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I tested the Rotel Michi P5 with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 "As We See It"). Looking first at its behavior via its line inputs, I performed most of the testing with the balanced inputs and balanced outputs and with the volume control set to its maximum. I repeated some of the tests with the unbalanced inputs and outputs with the volume control first set to its maximum, then at 77, which is equivalent to –10dB. (The volume control operates in accurate 0.5dB steps.)

The maximum gain for the balanced input to the balanced output…

The FARP was a small, boundary-less airfield marked not by a runway or buildings but by a couple of scattered antennas and several large fuel blivets. At our dug-in perimeter, the desert spread bare before us in every direction—except in the center of my sector of view. There, beyond a depression in the…

The Sacred Veil is a commissioned piece but also a labor of love. The cantata sets poems by Whitacre's friend, Charles Anthony Silvestri, who was coming to terms with the premature death of his wife, Julie. The score also sets three of Julie's writings and two of the composer's own poems.

Whitacre's "modern Romantic" idiom takes in agreeable dissonances for expressive effect. His vocal…

Maria Schneider, the most acclaimed jazz composer of our time, has been an impressionist, devoted to preserving moments of her life when the sensual and the spiritual became indivisible. Her new double album, Data Lords, is different—or rather, half of it is. The title refers to big-data companies whose binary…

Releasing a second album so soon after a Mercury Prize–nominated debut is the kind of action a band from a previous decade would have taken—no waiting three years between releases as is common today. But then, the brand of rock produced by Dublin's five-piece Fontaines D.C., which received much positive press for last year's debut, Dogrel, has been compared to the post-punk of the late '70s, when frequent releases were common.

Speed…

Though complicated and time-consuming, Wayne's methodology produced outstanding results. His goal was not just to clean a record but to restore it to as-new condition by removing from it every contaminant found on and, in some cases, in the vinyl—impurities baked into the groove…

Obviously, this half-hour procedure is not a casual record-cleaning process to be used after returning from a garage sale with a nice haul!

According to Kirmuss, even though new records are assumed to be free from baked-in cleaning fluids, the heat and pressure of the pressing process can cause mold-release compound—a chemical added to the PVC to make records easier to remove from…

What I remember most from that period was how much I loved Phil Rizzuto and Yankee baseball on AM radio and how often I burned myself on the soldering iron.

Except for each brand's unique wiring layout, chassis construction, and finish, the tube amps I repaired were mostly boring. Circuit…

The Sunvalley SV-EQ1616D uses a simple, conventional, capacitor-resistor (CR) RIAA equalizer with two switchable inputs and six selectable presets to match the various equalization curves used in past and…

Krystall is a veteran of hundreds of recording sessions, in all music genres and media types. You have heard his playing even if you don't know it; in this respect, he's typical of other world-class musicians you may not have heard of:…