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Billy Hart's quartet started in 2004. In 20+ years, it has quietly become one of the best small ensembles in jazz. It has taken Hart almost all his 85 years to be recognized as a national treasure. He is a master of a drum language he invented, one that knows a thousand ways to swing.

An unusual aspect of this quartet is…

In these days of industry transformation, acquiring a brick-and-mortar hi-fi store is not for the faint of heart. That's just what 41-year-old Brandon Bartee did in August 2025. Bartee acquired Audio Concepts from Mark Ashworth, who was celebrating the store's 40th anniversary, all 40 years under his ownership. Ashworth has been consulting for the store since the acquisition and will continue to do so for another few more months.

Audio Concepts has been in the same location in North…

Large-ensemble jazz was once the dominant format in the art form. Today it is a niche. Big jazz bands now survive mostly as labors of love. Current examples of beloved big bands include the Maria Schneider Orchestra, Darcy James Argue's Secret Society, and Ryan Truesdell's Gil Evans Project. There is another…

Legendary Stax guitarist/producer Steve Cropper hated when deejays talked over song intros. He decided to do something about it for the countless hit singles cut at the label's Memphis studio in the 1960s. As a result of his efforts, Cropper—who passed away on December 3, 2025, at age 84—became known as "The Intro Guy," a sobriquet he was proud to honor. "I got to hang out at a lot of radio stations, but I never really wanted to be a disc jockey,"

Cropper told me from his Nashville home during a phone interview in May 2018. "The work they did…

It doesn't matter whether the artist worked in Paris or Polynesia, in the 15th or 20th century. The force of the creator's persona, united with the constraints of the cultural system that supported the making of that type of art, determines the vibe the object emits. That vibe is what I'm hoping to grasp.

Whether I'm examining a Zulu beer pot or a John Cage drawing (both of which I've lived with), my first step…

Listening
Whenever I play records through my sound system, I need to feel the personas of the artists coming through. I want some authentic John Fogerty attitude. I want as much edgy John Lennon as I can get. I want to feel Tina Turner's moves. I want Aaron Neville's sacred voice to haunt me 'til we meet by the river.

As I sat listening with the Stax SR-007S, it took only a few seconds for Aaron Neville singing John Hiatt's sexy dreamy "Feels Like Rain" (16/44.1 FLAC A&M/Qobuz) to lope its way into my heart and choke me up.

I used DRA Labs' MLSSA system and a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone with an Earthworks microphone preamplifier to measure the Dynaudio Contour 20 Black Edition's farfield frequency behavior and dispersion. I used an Earthworks QTC-40 mike for the nearfield and in-room responses and Dayton Audio's DATS V2 system to measure the impedance magnitude and electrical phase angle.

Dynaudio specifies the Contour 20 BE's sensitivity as 86dB/2.…

Lucskai, a Hungarian who emigrated to Spain 15 years ago, calls himself a Personal Audiophile Journey Advisor. With Costa Soniqa, he aims to serve Germans, Brits, Poles, and other Europeans who wish to buy a house in Spain that can readily be outfitted with a high-end listening room. For the demanding and the highly committed, he even finds entire homes that can qualify as "…