Music and Recording Features

"Like many audiophiles I have often sped home from a concert to fire up the audio system, and then, to the sore vexation of my wife and guests, spent the rest of the evening plunged in the morbid contemplation of what, exactly, was missing."

THE COMPLETE STAX/VOLT SINGLES, 1959-1968 (Footnote 1)
244 songs by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Booker T. & the MGs, Carla Thomas, Rufus Thomas, William Bell, Eddie Floyd, The Bar-Kays, The Mar-Keys, and many, many others Atlantic 7-82218-2 (9 CDs only). Reissue producer: Steve Greenberg. AAD. TT: 10:52:07

BOB DYLAN: The Bootleg Series, Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased, 1961-1991) Columbia C3K 47382 (3 CDs only). Jeff Rosen, prod.; Mark Wilder, Tim Geelan, Josh Abbey, Jim Ball, engs. AAD. TT: 3:50:52

In the Fall of 1989, Stereophile magazine released its first recording, of Gary Woodward and Brooks Smith playing flute sonatas by Prokofiev and Reinecke, and a work by American composer Griffes that gave the LP its title: Poem (footnote 1). The full">http://www.stereophile.com//interviews/527/">full story was published in the September 1989 issue (p.66). We wanted to offer our readers an LP of acoustic music made with the minimum of electronics and processing—the sounds of the instruments would be as true to reality as possible. The images of the instruments were also captured with a purist microphone technique so that, with even a halfway decent system, a true soundstage would be created between and behind the loudspeakers when the recording was played back.

The end of two audiophiles' friendship:

Why had a high-end hi-fi magazine felt the need to produce a classical LP when the thrust of real record companies in 1989 is almost exclusively toward CD and cassette? Why did the magazine's editors think they had a better chance than most experienced professional engineers in making a record with audiophile sound quality? Were they guilty of hubris in thinking that the many years between them spent practicing the profession of critic would qualify them as record producers?

Frank Zappa on CD (and LP), Part I
Stereophile Vol.10 No.8, November 1987