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Capt. Trips, Matson's tribute to Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia, represents a return to his roots. He grew up in Berkeley, CA, playing keyboards in a psychedelic band and listening to groups like the Grateful Dead.

"We viewed those kinds of groups as our big brothers. They were a slight generation older than we were, and we were just young teenagers absorbing all everything they had absorbed. Jerry, I think, could have been a really fine, straight-ahead jazz player. His background was mainly bluegrass and folk, but the way that he phrases stuff, the…

New England Hi-Fi was founded as the New England Music Company by Derek R. Burt (footnote 1), in 1965—on the early side of hi-fi's heyday. Back then, the store carried the 1965 KLH line and other pioneering products, with a self-…

Better still, as listeners have become more knowledgeable and demanding, vinyl releases…

For years now, I've wanted to learn more about what I was hearing and just what was encoded on those great-sounding early records—and about why that sound seems to elude engineers today. When you write about things, sometimes having preferences and opinions isn't enough, so I reached out to four mastering engineers. This turned out to be a mistake. For starters, engineers love master tape, which sounds better than records and digital but is largely off limits to those of us who listen at home. How many audiophiles have even heard a master tape? Second, three of the engineers are, or have…

The most exciting part of listening to this unusual album is how it slowly builds its own universe—inside the headphone listener's head—becoming more visual and emotionally associative with each track. Its progression of tracks and successions of tempos represent a musical promenade through the 16th to the 19th centuries in Spain, played on guitars that might have been used to play these works by the composers themselves. Played on guitars that had not been played in generations. When this album is reproduced in its full colorful pulsing vibrancy—like it was for me with the Diana TC—it…

On Friday, May 5, 6–9:30pm, AV Therapy of Nashua, New Hampshire, will host its annual spring event. This year, the company proudly celebrates its 10th anniversary with a Cinco De Mayo Party!

New products will be displayed in multiple demo spaces with featured guests from Luxman, Sonner, Focal/Naim, KEF, Linn, Nordost, and Paradigm/Anthem available throughout the evening to demonstrate products and answer questions from attendees. The event will be held at AV Therapy, 216 Daniel Webster Highway, Nashua, New Hampshire. RSVP by phone at (603) 759-7183 or by email at info@avtherapy.…

The Compact Disc was launched in 1982, but the four decades since have seen an alphabet soup of similar-looking shiny discs including major formats like DVD, SACD, DVD-A, and Blu-ray Audio. As each new format arrived, hardware manufacturers scrambled to keep up, developing machines that could play just about any disc you could throw at them (or, rather, insert in them). The result was a bunch of "jack of all trades" disc…

What can it play?
While the CDT3's user manual claims compatibility only with standard CD, CD-R, and CD-RW, I was curious to see if it could play the other types of discs that are supposed to be playable on a regular CD player. In addition to a few CD-Rs and CD-RWs I had burned several years ago on my Alesis Masterlink, I tried a handful of hybrid SACDs to see if reading the CD layer might cause difficulties, and I tried the CD side on a couple of DualDiscs. Because they are double sided, DualDiscs are slightly thicker than standard CDs, which can cause loading problems with some…

Description: CD transport supporting CD, CD-R, CD-RW with 3.12" dimmable OLED display, front-panel push buttons and remote control. Digital outputs: 2 S/PDIF (RCA and BNC), AES3 (XLR), 2 I2S (HDMI/LVDS and RJ45/LVCMOS). Reference clock input and output 10MHz on 75/50 ohm BNC. Output resolution: Direct (16/44.1), 4× oversampled (24/176.4), switchable. Power requirements: 110–120V, 220–230V, 50/60Hz, set at factory. Power consumption: 50W; 1W standby.
Dimensions: 17.0" (430mm) W × 15.0" (380mm) D × 5.9" (150mm) H. Weight: 48.5lb (22kg).
Finish: Silver or…