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Digital Sources: Roon Nucleus+ file server with HDPlex linear power supply and AudioQuest JitterBug FMJ; iPad mini running Roon; Benchmark DAC3 B & PS Audio DirectStream D/A processors; MBL N31 CD player/DAC; Ayre Acoustics C-5xeMP disc player; Ayre Acoustics QA-9 A/D converter; NetGear Nighthawk router.
Integrated amplifier: CH Precision i1 with 2.1 firmware.
Power amplifiers: Parasound Halo JC 1+ monoblocks.
Loudspeakers: GoldenEar BRX, KEF LS50.
Cables: Digital: AudioQuest Coffee (USB), DH Labs (AES3). Interconnect: AudioQuest Wild…

I measured the DirectStream MK2 first using my Audio Precision SYS2722 system, then with the magazine's higher-performance APx500. The review sample was fitted with the v2.3.5 FPGA firmware, but after I experienced some anomalous measured results, I installed the v2.3.3 firmware package, which was available as a download on the DirectStream MK2's information webpage. I then installed the v2.3.6 firmware when it was available and repeated the testing.

The DirectStream MK2's optical input locked to sample rates up to 96kHz, the coaxial and AES3 inputs locked…

Keeping fans satisfied but also looking forward is an effective marketing tool, one that Ernst Mikael Jørgensen, the guru of all things…

"I was fatigued from what I'd been doing," Fulks told me recently via Zoom, sitting in his kitchen in Atwater Village, a Los Angeles neighborhood between Glendale and Burbank. "Me on acoustic guitar, with electric guitar, bass guitar and drums, that was my…

2001's Couples in Trouble, which he released on his own Boondoggle Records, was offputtingly eclectic. Even as The Washington Post's Geoffrey Himes hailed the record as Fulks's "most intimate, most ambitious work," Himes all but warned off potential buyers. "Before the record ends, the singer will try his hand at new-wave pop, art song, show tunes, troubadour folk, synth noise and honky-tonk." Sorry, too rich to digest. Fulks set out on a multi-album journey through classic hard country with 2001's ironically titled 13 Hillbilly Giants; its perverse conceit is…

When an artist has written hundreds of songs, it seems a logical request that he list the 15 or so that, as Fulks put it, “don’t embarrass me.” Would he consider this list “The Essential Robbie Fulks”? “Sure,” he said, “it’s fine if you want to say that.” Here they are, from the most recently released to the earliest, with the albums on which they appear.

"Angels Carry Me": Bluegrass Vacation (Compass, 2023)

"Molly and the Old Man": Bluegrass Vacation (Compass, 2023)

"I Just Lived a Country Song": Wild! Wild! Wild! with Linda Gail…

High Moon Records is on a mission. Used-record crate diggers and musical anthropologists at heart, they have introduced lost artists like Ace of Cups and Sons of Adam to a new audience of fans. Their latest project may be their best yet.

Gemini Girl augments the out-of-print Laurie Styvers releases Spilt Milk (1971) and The Colorado Kid (1973) with previously unreleased material including demos, alternate takes, and original…

Ingrid Laubrock is representative of what might be called the New Jazz Avant-garde. What is new is that, unlike the older version (Coleman, Ayler, late Coltrane, etc.), it is less noisy and more analytical. But it is no less challenging. Laubrock's imagination is radical.

The Last…

Strauss's sumptuous, late-career Four Last Songs are the final flowering of his romantic genius. Paired on this recording with the Final Scene from his last opera, Capriccio: A Conversation Piece for Music, these four orchestral songs ponder life's eternal mysteries as they swirl, soar, then climax in sound…