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Sonny & Cher: "I Got You Babe"
Atco Records AT.4035 (7" single). 1965. Sonny Bono, prod.; Stan Ross, eng.

I promise you, whatever age you are now, your lifeforce will be greater after you've heard Sonny Bono sing Put your little hand in mine / There ain't no hill or mountain we can't climb. Bill Voss of Technics played Sonny and Cher's "I Got You Babe" from a 12" Greatest Hits disc, and it earwormed its way into the next month of my life. When I got home from the show, I bought a VG+ version of the single on eBay for $11.95, and every time I see…

Al Di Meola/John McLaughlin/Paco de Lucía: Friday Night In San Francisco
Di Meola, McLaughlin, de Lucía, guitars
Columbia FC 37152 (LP). 1981. Barrie Marshall, Philip Roberge, prods.; Rex Olson, Tim Pinch, Ray Bardani, engs.

If concerts had traffic stops, Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin, and Paco de Lucía would have been pulled over for breaking the California speed limit during this December 5, 1980, performance. No one should be able to play an acoustic guitar this fast and articulately while creating such transcendent music, even quoting The…

The Camberwell Now: All's Well
ReR Megacorp DUP0022 (CD). 1992. The Camberwell Now, prod.; Keith Hancock, Barry Woodward, Dave Bernez, The Camberwell Now, engs.

Born from the ashes of the London-based experimental avant-prog band This Heat, The Camberwell Now was a trio, formed by This Heat drummer and lead singer Charles Hayward, the band's final bass player, Trefor Goronwy, and its sound engineer, Stephen Rickard. Rickard's "tape switchboard" was a cross between a sampler and a Mellotron created by connecting a stack of cassette decks to a keyboard…

After performing the CH Precision L10 balanced input's Calibration procedure, I used my Audio Precision SYS2722 system to perform a complete set of measurements using the L10's direct-coupled balanced inputs and outputs with the input impedance set to High, the gain adjust set to "0dB," feedback set to Local, Phase Polarity set to In Phase, and the Ground Lift switch set to Opened. I then repeated some of the tests using the unbalanced RCA inputs and outputs then did more tests with the magazine's higher-performance APx555. The supplied umbilical cables were long…

There's no point in listing the well-documented hassles, humiliations, and expenses involved in changing homes, or point out the ample opportunities for things to go from predictably stressful to memorably horrific. It's the less obvious aspects that strike me as interesting. At the risk of sounding maudlin, I…

I was listening through the most compelling sound system I had assembled since I started…

I had already been won over by the pair of Burmester 218 Top Line stereo power amplifiers ($50,000/each) I reviewed in the October 2024 issue. I wrote in my conclusion: "Their sound is so natural and complete that amidst the miracle of music, analytical thoughts inevitably cede to satisfaction, smiles, and wonder. ... Their sound ... was world-…

The review unit arrived complete with optional DAC/streamer module—and the phono module I could not evaluate. As a Roon Ready device that offers multiple connection and playback options, including Wi-Fi and Bluetooth file playback, I tested it multiple ways:

• As a pure integrated, with the vastly more expensive Innuos Nazaré server-streamer, the five-piece dCS Varèse music system doing the conversion (footnote 3). This setup enabled me to compare the same music at the same resolution sourced from the Nazaré's internal SSD and Qobuz.

• As a pure integrated amplifier using…

I used optical and coaxial S/PDIF data to test the DAC/streamer module's digital inputs, as well as network data played with Roon and test tone files stored on a USB stick. The Roon app recognized the amplifier as "Burmester 232 Integrated Amplifier." When I connected the amplifier's USB-C port to my 2017 MacBook Pro, Apple's USB Prober app identified the 232 as "Burmester Amplifier" from "Burmester Audiosysteme GmbH" with the serial number "2320164," and indicated that the USB port operated in the optimal isochronous asynchronous mode. However, the…

I performed a full set of measurements on the Burmester 232 using my Audio Precision SYS2722 system. Before I started the testing, I preconditioned the amplifier by operating it at 1/8 the specified power into 8 ohms for 30 minutes. At the end of that time, the temperature of the side-mounted heatsinks was 117.5°F/47.5°C.

Looking first at the Burmester 232's balanced line inputs: The amplifier inverted absolute polarity at the speaker and headphone outputs but preserved polarity at the balanced Preamplifier output. (Polarity can be adjusted for each input…