"It was a big year, man," Earle says. "A lot of stuff happened in 1967. My uncle, who was five years older than me, was living with us at the time. It was my dream come true, because he was always my hero. He brought a lot of records into the house, like Cream's Disraeli Gears and the…
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Steve Earle was born in 1967. Well, that's not exactly true. Earle was in fact born on January 17, 1955, in Fort Monroe, Virginia, but the singer, songwriter, and master interpreter's musical awakening came in 1967, when he was 12 years old, growing up in his acknowledged hometown of San Antonio, Texas.
Mettler: Is there one track on Jerry Jeff that's the benchmark for you in terms of how it sounds?
Earle: Well, duh, "Mr. Bojangles"! [Laughs.] That was the one I had to just not fuck up! (footnote 4) That song is so important. I played it at the Opry. I looked up halfway through, and every cell phone light in the balcony was lit. By the time I finished it, every light in the house was lit, so I think it went over well.
I talked with Susan (footnote 5) about this. I said, "All I know about this record so far is I have to cut 'Mr. Bojangles,' and I'm not gonna pussy out on it. I'm…
Jim Austin wrote about the Reference 6SE in October 2022 (Vol.45 No.10):
Lately, I've been thinking again about a concept I've thought about off and on for years: first impressions of a component versus lingering, meaningful differences.
We've all had the experience: Replace a familiar component with a new one, let it warm up, then listen. You hear differences, often dramatic ones. (Not always, though: A couple of years ago, I compared two DACs of similar price and design, switching back and forth between them, and could hear no difference at all.)
What's interesting is…
I first heard about the project in an email, one of the dozens I receive every day and barely glance at. It said that the editor of a German hi-fi publication was crossing the ocean to talk about hi-fi audio to students and their parents at a junior/senior high school in Westchester County, New York, just 45 minutes or so by car from my Manhattan apartment. Interesting. And odd. I moved on to the next email.
I might have ignored it completely if not for Keith Pray, Stereophile's general manager. Keith lives in Westchester County, not far from the school in question, and has kids in a…
Howard Jones: Dialogue
D-Tox Records (Multiple formats; auditioned as 16/44.1 stream). 2022. Howard Jones, prod.; Robbie Bronnimann, eng.
Performance ****½
Sonics ****½
D-Tox Records (Multiple formats; auditioned as 16/44.1 stream). 2022. Howard Jones, prod.; Robbie Bronnimann, eng.
Performance ****½
Sonics ****½
Howard Jones has always come across as an endearing blend of mad scientist and hopeless romantic. Since his 1983 debut single, "New Song," he has blended obsessive technical detail with extreme emotionality. His newest album, Dialogue, is the latest example of this approach, in which intricate structures of synthesized sound grow into musical mountains supporting impassioned lyrics.
Dialogue is the…
Two high-performance preamplifiers were subjected to further listening in recent issues. Jason Victor Serinus wrote about Rotel's Michi P5 in September 2022; Jim Austin auditioned the Audio Research Reference 6SE in October 2022.
For his FollowUp, Jim Austin compared the tubed Audio Research Reference 6SE ($18,000) with the solid state Pass Labs XP-32 ($18,375). "I wanted to experience the differences in the short term and then take note of how those differences panned out over time," he wrote. His conclusion? "These two preamps are zeroing in on the same sound from opposite directions. I…
Every product listed here has been reviewed in Stereophile. Everything on the list, regardless of rating, is genuinely recommendable.
Within each category, products are listed by class; within each class, they're in alphabetical order, followed by their price, a review synopsis, and a note indicating the issues in which the review, and any subsequent follow-up reports, appeared. "Vol.45 No.6" indicates our June 2022 issue, for example. "WWW" means the review is also posted online.
Stereophile's Recommended Components list is concerned mainly with products available in the US…
How to Use the Listing
The classes each cover a wide range of performance. Carefully read our descriptions here, the original reviews, and (heaven forbid) reviews in other magazines to put together a short list of components to choose from. Evaluate your room, your source material and front-end(s), your speakers, and your tastes. With luck, you may come up with a selection to audition at your favorite dealer(s). "Recommended Components" will not tell you what to buy any more than Consumer Reports would presume to tell you whom to marry!
The classes each cover a wide range of performance. Carefully read our descriptions here, the original reviews, and (heaven forbid) reviews in other magazines to put together a short list of components to choose from. Evaluate your room, your source material and front-end(s), your speakers, and your tastes. With luck, you may come up with a selection to audition at your favorite dealer(s). "Recommended Components" will not tell you what to buy any more than Consumer Reports would presume to tell you whom to marry!
CLASS A
Best attainable sound for a…
Turntables
A+
J.Sikora Reference: $47,000 w/o tonearm
This Polish company's top-of-the-line turntable is a nonsuspended, high-mass design, weighing 253lb. The dynamically and statically balanced platter alone weighs 40lb! Drive is with four square belts spun by four Papst DC motors. MF found that the plinth was immune to knuckle raps and motor start-up noises and wrote that the Reference was very quiet. He decided that this J.Sikora 'table had been superbly tuned to extract deep, well-controlled bass free of overhang or excess. The measured speed accuracy was impressive, as…
Tonearms
A+
SAT CF1-09: €55,000 ★
SAT CF1-12: €58,000 ★
In 2018, after selling 70 of his original Swedish Analog Technologies Tonearms, designer Marc Gomez discontinued it and replaced it with two new tonearms. The more expensive, the CF1-09, is now the company's flagship. The CF1-09's tapered, hand-lapped, "naked"-carbon-fiber armtube has an effective length of 9" and incorporates a number of parts machined from solid stainless steel—including a new vertical bearing yoke that's far more massive than that of the original SAT arm and makes the CF1-09 too heavy for…