I flew to Slovenia Monday evening, September 30th and returned home on October 2nd. It was a short trip during which Franc Kuzma gave me a factory tour and I spoke to an international group of Kuzma distributors from the U.K., China, India, the U.K. and Turkey among other locales. Kuzma the company has been in business for 40 plus years, manufacturing premium turntables and tonearms, and more recently phono cartridges and a series of accessories.The Stabi S turntable... Read More

Four new ‘Original Source’ titles recently arrived on my door marking the start of fall, and the first new batch of releases following the company’s monumental Karajan/Bruckner box set reviewed here by my colleague Mark Ward. This batch fit nicely into two categories: symphonic orchestral works, and piano repertoire. This review will cover the just released two LPs of symphonic music. The first work needs very little introduction. If you are even peripherally aware of... Read More

Though progressive rock peaked in the 1970s, next gen prog bands continued exploring adventurous compositional directions. Dream Theater, and bands like Queensryche and Fates Warning, embraced the technicality of Yes and Rush while honing in, with a hint of technical prowess, on the harder edges of Iron Maiden and Metallica. Each Dream Theater member is a virtuoso of his craft as evidenced, for example, by drummer Mike Portnoy's double kick drum patterns and... Read More

Continuing my examination of the history and future of classical audiophile-quality vinyl reissues... you can read Part 1 here.

With the success of the Deutsche Grammophon Original Source Series, are we poised on the cusp of an exciting future for audiophile vinyl reissues of classical music? Or will the other classical labels opt for expediency over quality if and when they decide to embark on their own vinyl reissue programs? There are clues to be found in the history of this small but significant market for audiophile vinyl reissues...

Albert King teaches a master class in blues guitar soloing on this classic Stax release recorded June,1968 at San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium, opening with a funked up version of Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man" that may not immediately be recognizable to Herbie fans but once you catch the groove, oh wow!Next up is a scorched earth take on King's "Blues Power", his defining song. King's playing is hard-etched deliberate,... Read More

Released in 1974, 50 years ago, Neil's 5th studio album, and the one following Harvest is among his most revered and musically enduring albums. Musicians on the album included Crazy Horse's rhythm section Billy Talbot (bass) and Ralph Molina (drums), along with other key players Ben Keith, Tim Drummond, Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Rusty Kershaw, David Crosby, Graham Nash and George Whitsell (The Rockets). Sessions were held at Young’s Broken Arrow Ranch in... Read More

When you think of high-end audio, you might envision large floor-standing speakers with multiple drivers and impressive cabinetry. However, some of the most astonishing sonic experiences can come from unexpected sources. This is the case with the Audience ClairAudient 1+1 V5 Personal Reference Loudspeaker. Despite its small 8" height, 9.75" depth, and 6" width, the V5 delivers sonic performance that can rival and, in some areas, surpass much larger... Read More

Hard to believe, but McIntosh's recently introduced MP100 is the storied company's first stand-alone phono preamplifier. Though at $2000 it's not stratospherically priced, it delivers both an impressive features set and the suave sonic goods, feel and build quality you'd expect from McIntosh. and of course, you could even say it glows (green).This is an accidental review, though shame on me for not asking for one to review sooner. It was on my... Read More

Hana introduced its S Series cartridges in 2014. They have become popular in many audio systems worldwide. Garth Leerer, President of Musical Surroundings, the US importer and distributor of Hana Cartridges, and Excel Sound Japan, the manufacturer of Hana cartridges, decided it was time to refresh their best-selling S Series cartridges, which include the high output SH, the low output SL and the mono SM. Designer Masao Okada-san aimed to incorporate the knowledge... Read More

Mistelbach, Austria – September 24th, 2024 – Pro-Ject Audio Systems just announced the latest edition to the T Series of turntables, the T1 EVO, T1 EVO Phono & T1 EVO BT. Improvements include the Ortofon OM10 MM phono cartridge, a larger Debut-sized sub-platter as well as electronic speed change for all 3 models. The precision-machined chassis remains free of resonant hollow spaces. The high-mass tempered glass record platter is anti-resonant & great for... Read More

The Domino website characterizes these two albums as "beloved", but when they were first released no one paid them much attention. They are costly on Discogs mostly because so few copies were manufactured. Most copies you'll find either have "cut out" cut corners or are promo copies discarded by foolish people.At the time John Cale was a Warner Brothers employee, as I recall, an "A&R Man", tasked with finding and signing new... Read More

Gram Parsons overdosed in the desert shortly after recording these tracks at Wally Heider's Hollywood Studios. A damn shame and a waste of a troubled life. His greatness is more appreciated now than when he lived. That often happens with artists, especially those bridging musical gaps as Parsons did, bringing country to rock first by joining The Byrds and being to a great degree responsible for Sweetheart of the Rodeo—an album originally conceived as more of a... Read More

The advent of the phonograph allowed for the dissemination of a wide variety of "Minority Enthusiasm" genres; and not only Spoken Word and Comedy offerings. Folk music and folk songs that would appeal to new arrivals to America were an important part of the business. Cantor Pierre Pinchik's 1928 cantillation, in Aramaic, of a text from the Kabbalah might not have been a huge success in its original pressing. But, as Pinchik's fame spread, the 1928 78rpm was reissued, in 1938 and 1948. Pinchik's vocal virtuosity and his instincts for dramatic presentation revolutionized the art form.

At an event Technics hosted at parent company Panasonic's Newark, New Jersey headquarters September 17th, Technics Business Development Manager Bill Voss walked me through all of the new $3299 SL-1300G turntable's features and mechanical and physical attributes, comparing it to the $2199 SL-1200GR2 below and the $4299 SL-1200G above. This video should clear up any and all confusion about what stepping up from the 1200GR2 gets you and what stepping down from... Read More

The tenor saxophonist Chris Potter plays with such youthful zest, it’s startling to realize he’s been on the New York jazz scene for 35 years. He turned heads from the get-go, in 1989, at age 18, as sideman to trumpeter Red Rodney (who, in his youth 40 years earlier, had been sideman to Charlie Parker). Through the subsequent decades, Potter has played in bands led by (among many others) Paul Motian, Dave Holland, Dave Douglas, Pat Metheny, and, for a spell, Steely... Read More

I have an admission to make, in all the demonstrations of dCS products that I have attended none have inspired me to listen further. They have always sounded perfect but devoid of involvement. However, this product and by extension the need to investigate its various set up options has revealed that dCS DACs are distinctly better than I thought. And this is only the baby in the range.By most metrics dCS is the reigning brand in British digital electronics. No one else... Read More

On April 5, 1923, in Richmond, Indiana, in the studio of Gennett Records, King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band made the first of thirty-seven recordings mixing African instrumental techniques and concepts of improvisation and rhythm with European notions of harmony, melody, and the virtuoso soloist, to create the template for the music we’ve been listening to for the last century. The Creole Jazz Band’s six recording sessions, all between April and December in 1923, made... Read More

Press release Oslo, Norway. September 2024 New Little Fwend P8/P10Mount for Rega turntables. No mass, no problem. Our Low model has always been very popular among the Rega-crowd since we started Little Fwend in 2016. When Roy Gandy decided to follow his “less (mass) is more”-philosophy even more aggressively on the P8, P10 and the new Naia and simply just replace less mass with nothing at all - fans of Little Fwend had a problem. We got countless emails from fwends... Read More