Interviews

Last month, our sister site AnalogPlanet.com published a brief post about one of Koeppel Design's recent releases: the LP Block ($76; engraved or stenciled, above). The majority of the comments on the blog criticized the LP Block and few of Kate Koeppel's other products purely for being too expensive. When I read these comments, I felt that the value of her products weren't being appropriately considered. I believe it's because there isn't currently a huge market for record dividers, record stands, and casual record-carrying totes. Consumers have little to compare and therefore lack perspective.

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.

This video is about Jeffrey Catalano and his shop High Water Sound, located in Manhattan's South Street Seaport, right under the Brooklyn Bridge. Though it was my first time meeting Jeffrey, I had long been familiar with his name—often associated with good sound at audio shows and a true appreciation for music.

At the Los Angeles Audio Show, held June 2–4, 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.

In November 2016, the Berlin Philharmonic made a stunning record-release announcement: a boxed set of all four Brahms symphonies, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, on six LPs, recorded and mastered direct to disc in September 2014. The release would be limited to 1833 sets—a quantity chosen in honor of the year of the composer's birth—at a price of €499 per set.

"For years, I had a terrible listening situation," guitarist Adam Rogers recalls. "I had a Vector Research amplifier that the guys at the hi-fi store called 'Victim Research.' I'd fallen into the contemporary trap of listening to music on computer speakers or headphones, all the while feeling that at some point I would like to invest in a great listening scenario."

Adam Rogers is one of most astute and industrious players in the world of jazz, a native New Yorker who has seen every era of the Big Apple music scene, and risen to become one of the best guitar players in the world...

This past weekend, John Atkinson, Herb Reichert, and I drove down to Philadelphia to visit audio retailer Doug White of The Voice That Is. In this video, Doug and JA discuss the challenges of a rapidly changing internet based market, the differences between buying online versus buying from your local dealer, and much more.