Last year mastering engineer Kevin Gray built a living room recording studio adjacent to his Cohearent Mastering suite. He's been working on an all-analog recording chain to go with it and now he's ready in this video to show it off. (Photo: L-R: Audio-Fidelity/DCC Compact Classics founder Marshall Blonstein, Fremer, Kevin Gray at Cohearent mastering session for TRON soundtrack album.) Read More

Buffalo, NY, January 5, 2023—Bluebird Music, SME's North American distributor announced today the immediate availability of the all-new SME MK2 series turntables. The SME product range now includes: Model 12 MK2, Model 15 MK2, Model 20 MK2, Model 30 MK2 and Synergy MK2. The main photo is of the Model 15 MK2.According to Bluebird, the primary feature of the MK2 editions is a "highly sophisticated new generation drive system consisting of an A.C. synchronous... Read More

Dizzy, the Internet's most prolific and self-important record holderupper paid a visit to the Tracking Angle studios and I interviewed him! Nothing more needs to be written. Dizzy speaks for himself, or doesn't. Read More

Last summer, while visiting Geneva to attend the Montreux Jazz Festival and produce a Nagra factory tour I also visited darTZeel Audio's brand new manufacturing facility. The company had just moved from its old funky loft location into this brand new, modern cooperative facility and CEO Hervé Delétraz was anxious to show it to me. The Lake Geneva photo was taken from the air as my plane approached the airport.Delétraz had arranged with his friends at Nagra to... Read More

Which is actually quite odd, because Messiah was never intended by its composer as a Christmas piece - quite the opposite in fact. It was originally composed, in 1741, for performance at the most solemn time in the ecclesiastical calendar - Easter. The work tells the entirety of Christ’s story, culminating in His Crucifixion and Resurrection, with a meditation on the meaning of His life and death to Christians. So, this is hardly the stuff of Christmas levity.However,... Read More

In the mid 2010s I had a two hour radio show on the Fairleigh Dickinson college radio station WFDU. It was fun, it was popular and everything played on it was transferred at 96/24 from vinyl so it sounded really good. The weekly show was done under the name of my previous endeavor. I wasn't paid for it so I've gone in and changed the name to "TrackingAngle.com radio". I think you'll really enjoy the eclectic Christmas music and banter from the... Read More

Sorry it's taken so long to edit and post the second video from Warsaw Audio Video Show 2022 held the final few days of October, but based on previous show videos, interest remains strong well after the event. The Warsaw Audio Video Show is now considered Europe's second most important show after Munich, but that's mostly because Munich is more of a business to business show to which consumers are invited, whereas this show is almost exclusively a... Read More

VMP's January 2023 "Record of the Month" is The Grateful Dead's "Anthem of the Sun"—the original 1968 mix not the 1971 Lesh remix—originally released on Warner Brothers-7 Arts. Chris Bellman cut lacquers using the original master tape for an AAA release. VMP does this so correctly both in terms of how they produce these records and in how they describe the process: "with AAA lacquers cut from the original master tapes by Chris... Read More

A reappraisal of Low's Christmas (1999) and Double Negative (2018). In memory of singer Mimi Parker (1967-2022), who died in November.

Saxophonist Jerome Sabbagh recently recorded "Vintage", a new all-analog jazz album with Kenny Barron, Joe Martin and Johnathan Blake, tracked to 30 IPS multitrack tape at Oktaven Audio, mixed to a custom, completely restored 1/2" 30 IPS Ampex 351 tube deck. Ryan Streber engineered at Oktaven, Pete Rende mixed at Brooklyn Recording.darTZeel's Hervé Delétraz recently came on board the project as the vinyl edition's Executive... Read More

This Thursday, December 15th from 4PM until 8:30PM at a special event hosted by Maier Shadi at The Audio Salon at The Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Avenue (Gallery F1) Santa Monica, California 90404, I will be be talking about my 60 years of record collecting and offering tips on what to look for and what to avoid when buying records, both new and used. Especially used. It will be more of a conceptual discussion rather than a list of what you should buy and own,... Read More

Santa Monica, December 12, 2022 – To celebrate the holiday season and support charities making a difference in communities around the world, Universal Music Group today launched the Music 4 Good charity auction in partnership with Charitybuzz, offering exclusive items and experiences provided by some of the world’s most beloved artists and renowned record labels. Proceeds from the auction will benefit organizations including World Central Kitchen, Planned Parenthood,... Read More

My main job is national-security columnist for Slate. Every December since joining, back in 2002, my editors have indulged me to write a piece on the year’s best jazz albums. Here’s a link to this year’s column, which, as usual, includes a mini-essay about each album and a sound clip of an entire track. Most of these I’ve reviewed either for Tracking Angle (those designated with an asterisk *) or for Stereophile when I was a staffer there (marked with two asterisks **). I should also note that most of these albums sound very good (the Jamal and Waldron sound good); a few (#1, 2, 3, and 5) sound superb.

Press release: Following the registration deadline for the HIGH END 2023 on 30th November 2022, the company HIGH END SOCIETY Service GmbH is pleased to announce that the international audio show is yet again fully booked. According to the event organiser, the demand for the popular atrium rooms in particular far exceeded the capacities available. The continued interest in the event among exhibitors is extremely positive and demonstrates how trade shows will continue... Read More

You have to log into your Sirius/XM account and then you can hear: "...decades of Neil’s classics, tracks from his new World Record LP, and songs from his recently released Harvest 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition featuring outtakes, demos, alternate versions and live tracks."The "Harvest" link takes you to where you can order the deluxe bundle for $149.00. The most interesting thing there is a previously unseen two hour 1971 documentary film shot... Read More

Jan Omdahl is the author of a new book in Norwegian on «Afric Pepperbird» by the Jan Garabrek Quartet, an early ECM jazz touchstone. The book is being considered for publication in English. This excerpt chronicles Jan’s attempts to convince his reclusive namesake to talk to him, ending up instead with Garbarek’s personal collection of test pressings.