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Shore Fire Media has just announced the first two titles from a new LP reissue program, the Rhino High Fidelity Premium Vinyl Series. Rhino High Fidelity's planned release schedule will be quarterly throughout the year; the inaugural release features two outstanding titles, the eponymous debut album from The Cars, The Cars (1978, Elektra Records), and... Read More »

Craft Latino is a specialty imprint that focuses on reissues of classic salsa, Latin jazz, Latin soul, and Afro-Cuban releases from Craft Recordings' deep catalog of Latino artists, many of which haven't been reissued as LPs for decades. Their newest reissues highlight classic records from a pair of legendary Latino percussionists, conguero Ray Barretto's Que... Read More »

Back in February, I received a series of unsettling emails from Dalibor Kasac, my contact at Euphony Audio in Croatia, telling me about a discovery they'd made concerning how ESS Pro delta-sigma DAC chips process native DSD. And that Euphony had gotten a couple of the new Topping E70 Velvet DACs that incorporated the newest... Read More »

Berkeley based Fantasy Records built their early reputation in the 1950s with classic LPs from Dave Brubeck, Cal Tjader, Gerry Mulligan, and Vince Guaraldi. Many of those LPs were pressed on red and blue translucent vinyl, and they became immensely popular with record buyers. I'll never forget finding a sealed copy of Vince Guaraldi's Jazz... Read More »

Living Sound Audio (LSA) is the in-house brand of Underwood HiFi, a company that's nearly legendary in audiophile circles. Walter Liederman, Underwood HiFi's "big kahuna"—hey, the dude lives in Maui, for heaven's sake—was a perpetual fixture on the Atlanta audio scene for decades. Walter was a partner in Atlanta-based HiFi Buys for 23 years prior... Read More »

  Naiu Laboratory is a German-based manufacturer that's been in existence since the late 1990s. It's the brainchild of Mircea Naiu, who also designed the proprietary circuit employed by their only current model, the Ella Mark 3 stereo amplifier. Naiu refers to this technology as Class ND, which is an acronym for "Naiu Digital." Naiu's... Read More »

Craft Recordings is bringing an impressive slate of limited-edition LPs to stores for 2023's first celebration of Record Store Day (RSD), which takes place on Saturday, April 22. Craft's noteworthy offering of rarities and specialty releases are just a smattering among the hundreds of records from a multitude of record labels. Craft's seven releases include... Read More »

Jazz Dispensary is Craft Recordings' house label that mines from the riches of Concord Music's jazz, funk, soul, and fusion recordings from their Prestige, Fantasy, and Milestone imprints from the mid-60s through the mid-70s. While many of their releases are compilation mix-ups of classic grooves from the period, Jazz Dispensary's Top Shelf series highlights rarities... Read More »

How do you spell diva? Barbra Streisand has been a brash, larger-than-life, irrepressible talent throughout her career, whether on Broadway, the big screen, or in the recording studio. Her amazing voice, her physical presence on stage and in front of the camera, and her prowess behind the microphone has helped win her an astonishing array... Read More »

I was a longtime subscriber to the now defunct Audio magazine; around the midpoint of 1981, while thumbing through the record review pages, I came across two albums that caught my eye. The first chronicled Glenn Gould's autumnal re-interpretation of The Goldberg Variations; the second documented the posthumous release of Bill Evans' You Must Believe... Read More »

Craft Recordings is beginning a new push with remasters and reissues of titles from the Original Jazz Classics (OJC) series from Concord Music's vast catalog of classic jazz from the Fifties, Sixties, and beyond. Many titles from the record labels that fall under the OJC umbrella rank among the finest ever recorded or released, and... Read More »

Over the course of my lifetime, I have grown to really love jazz. I distinctly remember the first time I heard a jazz trio playing at a party in my mid-twenties, and it affected me in a way no other exposure to music ever had. The delicately textured pluck or slap of the acoustic bass,... Read More »

During my show experience at FLAX, I basically live-posted capsules on Facebook from notable rooms I visited each day, saving my full coverage for after the weekend was over. Little did I know when I posted from the Focal Naim America room that I was opening a tempest in a teapot! At the point I... Read More »

Mobile Fidelity featuring Andrew Jones A couple of weeks prior to FLAX, I got an email press release from Mobile Fidelity alerting me that speaker designer extraordinaire Andrew Jones would be present in Tampa, giving talks about his new MoFi SourcePoint 10 loudspeaker. "Great!" I thought, "I'll definitely need to check that out!" Yeah, me... Read More »

Classic Audio Loudspeakers with Atma-Sphere in the Cypress ballroom John Wolff's Classic Audio Loudspeakers has been exhibiting in the cavernous Cypress ballroom for several years running now, and it's definitely a must-hear at every FLAX show. The amplifiers and preamps were from Atma-Sphere, and cables were provided by Purist Audio Designs. John always brings his... Read More »

2023 marked my third consecutive trip to the Florida Audio Expo (or FLAX as it seems to have been shortened to), and the experience was hands down the best yet! In terms of vendors, the show was completely sold out, which is great, but also a mixed blessing of sorts. There was so much more... Read More »

The TAD Reference One Experience lets US audiophiles hear TAD's lineup together for the first time. TAD Labs (TAD stands for Technical Audio Devices) is a Japanese high-end audio company that's working to establish higher product visibility in the US audiophile market through the efforts of PAD HiFi (Pro Audio Design), their exclusive US distributor.... Read More »

Patricia Barber, Clique!. HQ180 33.3 LP: $39.99 MSRP. Patricia Barber patriciabarber.com. Impex Records impexrecords.com Patricia Barber's Clique! was released to great fanfare by Impex Records in August, 2021. I had the good fortune to review the DXD (Digital eXtreme Definition) 32-bit/352.8kHz digital download files of the album at that time, and you can read my review... Read More »

In the mid-seventies, Al Di Meola was a young, hotshot jazz fusion guitarist with Chick Corea and Return to Forever. But he'd also developed a deep understanding of Latin music, and had a special love for flamenco guitar. During a European tour with RTF, Di Meola heard of a legendary Spanish flamenco guitarist, Paco De... Read More »