Elgar, Symphony No. 2. Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Onyx 4165. Elgar, Elgar, Elgar. What do American music lovers make of Elgar? Probably what the English make of Samuel Barber and of Copland's ballets. Each of our cultures has its romanticism and it is generally in our romanticisms that our cultures make their most characteristic, not... Read More »
Doug Munro and La Pompe Attack, The Harry Warren Songbook (GotMusic Records, GMR-1004, available at http://www.dougmunro.com, $15.99 CD) My first trip to an honest-to-goodness high-end audio store, one where I planned on making an actual purchase, happened way back in 1989 in downtown Philadelphia. (I lived there for almost a year, which now seems strange.) I... Read More »
So yeah, I like to dabble in tweaks and stuff that might add that much more to our musical enjoyment. Something that gets us that such more from our music. I admit it, I am a junkie for such things. People who have visited here look at the system and comment about its complexity and... Read More »
Music@Menlo 'Live,' 2016 "Russian Reflections" . (8 discs), available separately or as a box set. www. musicatmenlo.org. If you share Music@Menlo's enthusiasm for nineteenth century music, this latest edition of their annual set of (summer 2016) festival recordings will please you. It features a large group of minor and minor major Russian composers (plus Tchaikovsky... Read More »
My Questions and Answers (MQA) An interview of and by Andreas Koch on the subject of digital audio formats In the age of digital audio it appears that a new format is trying to conquer the consumer market every few years, but their success-to-failure ratio is much smaller than 1. It makes us wonder why... Read More »
Bybee filters. These things have been available for audio in various iterations for nearly twenty years, as far as I can tell. The filters are said to employ some of the technology used to reduce the noise floor of military submarines to improve sonar performance. I first read about these in the early 2000s, if... Read More »
LA AUDIO SHOW CREATES 'ALFIE' and 'XTREME' AWARDS LOS ANGELES — The LA Audio Show, premiering at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel from June 2 through June 4, has announced that it will present a series of prestigious "Audiophile" Awards for the finest products exhibited at the show in three general categories: Personal Listening, Speakers and Electronics. ... Read More »
It was clear from the moment I knew I would receive Kondo OnGaku amplifier for a review that I would also want to listen to it together with my friends from Krakow Sonic Society. These meetings give us not only a chance to meet, talk and listen to some music together but most of all to... Read More »
The Los Angeles and Orange County Audio Society, the world's largest at over 2100 members, presents events held monthly at varying locations throughout Los Angeles and Orange Counties in Southern California. Don't miss The Los Angeles Audio Show, June 2-4, the Society’s co-venture with the Orion Organization, which will be the largest fine audio mega-show ever... Read More »
Relativity Education with Audeze, Ableton + SubPac announce the next edition of the innovative Electronic Music Sessions educational program. Los Angeles Center Studios |Los Angeles, CA | March 8th, 2017 | Relativity Education, in conjunction with Audeze, Ableton, and SubPac, is proud to announce the newest iteration of its innovative Ableton-Certified Electronic Music Sessions (EMS)... Read More »
Kyomi Audio & GamuT Audio invite you to a memorable event Saturday March 18th in Chicago! Featuring: GamuT's new RS7i full range speakers GamuT's M250i mono amps & D3i Preamp GamuT's new complete line of Reference cables Kyomi Audio is hosting a GamuT' event in Chicago, featuring GamuT's Chief Engineer Benno Baun Meldgaard who will be explaining and demonstrating his latest innovative... Read More »
March 4, 2017 - The LA Audio Show, running at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel from June 2 through June 4, has announced an ambitious group of 17 seminars over the three day period. "Our partner, the Los Angeles & Orange County Audio Society (LAOCAS), put together a team, headed by Mark Katz, the organization's Chairman,... Read More »
Greg Timbers So, tell us a bit about your history in speaker design… beginnings and such. The journey that led you to JBL. I have been interested in Music since forever. My Mom played Piano and there was always music in the house. I started with Heath Kits and stuff around 12 years of age,... Read More »
Used to be, the only people needing fancy in-ear monitors were wasted rock stars or serious looking dudes protecting the President. The rest of us settled for crappy little earbuds that could only produce one sound accurately: "Good riddance!" High end IEMs were reserved for world class X-Games competitors barreling off the mini-ramp. But times... Read More »
March 1, 2017 - AXPONA (Audio Expo North America), the largest consumer audio show in the United States, returns to the Westin O'Hare Rosemont April 21-23, with nearly 45 new manufacturers and dealers making their debut at the 2017 show, offering music lovers and audiophiles the very latest products in the industry. AXPONA is known for featuring world-renowned... Read More »
Strap yourself in your seat, because we are going to go on a VIP ride with the VPI Avenger turntable. And yes, you dear readers are the VIPs in this adventure. This is part 1 of a 3 part series. The reason for the three parts is that I am going to review all three... Read More »
Roger Skoff writes about audio's bottom line - bass and Hi-Fi. When I was twelve years old, I had never heard bass. Really. Oh, I thought I had, but when you actually think about it, my guess is that not only will you understand and agree with what I just said; you may even discover... Read More »
Power to the people! The quality of AC power has a huge effect on the performance of an audio system! Most of you already know this. Some of you have gone to the expense of having a dedicated AC line installed for your audio system. We've been experimenting with AC power a lot lately. We... Read More »
The KRONOS Pro LE Turntable with Black Beauty Tonearm, photograph courtesy of KRONOS Audio. Take a breath. A shift of gear, now. From reference-grade DSD DACs to reference-grade turntables. This will be the third of three turntable evaluations that I've done over the past year, rounding out what's turned out to be the top three... Read More »
