He’s plowing mainly in the modal fields of his father’s legacy, music untethered from chord changes, doubly dangerous territory, not just because he’s begging comparisons but because most horn players who go that route get stuck running up and down scales for lack of anything to say or any harmonic weather…
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It’s risky, to say the least, for John Coltrane’s son to take up the tenor and soprano saxophones as a profession, yet that’s what Ravi Coltrane has been doing for 25 years, 15 of them as a leader, and his latest album, Spirit Fiction (his first on the Blue Note label), is his triumph.
At Montreal's Salon Son et Image earlier this year, Peter McGrath of Wilson Audio (left in photo) found the pairing of the company's Sophia 3 loudspeaker ($18,000/pair) and VTL's MB-185 Series III, EL-34-based monoblocks ($15,000/pair) and VTL TL-5.5 preamp w/phono ($10,500) so felicitous that he proposed that he and VTL's Luke Manley (right in photo) revisit the coupling in the US. The opportunity arose at Music Lovers Audio in Berkeley, California, where a public afternoon demo on June 9, 2012 drew a large group of audiophiles who packed two large showrooms at the prestigious, well-…
Yes, yes, yes!
Sun, Cat Power’s first album of original material since 2006’s The Greatest, will be released by Matador Records on September 4th. September 4th is going to be an awesome day.
The album was performed and produced entirely by Chan Marshall; it was mixed by Philippe Zdar of Cassius.
Listen to the first single, “Ruin,” here. Anchored by a salsa-like piano vamp and bolstered by nasty guitars, deep pocket bass, thrilling percussion, and memorable hooks, “Ruin” is pure Cat Power: dark, sexy, and compelling.
Leaves you wanting and needing…
Twisted fire-starters atop Arcadia's Afterburner DJ booth. The Afterburner will make its North American debut at the Catalpa Festival in NYC.
With New York City temperatures rising into the high 90s this afternoon, there’s no doubt that summer has officially arrived. And summer means great live music. Ask Stereophile’s editorial assistant, Ariel Bitran, who returned to the office all bronze-skinned and bleary-eyed after attending the recent Bonnaroo festival in Manchester, Tennessee. (He’s been wearing sandals ever since.) And, while I can understand and appreciate the desire to get…
London phono cartridges still carry the famous Decca name (even if only in parentheses), but they are now produced by John Wright, a precision engineer and ex-Decca employee. Wright (not to be confused with his IMF and more recent TDL loudspeaker-designer namesake) was assigned the rights in 1989 by Decca's Special Products division (footnote 1), when the company's new owner, Racal, decided that they didn't want to be involved in the manufacture of audio equipment. Wright worked for 20 years in Decca's phono-cartridge division, where he gained a wealth of experience. As well as manufacturing…
Some critics have described the standard Decca body as "'kin' plastic." In previous reviews, I had found structural resonance problems in the 200–300Hz region. The Jubilee's new body is precision-machined to be closefitting, and is quite inert. It also provides a clean, flat surface for mounting—complete with internal threads to take well-tensioned fixing bolts. The body mass is up from 4 to 10gm. This is a radical transformation, and should allow the "Positive Scanning" generator to operate to its best ability.
The Jubilee is fitted with the latest extended elliptical (or, more…
Sidebar 2: Colloms System
A trial with an undamped Linn Ittok tonearm wasn't promising, but my unmodified Naim ARO tonearm, which offers some mechanical damping, gave fine results. An SME V with high-rate damping provided the most secure tracking, while a discussion with London's UK distributor led me to try using the old London International unipivot arm (footnote 1). (This is an odd plastic-and-metal affair where you allow a couple of days for silicone damping fluid to find its way into a mysterious hidden damping well.)
My most successful trial was with the unipivot ARO mounted…
Sidebar 3: Michael Fremer on the London Reference, June 2005 (Vol.28 No.6):
The name had to be changed because of trademark issues, but this is the latest incarnation of the unusual and highly touted Decca cartridge that, in one form or another, has been around for decades. Everything I've ever read about this controversial design is true: It's one of the most alive, exciting, "direct-from-disc" cartridges I've ever heard. Once you've heard one of these doing what it does best, which is not everything, everything else sounds as if delivered via a tin can and string. (Okay, I'm…
Sidebar 4: Measurements
The Jubilee's frequency response (fig.1) was better than that of the older Decca designs. The omnipresent bass wiggles were now confined to a gentle rise toward 20Hz. Likewise, the 250Hz region was uniformly flat. There was just the gentlest of downward tilts, 0.5–0.75dB, from 100Hz to 5kHz. While the range above 5kHz was mildly perturbed (+1dB, –3.5dB), matters roughly balanced out over the final octave. Significant high-frequency resonances were held off until 24kHz.
Fig.1 London Jubilee, outer-band frequency response and channel separation…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: "Direct-Sensing" phono cartridge. Nominal output (1kHz, 5cm/s): 5mV. Recommended downforce: 1.8–2.2gm. Mass: 10gm. Recommended tonearm mass: medium (well-damped).
Price: $1600 (Jubilee, 1995); $4495 (Reference, 2005). Approximate number of dealers: 7.
Manufacturer: Presence Audio, Overdale, Haglands Lane, West Chiltington, Pulborough, West Sussex RH20 2QR, England. Tel: +44 (0)1798 813133. Web: www.londondeccaaudio.com. US distributor: Pro Audio, Ltd., Barrington, IL 60010 (1995). May Audio Marketing, 2150 Liberty Drive, Unit 7, Niagara…