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In large measure, that's where the fun in this set is to be found: in comparing different versions of the same song. As his critics at the time never let him forget, Armstrong worked from a fairly predictable set list during the All Stars years. As quoted in Riccardi's notes, some of the criticism was offensive and downright racist, observing that the All Stars sets seldom rose "above the plane of a coon carnival" and that Pops was "lowering himself as a human being." These recordings will never be mistaken for the Hot Five and Hot Seven sessions, but the fabulously vital and energetic…
Rotel RMB-1585 five-channel power amplifier
Power amplifiers are unglamorous but essential. In theory, they have only one task. But, according to audio sage Yogi Berra, "in theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." Amplifiers must take a voltage input signal and provide an output of somewhat higher voltage but of substantially higher current, the product of which is power. The task is complex in that this output must be applied to electrical interfaces whose characteristics vary widely from speaker to speaker—across the audioband and, for some, even at…
Power amplifiers are unglamorous but essential. In theory, they have only one task. But, according to audio sage Yogi Berra, "in theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." Amplifiers must take a voltage input signal and provide an output of somewhat higher voltage but of substantially higher current, the product of which is power. The task is complex in that this output must be applied to electrical interfaces whose characteristics vary widely from speaker to speaker—across the audioband and, for some, even at…
To get past this, I began climbing the steep learning curve necessary to assemble, configure, and use a more comprehensive solution. It consists of four parts: 1) remote networked storage to keep large, noisy drives far away; 2) updatable software with wide format support and a flexible GUI; 3) a silent networked computer with suitable digital outputs to run the software; and 4) multichannel or multiple DACs. I found this kind of DIY effort somewhat intimidating—it required real work and an education before I could assume the responsibility for getting all the disparate pieces to work…
Record business freebies are almost a thing of the past, but every once in a while, the formerly titanic enterprise still throws a fandango for music fans, none more exciting lately than the announcement that Universal Music is gonna throw a listening party, open the public, to preview the 14 LP The Beatles in Mono boxed set, at Electric Lady Studios in NY (Sept. 8) and the GRAMMY Museum in LA (Sept. 10). To get in you have to register using these links.
http://smarturl.it/BeatlesMonoLA and http://smarturl.it/BeatlesMonoNYC
Here’s an excerpt from the official press release:…
". . . seizing and incorporating . . . There is nothing about us which is more strongly primitive."—Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power
I am a collector. Books, records, art, music, knickknacks, old blurry anonymous photos, and more—hanging, sitting, standing, and shelved, they surround me where I sit and follow me around our home. In collecting, less is certainly not more, and I believe that part of its appeal is that our collections help define not only who we are but who we'd like to become—or, perhaps, how things are and how we'd like them to be.
I love my collection of LPs. I…
Other options include Crossfade Duration (within a range of 2–15 seconds, set with a sliding scale), Gapless Playback, Cache folder path, Cache max size (automatic 10% of free space, or set with a sliding scale from 1GB to a maximum value that will vary based on the amount of storage available on your computer), Playing buffer size, and Music Downloads Import Quality (320kbps or CD quality). I found that I had to adjust the buffer size when playing from my iMac, which connects to my network via WiFi. Once this was set, I experienced no dropouts or interrupts. (The rest of my desktop system…
And then there was Pono! Or not. Despite prompt denials by the folks at Pono, it now seems likely that the still mythical, high resolution music player will not be delivered to customers, who to date have kicked in $13 million via Crowdfunder and Kickstarter, until early 2015.
To those trusting souls, those Neil Young fans with more cash than sense, I say, go look up caveat emptor. You should have at least waited until the bugs were worked out. Or not.
Meanwhile, Young continues to stay musically relevant and cut his own completely unique path through the world. He and wife Pegi…
Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner conducting.
RCA ".5 Series" ARP1-W27 (LP).
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner conducting.
RCA ".5 Series" ARP1-W27 (LP).
In case you didn't already know, ".5" is RCA's name for their half-speed-–mastered line of audiophile LPs, whose releases to date have included many recordings, as well as some real gems, from their archive of older stereo recordings.
Their choice of old recordings is interesting to say the least, as it shows a side of RCA's classical division that we thought had atrophied and blown away many years ago: musical judgment. Instead of going for their most…
No, we made no typos in the specifications sidebar. The weight of the Wilson Audio Modular Monitor (WAMM) speaker system is enough to make you consult a structural engineer before dropping it on your living room floor—fragile, 300-year old New England frame houses are probably out. And the recent price increase from $32,000 to $35,000 is enough by itself to buy a pair of Quad ESL-63s—which is not a bad speaker system. The WAMM represents an all-out assault on both the state of the art in speaker systems and on the limits to which wealthy audiophiles will go in order to have the best (footnote…
It is this acceleration of aural intensity which produces a kind of rapture in the music-lover—Do I wax too poetic? Are you checking the cover of your magazine to see if it's really Stereophile?—that the WAMMs do uniquely well. As you can see, I was bowled over. As an equipment reviewer I would like the WAMMs for their cleanness of presentation, their tonal neutrality; as a sensual human being I would like the WAMMs for their ability to present realistic orchestral dynamics.
It's hard to assign one specific cause to above effect. I suspect that the key decision was to use $8000 worth of…