Genius.
“You two are so hot, you should be illegal,” I told them.
They laughed.
“What did you just say to them?” Rosemarie asked.
“I told them they were so hot they should be illegal.”
“God, you’re such a guy.”
“Danke!”
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These two kitty-clad women have been following me all over the show. They’re here to promote Cambridge Audio’s new Minx series of mini-speakers, made to match a small, stylish design with true high-quality sound.
Unfortunately, Jeff Joseph’s shipment of gear was delayed due to a short FedEx strike which occurred in Paris. Joseph was understandably tired and frustrated, but he hadn’t lost his great sense of humor.
“I can still play the speakers,” he said with a straight face.
I thought for a moment that he would employ some powerful new wireless technology; Joseph was an early proponent for computer-based audio.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. What would you like to hear?”
He covered his face with the press release for his lovely Pulsar ($7000/pair) and began to sing.
I…
Andy Regan (left) and George Cardas are excited about the current state of hi-fi and music. They strongly believe that the asynchronous technologies found in today’s digital-to-analog converters can erase any negative effects the Compact Disc has had on music and on our enjoyment of music. It’s possible to achieve improved sound quality and enjoy a better overall listening experience by removing the disc from the equation, playing high-quality music files stored on a hard drive.
Shut Up and Dance, on the French label Bee Jazz, should catapult John Hollenbeck into the pantheon of living big-band composers, along with Maria Schneider, Bob Brookmeyer, Jim McNeely, and (if his debut works are matched by what's to come) Darcy James Argue, among perhaps a very few others.
I've praised some of Hollenbeck's earlier albums in this space, especially his Large Ensemble's Eternal Interludes and his Claudia Quintet's Royal Toast, but I have to say I admired them more than I liked them. His arrangements were heady, his feel for harmony nearly peerless, but some of the pieces…
I swear: Music Hall’s Roy Hall was cracking jokes and smiling wide just moments before I snapped this shot.
“Are you enjoying the show?” he had asked.
“Very much. This show has a certain grace and a natural sex appeal that shows in the States seem to lack,” I said.
Roy nodded. “Ah, you get it. So you’re not just a pretty face.”
Then he walked me over to his new MMF-11 turntable (around $4500, including Pro-Ject 10cc carbon-fiber tonearm). First seen in prototype form at January’s Consumer Electronics Show, the 43-lb MMF-11 is a two-motor, flywheel-driven turntable…
Music Hall’s new plug-and-play dac15.2 ($299) has USB, coaxial, and optical inputs and is capable of handling resolutions up to 24-bit/96kHz.
“It’s just fucking amazing,” Roy Hall said simply.
Available this fall.
Let me hear your body talk.
—Olivia Newton John
—Olivia Newton John
But first a confession: I'm not the hip young man you might like me to be (or the one I might like me to be). I'm actually sort of old-fashioned. While my taste in music is nearly as uninhibited and adventurous as that of anyone I know, I prefer to enjoy that music in ways far more restrained and much less modern. I think I would have been right at home in the 1950s, wearing Ray-Bans and Levi's, listening to (and loving, equally and deeply) the music of both Jack Scott and John Cage, and playing my records on a record player.
I…
Overall, the HM-602 has a handsome, rather serious appearance: With its gold controls and its fine metallic finish, which at times seems a deep green and at others takes on a smoky charcoal, the HM-602, like its predecessor, exhibits an air of elegance and sophistication. And while the HM-801 proudly takes after Sony's famed Walkman—Fang Bian once owned every available model of the now-discontinued portable cassette player—the HM-602 much more closely resembles Apple's iPod Classic. On its front panel, below the 2" LCD screen, the HM-602 has a four-way control ring similar to the iPod's…
In any case, I was impressed. From the rich acoustic guitars and old-school drum-machine beats of Dominant Legs' Young at Love and Life (LP, Lefse 010) to the live drumming and heavily layered synth textures of Four Tet's There Is Love in You (LP, Domino WIGLP 254), I feasted on a steady diet of recordings with deep bass and thrilling stereo imaging. But placing the Audioengine 5s so far into my room proved impractical for a few reasons. First, because the A5s are internally powered, you need simply connect the speaker cable from the left channel's binding posts to the right channel's binding…
Sidebar: Contacts
Audioengine. Tel: (877) 853-4477. Web: www.audioengineusa.com.
Head-Direct. Tel: (347) 475-7673. Fax: (718) 766-0560. Web: www.head-direct.com.
Music Hall, 108 Station Road, Great Neck, NY 11023. Tel: (516) 487-3663. Web: www.musichallaudio.com.