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Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab honors the 50th anniversary of Heart's Dreamboat Annie with a deluxe 45 rpm, 180 gram LP reissue of the band's classic debut. Initially only available in their native Canada, Dreamboat Annie at first failed to gain much traction—at least until the album's second single "Magic Man" hit the Montreal airwaves. It... Read More »

We have a virtual cornucopia of excellence from NativeDSD for this edition of Recent Finds. Following the release of Eudora's outstanding Pure DSD256 album of Mozart's piano music for four hands, Review HERE, now we have a superb Mozart Requiem from Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Orchestra, delightful Handel and Bach secular oratorios from Florilegium... Read More »

  What happened to all of the luxury Japanese turntables? You know the ones I mean: those tall, chunky, rosewood-veneered JVCs and Denons and even Hitachis, with their fully-automatic feature sets, dead-on direct drive propulsion and wildly over-engineered parts like servo-damped tonearms? While other companies like Rega were trying to simplify turntable design, these folks... Read More »

So you want to travel back in time to the mid-1970s to buy a brand new (back then) 1975-era pair of Quad ESL-57 loudspeakers. Okay… I get it. The primary difficulty, of course, is that all of your efforts to build a time machine out of a Delorean have failed; completely and utterly failed. Is... Read More »

When two masters play side-by-side, magic happens. So it is with this excellent new recording from pianists extraordinaire Josep Colom and Javier Laso.  Mozart & Schubert Four Hand Piano Works, Josep Colom and Javier Laso. Eudora Records 2025 (Pure DSD256-Direct Mixed, Stereo, MCh) Edit Master Sourced HERE I have long admired the playing of both... Read More »

Rarely does technology trickle up into the high-end realm of two-channel audio playback. Yet, in the case of Class D amplification, this has indeed happened. The Class D circuit was invented in the mid-1950s by Alec Reeves, and the first commercial product was released by Sinclair Radionics in 1964. A bit further down the road,... Read More »

If you're a vinyl-spinning audiophile and you love great guitarists, you should listen to Chet Atkins (1924-2001). Heck, even if you don't spin vinyl you should listen to Chet Atkins. The soft-spoken man from Luttrell, Tennessee, was also known by the nicknames Mr. Guitar and The Country Gentleman. His guitar tone was sweet like honey,... Read More »

The Fenby Legacy: Music of Delius. Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Eric Fenby. Unicorn-Kanchana DKP (CD) 9008/9 (2 CDs; recorded 1981-3). Songs of Farewell (The Ambrosian Singers). Idyll (Felicity Lott, s; Thomas Allen, b). Fantastic Dance. A Song of Summer. Cynara (Allen, b). Irmelin: Prelude. A Late Lark (Anthony Rolfe Johnson, t). La Calinda. Caprice and Elegy (Julian... Read More »

Rhino Entertainment and Warner are celebrating the 75th anniversary of iconic label Elektra Records with twenty limited edition LP reissues and releases as part of the Elektra 75 Vinyl Collection. Albums in the series include a mix of 140 and 180 gram LPs, with many of them pressed on really cool colored-vinyl! The Elektra 75... Read More »

Wilco, A.M. (Rhino High Fidelity) I am a Chicago guy, and I have been a long term loyal fan of Wilco since the very beginning of the band. Wilco was formed in 1994 by the remaining members of the alternative country group Uncle Tupelo, after Jay Farrar's departure that same year to form Son Volt.... Read More »

Every now and then, something really special comes our way. And today it has. A new release from HDTT of Miles Davis' album, Milestones, in a gorgeous, sonically luscious Pure DSD256 transfer. I hope you will forgive this fresh new article after so many others right in a row. But I wanted you to hear... Read More »

Kapow! Right in the noggin! Wobbling like a UFO saucer in the finest Ray Harryhausen tradition, the record sailed crazily in the air, then jetted straight into the hapless boy's forehead. Score! A direct hit! The lesson here was, while some may argue about a Dynaflex record's sound quality, it's pretty tough to dodge in-flight.... Read More »

Craft Recordings has just released the latest installment in the Original Jazz Classics (OJC) reboot series, featuring four new titles that are scattered across the Prestige and Riverside labels. Including guitarist Kenny Burrell's fourth Prestige LP, 1957's Kenny Burrell; the 1958 Prestige blowing session Wheelin' and Dealin', which features the horns of Frank Wess, John... Read More »

This issue brings discussion of two new releases, and four that are included on my Pure DSD256 from Analog Tape: My Top of the Pile list but not previously reviewed. So, time to tell you more about these. Milhaud, La Création Du Monde, Suite Provençale, Charles Munch, Boston Symphony Orchestra. HDTT 2025 1960-1961 (DSD256, DXD)... Read More »

NativeDSD's catalog continues to expand, with new artists and new labels. As I've written before, I enjoy recommending new albums from NativeDSD because I trust that the sound quality will be very high, regardless of the format or original recording resolution. Too many times I've been disappointed by the sound quality found elsewhere, even from... Read More »

Tom Peeters is celebrating the 25th Anniversary of Cobra Records, which he founded in the fall of 2000. As founder, recording engineer, mastering engineer, and producer of nearly 100 exquisite albums released on the Cobra Records label over these years, Tom has many accomplishments for which his work should be celebrated. And he thanked. His... Read More »

Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab continues their brilliant restoration of Santana's catalog of albums with a new reissue of the band's 1977's classic, Moonflower. Sprawling across a pair of LPs, Moonflower unconventionally combined new studio tracks with Santana's first official domestic release of any of the band's live recordings. Moonflower provided a thrilling showcase of Santana's... Read More »

Bob Levi, a portrait. (Photograph and image processing by David W. Robinson) I am delighted to have the first opportunity to experience the perfected Schumann Generator S1 and the Inline Speaker Signature Silver for the first time in America. They are both exquisitely finished products and enhance the listening experience in vastly different ways. From... Read More »

Jewel Faye Smith (1943-2005), who went by the name Sammi Smith, was born in Orange, California. Due to her father's military career, she lived in Arizona, Texas, Colorado, and Oklahoma. In 1967 she was discovered in an Oklahoma City nightclub by Johnny Cash's bassist, Marshall Grant, and subsequently she moved to Nashville. With help from... Read More »