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  In my recent review of the Puron AC Power Conditioners, I was struck by the abundance of amazing and relatively inexpensive enhancements available to substantially improve the performance of your audio and video systems. Those include devices and accessories of every make and manner that, based on their outward appearance, would seem incapable of... Read More »

Nobody talks about Vaughn Monroe (1911-1973) anymore. That's sad, because Monroe was a very good singer. It's pretty clear to me that it's his unusual voice that places him in obscurity. Nothing sounds like his baritone voice. By today's standards, and even by my own retro standards, he sounds a little usual. His voice is... Read More »

The brochure included with the XACT S1 music server hammered on the point again and again. Digital that doesn't sound like digital. More like vinyl. The single-minded focus caused me to reflect on the scene and our recent history. What began with Perfect Sound Forever in 1983 is now snubbed in 2024. The new standard... Read More »

Rhino Entertainment has announced their cleverly named Start Your Ear Off Right series, which features a slate of eighteen limited edition LP releases, with most of them being offered in cool colored-vinyl variants. The releases criss-cross a multitude of genres and artists, ranging from rock (The Grateful Dead, The Doors, The Velvet Underground, Stevie Nicks),... Read More »

Craft Recordings' has just released the sixth installment in their premium Small Batch audiophile LP series with a reissue of Isaac Hayes' 1969 sophomore effort, Hot Buttered Soul. Long considered a landmark release of Sixties soul music, Hot Buttered Soul created the template that would serve as the launching pad for Isaac Hayes' future successes... Read More »

Sony Music Entertainment, Columbia Records, and Legacy Recordings have just reissued Alice In Chains' classic 1994 EP Jar of Flies in a 30th Anniversary special edition. Jar of Flies, despite only being an EP, was one of Alice In Chains most important releases, and included several of their biggest hits from the 1990s. The EP... Read More »

Impex Records has just released another of their incredible 1STEP 45 rpm LP box sets, this time featuring the classic Bossa Nova album Getz/Gilberto. Impex's 1STEP process is fairly labor-intensive, in that it requires cutting a new set of lacquers for every pressing run of 500 LPs. This nearly insane level of precision guarantees that... Read More »

The Zesto Audio Andros Spirit Phonostage (image courtesy of Zesto Audio) The new Zesto Audio Andros Spirit Phonostage is an inexpensive wonder. It is so precisely cut from the same cloth as the Andros II and Deluxe II, all tubes all the time, that the audiophile will forget the small differences and accept the Spirit... Read More »

Who the heck was Bill Snyder? Based on the scarce info I could find, William P. Snyder (1916-2011), from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, was America's most recorded light music pianist during the 1950s. Unfortunately for Bill's legacy, today's music lovers don't listen to the dim lit sound of light pianists, especially on mono LPs from... Read More »

Dean Waters at Pacific Audio Fest 2023: A Portrait with a Cigar. (Photograph and image processing by David W. Robinson)  About four months ago I received a Mola-Mola Tambaqui DAC and a Mola-Mola Perca stereo amplifier from Bill Parish at GTT Audio, and I've been using them as my daily-driver since then with much glee... Read More »

Bella Sound is the brain child of Michael Vice. Educated at UC Berkeley and Stanford in Physics and Electrical Engineering, Mike has poured his decades of experience and over 40 patents into his unique designs. Bella Sound's products include amplifiers, a power conditioner, and power cords, all based on Mike's conceptually novel approach, and married... Read More »

I've been reviewing a ton of LPs over the last few years, and to enhance my review process, I set up a dedicated, all-analog system in one of my audio rooms. That system features dual turntables from ProJect and Rega, a PS Audio Stellar phono preamp, a PrimaLuna tube integrated amp, and a pair of... Read More »

  WAY Cables Poetry X Analogue XLR interconnects   Despite having access to a pretty wide range of very enticing gear, I really try to avoid the marry go round of constantly swapping gear in and out of my reference system. I made big changes about 3 years ago and before that it had been over... Read More »

Silvestrov, Postludium No. 3. Matt Haimovitz, cello; Nadia Shpachenko, piano. Pentatone Music PTC5187305 (digital single). TT: 4.53. It's been two years since Russia invaded Ukraine, and Pentatone has chosen to mark the date with this single track of music by Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov. (To have labelled the release as "A Celebration of Ukrainian Culture," however, is... Read More »

I've had the immense pleasure of being able to evaluate a number of Impex Records' excellent LP releases over the last year or so, with results that have been uniformly superb. That list includes unexpectedly great albums, like Barbra Streisand's triumphal Live at the Bon Soir and the truly magnificent Al Di Meola/John McLaughlin/Paco De... Read More »

Playing vinyl is some of the most fun you can have in this hobby. Sliding a record out of its sleeve and setting it on the platter, throwing a switch and watching a turntable to come up to speed, cueing down a tonearm and hearing that satisfying sound of when the stylus contacts the record.... Read More »

My old friend and former roommate, Dave, suggested that I write about my Leni Okehu record. What a cool idea. The music is a boatload of fun, it's beautifully recorded, and Dave and I used to love the way it sounded on his ADS L880 speakers. The album's title is Hawaiian Holiday (International Award Series... Read More »

To paraphrase Lawrence Welk: there are more new turntables than ever to choose from, good and bad, and this is certainly one of them. That's actually how a lot of reviews seem to go these days, and who can blame the poor writers? With seemingly every audio (and audio-adjacent) brand either getting into the turntable... Read More »

Craft Recordings has announced the first group of new titles for 2024 in their Original Jazz Classics (OJC) reboot, featuring three albums that were released within months of each other in 1962. Those include the classic Cannonball Adderley with Bill Evans session, Know What I Mean?, along with the equally classic Art Blakey & the... Read More »