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…
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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!"
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…
Kalman Rubinson returned to Roon v.1.3 in September 2017 (Vol.40 No.9):
The Roon music-management and -playback system is no longer new (footnote 1). Its history, from its roots in Sooloos and Meridian, is outlined in Jon Iverson's review of Roon v.1.0 in the October 2015 issue. At the time, I found Roon intriguing but frustrating, primarily because it lacked support for multichannel audio. But in the last two years Roon has been improved and extended, driven in part by a lively user website that's supported by the active participation of company personnel. Turns out I wasn't the only one…
In football there's a saying to describe an unexpected outcome: "That why they play the games."
The recorded music equivalent might be "That's why you have to listen to the records." Much as you might be tempted to gaze at the cover art, remember a band's last record or think about the one time you saw them live and they really blew it, prejudging can be dangerous. In the end, you still gotta listen.
So there I was, waving around a CD copy of Pop Art Live, by 1970s power pop band, The Raspberries about to launch into a tirade about how most bands from the '70s should just stop.…
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Warner's 5-CD box set, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf: The Complete 78 rpm Recordings 1946–1952 is a vocal lover's dream. Filled with recordings made when the soprano was between 30 and 37 years of age—she was born December 9, 1915—this bargain bonanza confirms that Schwarzkopf's oft-brilliant, sometimes outré interpretations of art song and opera were an essential part of her artistic personality from the get-go.
The brilliance of Schwarzkopf' instrument, and the magic of her sweet head tones, was already in place when the first of these recordings was made. In fact, listening to these new…
The embrace of MQA by audio companies and labels has widened. At last weekend's IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin, MQA announced that its technology will be embedded in LG's new, globally distributed V30 flagship smartphone. In addition, two Sony Walkmans, the WM-ZX300 and WM-A40, will become equipped for MQA music playback. Pioneer and Onkyo also offer Tidal Masters (MQA) mobile streaming on their latest XDP-30R and DP-S1 models, and iFi is developing a nano iDSD Black Label DAC that features MQA integration.
At CEDIA, which takes place September 5–9 in San Diego, both…
The world has lost another irreplaceable musical legend in Steely Dan guitarist, bass player, songwriter, and co-frontman Walter Becker. I spent Sunday listening to Dan records, and trying to write about Becker's legacy. The guy was elusive, hard to read and reticent to the point of obsession (footnote 1).
Few rock bands have ever inspired such a sharp cleavage in fan opinion. And both sides are extremely passionate about their beliefs. One side despised the band's precision. For them they were a soulless mob of overprivileged SoCal studio cats (although Fagen was clearly a New Yawker)…
The Genesis 500 ($650) is the baby brother of Monster Cable's top-of-the-line Genesis 1000 cartridge. It is almost identical in physical appearance, differing only in its use of green body trim (the 1000 sports red pinstripes). All of the functional differences appear to be in the stylus and cantilever. The cantilever of the 500 is a hollow sapphire rod tightly attached to an inner aluminum tube (the 1000 has a diamond-coated boron tube cantilever). Its stylus is a 6µm x 35µm line-contact (3µm x 60µm for the 1000). Monster claims a stylus life in excess of 600 hours for the Genesis 500, more…