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Beyoncé's latest, Cowboy Carter, is being widely called her "country album," and the country influence is obvious. Some of the songs are even getting airplay on country radio. Cowboy Carter, though, is not a country album: It's much more ambitious than that.

The first track on Cowboy Carter is operatic. ("American Requiem" credits 14 songwriters including John Batiste, Shawn Carter, Stephen Stills, and Rhiannon Giddens…

The first impression of this record is the freshness and richness of its sonic palette. There may never have been a jazz album with this exact instrumentation: vibraphone (Patricia Brennan); trumpet (Kenny Warren); trombone (Jacob Garchik); viola (Joanna Mattrey); violin (yuniya edi kwon). Stephan Crump's acoustic bass leads this band from within. His compositions and arrangements configure six…

Otra Noche, the most recent release on Todd Garfinkle's M•A Recordings, is a continuation of Será Una Noche, a project begun in 1998, then continued with La Segunda in 2003. Twenty years later, Otra Noche is here, and it strikes me as one of the most perfect examples of digital recording I've ever encountered.

Otra Noche is a simple, spaced-omni stereo recording of real people performing together in real…

With that in mind, here…

If buying a hi-fi product from an internet retailer is like an arranged marriage, a hi-fi show is like speed dating. Not everyone, I realize, approaches hi-fi shows (or speed dating, for that matter) the same way, and anyway, the analogy between hi-fi and dating is far from perfect. Speed dating is how this year's AXPONA, America's biggest hi-fi show, held at the Renaissance Schaumburg Hotel & Convention Center (above) near Chicago in April, often felt to me as I moved from room to room. Every new system I heard had the potential to become a long-term relationship…

For those who care about sonics, the current wave of expensive 45rpm vinyl reissues has made one question urgently relevant: Does convenience trump better sound? Put differently, does the ease of not getting up every 10…

One of the most common turntable-related problems I get asked to solve is footfalls. People with squishy floors must tiptoe gingerly back to the listening seat lest they send the stylus skipping across the record—no fun! Good music should make you want to get up and dance; that's not exactly in the cards if doing so sends the needle flying.

This topic reminds me of a school ski trip I took to Austria in the mid-1970s. I was a teenager, and the jukebox in the dorm we stayed in turned out to be unskippable. That…

In this, McIntosh is not unique; KLH, JBL, Klipsch, and other companies have rethought and reworked vintage products for the current marketplace, employing new approaches and technologies.…

The ML1 Mk II's came to me new from the McIntosh plant in nearby Binghamton. When I first fired up the ML1 Mk II's, I picked something to play at random. I don't even recall what the recording was. My initial reaction: The upper-mids seemed a bit harsh and busy, very different than the two-way stand-mounted Harbeth C7's that usually occupy this space. Following my new resolution to be patient, I kept playing recordings without sitting in the sweet spot or taking notes. I did not fool around yet with placement or toe-in, and I left the handsome substantial grilles in place. My idea was to…