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Last May, after bringing our daughter to a writer's workshop in Vermont, my wife and I decided to continue on to Montreal, for a semi-unplanned weekend away. We arranged lodging at the Hotel Bonaventure, which canny readers know as the site of the annual Salon Son et Image, and we had an excellent time, punctuated with good wine, great food, brilliant art, distinctive architecture, and wonderful people. The food included a visit to Pagliaccio, which may well be the finest Italian restaurant in North America; the art included a good look at David Altmejd's Eye, across the street from the Musee…
We've worked out another special deal for readers to celebrate the new Chesky Dunnun Kan release.
From now until October 31, 2015, readers of this website will get a 25% discount on the new 24-bit high resolution Dunnun Kan album and/or anything in Chesky's hi-res catalog on HDTracks.com.
To Get Your Discount:
Click on this link and then use CHESKYSTEREO25 for the offer code when you check out. (To go directly to the new Dunnun Kan album page only, use this link.)
Some of the Other Releases Available in the Deal:
Anything from Chesky qualifies for the 25%…
It had been years since Stereophile's last San Francisco Hi-Fi Show, when we'd hired him as a solo act, and yet the conversation was once again instant vaudeville, and I was again the straight man.
"The last time we saw each other, I think I just shook your hand and handed you a check."
"What, you didn't bring a check this time?"
"So this is your 16th solo record?"
"Is that all? Bach was doing a cantata a week. How many songs did Schubert write?"
"But he didn't do the words."
To say that Richard Thompson, who started out in Fairport Convention in…
It's not the pale moon that excites me / That thrills and delights me / Oh no, it's just the nearness of you.—"The Nearness of You," Ned Washington & Hoagy Carmichael
Despite what big-box stores and lossy streaming services want to sell you, listening to music at your desk does not have to suck. In fact, for not a lot of dough, you can easily build a desktop system that'll feed your head with music's goodness—or, for a few grand, assemble a setup that rivals the big rigs. Add the right app and streaming service, and you'll have access to an ever-expanding library of losslessly…
Thompson's Capitol records, which did suffer from a bright and brittle early digital production style, were produced by Mitchell Froom, the keyboard player and surefooted producer who's produced over 60 albums, including Los Lobos' Kiko and his ex-wife Suzanne Vega's 99.9F°. "Mitchell's great. He's a great musician. Sometimes I think, um, it's hard to spot what's special about what I do, if there is anything a'tall. A lot of it is cultural—the fact that I didn't grow up listening to the blues. I wasn't impregnated with the same music as most Americans, and actually most British people. I…
Neil Young's PonoPlayer ($399) houses digital and analog circuitry designed by Ayre Acoustics, including Ayre's oh-so-musical minimum-phase filter. If you've read John Atkinson's review of the Pono in the April 2015 issue, or my review on AudioStream in January 2015, you already know that it's a superb DAC that comes close to Ayre's QB-9DSD DAC at a fraction of the price, while throwing in a music server and headphone amp gratis. The PonoPlayer attaches to your computer via its micro-USB input, for transferring files to the Pono's internal 64GB of flash memory, or its MicroSD card capable…
Sidebar Contacts
Dynaudio A/S, Sverigesvej 15, 8660 Skanderborg, Denmark. Dynaudio International GmbH 2014, Ohepark 2, 21224 Rosengarten, Germany. Tel: (49) (0)4108-4180-0. Fax: (49) (0)4108-4180-10. US distributor: Dynaudio North America, 1140 Tower Lane, Bensenville, IL 60106. Tel: (630) 238-4200. Web: www.dynaudiousa.com.
iFi Audio. Web: www.ifi-audio.com. IsoAcoustics Inc., 4981 Highway 7 E., Unit 12A, Suite 160, Markham, Ontario L3R 1N1. Canada Tel: (905) 294-4672. Web: www.isoacoustics.com
Mytek Digital, 148 India Street, Brooklyn, NY 11222. Tel: (347) 384-2687. Fax…
On September 8, the international custom-installation trade association CEDIA named J. Robert Stuart, co-founder of Meridian Audio Ltd. and Inventor of MQA, as this year's Lifetime Achievement Award recipient. Stuart will be recognized at the annual CEDIA Awards Celebration at CEDIA EXPO on October 17, 2015.
According to the press release: "The CEDIA Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes an individual who has exhibited outstanding, creative, innovative, and visionary leadership in the growth and advancement of the residential electronic systems industry. Nominations are submitted by…
The Shure Brothers have been making magnetic cartridges since the early 1950s (they had been exclusively microphone manufacturers prior to then), and their continuing R&D program has resulted in new, improved models every few years rather than every 6 months (as seems to be the rule these days). As a result, Shure has the appearance, to most audiophiles, of a stodgy, plodding, rather "establishment" manufacturer that can be trusted to make a solid, reliable product but nothing brilliantly innovative or—for that matter—nothing remarkably good either.
To be sure (Sorry about that!),…
It has been a disrupted spring. Late last year, my wife and I committed ourselves to a long-needed renovation of our main living space: an apartment in Manhattan. Articles, books, and TV shows have illuminated the trials and triumphs of home renovation, but as far as I know, none has included a redo of the listening room of an obsessive audiophile, let alone one who is also an audio writer facing copy deadlines.
I'm more than a little lazy, and I had long-delayed much-needed system updates because of all the dreaded effort and disruption. But slowly I began to realize that this was an…