Brian Yeazel of Oak Park, Illinois is one of those lucky people. He's the winner of the Focal Spirit One headphone sweepstakes. Brian doesn't realize just how lucky he really is. One of our samples for this sweepstakes got stolen from our storage closet! Home Theater readers didn't get…
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We're always happy to spread the love of gear (and music) here at the good ole' STP. STP's one of our in office abbreviation for Stereophile. Occasionally, it's STRP. Sometimes it's, "We have to do another issue?", but seriously, we do enjoy making audiophiles happy. It's one of the best parts of the job.
The fourth annual California Audio Show is poised to get underway August 9–11 in a new venue, the Westin San Francisco Airport (Westin SFO), in Millbrae, CA. The only West Coast consumer fine-audio show between Newport Beach (in very southern California) and Denver, CAS4 is expected to draw close to 1000 audiophiles per day to listen to systems in at least 41 sound rooms, 16 of which are of medium or large size.
Constantine Soo, the show's promoter, explains that he left the Crowne Plaza, the nearby site of the show for the past two years, because of its lack of big rooms. It's hard not…
Matana Roberts is a rare talent—a saxophonist, storyteller, and singer with a distinct voice and powerful vision. Her 2011 release, Coin Coin, Chapter One: Gens de couleur libres, shocked me with its uncompromising combination of beauty and violence. Listening to it—anyhow, anywhere—is a singularly moving experience. My complete review of Coin Coin, Chapter One appeared in Stereophile’s November 2011 issue and I later named it one of my favorite records of that year. It sticks with me still as one of the most thrilling and seemingly important records I’ve ever heard.…
That's It! (Sony Legacy) is a hell of a fun album: the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, the treasure of New Orleans music, wailing with cylinders wide open.
Purists might protest. All the songs on this record are new (a first for the PHJB), and the solos tend more toward R&B riffs than trad-jazz polyphony. In short, the vibe seems to pulse more from the rowdy late-night clubs up on Frenchman Street than the band's usual stately sanctuary in the heart of the French Quarter.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, and there's very little wrong with That's It! The octet—a trumpet…
Moderat is made of Apparat’s Sascha Ring and Modeselektor’s Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary; as the album title suggests, II is their sophomore release. This is no slump, however, and the music these men make together is seamless and true: It does not sound like two distinct visions forced together, but instead reflects a natural progression of shared ideas, a tangle of conflicts, tensions, and parallels brought together to create something exhilarating.
The lead single, “Bad Kingdom,” is built around a wonky hi-hat/snare pattern; flatulent, vibrating bass; airy synths; and…
Gulp.
All the details, from the website of the New York Public Library, with critical commentary from me:
The Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound has 22,000 LPs with your name on them.
Why, thank you!
The records represent decades of unsolicited donations, for which we already have at least one copy in great condition. Now we need the space to bring in more unique materials for you to enjoy and study.
You need the space, I need the records!
Whether you are a hardcore collector of foreign classical releases, lover of 70s…
Even before I'd really listened to PSB's Alpha PS1 powered desktop speakers (see last month's column), I suspected that I'd like them: They're affordable, attractive, small enough to actually fit on my desktop, and designed and manufactured by a true high-end audio company. Besides all that, the PS1s had been highly recommended by a friend, AudioStream.com's Michael Lavorgna. I only needed the speakers to sound good in my home. And they did—clean, clear, detailed, and dynamic, with a surprisingly big and bold overall sound. What I didn't expect, and what consequently convinced me to buy the…
I go where the girls go. Getting back to Natalie's problem: We connected her iPhone to the Audioengines and called up Pandora. The music sometimes dropped out altogether, and was otherwise plagued by intermittent buzzing. I guessed this had something to do with the cable, a simple minijack-to-minijack interconnect supplied with the Audioengines, which transmitted the audio signal from Nat's phone. It sounded as if the cable's connector was no longer making proper contact with the speaker's input jack. Though music was momentarily bearable, the intermittent buzzing was terribly annoying;…
Sidebar: Contacts
AudioQuest, 2621 White Road, Irvine, CA 92614. Tel: (949) 585-0111. Web: www.audioquest.com.
PSB Speakers International, 633 Granite Court, Pickering, Ontario L1W 3K1, Canada. Tel: (905) 831-6555 Web: www.psbspeakers.com.
Skullcandy, 1441 W. Ute Boulevard, Suite 250, Park City, UT 84098. Tel: (435) 940-1545. Fax: (435) 214-2566. Web: www.skullcandy.com.
Down deepest, beneath everything he does, underlying all the facets of his ever-expanding career in music, Terence Blanchard is still a New Orleans guy. Question that and you can hear his dander rise.
"Even people from New Orleans don't associate me with the music community down here, because they don't see me out and about doing that," Blanchard says via cell phone one afternoon from New Orleans. "But then there will be moments. I did a gig one night at Preservation Hall with those guys, and everybody was shocked. People were coming up to me and saying, 'I didn't know you could do that…