Welcome to Capital Audiofest!
Ken Micallef sits down with Capital Audiofest head honcho Gary Gill to preview this weekend's show.
LATEST ADDITIONS
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Spin Doctor #42: Analog Hierarchy and the Korf TA-CF9 Series II tonearm
I have considered myself to be an audiophile for pretty much my entire life, since long before I had even heard the word. As a toddler, I would play records on the family Garrard record changer, so when my parents moved the record player to a higher shelf to get it out of my reach, I climbed up the bookcase to get to it.
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ReVinylization #80: Acoustic Sounds, Verve, and Impulse! Open the Vault
Labels like Craft Recordings, SAM, Candid, Speakers Corner, Blue Note (Tone Poet and Classic Vinyl), and Rhino are doing superb work reissuing classic jazz titles, with dead-silent backgrounds, resolution that often surpasses my beloved originals, and bass with real weight. And unlike those originals, they're available and affordable.
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Sound Chaser #14: The Jayhawks' New Album, Sanctuary Park
Sometimes you can go home again. In the case of The Jayhawks—the Minneapolis-bred Americana veterans who are celebrating their 40th anniversary this year— going home meant securing a reunion with producer Bob Ezrin, getting him back behind the board for another album, Sanctuary Park, released in late August on the Thirty Tigers label.
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Funkadelic's Maggot Brain Reissued on Vinyl
In the 55 years since its release, Maggot Brain, Funkadelic's funk-rock masterpiece, has gone from being called "a shattered, desolate landscape with few pleasures" and "horrible mush" in a 1971 Rolling Stone review to coming in at #136 in that same publication's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time."
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Clearaudio Compass record player
Clearaudio's origin story dates from the depths of the Cold War, in Czechoslovakia. It was 1968, and the Prague Spring uprising against the Soviet Union had collapsed. A young man escaped the carnage on a motorcycle, crossing the Iron Curtain into West Germany. That young man, Peter Suchy, went on to found Clearaudio in 1978.
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Rabbit Holes #23: Miles Showell's Half-Speed Supertramp Remasterings
Miles Showell, the modern master of the half-speed master, has been busy. Besides helming a score of reissues from the Alan Parsons Project's Arista heyday (see "Miles Showell, Half-Speed Master"), the affable audio engineer found time to put an indelible half-speed stamp on seven entries in Supertramp's studio catalog.
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Miles Showell: Half-Speed Master
Now that vinyl is again a growing and profitable reality, various schemes and ideas have emerged to improve the sound quality and raise the price of vinyl, especially vinyl reissues. From Mastercuts and One-Steps to Original Master Recordings and UHQR, vinyl records have never been offered in so many high-quality forms that both sound better and cost more.
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Charisma, passion, and kudos galore at Toronto Audiofest 2026
If Part 1 of Robert Schryer's Toronto Audiofest 2026 report was any indication, this year's show—which was held on October 16–18, 2026—continued to deliver on its intended promise of collective cheer, great gear, and musical bliss. Here's the second of installment of his three T.O. show reports to further state the case.
ReDiscoveries #16: Frank Hewitt Lives
Jazz critics tend to live in the now. Just-released records. Tonight's concert. New breakout talents. One of the few things I dislike about being a jazz critic is that I rarely go back and dig out old albums I loved and listen to them again just for pleasure. This week, I did.
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