Indholdsfortegnelse for August 2024 i Stereophile

Forty years ago, as I was starting out on my audio journey, I railed against the flashy mainstream audio gear of the day. To me less was more, and I tried to convince my friends that my small, austere British-made audio rig, including what my friends jokingly called my Lynn Swanndek turntable (after the Steelers wide receiver), really did sound much better than their big silvery Japanese stacks loaded up with shiny knobs, switches, and meters. Audio was all about the sound after all, and I wasn’t interested in some dazzling visual display that had nothing to do with what I was hearing. I gravitated toward gear that wasn’t flashy or fancy looking, feeling that meant that the effort and expense to create it went where it counted most, to…

For several months, my wife and I had been living in a cozy studio apartment in New York’s Financial District while our apartment underwent substantial renovations.1 All the old furniture was sold or donated, and decades of accumulated stuff was subjected to triage (sell, donate, or store). All my audio equipment, parts, and tools suffered the same fate. Downtown, my listening was via pretty decent headphones (B&W Px8, Audeze LCD-XC) connected to a Mytek Brooklyn II DAC and my PC. Meanwhile, we were very busy shopping to equip the “new” apartment. I have never really enjoyed headphone listening (and now I of the MU2. know it’s likely I never will), so our recent return home was a relief in so many ways. We still have a “punch list” of things…

“Hybrid” technology—specifically, mixing tubed and solid state in the same amplification device—stirs a deep desire for many enthusiasts. It has the potential to embody a perfect blend: the tonal liquidity, presence, and spaciousness of tubes coupled with the power and dependability of solid state. It’s potentially an endgame technology. Still, I have long remained skeptical. I am, I confess, a certain kind of audiophile, a blend of purist and traditionalist. I favor older technologies and simpler circuits. Amplifiers—including integrated amplifiers—should be tubed, input to output. Rectification? Tubes of course. I’ve even entertained OTL designs—the idea of them at least, though my experiences have been mixed. Still, my mind and ears are open. Countless hours reviewing for Stereophile have shown me that our technology, though quite mature in most ways, nevertheless…

As one of the first live albums to be recorded in the hallowed space that is New York City’s Village Vanguard, Sonny Rollins’s A Night at the Village Vanguard (recorded November 3, 1957, released in 1958) set the template, proving that recording in the odd, triangular club could not only work but could also produce distinctive, satisfying sound. Soon after the recording of the Rollins album, Bill Evans and John Coltrane added live Vanguard albums to their recording catalogs. Now reissued by Blue Note Records as part of its Tone Poet Series, this three-LP edition, which comes from a different source than previous releases, is that rare audiophile reissue where the sonic differences are immediately audible. “On all the previous reissues of the album, everything had been done from the…

SONNY ROLLINS Freedom Weaver Rollins, tenor saxophone; Henry Grimes, bass; Pete LaRoca or Kenny Clarke or Joe Harris, drums Resonance HCD-2065 (3 CDs, available as 4 LPs). 2024. Zev Feldman, prod.; George Klabin, Fran Gala, sound restoration At 93, Sonny Rollins is our greatest living jazz musician. He has retired from playing, but he is still in the news. Last year came Aidan Levy’s monumental biography, Saxophone Colossus. There have also been major archival releases, the latest of which, Freedom Weaver, comes from a 10-day period in March 1959, during Rollins’s first European tour. It contains performances in radio and television stations, clubs, and concert halls. The music has never been issued before in official releases—only bootlegs. Like all output from the distinguished Resonance label, the production offers optimized sound…

One August night in 1965, I parked in the driveway of my best friend Derf Marko’s house and let myself in the back door. As I entered, I could see to the bottom of the basement stairs, where I observed a loud pulsing darkness with plumes of agreeably acrid smoke floating up through the stairwell. Back in the darkness, I heard Fred and another person making declarative statements in loud unintelligible bursts. When I reached the bottom of the stairs, Marko’s basement rec room looked like a trashed-out tiki bar illuminated by a single red Christmas light hanging just above a Dual turntable. The room was dark to a point where it was impossible to walk without stepping on records or to make out who was there and what was…

The hi-fi receiver has been many different things. Early examples, like the Harman Kardon “Stereo Festival” TA-230 from 1958 (said by modern-day Harman/Samsung to be the first stereo receiver1), featured separate FM and AM monophonic tuners that could assign a speaker to each if you wanted to listen to what was then a fad: stereo broadcasts over two stations (left channel over FM, right over AM, for instance). Standardized FM stereo broadcasting began in 1961, and by then, receivers had evolved into large, complex, nearly complete stereo systems; an example of that was the Fisher 800.2 By the 1970s, the focus of receiver development and manufacturing had shifted to Japan. The era of features-laden “Silverface” receivers peaked with the massive Technics SA-1000.3 That behemoth was just over 2' wide, nearly…

This paragraph from Linear Tube Audio’s website description of their new Aero DAC sets the tone for the story I’m about to tell. “After trying various options, we chose the Analog Devices AD1865 R2R DAC chip, which is sometimes called the ‘vinyl DAC,’ for its organic sound. It is a non-oversampling DAC, with no digital filters. The AD1865 is much-loved by audiophiles and is used by at least one hifi company in a flagship DAC costing over $150,000.” Check the forums and you find that the AD1865 chip is also a heavy DIY favorite. Home brewers are attracted to this discontinued, “obsolete” 18-bit chip for its easy implementation and unprocessed, music-friendly sound. Manufacturers of luxury-priced DACs love it, too. They don’t mind that it’s discontinued; they’ve already bought thousands of…

