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Being “old school” can be either a compliment or a nasty put–down depending on who’s doing the talking. In the case of Jesse Baylin, the jersey girl turned Nashville singer/songwriter who is married to drummer Nathan Followill of the now-on-hiatus Kings of Leon, her new record Little Spark is a very savvy exercise in blending lots of obvious reference points, from Dusty Springfield to the classic girl groups of the 60’s, yet keeping the sound and attitude contemporary. With a sultry, ethereal delivery and an overall dreamy retro distinctness of Amy Winehouse—though the similarities end there—…
Last night, before giving in to sleep, I listened over and over to the Dirty Three’s upcoming record, Toward the Low Sun, the band’s first release in seven years and their first for the great Chicago label, Drag City.
The Dirty Three (Mick Turner on guitars, Warren Ellis on violin, and Jim White on drums) has always shown a deep respect and admiration for those magical spaces in between—between the notes, between one another, between the music and the listener. You can hear this in the gentle, expert touch of brushes against snare; the tap of sticks against steel; the stroke,…
Sheriff Truman: Jelly donuts?
Dale Cooper: Harry, that goes without saying.
Dale Cooper: Harry, that goes without saying.
The beast is now in the careful, capable hands of our copy editor, Richard Lehnert. I sent it to him last night, only six days after I began creating this latest collection of “Recommended Components” blurbs—the last six months of equipment reports, follow-ups, and column coverage distilled into 150-word gems. Six months squished into six days: less time than it took to create the universe.
It seems that with every April and October that comes our way, we’re forced to complete the task in…
Beethoven: Sonata No.32, Op.111; Sonata No.21, Op.53 ("Waldstein")
Tibor Szasz, piano
Bainbridge BCD-6275 (CD). Leo de Gar Kulka, eng. & prod. DDD. TT: 58:03
Tibor Szasz, piano
Bainbridge BCD-6275 (CD). Leo de Gar Kulka, eng. & prod. DDD. TT: 58:03
Mozart: Piano Concerto No.13, K.415; Overture to Lucio Silla, K.135
Jeremy Menuhin, piano; George Cleve, 1987 Midsummer Mozart Festival Orchestra
Bainbridge BCD-6273 (CD). Leo de Gar Kulka, eng. & prod. DDD. TT: 36:58
Prokofiev: Alexander Nevsky, Lieutenant Kije
Andre Previn, Los Angeles Philharmonic
Telarc CD-80143 (CD). Jack Renner, eng.; Robert Woods, prod. DDD. TT: 63:37
Rachmaninov…
The Threshold FET nine/e ($2595) is the junior sibling of the FET ten/e, a solid-state preamp that has earned a rave review in March 1991 from noted tubeophile Dick Olsher (Vol.14 No.3), itself a development of the FET ten that J. Gordon Holt reviewed in September 1987 (Vol.10 No.6). Would my ears, accustomed as they are to the pitter-patter of electrons traveling through a vacuum, have a similarly positive response to the FET nine/e?
The first thing I noticed about the FET nine/e is the outboard power supply: connected to the preamp with a flexible umbilical cord, this is quite a…
Sidebar 1: System and setup
My audio system has evolved somewhat since I described it in "A Matter of Taste" (Vol.12 No.6). The analog front end consists of a Linn LP12, now with Lingo power supply, Ittok, AudioQuest AQ 7000 replacing the Talisman S, and a Bryston TF-1 stepup. Digital source is a Philips CD650 (internally damped and otherwise messed-around-with), now feeding an Aragon D2A via MAS masTER LINK digital interconnect.
My PV5 has been re-tubed; the phono-stage tubes have AudioQuest tube dampers on them; the balance pot and mode switch have been bypassed, and the unused…
Sidebar 2: Measurements
The frequency response of the FET nine/e is shown in fig.1. The lower curves show the response through the line-level stages taken at the main outputs—and require no comment. The upper curves show the phono RIAA response taken at the tape monitor outputs. The deviations within the audio band are minor; the rising response seen at the extreme top end peaks above 100kHz. In an effort to track down any possible adverse effects from this, we fed a (pre-equalized) 10kHz squarewave into the Threshold's phono input (set for low gain). The resultant squarewave is shown in…
Sidebar 3: Specifications
Description: Frequency response: DC–100kHz, –0.2dB, RIAA equalization ±0.25dB (20Hz–20kHz). Distortion: line stage, 0.007%; phono stage, moving-magnet, 0.005%, moving-coil, 0.05%. Gain: phono stage, moving-magnet, 37.7dB; moving-coil, 58.5dB; high-level, 20.57dB. Input impedance: line stage, 20k ohms; phono stage selectable, 32.2 ohms, 47.5 ohms, 100 ohms, or 47k ohms in parallel with 50pF, 100pF, 200pF, or 250pF. Noise: phono stage, moving-magnet, –80dBA ref. 5mV input; moving-coil, –66dBA ref. 1mV input; line stage, –112dB ref. maximum output. Output impedance…
Chick Corea's Further Explorations (Concord), with Eddie Gomez on bass and Paul Motian on drums, is my favorite jazz album of the year so far. I've played it maybe 20 times since I got an advance copy a few months ago.
It's a two-disc set, taken from two weeks of sessions at the Blue Note in Greenwich Village (one of which I raved over in this space at the time, back in May 2010). The gig was hawked as a Bill Evans tribute (the title is a spin on Evans' 1959 album Explorations), but that told only the half of it.
Evans covers dominated the sets, but there were also originals,…
As one of the Top Five KEF dealers in the United States, AudioVision San Francisco was chosen as the site for the country's first in-store demo of KEF's Blade ($30,000/pair) on January 19. Given that the Blade's previous three quasi-public demos were either at shows—CEDIA 2011, where the environment was reportedly too noisy for anyone to get a good listen, and RMAF 2011, where the room was too small—or KEF's 50th Anniversary Party in the British Embassy in New York City, this was actually the first time that anyone on the West Coast, or any bloke who happened to wander in off the street, had…