Administered by Queens College, which owns the house and also houses the Louis Armstrong Archive, the trumpeter's home is in a neighborhood that has morphed from African-American to Latino since Armstrong died in 1971…
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In New York City or more specially Corona, Queens, July is the month when thoughts turn to the legacy of one Louis Armstrong. According to his own reckoning, "Pops" was born on July 4, 1900, but in reality he was born on August 4, 1901. Last weekend, I made the pilgrimage with my patient wife to the Pops home in Corona, to view what is now the Louis Armstrong House Museum.
As a kid growing up in New Orleans, Louisiana, bassist John Hébert was familiar with old things. Hébert's mom enjoyed taking him and his three siblings to the city's ancient burial grounds, such as St. Greenwood Cemetery & Mausoleum (1852) or Louis Cemetery No.1 (1789). Once inside the graveyards' crumbling walls, the Hébert family often found things natural—and unnatural.
"Because New Orleans is below sea level the graves are in mausoleums or coffins that sit above-ground in concrete bathtubs," Hébert explains. "These cemeteries are very mysterious. Every time they bury someone the…
New York, NY—News Bar Cafe, Union Square. It's 11am. Low jazz can be heard playing on the overhead speakers, along with background chatter and the occasional ambulance. Caffeinated beverages and breakfast sandwiches are present. I take a tentative sip of cappuccino, reach under the table for my trusty Zoom H5. Across from me sits jazz pianist and composer Fred Hersch. A man who has meant many things to me in my lifetime—a musical role model, a source of inspiration, a friend, a set of frequently played digital music files... I sit anxiously—is it the awe or the beverage? I think to myself: he…
Editor: I write in response to the so-called "review" of Peter, Paul and Mary's In the Wind (45rpm LP, ORG071), by Art Dudley, in the June 2016 issue of Stereophile (pp.35–36). This reads as little more than an unbalanced attack on Original Recordings Group, one laced with an apparent lack of knowledge of the reissue business. First, let me make two points:
With regard to the creased label [of the album purchased by Mr. Dudley]: This is undoubtedly a bad defect, but one which is not exclusive to ORG product. As someone who has been involved in LP licensing, manufacturing, sales, and…
Twenty-three years ago, in 1993, Charles Hansen cofounded Ayre Acoustics, Inc., in Boulder, Colorado. On Ayre's website, Hansen is named as Research Director for Ayre, and it seems an apt description. Along with experimenting in and developing audio-electronics hardware and software, Hansen has strongly hewn to certain design principles, among them fully balanced operation, an absence of loop negative feedback, and solid-state circuitry. Ayre's current flagship preamplifiers and amplifiers, the twentieth-anniversary R Series, have received reviews and accolades, while at the other end of…
Your little car gets in and out of traffic better than minivans or monster trucks. Your little dog runs rings around the other dogs at the park. Maybe it's time to get a couple of little loudspeakers, too?
The reasons for doing so are pretty much the same: little speakers deserve consideration not because they sell for little prices—although some of them do—but because they're nimble, they're fast, and they get out of the way of the music they play. That last characteristic can be crucial to listeners for whom stereo imaging is important: A small speaker has less cabinetry to diffract…
Screwed to the bottom of each SS-NA5ES is an aluminum plate 8" wide by 9.9" deep by about 0.2" thick. Fastened to the bottom of the plate, one at each corner, are four thin, stiff, self-adhesive rubber pads. I sat each speaker on its stand and made sure that each pad was in good contact with the steel beneath. After that, and before making final adjustments to the spiked feet, I experimented with speaker placements while listening to recordings of music with reliably good bass content, as well as to test tones, such as the delightful "Pink Noise at –20dB L + R (Uncorrelated from 1:11),"…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Two-way, four-driver, reflex-loaded, stand-mounted loudspeaker. Drive-units: two 0.75", one 1" fabric-dome tweeters; 5" bass/midrange driver with anodized-aluminum cone. Crossover frequencies: 400Hz, 4kHz, multislope. Nominal impedance: 4 ohms. Sensitivity: 86dB/2.83V/m. Frequency response: 45Hz–45kHz, –10dB. Maximum instantaneous input power: 70W (non-clipping).
Dimensions: (including protruding parts) 13.85" (355mm) H by 8" (205mm) W by 12.7" (325mm) D. Weight: 22 lbs (10kg).
Finish: Dark brown.
Serial numbers of units reviewed:…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog Sources: Garrard 301 turntable; EMT 997 tonearm; EMT OFD 15 & TSD 15, Shindo Laboratory SPU pickup heads.
Digital Sources: Halide Designs DAC HD USB D/A converter; Apple iMac G5 computer running Audirvana Plus 1.5.12; Sony SCD-777ES SACD/CD player.
Preamplification: Hommage T2 step-up transformer, Shindo Laboratory Masseto preamplifier.
Power Amplifiers: Shindo Laboratory Corton-Charlemagne (monoblocks).
Loudspeakers: Altec Valencia, Auditorium 23 Hommage Cinema, DeVore Fidelity Orangutan O/96.
Cables: USB: Wireworld…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I used DRA Labs' MLSSA system and a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone to measure the Sony SS-NA5ES's frequency response in the farfield, and an Earthworks QTC-40 for the nearfield. My estimate of the Sony's voltage sensitivity was 86.7dB(B)/2.83V/m, which is very slightly higher than the specified 86dB. The SS-NA5ES's electrical impedance is specified as 4 ohms, but, as can be seen in fig.1 (solid trace), the impedance remains above 4 ohms at all audio frequencies other than the lower midrange, where it reaches a minimum value of 3.4 ohms at 220Hz. However, the…