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Each time I approach a new recording, the music always comes first. In that spirit, with thoughts of savoring the abundant beauties in six of the eight Sonatas for Violin Solo that Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber dedicated to Maximilian Gandolf Graf von Kuenburg, the Archbishop of Salzburg, in 1681, I cued up Channel Classics' latest offering, Just Biber.…

I only saw Jeff Beck live three times, but each concert has stuck in my memory. The first was in 1965, soon after he replaced Eric Clapton in the Yardbirds. Both his virtuoso soloing and his overall musicianship astonished the teenage me.

The second time was at a blues festival in 1967, where the Jeff Beck Group made its debut. Playing drums was the great Aynsley Dunbar, with Ron Wood on bass—Beck's bands always featured excellent sidemen and 'women—and a young Rod Stewart was on vocals. Again Beck's guitar playing wowed me, though the shy Stewart kept hiding…

That large, heavy, expensive three-way tower featured an enclosure built on an aluminum space frame with extruded aluminum walls. I was impressed not only by how it measured but also by its lack of…

I used DRA Labs' MLSSA system, a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone, and an Earthworks microphone preamplifier to measure the quasi-anechoic frequency- and time-domain behavior of one of the Audiovector R 3 Arretés—serial number 202084—in the farfield. I used an Earthworks QTC-40 microphone, which has a ¼" capsule, for the nearfield responses, examined the loudspeaker's impedance with Dayton Audio's DATS V2 system, and investigated the enclosure's resonant modes with a plastic-tape accelerometer.

Audiovector specifies the sensitivity of the R 3 Arreté as 90.5dB…

Obviously, some matches are more simpatico than others. In this case, Michael favored the 300s paired with the XLFs—but we have yet…

In the June 2011 Stereophile, I reviewed Bryston's BDP-1 digital player ($2195) and purchased the review sample. Twenty-one months later, Bryston released a new version, the BDP-2 ($2995, footnote 1). The new Bryston player looked great, and bumped-up the BDP-1's processing power, system memory, number of input options—now including six USB sockets in place of the BDP-1's four, a rear-mounted slot for a self-powered eSATA drive, and provisions for an optional internal SATA drive—and USB-port current…

I never met the late Robert J. Reina, but, sadly, I can see his face as I type these words. I can see his byline on the pages of the countless BJR reviews I've read. Right now, in my tiny Brooklyn crib, I'm listening to the giant, slow, fugal opening of Philip Glass's score for the 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi (UK LP, Island ISTA 4). I'm hearing and feeling the same "dramatic passages in the lower bass" and guttural voices I imagine Bob experienced while writing his review of Dynaudio's Excite X14 loudspeaker (price…

I missed the chance to send off an R.I.P. to the jazz pianist Paul Bley, who died on January 3, at the age of 83, so I'm catching up with this advance notice of a free memorial concert to be held this Thursday night, February 11, featuring piano solos by seven of his acolytes—most notably Ethan Iverson and Frank Kimbrough, whom I've lauded on this page many times. The memorial concert—which also features Rob Schwimmer, Aaron Parks, Lucian Ban, Jacob Sacks, and Matt Mitchell—will be held at 8:00 pm, in the…