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Walter Liederman and Danny Richie next showed me the mammoth LS9 (named for its nine planar magnetic drivers). Priced at an unbelievable $6000/pair considering their size and complexity, the LS9s were coupled with Al Stiefel's fine Red Rock Audio 50Wpc Renaissance Monoblock amplifiers ($39,750/pair), Red Rock prototype preamplifier, Abbingdon Music Research CD-77 player ($8500), Grand Prix Audio Monaco turntable ($19,500), and Red Rock Audio cables. Components were supported by the Monaco Modular Isolation Rack ($4750) and Monaco Amplifier Isolation System ($1499). Grand Prix designer…
It was 5:30 p.m. on Saturday. As Day Two was coming to a close, this sleep-deprived audiophile determined to end the day on a high note. Ah, the Cary/Dali room. That's sure to be a winner. Thank God, it was.
The combination of Dali Helicon 400 Mk.II speakers complete with ribbon tweeter and recent upgrade of woofer and crossover ($6300/pair), Cary SLP05 preamp ($7500), CD306 SACD player ($7500), CAD P205 power amp (60Wpc in triode, 120Wpc in Utralinear), Audio Magic power conditioner, and MIT mid-level cabling was a joy to listen to. The system did a marvelous job of communicating…
Ray Kimber of Kimber Kable strongly believes that audiophiles need to be exposed to live music. He arranged for one of the ensembles he records with his Isomike system, the Fry Street Quartet, to perform a series of concerts at RMAF. After the players finished a Haydn Quartet in the Marriott's lobby, the audience went into the Kimber listening room across the corridor to hear the same piece on Ray's $500k reference surround system, described earlier in the blog.
This Gay Talese Esquire profile of the chairman of the board is frequently cited as the best celebrity portrait ever published. I don't know about that—I'd rate both Wolcott Gibbs' New Yorker deconstruction of Henry Robinson Luce and Lillian Ross' Hemingway profile just as highly.
But those three are about as good as it gets.
It's just outside, looking in.
The New York Times' Anthony Tommasini says serial music is just one more tool the present-day composer can utilize.
On the eve of the film's UK release, Neil Gaiman muses on how he came to write Stardust.
I immensely enjoyed Stardust, both as a book and as a movie—Gaiman wisely let Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman make some drastic changes so that it worked as a movie, which is an entirely different critter from a novel.
Call me smitten if you must, but I find Gaiman good company, no matter which medium he works in.
"The book came out, first in illustrated and then in unillustrated form. There seemed to be a general consensus that it was the most inconsequential of my novels. Fantasy…
You can do it with Chuck Taylors, you can do it with Mini Coopers, you can do it with Cob Houses, and now you can even do it with loudspeakers. MartinLogan, ever fashion conscious, has launched a Custom Shop, allowing music lovers to style their own loudspeakers.
Cool, right?
Currently, only the flagship Summit loudspeaker ($10,995/pair) is up for a makeover. But assistant marketing manager, Devin Zell tells me he's working on getting the company's other models available in the Custom Shop. It'll take a few months. In the meantime, MartinLogan is happy to work directly with…
I’ve listened to Herbie Hancock’s new CD, River: The Joni Letters (on Verve), three times now, and it gets better with each spin. This is a Joni Mitchell tribute album, with Hancock on acoustic piano heading a straight-ahead jazz quintet (including Wayne Shorter on soprano sax and Dave Holland on bass), fronted on six of the 10 tracks by various singers.
It’s strange that more jazz musicians haven’t covered the Mitchell songbook. Her harmonies are sophisticated but also wide open, leaving plenty of freedom for improvisers. Dave Douglas recorded a few of her songs, and several others that…
Sean O'Hagan asks, "where are the heirs to awkward buggers like Robert Wyatt?"
That's the wrong question, I think. There has never been anyone else remotely like Wyatt—he's a sport of nature and that's not hereditary.