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Fun with Moose and Squirrel

Jonathan Scull May 26, 2021 First Published: May 26, 2021 0 comments

'Cause it's hard to say what's real / When you know the way you feelFlaming Lips, "One More Robot/Sympathy 3000-21," from Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

In a recent Zoom meeting, some friends got into a dust-up about how "real"-sounding high-performance audio systems can be. The consensus was that there was no chance at all of real, live sound. A label owner waved it off as impossible: "Fuhgeddaboudit," he said. He's from New York, like me.

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Goodbye to the house Mike Kay built

Jay Jay French Apr 12, 2021 First Published: Apr 12, 2021 0 comments

By the time this issue of Stereophile arrives in your mailbox (and on newsstands), Lyric Hi-Fi & Video, the legendary symbol of male-dominated, uber-luxury hi-fi retail, will be closed forever.

This makes me sad. I wasn't just a client of Lyric; I worked there.

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Death Row Discs

John Swenson Mar 16, 2021 First Published: Mar 16, 2021 0 comments

My music is keeping me alive.

I have terminal cancer, which is like Bergman's chess match with the Grim Reaper: You know you're going to lose, but with skill, determination, and luck, you can delay the inevitable, move by move. Determination is key, because it's all too easy to give up. My musica collection I've amassed over the last 60 yearsinspires me to keep going, to keep listening.

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Remembering live music in Europe

Thomas Conrad Mar 02, 2021 First Published: Mar 02, 2021 0 comments

I wrote an article for the March 2017 issue of Stereophile called "The Permanent Jazz Festival: The Rise of Europe and the Future of Jazz." It presented two theses: that much of the energy in jazz now comes out of Europe, and that the best place to feel that energy is in the crowd at a European jazz festival. There are hundreds of them throughout the year.

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Landscape into music

Sasha Matson Feb 03, 2021 First Published: Feb 03, 2021 0 comments

It says something about the power of music that some individuals fading into dementia can still recognize the music they knew earlier in their lives. Not to denigrate new music, or music one hasn't heard before, but our mental jukeboxes award top chart numbers to music that we have lived with over time. Those DJs making their playlists in our brain are the toughest of critics. They don't care what anyone else might think, "Close to You" is staying in the rotation. Music and memory are linked.

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We need a new word

Robert Schryer Dec 29, 2020 First Published: Dec 29, 2020 0 comments

When I first heard the word "audiophile," I loved it. It sounded fresh and dignified. I related to it instantly. An audiophile! I loved the whole idea of it, the focus on music, on sound. That was me! I'd found myself! And people like me. Other audiophiles, who lived all over the world. To paraphrase Tom Petty, it was like a first flash of freedom.

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Something's Coming

Jonathan Scull Nov 23, 2020 First Published: Nov 23, 2020 0 comments

So, what's "this thing of ours"? I'm only half-kidding. High-end audio is deadly serious for many passionate audiophiles. Some measurement types defend their turf without thoughtwithout mercyand often deride subjectivists, like me, who believe if you like what you hear, then that's what counts, enjoy. Objectivists say if you can't measure it, then it doesn't exist. Well, goes the retort, you don't know what to measure, your instruments aren't refined enough, and on and on.

The struggle continues to this day for some reason, and boy-howdy is it ferocious, especially regarding cables.

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A gift at war (for Veterans Day)

Jason Davis Oct 29, 2020 First Published: Oct 29, 2020 0 comments

In March 2003, as news networks broadcast images of American tanks racing north toward Baghdad, my infantry platoon dug shallow foxholes in southern Iraq. We were part of a defensive perimeter guarding FARP Exxon, a helicopter refueling point for the Army's 101st Airborne Division.

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A Musical Inheritance

Alex Halberstadt Sep 23, 2020 First Published: Sep 23, 2020 0 comments

When I was a child, my father was a dealer in black-market records. We lived on what was then the outskirts of Moscow, in what was then the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It was the 1970s, and our nation's record stores only sold discs of domestic manufacture, most of them wooly-sounding classical recordings on the Melodiya label. This meant that a healthy contingent of Muscovites valued records smuggled from what they referred to in hushed tones as "The West" more than just about anything else their rubles could buy.

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"What's Going On"

John Atkinson Aug 10, 2020 First Published: Aug 10, 2020 0 comments

Mother, mother

There's too many of you crying

Brother, brother, brother

There's far too many of you dying

I watched the TV with horror. George Floyd, an African-American man in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was being killed in front of the camera. I retreated to the listening room. In what couldn't have been a coincidence, the Roon app's "Discover" function had recommended I play What's Going On, Marvin Gaye's groundbreaking album, released in 1971 by Motown subsidiary Tamla.