The March 2010 issue of <i>Stereophile</i> is now on newsstands. Open it up and you’ll see that Steve Guttenberg has rediscovered his faith in vinyl. Hooray! What did it for him? A new turntable: the VPI Classic. “Coming back to vinyl,” Steve writes, “I now see that digital’s primary fault is that it encourages passive listening.”
Last night at <a href="http://lepoissonrouge.com/">Le Poisson Rouge</a>,<br>
<a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/four_tet_there_is_love_in_you… Hebden</a> made all the kids<br>
slither and groove.
It’s been nearly a week since PBS’ broadcast of the White House concert of music from the civil-rights era, and its sounds and images keep popping up in my brain.
Among the maladies to which music lovers are especially susceptible, hearing damage caused by prolonged exposure to loud sounds is perhaps the most pernicious. When you're young, you normally don't think about the consequences of cranking up the volume, but if you do that routinely, you are sure to suffer some form of hearing deficit in your later—or, in some cases, not so later—years.
Playback Designs was founded less than three years ago. However, with the release in 2008 of its MPS-5 Music Playback System—a slim, full-featured SACD/CD player and DAC that costs $15,000 and is built in the US—the company has since established itself as a significant player in high-performance digital audio.
If you’re a fan of John Fahey—a fan of his music, his writing, his thoughts on life, whatever—and especially if you’re sort of sad, like I am, about having never met him, then you’ll enjoy this disc. The Three Day Band is Fahey and musician <a href="http://www.myspace.com/ayalsr">Ayal Senior</a> who, in addition to capturing Fahey on four-track here, also edited much of Fahey’s second collection of stories, <i><a href="http://www.dragcity.com/products/vampire-vultures">Vampire Vultures</a></i>. (Senior’s also got a bunch of good-looking cassettes available.)
Almost every assumption you might make about Vienna Acoustics' Klimt The Kiss loudspeaker by looking at it would be wrong. It is <I>not</I> a stand-mounted two-way loudspeaker. It's a three-way, with a coincident tweeter-midrange. And that ain't no stand—it's an integral part of the speaker. It does <I>not</I> have a conventional cabinet—there are two separate enclosures, complete with micrometer control of both vertical and horizontal axes. And those sure aren't plain-vanilla drive-units—they're about as unique as they come.
There is a proper procedure for taking advantage of any investment.<br>
Music, for example. Buying music is an investment.<br>
To get the maximum you must
Clearly, many of you still cherish your cassette decks, but what about <A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reel-to-reel_audio_tape_recording" target="new">open- reel</A>? Do you own, or have you ever owned and used a reel-to-reel or open-reel tape deck?
<B>Pat Metheny <I>Orchestrion</I></B><BR>
Pat Metheny, guitars, orchestrion programming.<BR>
Nonesuch 516668-2/-1 (CD/LP). 2010. Pat Metheny, prod.; eng. AAD? TT: 52:06<BR>
Performance ****<BR>
Sonics ****