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Quebec-based Solen—which distributes parts from a number of different manufacturers, as well as manufacturing their own well-regarded capacitors and other components—has a talent for filling their exhibit rooms with scores of items, including finished products made from the parts they sell. Among the latter at this year's Montreal show was a single-ended triode amp that will soon be available as the Coffin Audio 2A3 SE. Using new-old stock 6SL7 tubes to drive its nominal 2A3 directly heated output tubes, the nicely made Coffin amp uses Solen Teflon coupling caps, and the stereo amp's retail…
I would love Art Dudley even if I had never met him, listened to bluegrass with him, or swapped stories about aliens near a campfire under a milky-way-filled Cherry Valley sky. I would love him because he's Art D. and his audio writings are so I-am-there intimate and engrossing. Unfortunately, every time I read his stuff I want more. It is one thing to read audio porn but, for me, audio porn really needs sight and sound. In print form it is not fully satisfying. Forget MQA and DSD, I want POV. I want to see Art sitting on his new couch listening to Shindo-powered Altecs. Likewise, when I…
One format that is often an afterthought in discussions about downloads, LPs, and every other music storage and playback medium is the SACD. Fiercely beloved by a determined minority, most of them audiophiles, SACDs continue to be manufactured, most recently by Mark Piro's New York-based Analog Spark label. His latest hybrid SACD release is a reissue of Todd Rundgren's 1972 masterpiece, Something/Anything?.
A fascinating mix between a prodigious writer of inviting pop tunes and a musical mad scientist with a seemingly endless appetite for self-indulgence, Rundgren's career has bounced up…
On at least one occasion that I can recall—in 1996, in the early days of Listener magazine—a US publicist for the Japanese manufacturing company Denon told me that they planned to discontinue their DL-103 moving-coil phono cartridge, an enduringly popular model that had been in production since 1962 (footnote 1). At the time, neither the DL-103 nor any of their other cartridge models appeared on Denon's US price lists, and neither English-language promotional materials nor even a basic spec sheet was available to American consumers or press. (All of this is charbroiled into my memory because…
I re-auditioned the MusiKraft with the recording of Beethoven's Violin Concerto by David Oistrakh and the French National Radio Orchestra, under the direction of André Cluytens (EMI Centenary SAX 2315). The cartridge's strengths, well known to me now, were all there: the timpani taps that open the piece were temporally taut yet endowed with a realistically resonant tone and generous die-away. Oistrakh's entrance came across with a degree of nuance that seemed unlikely to be artifice: he pulled back, almost imperceptibly, against the tempo set by Cluytens, seemingly to let the listener know…
I have long been aware of English audio company Prism Sound, both from my use at the turn of the century of their excellent PCI card–based DScope2 measurement system (footnote 1), and from some of my friends' enthusiasm for Prism's SADiE digital audio workstation. Prism Sound was founded in 1987 by two DSP engineers, Graham Boswell and Ian Dennis, who had first met when working at mixing-console manufacturer Rupert Neve, in Cambridge, England. From the beginning, Prism Sound operated exclusively in the world of professional audio, but a year or so ago I began seeing their first domestic…
And so we circle back to the question of the permanent storage of LPs. If my money holds out, I'll ask the man who built my present shelves—a cabinetmaker who's also made some fine loudspeaker enclosures—to build shelves for my next house. Of course, that will depend on how much cash I have left after down payments, property taxes in escrow, closing fees, and moving expenses. If my savings are devoured by the above and if time allows, I may have to go it on my own. Or I might turn to IKEA, whose Expedit line of shelving units—their "cubbies" are, intentionally or not, the perfect size for…
Sidebar: Great Mother of Burl!
Frequent attendees of US audio shows know Gordon Burwell's copious handlebar mustache and cheerful demeanor almost as well as his Burwell & Sons loudspeakers. Dedicated to building his own interpretations of Altec Lansing's iconic A-7 Voice of the Theater speakers for his top-of-the-line Homage series of products, Burwell travels the US in search of Altec and JBL drivers, then installs those vintage components in horns and cabinets crafted from and veneered with salvaged, high-quality woods. Burwell's speakers are some of the most striking audio…
I'm not sure if Ry Cooder, guitarist extraordinaire, ever made a bad record but I damn sure know that Paradise and Lunch will forever be his brightest classic.
For the first time since it was released in 1974 and repressed in 1976, the album has been reissued on LP in the US by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab, who has done its usual beautiful job in terms of both sound and packaging. Originally produced by Warner Brothers honcho and co-visionary (along with Mo Ostin) Lenny Waronker and SoCal cohort (and Randy Newman producer) Russ Titelman, the album was always well-recorded in the extreme.…
If the last thing you need is one more serious dive into the depths of the human psyche, you will find happiness in Handel Goes Wild: Improvisations on George Frideric Handel. A delight from start to finish, this latest Warner release from theorbist Christina Pluhar and her crack early music ensemble, L'Arpeggiata, lives up to its director's reputation for refreshing baroque repertoire with new, out-of-the-box ideas.
The first thing to know about this Handel Goes Wild, which I auditioned via 24/96 WAV files downloadable from multiple sites, is that none of its 15 selections receives…