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In the forum, it’s been determined that Magnum Dynalab, without a doubt, offers the best tuners on the market; and, while I don’t own a decent tuner and my time spent listening to the radio is dedicated almost entirely to frustrating Mets games and morning weather reports, I am now interested in Radio Happy Hour, with host Sam Osterhout, actors Matt Skibiak and Robin Reed, and music by Stephanie Davila.
Radio Happy Hour, the radio show not on the radio, is a live variety show featuring made-for-radio murder mystery sitcom, guest stars, musical performances, an audience quiz, and…
Last January, John Atkinson wrote an enthusiastic review of Dynaudio’s 30th Anniversary Sapphire loudspeaker; impressed by its big-bottomed bass, neutral midrange, and stable stereo imaging, JA concluded:
I can’t think of a more pleasant way to have spent my summer than with the Dynaudio Sapphires….Recommended with a bullet. The remaining 300 pairs of Sapphires won’t hang around much longer, so most of us will have to wait to see what Dynaudio comes up with for its 40th anniversary.
Just over a year later, the last pair of Sapphires (Serial Number 1000/1000), finished in a…
I’ve been digging Dexter Gordon’s 1963 album, Our Man In Paris, featuring Bud Powell on piano, Pierre Michelot (a JA fave) on bass, and Kenny Clarke on drums. Look at how deep and cool Dexter Gordon looks on the cover, balancing a smoke between his fingers, lost in thought.
Don’t you just want to be Dexter Gordon?
Director Bante takes Sleeveface to new heights with this video, bringing to life so many of Blue Note’s iconic covers. Stereophile contributor and AAAS member, Jim Austin, gave me the heads-up on this one.
So far, other than Steve Zahn who is really annoying as a devil–may–care DJ with goofy eyeglasses, the new HBO series, Treme is pretty great. Lots of flavor. Some hokiness of course, but still fairly believable most of the time. The best scene so far hands down was when Elvis Costello, playing Elvis Costello, comes out of a bar to crawl into his limo and Kermit Ruffins, playing himself, is standing on the sidewalk really huffing on fatty. When Zahn encourages him, through the cloud of smoke, to talk to Costello and maybe land himself an opening slot on an upcoming Costello tour, Kermit demurs…
You know what tomorrow is? Record Store Day! It’s not that guys like you and me need a special reason to go to the record store and buy a bunch of vinyl, but it’s nice to have it anyway. You’ll find me at my local shop, Tunes, in Hoboken, by no later than 10am, waiting for the doors to open. Last year, I showed up just 30 minutes after they had opened, only to find that most of the coolest stuff had already sold out. Not this year. This year, I’ll be the one that gets all the cool stuff.
Here are a few of the special, limited-edition Record Store Day items that I’ll be…
Never did I think the day would come when I’d be standing in a line at 10:30 am on a chilly April Saturday to get into a record store. A record store mind you that is directly across the street from the now spacious, high-ceilinged NYU offices that were once the Tower Records on Broadway in downtown Manhattan.
It’s unimaginable to me that Tower on lower Broadway, as well as the one on Sunset to be honest, are gone. The one in NYC had an upstairs, with wonderfully warped and creaky wooden floors that was filled with jazz and country music. And lots of catalog on the shelves. I used to…
The May 2010 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. Jon Iverson opens this issue by exploring “The Holy Trinity of Audiophiledom.” The idea was born on the morning of February 9. I had sent an e-mail to Jon, directing his attention to a post in our forum regarding one reader’s experience with cassettes and cassette decks. Jon responded by directing my attention to that morning's Vote question, which also dealt with cassettes.
“Uh-oh,” I said.
And after awhile: “That’s an epic forum post!” Jon exclaimed.
“It is,” I said. “And there are now 37 comments to my…
In our April issue, Robert Baird talks to Okkervil River’s Will Sheff about his recent collaboration with Roky Erickson, the wild-eyed frontman for the famed 13th Floor Elevators.
We learn that Erickson has traveled a long way—through jail cells and mental institutions and break-ups and bad trips and toothlessness—to be able to release this album, his first in 14 years, provocatively titled True Love Cast Out All Evil. We learn that Sheff, as producer, intended the album to be a work of authenticity, rather than an “over-reverential museum treatment.” And we…
If the cover of the latest issue of Uncut is any indication, “lost” albums never lose their appeal for the musically–inclined or obsessed. Music fans always want what they don’t have or haven’t heard or hear is hard to get. It’s the allure of the forbidden record. And it’s a chief symptom of the record collecting psychoses.
And then there are lost performers. Singer and guitarist Kenny Rankin kind of falls into that category. The records he made in the Seventies, which Johnny Carson of all people so loved, are now nearly forgotten. When I asked a musically literate friend about him…
John Atkinson runs a set of measurements on the Vivid Audio G1Giya. Here, we see the Giya turning at five degree intervals, while a pseudo-random series of pulses is used to calculate impulse response.
For images of the fun, visit our Gallery. For much more info on how and why John Atkinson measures loudspeakers, go here, here, and here.