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Last Trip To Other Music

Photos: Brian Li

It's half past seven on a drizzly Friday night in New York City. I'm a little bit of a mess; soggy from the sporadic downpour, weakened by a full day's work, and still regretting the sub-par pork and chive dumplings I wolfed down earlier. All day long I've been fighting off the urge to inject myself with cold beers (preferably Guinness) and binge watch Wong Kar Wai films. It's one of those days.

I'm with my friend Brian Li and we're walking in the East Village. Our destination: Other Music.

Pause. Allow me to back track and offer you, reader, some…

Vijay Iyer & Wadada Leo Smith, <I>A Cosmic Rhythm with Each Stroke</I>

I've listened to this album several times now, and it's growing on me with each play. A duet session with pianist Vijay Iyer, 44, and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, 74, both master musicians, immersed in avant-garde composition but comfortable with basking in lyrical ballads too, A Cosmic Rhythm with Each Stroke (on the ECM label) is spacey without devolving into New Age goo, intense (sometimes simmering, sometimes bursting to a boil) without losing the theme or pulse of a piece.

The heart of the album is a 52-minute, largely improvised suite (which provides the CD's title), inspired by the…

The Goodness of Your Heart: A Tragedy in One Act

Note: All dialogue quoted verbatim from e-mail exchanges to which I am privy; the stage directions are imaginary.

Dramatis Personae:

bill, director of marketing for PS Audio

randy (footnote 1), amateur reviewer for a commercial audiophile website

dick (footnote 2), professional reviewer for an established audio magazine (not Stereophile)

SCENE ONE

The stage is completely darkened, save for a small pool of light L. and another R. At L. we see randy in his office, sitting with his feet up on his desk. Other than a computer and a telephone, his desk is…

Recording of June 2016: <I>Emily's D+Evolution</I>

Esperanza Spalding: Emily's D+Evolution
Concord 7238281 (LP, 24/96 FLAC from PonoMusic). 2016. Esperanza Spalding, Tony Visconti, prods.; Kyle Hoffman, Tim Price, engs.; Martin Cooke, Kyle McAulay, Erin Tonkon, asst. engs.; Paul Blakemore, mastering; Rich Costey, mix. Mario Borgatta, mix assist. DDA? TT: 43:41
Performance ****½
Sonics ****½

It may have started back in 2011, when the crowd at the Grammy Awards let out a collective "Who?" as Esperanza Spalding was named Best New Artist, an award almost everyone had thought would go straight to Justin Bieber. Spalding was the…

Let Him Roll

What can you say about a man who wrote a love song to tomatoes?

“Now you can go out to eat and that's for sure/ But it's nothin' a homegrown tomato won't cure/ Put 'em in a salad, put 'em in a stew/ You make your very own tomato juice.

"You can eat 'em with eggs, eat 'em with gravy/ Eat 'em with beans, pinto or navy/ Put 'em on the side, put 'em in the middle/ Put a homegrown tomato on a hotcake griddle

"Homegrown tomatoes, homegrown tomatoes/ What'd life be without homegrown tomatoes/ Only two things that money can't buy/ And that's true love and homegrown tomatoes.”…

VPIAudioQuest Event in New Jersey Friday

Friday May 20, from 2-10pm, Hi-Fi Sales (1732 Route 70 East, Cherry Hill, NJ 08003) is hosting an event in which audiophiles can get their first look at VPI's brand new ADS (Analog Drive System) speed controller (projected price: $800-$1000), the first product of the company's newly forged partnership with electronics designer Mike Bettinger. Attendees will also have a chance to compare VPI's magnetic-drive and direct-drive turntable technologies, in the form of two otherwise-identical VPI Avenger turntables—a first for their direct-drive system.

Mat Weisfeld and Harry Weisfeld of VPI…

Dan D'Agostino Dems in Dallas Saturday

May 21, 2–6pm, Bill McKiegan, President of Sales at Dan D'Agostino Master Audio Systems, will be presenting a day of listening at Audio Concepts (11661 Preston Rd #280, Dallas, TX 75230) in Dallas, Texas. The featured system will include the new Momentum M400 mono amplifiers, Momentum Preamplifier, and Momentum Phonostage (above), driving Wilson Alexx loudspeaker and using the AMG Viella 12 turntable.

Also on display will be the Momentum MLife integrated amplifier, which has been recently upgraded to include Tidal streaming.

Meridian Explorer2 D/A headphone amplifier

I was lying on a mattress on the floor of an empty apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Not as grim as it sounds—it's a nice apartment, and the mattress was new, and had just been delivered—but it was hot (no air-conditioning), and my family and my furniture were still in my condo up in Maine, and I was lonely. I needed some cheering up. Which is how I rationalized the decision to buy an Explorer2, Meridian Audio's tiny, inexpensive ($299) digital-to-analog converter.

Thanks to Amazon Prime, 24 hours later I was sitting on a newly delivered bar stool—still no other furniture—…

Meridian Explorer2 D/A headphone amplifier Page 2

MQA also uses a clever approach to nondestructive compression (in interviews, Stuart has used the phrase analog-lossless) in which timing-relevant data from the higher sampling frequencies—including the range above the range of human hearing, where music still has energy—are folded back into the first 44,100 samples and reversibly buried below the noise floor. In this way, MQA claims to deliver music with studio-master quality in packages small enough to conveniently download and stream, and in a form its exponents say sounds better than a CD even if you don't have an MQA decoder.

If MQA…

Meridian Explorer2 D/A headphone amplifier Specifications

Sidebar 1: Specifications

Description: Single-box, USB bus–powered, MQA-capable digital/analog converter and headphone amplifier. Input: mini USB-B. Output: line-level and headphone via separate 3.5mm minijacks. Maximum word length: 24 bits. Maximum sampling rate: 192kHz. Maximum line-level output voltage: 2V RMS. Headphone output impedance: 0.47 ohm.
Dimensions: 4" (102mm) L by 1.25" (32mm) W by 0.7" (18mm) D. Weight: 1.76oz (50gm).
Serial number of unit reviewed: E201EP.
Price: $299. Approximate number of dealers: 136. Warranty: 2 years parts & labor.
Manufacturer:…