In the March 2018 issue of Stereophile, in my account of the involvement of Karlheinz Brandenburg and the Fraunhofer Institute's facilitation of MP3 and file sharing, I inadvertently aped Brandenburg's own sanitized account. In interviews, Brandenburg has claimed that, in 1997, an Austrian graduate student bought a copy of the MP3 encoder and shared it online via an FTP site; that's the account I repeated last month. But in his excellent book How Music Got Free: A Story of Obsession and Invention (Viking Penguin, 2015), Stephen Witt makes a…
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Sidebar 2: On Karlheinz Brandenburg and MP3
Brad Mehldau: After Bach
Brad Mehldau, piano
Nonesuch 7559-79318-0 (CD). 2018. Robert Hurwitz, exec. prod.; Tom Korkidis, prod. coord.; Tom Lazarus, eng., mix, mastering; Brad Montgomery, mix. ADD? TT: 69:24
Performance *****
Sonics *****
Brad Mehldau, piano
Nonesuch 7559-79318-0 (CD). 2018. Robert Hurwitz, exec. prod.; Tom Korkidis, prod. coord.; Tom Lazarus, eng., mix, mastering; Brad Montgomery, mix. ADD? TT: 69:24
Performance *****
Sonics *****
That American jazz pianist Brad Mehldau has made a recording of J.S. Bach's music should come as no great surprise to anyone who's followed his extraordinarily varied career. In many ways, it seems a natural progression.
Having become one of the most important jazz pianists of this century, and dabbled in classical-flavored…
"No one thing turned more people into audiophiles than the '60s counterculture," said Bruno, arm flung over his cash register. "It opened up the doors of sonic perception. Even the great audio designers of the day were countercultural mavericks!"
Bruno is the lanky, braided-beard, thirtysomething owner of a small, well-stocked record shop in Montreal, and we stood facing each other on either side of a glass case filled with vinyl paraphernalia. Bruno has made the most of his limited space. Every foot of each wall supports a shelf crammed with music-related merchandise: rock and jazz…
Less than a minute into this rare realization of the Leçons de Ténèbres des Mercredi, Jeudi et Vendredi saints by Michel Lambert (ca 1610–1696), I knew I had to review it. Recorded for Harmonia Mundi in 24/88.2 hi-rez by Alban Moraud, who did a wonderful job capturing the resonant acoustic of La Courroie, Entraigues-sur-la-Sorgue, the 2-CD/51-track set showcases the extraordinarily agile, virtually vibrato-less and intentionally nasal bari-tenor of Marc Mauillon. Supporting him are three expert instrumentalists who are in high demand by most of France's baroque ensembles: viola de gamba and…
Six weeks ago, Jana Dagdagan and I visited the Peekskill, New York factory of Soundsmith—her first time there, my second. Although I didn't mention this to the company's President and Chief Engineer, Peter Ledermann, the thing that most impressed me during my second visit was how little had changed since my first, in April of 2015. In particular, all but two of the employees I saw at Soundsmith this year had been there during my first visit; that suggests an experienced workforce—no small advantage in the manufacturing of phono cartridges, where the requisite skills are specialized, to say…
Thursday May 24, Soundings Fine Audio Video (8101 E. Belleview Avenue Suite X-1, Denver, CO 80237) and Lavish Hi-Fi (1044 4th Street, Santa Rosa, CA 95404) are holding special events.
Soundings is celebrating 30 years in High End Audio with an evening of fun and listening. Guests will include Rich Maez from Boulder Amplifiers, who will be showing off the new 508 phono preamplifier, Chris Morris from Chord Electronics, and Mike Marko from Nordost Cables, and Chord and Nordost will be offering special pricing at the event. The festivities will begin at 6pm and go until 9pm and there will be…
Each equipment report in Stereophile focuses on a single audio component. When listening to a component for review, I leave unchanged all other components in my audio system. Other Stereophile reviewers experiment with different interconnects, speaker cables, power cords, or stands. As I found while reviewing Bryston's BP-173 (Cubed) preamplifier, being flexible has its rewards.
Description
My first lesson in flexibility was learning what Bryston means by "Cubed" (footnote 1). Jim Tanner, Bryston's VP of sales and marketing, explained that all their Cubed models employ an array of…
In the early 1960s, young people who were anxious see the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show had to first sit through a seeming eternity of bad comedians, bad puppet shows, and acrobats spinning dinner plates to the tune of Khachaturian's Sabre Dance. So it is here: Before I can get to the Miyajima Saboten L phono cartridge, I have to report on something I left out of my April 2018 column, which was devoted to Zu Audio's modification of the classic Denon DL-103 cartridge. And since this is information I've been holding on to for almost a year, I suppose I also left it out of my August 2017…
So I switched from the Constellation Stereo 1.0 to a Mark Levinson No.534 ($20,000), which had just arrived for review. To my delight, the new amp produced a more neutral tonal balance, along with transparency, clear highs, and bold dynamic contrasts. The midbass and midrange were smooth and grainless and, most important, didn't overpower the bass.
The bass response of the BP-173–No.534 pairing was unusually strong and extended. The full weight of pedal chords captured on good recordings of pipe organ pressurized my listening room. John Rutter's A Gaelic Blessing, with Timothy Seelig…
Essential specs: The Saboten L weighs 9.5gm, has a compliance of 8x10–6cm/dyne, and is recommended to be run at a vertical tracking force (VTF) of 3gm. Its internal impedance is 16 ohms, which seems a bit high in the context of its 0.23mV output. Also of note is what Miyajima Laboratory describes as the cartridge's "appropriate" temperature range of operation: 68–86°F, with a balmy 77°F given as "most suitable." Must be that Cameroonian wood.
After installing it in my review sample of the Acoustic Systems Arché headshell and fastening it to my EMT 997 tonearm, I began listening to the…