Scheduled for Sunday, October 18 at Sausalito's Presidio Yacht Club near the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge, the event has again been publicized on the over 100,000 member strong DIYAudio.com forum. The forum is international in scope—it began in Australia—meaning that Burning Amp is one of the few large-scale DIY…
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The Burning Amp Festival is almost upon us. The day-long DIY (do-it-yourself) love fest, held within yards of the San Francisco Bay, attracts a good 150 DIYers from around the world who engage in the annual ritual of demming their homemade gear for other avid audio enthusiasts.
The first chapter in the history of the LAST Factory, manufacturer of LAST Record Preservative for LPs, is coming to a close. After shepherding for 30 years the Livermore, California–based company he founded, LAST's president, Walter Davies, is retiring to devote his energies to still photography. With Jan and Ric Mancuso, of Trade Secrets Consulting, Davies is looking for a buyer to keep the company in operation.
Three LAST products—Record Preservative, StyLast Stylus Treatment, and their flagship Power Cleaner for LPs—have been listed in Stereophile's "Recommended Components" for many…
The people at Manhattan high-end audio retailer Stereo Exchange know how to throw a party. They proved it back in April with their Spring Fever event, and they look to surpass the success of that outstanding evening with their 25th Anniversary Celebration, this Thursday, November 5, from 3–9pm.
Representatives from several top audio manufacturers will be on hand to demonstrate their latest products and speak with guests. Featured products on display will include NAD's new M2 Direct Digital amplifier, Grado's top-of-the-line PS1000 headphones, Vienna Acoustics' The Music loudspeakers, and…
On November 19, Scottosh manufacturer Linn Products held a press conference in London to announce that it was forthwith ceasing the production of CD players, and effectively replacing them by its new DS-series "digital streaming" components in its product portfolio.
Such a bold and radical decision requires elaboration. As the first major specialist hi-fi brand to announce such an exit strategy, the shock value of the announcement is clearly designed attract maximum media publicity. But it's also very much a statement of intent, and represents Linn's firm belief that digital streaming…
The world's largest classical label, Naxos of America, has released its first Blu-ray music package. The Virtual Haydn: Complete Works for Solo Keyboard contains three Blu-ray audio discs plus one three-hour Blu-ray videodisc that together hold 15 hours of music. All performances are by Tom Beghin, a baroque specialist and musicologist based at McGill University. Sound engineer Martha De Francisco, an Associate Professor at McGill, recorded the performances in high-resolution (24-bit/96kHz) PCM sound.
Beghin has recorded Haydn's music on seven modern replicas of historic keyboards ranging…
Back when there was still something called the "classical music industry," one of Stereophile's favorite small labels was John Marks Records, masterminded by the magazine's "The Fifth Element" columnist, John Marks. In fact, it was his recordings that first brought John to the magazine's attention. JMR had a phenomenal run of releases, among them Arturo Delmoni and Meg Bachman Vas's Songs My Mother Taught Me, Nathaniel Rosen's cycle of J.S. Bach's Suites for Solo Cello, Delmoni and Rosen's Music for a Glass Bead Game, and the three Rejoice recordings of Christmas music for string quartet (…
The "high-performance" sector of the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show, to be held January 7–10 at the Venetian Hotel, in economically downturned Las Vegas, promises an exciting array of new products for home and office. While the CES proper is open only to dealers, press, and the relatively few non-industry audiophiles who can wriggle their way in, Stereophile's intrepid bloggers promise to tell you just about everything worth talking about, via frequently updated show reports on our website.
This year's high-performance exhibitors number at least 274 (down from 353 last year), and are…
Among the maladies to which music lovers are especially susceptible, hearing damage caused by prolonged exposure to loud sounds is perhaps the most pernicious. When you're young, you normally don't think about the consequences of cranking up the volume, but if you do that routinely, you are sure to suffer some form of hearing deficit in your later—or, in some cases, not so later—years.
One of the most common problems that arise from overexposure to loud sounds is called tinnitus (pronounced TIN-ni-tus or tin-NIGHT-us), which is usually described as "ringing in the ears." It can manifest…
Axpona, the Audio Expo of North America, is geared up for its premiere next Friday in Jacksonville, Florida. The new Show runs March 5–7 at the 350-room Wyndham Riverwalk Hotel, which overlooks the St. Johns River and is just 15 minutes from the Atlantic Ocean. Sponsored by Stereophile, which will blog live from the show, Axpona is already looking like a winner. Impressive figures for advance Internet registration (discounted through March 1) indicate that Axpona might meet or even surpass attendance at last year's Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, in Denver.
The list of exhibitors continues to…
BluePort Jazz's catalog of 15 titles, recorded in jazz clubs and studios by Jim Merod, is now downloadable in lossless FLAC format from the House of Linn website. Merod—a PhD professor, an author of numerous books, a music critic for Enjoy the Music.com, and an equipment reviewer for Positive Feedback Online—is known for recording with as few microphones as possible and mixing everything live to two tracks in high-resolution (24-bit/96kHz) PCM format.
BluePort artists include Jaime Valle (Latin jazz), Noel Jewkes Quartet, Gene Bertoncini (guitar), Joe Wilder–Marshall Royal Quintet, Dale…