothering me. First my right, then the left. A low-level high-pitched ringing, followed by a congested feeling and a popping like what you get when flying or taking an elevator way up to the 29th floor. Then, one morning in Las Vegas while attending the Consumer Electronics Show, my left ear went whooooooooosh. And my hearing was momentarily dulled—not completely gone, just dulled. Outside sounds were farther away, my own voice sounded distant and muffled. It freaked me out.
I started talking to myself.
Hello? Hello!
What the heck…