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Late last month, New York City's In Living Stereo underwent two major changes: They made a short move, from a modestly sized storefront to a much larger one—2 Great Jones Street in the East Village—and they went from being a hi-fi shop to being a hi-fi and record shop. On a recent visit to their new digs I was impressed with the latter: While some hi-fi shops limit their music commitment to just a few racks of 200-gram LPs—commendable in and of itself, of course—In Living Stereo has built an entire record loft and filled it with hundreds of well-chosen new and used LPs. (I took it upon myself…
The iconic "McIntosh-blue" meter
Even folks who are not audiophiles know about McIntosh. Well, maybe not know about, but McIntosh’s cool-blue power meters are an image embedded into the subconscious of multitudes of Americans. Although when consumers hear McIntosh they think Apple, when they see those blue meters, they think audio. Images of McIntosh gear speckle American culture, whether in the movies Pillow Talk (1960), 9 ½ Weeks (1986), or As Good as it Gets (1997) or as the official amplification for the Grateful Dead’s (THE American rock band) notorious Wall of Sound, which…
Wynton Marsalis: Baroque Music for Trumpets
Vivaldi: Concerto for 2 Trumpets, RV 537; Telemann: Concertos for 3 Trumpets, in B-flat and D; Pachelbel: Canon for 3 Trumpets (arr. Leppard); M. Haydn: Concerto for Trumpet; Biber: Sonata for 8 Trumpets & Orchestra
Wynton Marsalis, piccolo trumpets; Raymond Leppard, English Chamber Orchestra
CBS M 42478 (LP), MK 42478 (CD). Bud Graham & Steven Epstein, engs.; Steven Epstein, prod. DDD. TT: 47:18
Vivaldi: Concerto for 2 Trumpets, RV 537; Telemann: Concertos for 3 Trumpets, in B-flat and D; Pachelbel: Canon for 3 Trumpets (arr. Leppard); M. Haydn: Concerto for Trumpet; Biber: Sonata for 8 Trumpets & Orchestra
Wynton Marsalis, piccolo trumpets; Raymond Leppard, English Chamber Orchestra
CBS M 42478 (LP), MK 42478 (CD). Bud Graham & Steven Epstein, engs.; Steven Epstein, prod. DDD. TT: 47:18
There are very few musically satisfying compositions for solo trumpet. A great deal of the standard repertoire is Baroque, and…
In large part because I was fascinated by the potential of Direct Acoustics' Silent Speaker II loudspeaker ($748/pair) in affordable systems (see my columns in the June 2011 and August 2011 issues), I rounded up three CD receivers that are network- and Internet Radio–ready and cost under $1000: one each from TEAC, Marantz, and Denon. These models are functionally and cosmetically more similar than different, and, it turned out, sounded more alike than not.
I was also curious to hear them as a follow-up to my quest of a couple of years back to use affordable but non-network CD receivers…
There is another issue: The designers of these models seem to have assumed that the center of the buyer's musical life is MP3 files or Internet Radio, and their products don't appear to be very future-proof in terms of higher-resolution digital (footnote 1). But with big classical works, such as Mahler's Symphony 5 in the Eliahu Inbal/Frankfurt RSO recording (CD, Denon 1088), the sound I got from the Silent Speaker IIs with the TEAC and Marantz CD receivers was as good overall (though not in every particular) as any I heard in my CD-receiver quest of two years ago, and better and far…
Sidebar: Contacts
Antelope Audio. Tel: (415) 869-9661. Fax: (415) 520-0954. Web: www.antelopeaudio.com.
Denon Electronics (USA) LLC, 100 Corporate Drive, Mahwah, NJ 07430-2041. Tel: (201) 762-6500. Fax: (201) 762-6670. Web: usa.denon.com.
Marantz America, LLC, same as Denon (above). Web: us.marantz.com.
TEAC America, Inc., 7733 Telegraph Road, Montebello, CA 90640. Tel: (323) 726-0303. Web: www.teac.com.
We were sitting near the pool, in a cozy, private cabana on the outdoor terrace of the Trump Plaza Residences in downtown Jersey City, surrounded by all kinds of beauty: To the north, the old Powerhouse Building stood proud, strong, and silent; to the south, Exchange Place's Colgate Clock was just beginning to glow, extending its tireless arms toward Lower Manhattan; to the east, the Empire State Building soared into the humid evening sky, its white-lit spire making thin veils of the summer clouds; and to the west, the redbrick row houses of Harsimus Cove hummed with the sounds of quiet…
At home, I heard stereo imaging that was equal to, if not even more exciting than, what I'd heard at the CAS, but the overall sound was softer and more opaque, the jagged edges of "Lost & Found" somewhat dulled—not necessarily a bad thing. The biggest difference between the two systems' sounds, however, was in the low end. Whereas the demo rig had produced magnificent blasts of deep-bass energy that coursed through the room and into our bellies, seeming even to make the walls, floor, and ceiling expand and contract, here, at home, there was merely a whisper of that wonderful, physical…
Spectral Audio , the northern California company whose director of engineering is Prof. Keith O. Johnson, gave the first public preview of its SDR-4000SL Master CD Processor on September 24, at Music Lovers Audio, in Berkeley. Introduced by Johnson and Spectral founder Richard (Rick) Fryer, the $19,000 Spectral Digital Resolution (SDR) model sounded sensational playing 16-bit/44.1kHz, HDCD-encoded files Johnson had made for Reference Recordings, through a system that included Spectral's DMC-30SS preamplifier and monoblock amplifiers, Wilson Audio MAXX 3 speakers, Spectral Ultralink II speaker…
Bruckner Symphonies 4, 7, 9
(Finale of 9 completed by Carragan, ed. 2010)
Gerd Schaller, Philharmonie Festiva
Profil PH11028 (4 CDs). 2008/2009/2011. Ememkut Zaotschnyj (4, 7), Lutz Wildner (9), prods.; Sandro Binetti (4, 7), Herbert Fr ühbauer (9), engs. DDD. TTs: 65:43 (4), 64:52 (7), 83:41 (9)
Performance *****
Sonics ***** (4, 7), ****½ (9)
(Finale of 9 completed by Carragan, ed. 2010)
Gerd Schaller, Philharmonie Festiva
Profil PH11028 (4 CDs). 2008/2009/2011. Ememkut Zaotschnyj (4, 7), Lutz Wildner (9), prods.; Sandro Binetti (4, 7), Herbert Fr ühbauer (9), engs. DDD. TTs: 65:43 (4), 64:52 (7), 83:41 (9)
Performance *****
Sonics ***** (4, 7), ****½ (9)
These performances were recorded at the Ebrach Festival, held annually in the small town of Ebrach, Germany (an hour's drive north from Nuremberg or west from Bayreuth), in the former Abbey Church of Ebrach, which comprised a…