The Ultra High End Better Start Offering More
- Written by: Jeff Fritz
- Category: Opinion
Amazon’s recent announcement of their Amazon Music HD streaming service ($14.99/month, $12.99/month for Prime members; all prices USD) will drive the other major music-streaming services to offer better quality, or lower prices, or both. Those are three of the conclusions drawn by SoundStage! staffers, as discussed in Gordon Brockhouse’s recent article on SoundStage! Global. To compete, Apple and Spotify will need to offer a high-resolution option, and Tidal ($19.99/month) and Qobuz ($24.99/month) will likely have to lower the prices of their top tiers. This is, of course, business as usual: When a major player undercuts the market and/or offers a superior product, its competitors are forced to meet that challenge or go out of business.
Luxman D-380 CD Player
- Written by: Garrett Hongo
- Category: Full-Length Reviews
In Eugene, Oregon, where I live, there used to be a mom-and-pop electronics store downtown, near the bus station and public library. It was the kind of place you went to pick up a pair of old Advent or Infinity speakers, a new stylus for your vintage record changer, a used CD or DVD player, or basic lamp cord to wire up your living-room stereo -- everything you needed for a cheap but good system was there. It was called Thompson Electronics, and I guess it had been there since the 1960s, occupying a storefront kitty-corner to the St. Vincent de Paul, where I’d sometimes scrounge for used LPs. Making only one downtown stop, I could get mounting screws for a phono cartridge and a new old record.
Charles Mingus: "Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus"
- Written by: Joseph Taylor
- Category: Recording of the Month
Impulse! 000602577573781
Format: LP
Musical Performance: ****½
Sound Quality: ****
Overall Enjoyment: ****
In 1963, bassist, composer, and bandleader Charles Mingus recorded three albums for Impulse! Records. The first of these, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, is one of his best, and fit the Impulse! aesthetic of recording cutting-edge jazz. The third, Mingus Plays Piano, is a unique and valuable look at Mingus on the instrument he used to write his brilliant music.
SGR Audio Model III Symphony Equipment Rack
- Written by: Jeff Fritz
- Category: Full-Length Reviews
I’m not an audiophile who haphazardly throws money at components. Nor do I open my wallet because of some preconceived notion of what proportion of an audio-system budget “should” be allocated to a given product category. This thinking has led me to assemble and own, over the years, audio systems that some might say are unbalanced, at least in terms of cost. For instance, I’ve almost invariably chosen to spend large portions of my budget on loudspeakers, because I’ve found that a change in speakers usually provides me with the biggest improvement in sound quality. I typically spend less than a tenth as much on a digital source component, because in the last decade or so great digital sound has become so affordable.
Buying Audio by the Pound: Loudspeakers
- Written by: Jeff Fritz
- Category: Opinion
In “Power Supplies: Commentary for Consumers,” an essay by famed engineer Nelson Pass posted on the website of the company he founded, Pass Laboratories, he states:
As a consumer, you want the best sound you can get. You can accomplish that through critical listening. As a secondary goal, we all like to get what seems to be good hardware value, and we want to know that the manufacturer has actually put some real money into the product which costs a small fortune. If you can read the specs or look under the hood, the power supply, being one of the most expensive parts of the amp, usually is a good indicator. It should be the biggest and heaviest part of the amplifier.
TAD Evolution One TX Loudspeakers
- Written by: Jeff Fritz
- Category: Full-Length Reviews
In November 2017 I reviewed the Technical Audio Devices Micro Evolution One loudspeaker, aka the TAD ME-1. It now costs $14,995/pair USD, including TAD’s ST3 stands, and at the time we gave it a Reviewers’ Choice award. The ME-1 is pretty small at 16.2”H x 9.9”W x 15.8”D, but its size had little correlation with what I heard. Of the many things I noticed about the ME-1’s sound, what most surprised me was what I wrote about in the penultimate paragraph of my review: “It filled my Music Vault with full, rich, detailed sound that never fatigued me and never bored me.”
Two or Three a Month
- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: For the Record
In my younger, poorer years, I spent an inordinate amount of my free time scouring garage sales and rummaging used-record stores for LPs. In those days, the early 1990s -- God help me, nearly 30 years ago -- used vinyl was plentiful and cheap.
"Baby Face" Willette: "Face to Face" and Grant Green: "Grant’s First Stand"
- Written by: Joseph Taylor
- Category: Recording of the Month
“Baby Face” Willette: “Face to Face”
Blue Note B0029750-01
Format: LP
Musical Performance: ****½
Sound Quality: *****
Overall Enjoyment: *****
Grant Green: “Grant’s First Stand”
Blue Note B7745061
Format: LP
Musical Performance: ****
Sound Quality: ****½
Overall Enjoyment: ****½
Blue Note’s celebration of its 80th birthday continues, and I wanted to cover two new pressings featuring nearly the same players but released in different reissue series. “Baby Face” Willette’s Face to Face has been returned to print on vinyl as part of the Tone Poet series, mastered by Kevin Gray under Joe Harley’s supervision. Grant Green’s Grant’s First Stand is part of the Blue Note 80 series, also mastered by Gray but produced by Don Was.
McIntosh Laboratory MT10 Turntable
- Written by: Jeff Sirody
- Category: Full-Length Reviews
McIntosh Laboratory was founded in 1949, when vinyl was a growing source for music reproduction. But it wasn’t until nearly 60 years later that the venerable company, based in Binghamton, New York, introduced its first turntable model. The debut of the MT10 turntable ($11,500 USD) was polarizing: Those who first saw it loved it or hated it. I remember some of the comments: “A turntable with a meter? Why?!” or “I don’t care how it sounds, it just looks too odd.” But most of the people who panned it had yet to hear it.
My Most Controversial Review Ever
- Written by: Jeff Fritz
- Category: Opinion
In May 2005, SoundStage! Hi-Fi (then simply SoundStage!) published my review of the darTZeel Audio NHB-108 Model One stereo amplifier. I had lots of good things to say about this super-cool Swiss product, and in the years since, it seems that many audiophiles have enjoyed having one at the heart of their high-end systems. To say it has had a successful run would be an understatement.
- Magico A3 Loudspeakers
- Stan Getz: "Getz at the Gate: The Stan Getz Quartet Live at the Village Gate, Nov. 26, 1961"
- Merrill Audio Element 118 Mono Amplifiers
- Five Products I Really Want: Summer 2019 Edition
- Valve Amplification Company Master Preamplifier
- My Last Stand and MoFi's Terrific MasterTracker Cartridge
- Bill Frisell and Thomas Morgan: "Epistrophy"
- Constellation Audio Revelation Andromeda Phono Stage
- Why You Want Your Audio Gear Measured
- Audio Research Reference 6 Preamplifier
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