Every month Stereophile magazine offers authoritative reviews, informed recommendations, helpful advice, and controversial opinions, all stemming from the revolutionary idea that audio components should be judged on how they reproduce music.
On September 27, executives from Apple Corps and Universal Music Group held a press event at the Dolby Theater in Manhattan. The event included Dolby Atmos demos of forthcoming Beatles releases. It included some big news—although the biggest news wasn’t obvious at first. The obvious headline: The Beatles are releasing a new song. It’s called “Now & Then,” and all four Beatles play on it. You’ve probably heard about it by now, since there’s a massive marketing campaign. UMG is calling it “the last Beatles song.” For more information, see the Stereophile review on p.147. Those attending the press event also learned that on November 10, Universal and Apple Records will reissue the Red and Blue albums in expanded, 50th Anniversary form, as 2-CD and 3-LP sets and for streaming,…
Beyond 33 1/3 Over the last couple of years, I’ve enjoyed the increasing discussion of other recorded formats like 78s and 45s. The improvements in digital recovery and remastering from 78s lately have been astounding. The 4-CD box set Excavated Shellac collects music from around the globe recorded on 78s even though some were recorded and released as late as the 1960s.1 Listening to a bunch of 78s lately, I noticed an uncanny quality to some 1950s recordings. The frequency extremes are still rolled off, but a steel guitar or electric organ can float over the rest of a track in a way I’ve never heard in another format. 45s are where the action is for some genres I collect, so I enjoyed reading Michael Trei’s section on cartridge alignment.…
LENBROOK ACQUIRES MQA Lenbrook Corp., the privately owned Canadian enterprise whose holdings include NAD electronics, PSB Speakers, and Bluesound (the maker of the BluOS music operating software system), has acquired assets of MQA Ltd., including MQA technology and the SCL6 codec. The press release, which went public September 19, notes that the deal “further solidifies Lenbrook’s commitment to excellence and innovation in the evolving landscape of audio technology.” The announcement ends months of speculation that began in April, when MQA entered receivership. An accompanying FAQ affirms, “As one of MQA’s most significant licensees and also the owner of the award-winning BluOS high-res content platform, … Lenbrook is in the business of providing high resolution audio experiences [to] informed customers who appreciate innovation and value having options. … We believe MQA…
ATTENTION ALL AUDIO SOCIETIES: We have a page on the Stereophile website devoted to you: stereophile.com/audiophile-societies. If you’d like to have your audio-society information posted on the site, email Chris Vogel at vgl@cfl.rr.com. (Please note the new email address.) It is inappropriate for a retailer to promote a new product line in “Calendar” unless it is associated with a seminar or similar event. CALIFORNIA ❚ Friday evenings, 5–7pm PST: The San Francisco Audiophile Society hosts a virtual happy hour via Zoom. This is open to anyone who’d like to join us to talk about hi-fi and whatever else is on your mind. For more information and registration, visit bit.ly/3RyaqX9. FLORIDA ❚ February 16–18, 2024: The Florida Audio Expo will take place at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Tampa Westshore, 555…
From the outside, 357 West 17th Street in New York City appears to be a nice, gray-finished modern townhouse, just around the corner from the chic Chelsea Market. But inside the 11,000sqft building are four floors and a rooftop terrace. All the rooms are devoted to systems that feature audio components from brands owned or distributed in the US by the McIntosh Group: McIntosh Laboratory of course; Sonus Faber; Rotel Michi; Pro-Ject Audio Systems; and Sumiko Phono. Supporting products in the systems are sourced from Baxter (furniture), USM (cabinetry), Sony (a video projector), Kaleidescape (a movie player), Screen Research, Roon Labs, Abyss (headphones), HRS (racks), and AudioQuest (cables). There used to be a different Mc-Intosh Townhouse in Manhattan, in SoHo. But just as the lease was about to expire on…
Netherlands-based engineer and industrial designer Kostas Metaxas founded Metaxas & Sins in 1981 with the purpose of making audio components that would be considered objets d’art: “beautiful to look at, breathtaking to hear—limited-production heirloom components handcrafted from the finest materials and electronics and engineered by a visionary artisan.” I know Kostas Metaxas from his appearances at the High End Munich show and through German friends who speak highly of his amplifiers and preamps. (Metaxas & Sins makes amplifiers, speakers, a turntable, and—well, see below.) What captured my attention was how Metaxas blends engineering with art-object aesthetics. When I first spied his creations, I imagined a Disney fantasy where a roomful of animated CNC machines go Sorcerer’s Apprentice wild. His radically shaped, elegantly drawn components are eye-catching in the extreme. Regrettably,…
