While everyone, or most jazz fans at least, have their favorite guitarist, their preferred stylist as it were, Abercrombie has always stood out in my mind as much for what he didn't play as for what he did. Uncommonly generous as a leader, he was a master of understatement and had impeccable taste in his playing, composing and choice of cover…
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The sad toll among musicians who came of age in the late 1960s and early 1970s continues as jazz guitarist extraordinaire John Abercrombie, 72, died on Wednesday at Hudson Valley Hospital outside of Peekskill, NY, in the presence of his family.
Actual Internal Dialog: "Jason, you cannot review another recording with Carolyn Sampson. You've already reviewed two, and given one a R2D4. People will think you believe there's no other soprano worth listening to."
"True. But one of the Brit pubs just gave her latest recording for Harmonia Mundi, Bach Cantatas for Soprano with the Freiburger Barockorchester under Petra Müllejans, its 'best of the month.' And the recording includes the joy-filled Wedding Cantata, Weichet nur, betrübte Schatten, BWV 202" (Begone now, Gloomy Shadows) that you first learned from Karl Richter and the Munich…
In this video, Steve Guttenberg, "The Audiophiliac" and a regular contributor to Stereophile's "As We See It" column, gives us a tour of his system in Brooklyn, NY.
Tchaikovsky: 1812 Overture (Op.49), Capriccio Italien (Op.45
), "Cossack Dance" from Mazeppa (LP), plus Marche slav, Op.31, Polonaise and Waltz from
Eugene Onegin
, Op.24, Festival Coronation March
(CD).
Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, Kiev Symphony Chorus; Children's Choir of Greater Cincinnati, Erich Kunzel cond.
Telarc Digital DG-10041 (LP, CD-80041 (CD). 1979 (LP), 1984 (CD). Edited at Soundstream, Inc. Robert Woods, prod.; Jack Renner, eng. DAA (LP), DDD (CD). TT: 35:19 (LP), 60:23 (CD).
Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, Kiev Symphony Chorus; Children's Choir of Greater Cincinnati, Erich Kunzel cond.
Telarc Digital DG-10041 (LP, CD-80041 (CD). 1979 (LP), 1984 (CD). Edited at Soundstream, Inc. Robert Woods, prod.; Jack Renner, eng. DAA (LP), DDD (CD). TT: 35:19 (LP), 60:23 (CD).
I must say I'm getting a bit bored with the 1812 Overture, but as long as there are…
Nelson Pass is a consummate engineer, but he got his start in physics, earning a bachelor's degree from UC Davis. As he worked on his degree, he was already an audio designer, focusing on loudspeakers—great training for a designer of audio amplifiers. Soon, in 1974, he cofounded Threshold Audio with René Besne, of audio and folk-dancing fame; their goal was to build electronics, partly because the field is less competitive—it's harder than building speakers. As he told Thomas J. Norton in "Simple Sounds Better," an interview in the November 1991 issue of Stereophile, Pass created one of the…
We have gain devices; basic topologies; values of the many passive components, like resistors, capacitors and inductors; classes of operation (bias points and load lines); and a host of other details—but it's more about process. Because I personally do not have anyone dictating the desired results—lucky me—I often start with a consideration of the gain devices themselves, as their characteristics suggest the best or most interesting circuits that might play to their strengths.
I lean toward class-A because it makes the process smoother—again, no boss—and I work on individual gain stages…
Michael Newman—Classical Guitarist
Sheffield Lab 10 (LP). Lincoln Mayorga, prod.; Doug Sax, eng., prod.
Sheffield Lab 10 (LP). Lincoln Mayorga, prod.; Doug Sax, eng., prod.
Mr. Newman's program comprises Bach's "Chaconne" from the Violin Partita No.2 in d, Albeniz's Torre Bermeja, Turina's Fandanquillo, and Eduardo Sainz de la Maza's Campanas del Alba. This is simply gorgeous. The most perfect guitar recording to date. BUY IT!!!!—Margaret Graham
Long ago, I stopped associating Act II of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake with dancing. Now, every time I hear it, I immediately flash on broken battlements, a black cape, and Béla Lugosi's unmistakable Hungarian accent: "Listen to them—cheelllldreennn of dee night. What muuuusic they make!"
Then there were James Bernard's tense scores for the Hammer films—like Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966), starring Christopher Lee—that my parents somehow let me see in a theater when I was seven, as part of an afternoon of bargain monster movies that included all the sourballs and unbuttered popcorn you…
It's time to fulfill my promise to write about Playback Designs' Sonoma Syrah music server and Sonoma Merlot DAC. It all began when I asked Playback's founder and CEO, engineer Andreas Koch, when he plans to produce a multichannel digital-to-analog converter—a question I've put to so many other manufacturers. He said that he already had a multichannel system on the drawing board, and not just a DAC. Our e-mail exchange culminated in his announcement of the Playback Designs USB-XIII Digital Interface, to be used between a USB source component and as many as three DACs via PLink, Playback's…
The other option is to connect the USB-XIII and the Merlots directly to the Baetis server via USB and use Playback's ASIO driver (footnote 3). This worked beautifully, and quickly became my preferred configuration for ease of use and musical enjoyment. It also let me make A/B comparisons with the exaSound e38 D/A processor by linking the outputs to the two DAC setups and using input switching on the preamp. The differences weren't huge, and less than I'd expected, but they were in favor of the Playback setup. Soundstage detail was equal, but the exaSound's was a bit more forward; the…