The best Christmas gift in history was George Bailey being shown what the world would be like without his being born, courtesy of Angel Second Class Clarence, in the classic 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life. More recently, and in the real world, the best gift ever was the release of pianist Les McCann’s Never a Dull Moment! (Live from Coast to Coast 1966–1967) a few weeks before Christmas 2023 and less than a month before his death at 88, on three vinyl LPs. After he passed, McCann received numerous glowing obituaries, in both the jazz press and the larger international media landscape, the latter focused on his second act as a fount for hip-hop samplery. His music was borrowed more than 300 times by the likes of Snoop Dogg,…

GABRIEL FAURÉ La Bonne Chanson, L’horizon chimérique Stéphane Degout, Alain Planès Harmonia Mundi HMM 902382, CD (reviewed as 24/96). 2024. Alban Moraud, prod.; Alban Moraud Audio, eng. During the current Fauré Centennial, recordings of the composer’s music are appearing at a steady pace. So far, vocal music has gotten short shrift, adding importance to this new Harmonia Mundi recital, in which baritone Stéphane Degout, one of today’s foremost proponents of French mélodie, adds his mellifluous voice to Alain Planès’s period-authentic Pleyel “Grand Patron” piano, manufactured in 1892. Degout, almost 48 at the time of the recording, may have produced even sweeter soft tones in his younger years, but the voice retains its strength, absolute steadiness, and flexibility. Degout, who in Fauré values steady tempo over romantic pliability, begins with one…

THANK YOU, JON IVERSON John Atkinson After 27 years, May 31, 2024, was the final day AVTech webmaster Jon Iverson was responsible for overseeing the company’s websites, including this one. Now in his mid-60s, Jon felt it was time for him to retire while he still had the energy to explore his other interests. Jon was a successful audio retailer in California’s Central Coast region in the 1980s,1 though he took a year off to study gamelan music in Bali, Indonesia.2 After selling his business, he contacted Stereophile’s then-publisher, Larry Archibald, and myself in the spring of 1997 with a vision for the magazine’s website. Larry and I had been trying to come up with an appropriate web strategy for a long time, but without any success. But when Jon…

Stereo is the most successful audio gimmick of all time. While dashboard record players, quadraphonic LPs, and MQA have gone the way of Ron Popeil’s hair-in-a-spray-can infomercials, stereo remains king. And I am guilty of loving it. That old expression “men love with their eyes” applies to listening, too. Enabled by the advent of a second channel, the fanning out of musicians across a soundstage fills the room and gives the eyes—and not only the ears—something to do. And I happen to enjoy the soundstage. It may be an utterly artificial delight, but who doesn’t love hearing a tambourine coming from 10' to the left of the left speaker? So when I came across an article in which someone likened mono to listening to music through a hole in a…

It’s time to go out on a limb. Are Danny Elfman’s Percussion Concerto and the other works on his new album “great music”? Should this classical music, from the former lead singer and songwriter of new wave band Oingo Boingo—who composed film scores for Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, and Spider-Man, and whose music introduces Desperate Housewives and The Simpsons—be in the same conversation with Albéniz, Scriabin, Ligeti, Glass, Gluck, Brahms, and Beethoven, whose work appears on our other Recording of the Month candidate, Yuja Wang’s Vienna Recital? All I know for certain is that Elfman’s new Sony Classical recording, with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by JoAnn Falletta, is a helluva wild ride. Sometimes exuberant, sometimes eerie, frequently brash, and overflowing with color and contrast, it’s filled with more…

KERRY KING From Hell I Rise Reigning Phoenix Music 2.003 (LP, CD). 2024. Kerry King, Josh Wilbur, prods.; Josh Wilbur, Kyle McAulay, Mark Aguilar, engs. Just shy of 59, guitarist Kerry King is hardly the oldest musician to put out their first solo record. He is not even the oldest metal guy; that was Sir Christopher Lee, at 91. From Hell I Rise is significant nevertheless, as the first full-length opportunity to hear King outside of Slayer following a handful of guest appearances. Slayer’s last several years were tumultuous; From Hell I Rise can be heard as a cleansing ritual, King divesting himself of that band. He enlists its on-again, off-again drummer Paul Bostaph for his solo date. Filling out the new band are former Vio-Lence/Machine Head guitarist Phil Demmel,…

Miyajima Zero Mono Thank you, Alex and Stereophile, for an insightful review of the world’s number one true single-coil mono phono cartridge, the Miyajima Zero. Alex mentioned the different stylus sizes and several priced models—78s, too! The Miyajima monos are true, single-coil mono cartridges, not strapped stereo cartridges rebranded as mono like most so-called mono cartridges. (An easy tell is the stylus size and shape.) This can cause hum with less-than-well-designed phono stages where the designer never considered mono reproduction. There are several very easy fixes to eliminate the ground loop hum; we can advise several ways to “mono” your system. Remember, all Miyajimas sell with a seven-day full money-back trial, so you have nothing to lose. One last thing: We have compression nuts available, so only a screw is…