Black Sabbath: Paranoid (Rhino BA2 3104 BD). An old favorite, the seminal heavy metal album (footnote 4) sounds fresh, different, and even more menacing with distinct four-channel mixes.
Santana: Abraxas (Sony Japan SICP 10135 SACD). The quad mix for this classic rock album is quite different from the familiar stereo. Carlos Santana's blistering guitar solo on "Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen" flies around the four speakers, suggesting a voodoo caldron of sound.
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Remastered from the original tapes (except one, for which a digital source was used), all five are available on LP and CD as well as streaming and download. At TomWaits.com and UDiscover Music, the LP versions are available in colored-…
For Abrash, who cut the new lacquers for the UMG reissues, matching the sound characteristics of the original DMM Waits masters made for a uniquely challenging job. "So my thing was, could I reverse engineer the DMM cuts? I studied the groove spacing. They look very good under a microscope. They're very thin, very narrow grooves. The plus thing is that you don't have pre- and post-echo," Abrash said. "For me it was about trying to match the cutting levels as close as I could to the original, not alter the…
Across John Leventhal's 45-year career, he has produced records that won close to 20 Grammy Awards, written songs performed by artists from Joe Cocker to Shawn Colvin, and worked in the studio with musicians as varied as Jackson Browne and Johnny Cash. But until now, he has never occupied the role of "solo artist." That changes with the release of Rumble Strip.
The record combines Leventhal's…
Yarlung's latest "audiophile" recording is a breath of fresh air in every respect. Offering seven accessible, beguilingly fresh works, all composed within the last 53 years (and several quite new), it brings together stellar artistic forces: the 49-year-old Takács String Quartet;…
The jazz piano world is filled with contenders these days, and Caelan Cardello is a name to watch.
This relaxed set, a duo with veteran bassist Rufus Reid, was impeccably recorded at 24/96 resolution at the small venue inside New York City's Klavierhaus, a piano restoration specialist business. The recording is unadulterated; according to the liner notes, engineer Markos only…
AudioNec? I wanted to say “oh my aching neck” after a long flight, but this room with its massive dual computer server/DAC and substantial modular floor-standing speakers put my body at ease.
The setup included the world premiere of…
Brand Ambassador Johnnes Farkas showed the HSE Swiss Master Line 7 Phono Preamp, the HSE Swiss Master Line 8 Preamp, and the dual HSE Swiss Reference Phono Preamp and Power Supply. All prices include 10% VAT.
The dual mono Master Line 7 Phono Preamp (€81,500) is a stunning piece of class…
Timo Engstrom streamed John Scofield and Pat Metheny’s serpentine “The Red One,” Metheny’s acoustic guitar exploration of “And I Love Her,” and Tribal Tech’s “Face First,” a bludgeoning 90s jazz fusion piece.
The system played these streams with solid fidelity to the source while revealing the good (“The Red One”) and bad (“Face First”) of the recordings.
Equipment…
Accompanying exhibits that combined products from Basso Continuo, Dan D’Agostino, dCS, Krell, Meridian Audio, Nordost, Perlisten, Velodyne, Vicoustic, VPI, VTL, Western Electric, and Wilson Audio (among others) were a host of industry luminaries. Among these were Dan D’Agostino and Burhan Coskun (D’Agostino Master Systems), Joe Reynolds (Nordost), Luke Manley (VTL), Charles G. Whitener (Western Electric), and…