Ken Micallef

Rotel Michi P5 preamplifier

Ken Micallef Oct 28, 2020

Before starting this review of Rotel's Michi P5, the 60-year-old, Japan-based audio company's recent preamplifier design, I thought it appropriate to consider "What is an audio preamplifier? What should it do?" There are plenty of opinions to be found at stereophile.com:

"What a preamp ought to do, apart from changing volume and switching sources, is as little as possible," wrote Stereophile Editor Jim Austin in his 2017 review of the PS Audio BHK Signature preamplifier.

Interviews Music and Recording Features

Maria Schneider: Is There Anybody Out There?

Ken Micallef Oct 08, 2020

"The data lords are gathering data and giving it to organizations that then manipulate us with the things they know about us, things that we don't even know about ourselves," says five-time Grammy Awardwinning composer, conductor, producer, and band leader Maria Schneider. "They give our data to any company that'll pay for it to manipulate you, specifically targeting your vulnerabilities. It takes away freedom of thought, a true discourse where people are thinking for themselves. Count me out."

Budget Component Reviews Stand Loudspeaker Reviews

Polk Legend L100 loudspeaker

Ken Micallef Oct 02, 2020

Summer!

COVID-19 notwithstanding, summerwarmth, flowers, leaves on treeshas descended on Greenwich Village, my New York City home for the past 30 years. What hasn't descended are tourists, belching motorcycles, behemoth sports cars, beer drinkers, and the usual summer hell-raisers, the sort that would've sent legendary Village bohemians Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs running back to their cold-water flats.

Interviews Music and Recording Features

James Taylor: an American Standard

Ken Micallef Aug 05, 2020

On iconic singer-songwriter James Taylor's 20th album, American Standard, the lanky crooner adapts the classic American songbook to his easy-rolling musical ways. The result is an American mixture of timeless songcraft.

Where some popular singers use the songbook canon to increase record and ticket sales, Taylor has no need to change himself or increase his audience. He's as comfortable as any man can be, having sold many millions of records the world over for almost 50 years.

Music and Recording Features

Jim Campilongo: Telecaster Master & Audio Enthusiast

Ken Micallef May 08, 2020

In a 2014 profile in the New Yorker, Paul Elie, author of the book Reinventing Bach, wrote, "There it was again: the stinging treble, the spooky overtones, the strings snapping and booming under his handsthe sound of a Tele being played as skillfully and exuberantly as it can be played."

The musician in question was Jim Campilongo . . .

Budget Component Reviews Stand Loudspeaker Reviews

Fyne Audio F301 loudspeaker

Ken Micallef Apr 17, 2020

Located outside Glasgow, in a geographical area that's also home to Linn Products and Tannoy Ltd.and also near the storied whisky distilleries of Aberfeldy and Blair AthollFyne Audio got off to a fast start. A mere three years after the company's 2017 founding, Fyne already has distribution deals in 50 countries and offers 24 products in seven series.

Stand Loudspeaker Reviews

ProAc Response D2R loudspeaker

Ken Micallef Mar 31, 2020

Between the mid-1980s and late 2000s, Stereophile published 14 reviews of loudspeakers from England's ProAc Limited. First came Dick Olsher's review of the ProAc Tablette in 1984. The latestuntil nowwas in 2010, when John Marks wrote about the ProAc Response D Two.

Music and Recording Features

Welcome to the EDM Jungle

Ken Micallef Mar 05, 2020

In the mid-1990s, record labels were cash-flush and music magazines plentiful. Warner Bros., Capitol, Universal, Mercury, RCA, Arista, Mute, and Astralwerks shuttled US-based music journalists across the Atlantic to cover England's burgeoning Britpop, trip hop, drum and bass, and techno music scenes. The latter three genres were hailed by the press as the "electronic dance music revolution."

Integrated Amp Reviews

Schiit Audio Ragnarok 2 integrated amplifier

Ken Micallef Jan 31, 2020

In Herb Reichert's review of the original Schiit Audio Ragnarok integrated amplifier, he wrote, "Schiit Audio's Ragnarok [is] the first amplifier of my experience that plays earth and sky, mind and body, brown eyes and blue, speakers and headphones, with equal narcotic intensity." Herb's colorful conclusions so persuaded me of the Ragnarok's worth that, when Schiit Audio's Jason Stoddard and Mike Moffatt announced the impending release of the Ragnarok 2, I pitched a Stereophile follow-up review.

Interviews Music and Recording Features

Bill Frisell: New Ideas in Old Songs

Ken Micallef Jan 07, 2020

Of the celebrated triumvirate of John Scofield, Pat Metheny, and Bill Frisellthe most original and influential jazz guitarists of the past 50 yearsnone is more distinctive, or self-effacing, than Frisell, a true changeling of the guitar. Frisell is a jazz-based musician, but his music crisscrosses genres, and his guitar playing isn't bound to or limited by a specific technique. He's a master illusionist, able to alter a song's meaning far beyond its original intent with the aid of a Telecaster guitar, a modest effects chain, and, most importantly, his rich imagination.