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My gosh, Björk's new video is just lovely. How many levels of recursion can you spot?
Sting's recording of Dowland lute songs has certainly generated a lot of hooey—ranging from accusations of Sting making commercial move (yeah, recording a disc of lute songs is sooo calculated to run up the charts) to complaints about Sting's "inauthentic" performance.
Goodness gracious, Mr. Sumner—how dare you!
The folks I know in the lute mafia mostly give Sting his props for his effort. I like the disc myself, although I agree with Dial "M" For Musicology that its biggest sin is probably caution. Compared to the egregious crapulousness of most rock crossovers committed by, say…
Texas' political scene is clearly crazy—which is just one more reason why Kinky Friedman might make the perfect Texas governor. The state has clearly elected clowns before, why not try a pro?
At the suggestion of a fellow BAAS (Bay Area Audiophile Society) member, I abandoned futile attempts to cover every room on a given floor, and instead pinpointed systems that had turned my brothers on. In this case, it was the room shared by Flying Mole Digital and Green Mountain speakers.
Fed by an old Sony transport and a relatively inexpensive Birdland upsampling DAC, I heard designer Roy Johnson’s Green Mountain Continuum 3, a time-coherent three-way with 90dB sensitivity, and the Flying Mole DAB-M310 class-D monoblocks. The system sounded best on a track by Jennifer Warnes,…
Gilbert Yeung of Blue Circle Audio never fails to brighten my day. In this case, his electronics did likewise.
The combination of the April Music Stello CDT200 transport; Blue Circle’s BC 501 DAC, BmPH 160Wpc, class-AB, solid-state integrated amplifier, MR1200 power conditioner, BC602 passive conditioner, and full complement of cabling, all feeding Selah Audio 3D speakers, may have produced a more modest presentation than the significantly more expensive, entirely different Artemis Labs/Verity pairing, but shared that system’s lovely tonal balance and excellent pace. As usual,…
Photographed in a state of mild panic, as your truly was trying to figure out what was wrong with his new Canon digital camera [Answer: nothing but his brain], the dedicated Serinus RMAF work area at the Marriott is pictured in its characteristically unglorious state.
Given the exceptional hospitality of the Marriott Denver Tech Center staff—among the most efficient and attentive folks I’ve encountered at any show—I confess that I’ve fallen in love with the infinitely charming Latina who has been cleaning the room. To think that some would demonize her simply because her command of…
For some system configurations, hotel rooms present near impossible challenges. Such was the case in one padded cell on the 5th floor of the Marriott Denver Tech Center, where the frustrated purveyors of a modestly priced A/V surround system raided the linen closet in a desperate attempt to tame errant sound. I didn’t have the heart to ask if the reflective surface of the black plastic tape might be making matters worse.
Here’s hoping that when they dismantled everything, the wallpaper remained in place!
Fortune found in the fortune cookie that accompanied my evening meal of Chinese take-out: "When in doubt, let your instincts guide you."
To the extent those words have to do with this blog, besides proof that I'm sufficiently punch drunk from three days of non-stop system hopping to quote such a foolproof source in such an impossibly run-on sentence, they must refer to what both John Atwood, designer of Artemis Labs electronics, and the designer of the Verity Sarastro loudspeakers took to heart as they developed their respective products. The combination of the Artemis Labs SP-1…
Jack Black on the need to stop piracy.
Do I need to say "mildly offensive language alert"?
Although it can sometimes seem quite illusive, or only reserved for the chosen few, high-end proof of the proverbial scales of justice surfaced in the last room I was privileged to visit.
There I encountered the striking Red Rock Renaissance amplifiers, push-pull 50Wpc tubed monoblocks ($28,750/pair) designed by RMAF co-founder Al Stiefel and Gordon Maughan. The Red Rocks were paired with visually arresting Gershman Acoustics Black Swan loudspeakers ($30,000/pair), Exemplar Audio’s Exception II preamplifier ($3250) and Extant DAC ($8800), and Magnan cables. The system exhibited…