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Dave Alvin is a fighter. In the 1980s, when Dave and his older brother, Phil Alvin, shared studio and stage as co-founders of Los Angeles punkabilly band The Blasters, they frequently fought each other. They also fought musically, tussling over every note as the four-man band wrangled many great tunes. In that respect, their working relationship may have been similar to the sibling push-pull output of Ray and Dave Davies in the Kinks and Liam and Noel Gallagher in Oasis. Consider "American Music," "Marie Marie," and "Border Radio," all from the band's 1981 sophomore…

Alvin: Well, yeah—and there were different levels of record stores, right? There were the ones where you knew the guys knew their stuff, so they knew if you put the record you wanted over in Easy Listening. You knew they'd figure it out within an hour. [laughs]

But there were a couple record stores—Licorice Pizza [in Long Beach, California] being one of them—where you knew the people working there had no idea, so you could take the blues or jazz or country record you wanted and put it over behind Mantovani or whatever. You knew they were never gonna look for it over there.

After I read John Marks's review of Benchmark Media Systems' DAC1 D/A processor/headphone amplifier in the July 2003 issue of Stereophile, I bought a rack-mounted version to use for my on-location recording projects. I subsequently wrote, in a follow-up review, that the diminutive Benchmark "punched way above its weight. Its grain-free presentation was accompanied by stable, well-defined soundstaging, and low frequencies that, if not as weighty as [that of my reference, the 18×-the-price Mark…

Herb Reichert reviewed the Rotel Diamond Series DT-6000 DAC Transport—fundamentally a CD player with digital inputs—in his February 2023 Gramophone Dreams column, where he described it as a "well-built, great-sounding, reasonably priced CD player." He had so much fun using the Rotel—"rediscovering the Joy of CDs: one-box simple, stress-free, plug'n'play, and something physical to touch, scrutinize, and collect"—that he suggested I examine its measured performance.

I tested Herb's sample of the Rotel DT-6000, serial number 272-2221004,…

I became a Ruby Hughes fan late, 13 years after she had won two prizes at the 2009 London Handel Singing Competition. Once I heard her tonal purity and simplicity, I was hooked.

Here, in a recital that includes two world premieres, Hughes and longtime collaborator Huw Watkins…

If these four guys are not the best players in the Pacific Northwest on their respective instruments, they are all on very short lists. Scenes has made eight albums in the last 20 years. It was reduced to a trio, and remained so for most of its history, when one charter member, Rick Mandyck, had to take a 15-year break from playing the…

There are singers, crooners, songwriters, and there's Peggy Lee—she was all three, earning both a Grammy and a place in the Songwriters Hall of Fame. From her beginnings in the days of "old-time radio" and swing music, to her pop hits of the '50s and '60s to her later years singing in concert halls and lounges, Lee stood out for her…

In 2001, in a review of Camelot Technology's Round Table DVD player, which included an Anagram Technologies DAC, I wrote: "I was so impressed with the sound that I took the Round Table downstairs to my 2-channel audio room and used it there when I…

Ground hum and noise are facts of the analog life, yet ground-wire spades come with variously sized gaps, from tiny to gaping. So do the ground lugs on phono preamps. Mismatches are common, and that's frustrating, especially if you have to reach around the thing to make a connection. The P1 has the absolute best ground-lug system I've…