A more discursive version of this list, with descriptions and an audio track from each album, appears here in Slate (my editors indulge me now and then…
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Sorry I've been away from this space for so long. My day gig (national-security columnist for Slate) has kept me busy (as you can imagine), and I've got a tight deadline on a new book. Still, as Congreve observed, "Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast," and there's plenty of breast-beating savagery out there, so I've continued to listen, and here is my dispatch on the Best Jazz Albums (10 new and two historical discoveries) of 2018.
Joyce DiDonato: Into the Fire
Works by Heggie, Strauss, Debussy, Gruber, Lekeu
Joyce DiDonato, mezzo-soprano; Brentano String Quartet
Erato 573802 (24/96, CD). 2018. Jeremy Hayes, prod.; Steve Portnoi, balance, mastering. DDD. TT: 77:38
Performance ****½
Sonics ****½
Works by Heggie, Strauss, Debussy, Gruber, Lekeu
Joyce DiDonato, mezzo-soprano; Brentano String Quartet
Erato 573802 (24/96, CD). 2018. Jeremy Hayes, prod.; Steve Portnoi, balance, mastering. DDD. TT: 77:38
Performance ****½
Sonics ****½
On the 2017 Winter Solstice, the astounding Joyce DiDonato—the coloratura mezzo-soprano from Kansas who zips through impossible runs of Rossinian roulades faster than anyone can shuck corn—took a break from opera to present a song recital in London's famed Wigmore Hall. With Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer's…
It was January 1986. Stereophile's then publisher, Larry Archibald, and I were driving in his diesel 'Benz sedan from Las Vegas to Santa Fe. We had shaken hands at the just-concluded Consumer Electronics Show on my replacing J. Gordon Holt as the magazine's editor, and now, during the 750-mile drive, we mapped out the strategy to take what was then an "underground," digest-format, somewhat irregularly published magazine to the position of dominance in audio publishing it still enjoys.
As Larry and I discussed on that 13-hour drive from Nevada to New Mexico, we began publishing every month…
Reader's Letter: Mistaken enjoyment?
Editor: I was led astray by my BorderPatrol DAC. Making stacks of old CDs sound musical was irresistible. I even installed an old Mullard EZ80 in the DAC to increase my pleasure. After reading John Atkinson's measurements of the BorderPatrol in the September issue (pp.75–80), my belief that a DAC should be making these CDs sound good wavered. I don't understand his measurements and charts, but they must be more valid than what I hear with my tired old ears.
Then came Jon Iverson's Follow-Up review of the BorderPatrol DAC in November (p.141).…
One summer in the mid-2000s I purchased a pair of Cambridge Audio components for my red-headed, tango-dancing Texas girlfriend. She quickly saw through my ruse to install some solid hi-fi in her New Jersey home away from home—but eventually she acquiesced, and soon Michael Martin Murphey (she), the Beatles (me), and Miles Davis (us) filled our weekends with music. Inspired by a Sam Tellig column I read around that time, I paired a Cambridge Azur integrated amplifier and CD player with a pair of Triangle Titus XS minimonitors. The sound produced by this quartet was clean, precise, and…
This is one seriously beautiful piece of hi-fi. I was instantly compelled to touch the large, concentric volume/source select control knobs that dominate the center of the faceplate, which permit navigation and volume selection at the touch of its single creamy dual dial. The control dial is assembled from 31 precision-milled engineered parts, all made "from aerospace-grade materials," per Cambridge's website. The substantial metal remote-control handset replicates the dials' functions and adds Skip, Mute/Unmute, Power Off, and four programmable buttons—but I preferred the feel of the Edge…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Two-channel integrated amplifier with Bluetooth and digital inputs. Inputs: 1 pair balanced, 2 pairs unbalanced, analog; coax and TosLink S/PDIF, USB, digital; Bluetooth, Audio Return Channel (ARC). Outputs: 2 pairs five-way binding posts, XLR/RCA preamplifier out; ½" headphone (12–600 ohms impedance recommended). USB audio input: USB Audio Class 2.0 supporting up to 32-bit/384kHz PCM and DSD256. Bluetooth: 4.1 (Smart/BLE enabled) A2DP/AVRCP supporting formats up to aptX HD. Continuous power output (RMS): 100Wpc into 8 ohms (20dBW), 200Wpc into 4…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog Sources: Kuzma Stabi S turntable & Stogi tonearm; Thorens TD 124 Mk.I turntable, Jelco 350S tonearm; Denon DL-103, Hana EL, Ortofon Quintet Bronze cartridges.
Digital Sources: Apple MacBook computer running Audirvana Plus; LG BD550 BD player (as transport); ATC CDA2 Mk.II CD player; Halide DAC HD, PS Audio NuWave DACs; Western Digital T2 Mirror Drives (2).
Preamplification: Auditorium 23 A23 MC step-up transformer, Luxman EQ-500 phono preamplifier, Shindo Laboratory Allegro preamplifier.
Power Amplifier: Shindo Laboratory Haut-Brion.…
There's no place for fashion in epidemiology, aeronautical engineering, or the mining and storage of uranium. Fortunately, domestic audio is less serious, its goals more scattered and ambiguous, than those and a thousand other pursuits.
And so, throughout the 20th century, any number of trends in domestic audio popped up their heads, some remembered as fads, others as legitimate approaches to playback. Among the latter are amplifiers whose output sections operate in single-ended mode, in which the entire signal waveform is amplified by a single device (footnote 1)—usually a tube, most…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
A few seconds after I first powered up Ken Micallef's review sample of the Edge A (serial no. HT C10972 6856 0020) it turned itself off, its front-panel light glowing red to indicate a fault. I suspect that, despite the protection afforded by the impressive packaging, the box had been dropped somewhere on its way to me. As Cambridge's Dominic Baker was visiting the company's US office, in Chicago, he stopped by my Brooklyn test lab on his way back to the UK with a second sample for me to measure (serial no. HT C10925 6853 0026).
This second sample of the…