Elac's Andrew Jones Talks Loudspeakers
At the Los Angeles Audio Show, held June 24, John Atkinson spoke with Elac's Andrew Jones about speaker design, building affordable loudspeakers, and Elac's Adante AF-61 speaker, which made its debut at the show, driven by Audio Alchemy amplification.
Electropop Pioneer Boris Blank's Blank Canvas
Yello's Boris Blank poses at an outdoor cafe in old town Zurich. (Photo by Rogier van Bakel.)
Boris Blank has a cold, and three days after meeting him in his hometown of Zurich, I do too. This seems apt. Metaphorically, he's been infecting me for decades.
For almost 45 years, Yello, the pioneering Swiss band that Blank formed with singer Dieter Meier, has created witty electropop that provokes joy and awe in attentive listeners. You can dance to most of this music, of courseit's often hard not tobut its allure, its spell, goes deeper. For one thing, Yello's music is delightfully visual. Cinema for the ears.Four Interviews with John Atkinson
Occasional Stereophile contributor Steve Guttenberg publishes a YouTube channel about audio that has achieved an impressive reach. As Steve told me in a conversation I had with him last December, 22% of his 98,000 subscribers (at the time we talked) are under 34 years old, and, to judge from the comments, most of them don't read Stereophile!!!! "It would nice to introduce you to them!" said Steve, and proposed he interview me and post the video to his channel when it hit the magic 100k number, which it did on January 9.
Steve visited my place in Brooklyn just before the New Year, and we spent an afternoon talking about audio, magazines, measurements, and music.
Fred Hersch
New York, NYNews Bar Cafe, Union Square. It's 11am. Low jazz can be heard playing on the overhead speakers, along with background chatter and the occasional ambulance. Caffeinated beverages and breakfast sandwiches are present. I take a tentative sip of cappuccino, reach under the table for my trusty Zoom H5. Across from me sits jazz pianist and composer Fred Hersch. A man who has meant many things to me in my lifetimea musical role model, a source of inspiration, a friend, a set of frequently played digital music files... I sit anxiouslyis it the awe or the beverage? I think to myself: he's now entering the realm of debatable audiophile and breakfast co-conspirator. Cappuccino sip. Let us begin.
George Avakian: That Rhythm Man!
"So where did it all go wrong, George? When did the major-label record business begin slipping away?"
Before he can answer, I recall something George Avakian once told me over the phone. "Goddard Lieberson [former president of Columbia Records] said, 'I'm tired of sitting in A&R meetings with record guys. Get me some lawyers and accountants who don't want to argue about music.'"
"I don't remember saying that, but that's very interesting," Avakian says with a mischievous smile of recognition.
George Winston Climbs Aboard his Carousel
New Age. Most of it was acoustic. While there were vocals here and there, much of it featured instrumentalists playing solo or in groups. Some of it was meant to alleviate stress. Some of it was marginally connected to a similarly named movement in spirituality. Environmentalism and respect for nature were constant themes. Some New Age artists created moody, ambient sounds that were intended as background music, to promote healing and relaxation.
Gerald Wilson: Little Big Man
Big bands died out back in the 1950s, right? They went away when the jitterbug faded and folks began dancing to music other than swing? And then real jazz fans departed when the bebop soloists came along and made big-band players look clumsy and quaint?
Going Dutch (& Dutch): a Conversation with Martijn Mensink
In his review of the three-way, active Dutch & Dutch 8c loudspeaker in the August 2019 issue of Stereophile, Kalman Rubinson concluded that "The D&D 8c demonstrates that active, DSP-empowered speakers are the future." I was equally impressed by the 8c's measured performancea superbly flat on-axis response and an unmatched control of dispersion over the entire audiobandand asked to borrow a pair so I could experience the speakers in my own listening room.
GoldenEar's Sandy Gross Talks Loudspeakers
The January 2018 issue of Stereophile, which will hit newsstands at the end of this week, features GoldenEar Technology's flagship Triton Reference loudspeaker on its cover, with a review inside from John Atkinson. When GoldenEar's co-founder and president Sandy Gross visited JA last July to set the speakers up in his Brooklyn listening room, John asked Sandy about his loudspeaker design goals, his preferences in sound quality, his tastes in audio, and the state of the high-end audio market.
Gordon Rankin, Wavelength's Single-Ended Man
Jonathan Scull: Gordon, please tell us what you see as the basic difference between single-ended and push-pull.