So I've been playing around more with headphones (headphones from Sennheiser, Audeze, AKG, and OPPO are in my usual rotation of references), but after hearing the new ELEARs from Focal… uh, we got to have these. At an event held over in Torrance at The Source A/V a while ago, Carol and I, along with a throng... Read More »
USB Cables… my last Rambling's column centered on the Purist Audio Luminist Revision Neptune cables and how, well either differences in cables are there for you or not. For whatever reason applies here—you hear it, you don't hear it, you can't hear it, or won't hear it… really doesn't matter as everyone finds their happy... Read More »
Tinariwen, Elwan (ANTI- 87467-1, 2-LP set $19.98 through Amazon) Reviewing contemporary music is often merely a matter of describing a hybrid. "Their music is a cross between Gwar and the first three Partridge Family LPs." "This latest album blends grindcore and dubstep with Texas swing." You can communicate the essence of a performer by mentioning two... Read More »
February 14, 2017 Channel Islands Audio is proud to announce the release of our long-awaited PEQ1 MKII MM/MC Phono Preamplifier The PEQ1 is a versatile design offering outstanding performance with a wide variety of phono cartridge types. This new dual-mono design is aimed at music lovers seeking the utmost life-like performance from their vinyl collection.... Read More »
This is an ongoing project by Claude Lemaire of Soundevaluations. Here is the second 10 of his Top 500 SuperSonic List... 11. Carole King,Tapestry. Ode Records. SP 77009 (1971), MoFi, MFSL 1-414 (2013), 33 1/3 rpm. Genre: pop, soft rock, acoustic folk, jazzy overtones Throughout the 1960s Carole King and song-writing partner Gerry Goffin wrote a ton of hits... Read More »
Our audio compadre John Marks herein rightly brings to our attention Abraham Lincoln's deep affection for opera and the stage. He was assassinated, after all, at Ford's Theater in April of 1865, much to the grief and anger of the narrow-minded pietists and pharisees of his generation. Lincoln considered the theater and opera to be... Read More »
Boulder, CO: 2/13/2017: PS Audio is proud to introduce the Stellar line of components, continuing our four decade tradition of ultra-high-value, high performance products. Stellar will initially consist of three models: Stellar Gain Cell DAC combines an updated version of our analog Gain Cell technology with a full-featured DAC that can play the DSD output from our new DirectStream Memory Player. MSRP $1,699 in the... Read More »
Eclipse: Chamber Music of Mischa Zupko. Wendy Warner, cello. Sang Me Lee, violin. Mischa Zupko, piano. Cedille CDR 90000168. Calling someone a "Chicago composer" as Cedille Records often does is probably not doing him a favor. It suggests limitations, local heroes. The fact is, in the case of Mischa Zupko (and cellist Wendy Warner who... Read More »
"Man, it was easy! Five acres of solar panels, and I killed it!!"
John Marks' final installment about his recommended Steinway and Sons office system is below. He focuses on the Grace Design m920 DAC as the digital heart of the system. Read on for his summary. And remember that John's blog site, The Tannhauser Gate (http://www.thetannhausergate.com) is a fine place for audio commentary and music/video reviews! Recommended. Dr. David... Read More »
In part three of this series, John Marks introduces cables to his small office audio system recommendations. While John has his own Esperanto Audio line of reference audio cables, he concentrates on Audioquest's very good price-t0-performance cables. This is shaping up to be a very pleasant office/desktop system; I appreciate the useful advice contained in... Read More »
Parasound's Zamp v.3 stereo amplifier One of my favorite lines from the original Star Trek TV series (and please, nobody forget that Alexander Courage's theme music borrowed heavily from Mahler's symphonies 1 and 7) was something like: I bet five Quatloos on the feisty newcomer! Well, Parasound's Zamp v.3 is hardly a newcomer, but, it's... Read More »
The Gryphon Audio Kalliope DSD DAC upon arrival here… (Photograph and image processing by Robinson) The world of DSD DACs has certainly exploded over the past four years, going from a relative "we happy few" to over 400 models to choose from. The price points vary wildly…from $189 all the way out to multiple tens... Read More »
Flemming Rasmussen of Gryphon Audio Gryphon was never the adopter of technology for the sake of technology on its own, we always found it intriguing and followed it closely, but our experiments remained in the lab for the right timing. Right timing? Gryphon made it first appearance 30 years ago with a revolutionary HEADAMP, taking... Read More »
New proprietary design brings together premium materials and precisely tuned enclosures to achieve best-in-class performance Periodic Audio, an audio products manufacturer specializing in high-performance portable audio solutions, will launch its first three models of in-ear monitors (IEM) at CanJam NYC 2017, February 4-5. These IEMs have been engineered using materials and processes common to... Read More »
John Marks gives us a recommendation for a stereo system that offers a great deal of musical satisfaction with a small footprint and at a more reasonable price point. This four-part series will explore his thoughts on this package. May it serve you well! Dr. David W. Robinson, Ye Olde Editor Photo of Eric Feidner... Read More »
Maria Schneider (photograph courtesy of Soka University) Maria Schneider is an unrivaled American composer in the grand tradition of Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Chopin and Ellington, a transcendent lineage that defines western musical maturity. A once undiscovered orchid, Maria's risen to a plateau of melodic delight and aesthetic delicacy without equal, an achievement accrued in... Read More »
Merging High Performance Audio and Versatile Connectivity OPPO Digital today announced that the new Sonica DAC is ready for release. The newest entry into the OPPO family of digital audio products, Sonica DAC merges audiophile-grade performance with the latest network streaming technology. With more and more music coming from digital sources, the DAC (Digital-to-Analog Converter)... Read More »
