SoundStage! Xperience | SoundStageXperience.com

Details: Vinyl music

April 2025

Milestone Records / Craft Recordings—CR00845
Format: LP

Musical Performance

Sound Quality

Overall Enjoyment

Jazz saxophonist Joe Henderson made his name with Blue Note Records, where he recorded five LPs as a leader between 1963 and 1966 and appeared as a sideman on many other sessions. He moved to Milestone Records in 1967 and in the ten years that followed recorded 12 albums for them. His Milestone years offered a mixed bag of approaches to jazz, and there were some gems among them. One was Power to the People (1969), which Craft Recordings reissued last year on vinyl and hi-rez digital as part of its Jazz Dispensary series.

Details: Pulse!

April 2025

When I attended the Capital Audio Fest in November, I experienced many demo rooms full of impressive gear. I found myself being pulled into a few of them because, even as I was passing by in the hallway, I could hear music that sounded not just good, but lifelike. As I wandered into one such room in particular, I was immediately impressed by the appearance of the turntables, integrated amplifier, and speakers on display. They looked natural, organic, and inviting.

Details: Vinyl music

April 2025

Weird Records—WEIRD166LP
Format: LP

Musical Performance

Sound Quality

Overall Enjoyment

A little more than two years ago, English songwriter Richard Dawson released The Ruby Cord, the final album in a trilogy that looked at English life in the Middle Ages (Peasant, 2017), the present (2020, 2019), and the distant future (The Ruby Cord, 2022). For the most part, Dawson writes for acoustic instruments, and his work embraces folk-music traditions while subverting and reimagining them.

Details: Art+Tech

Note: for the full suite of measurements from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click this link.

March 2025

The history of recorded blues and jazz has abounded with legendary figures in the decades since Mamie Smith cut “Crazy Blues” in August 1920, but few artists have been connected to as broad a range of other musicians, and as many seminal events, as 82-year-old John Paul Hammond. Also known as John Hammond Jr.—to differentiate him from his father, a renowned record producer who shepherded budding artists ranging from Benny Goodman to Bruce Springsteen during his long tenure with Columbia Records—he was a veritable Zelig during the 1960s.

Details: Vinyl music

March 2025

Atlantic Records / Acoustic Sounds SD 8239 /APA 070-45
Format: LP

Musical Performance

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Overall Enjoyment

Boz Scaggs recorded his first solo album in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1965. Polydor Records released Boz in 1966, but it didn’t get wide distribution. On his return to the US, he joined up with Steve Miller in San Francisco. Scaggs had known Miller since high school, and they had played together in bands in high school and college.

Details: Pulse!

March 2025

A little more than a month ago, SoundStage! publisher Doug Schneider posted a message on Facebook that caught my attention. To be honest, I usually look out for Doug’s posts—they let me know what’s going on at the SoundStage! Network, and in the audio industry in general. This one hit home because it referred to something that has always been at the root of my interest in hi-fi.

Details: CD music

February 2025

Polydor / Fiction Records / Capitol Records 00602475036746
Format: CD

Musical Performance

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Overall Enjoyment

Songs of a Lost World is the Cure’s first album of new songs in 16 years. The group has released a couple of live albums and a few random singles since the last studio album, 4:13 Dream (2008), and has toured off and on. Robert Smith, the Cure’s leader and the one consistent member over its nearly 50-year history, announced a new album several times in interviews since 2008, but it never materialized.

Details: Pulse!

February 2025

Rick Beato is a musician, producer, recording-studio owner, and guitar instructor. His YouTube channel, which Beato established in 2015, has 4.7 million subscribers. On the channel, Beato has covered a lot of subjects in the last ten years, diving into everything from music theory to the current state of the recording industry. Beato has become so popular and well established that he’s been able to interview famous musicians on his show, including David Gilmour, jazz guitarist Mike Stern, Rick Wakeman, and Tori Amos.

Details: Art+Tech

January 2025

Having worked with artists as diverse as Bon Jovi and Wynton Marsalis and helped define the musical signatures of late-career Chick Corea and Wayne Shorter as a member of their bands, bassist John Patitucci has cachet that few other rhythm-section players achieve. His tone, technique, and imagination are all exceptional.

Details: Vinyl music

January 2025

Craft Recordings / Milestone Records CR00767
Format: LP

Musical Performance

Sound Quality

Overall Enjoyment

I hadn’t heard of the Uruguayan jazz trio Opa until Craft Recordings reissued the group’s US debut, Goldenwings, in its Jazz Dispensary Top Shelf series. The label’s audiophile series has returned a few lesser-known albums by well-regarded jazz musicians, such as Joe Henderson and Woody Shaw, to vinyl. It has also brought back work by artists who deserve wider renown, including pianist Patrice Rushen.

Details: Pulse!

January 2025

In my November Pulse! column, I made a prediction about the Capital Audiofest, which took place over the weekend of November 8–10 in Rockville, MD, a suburb of Washington, DC. “I can tell you what I’ll hear,” I wrote. “Diana Krall, Sting, Texas Flood by Stevie Ray Vaughan (the Acoustic Sounds reissue), Kind of Blue (Acoustic Sounds again), any number of MoFi titles, and so on.”

Details: Vinyl music

January 2025

Capitol Records—T 2080 Apple Records / Universal Music Group International 0602468019756
Format: LP

Musical Performance

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Overall Enjoyment

The Beatles’ conquest of America in 1964 happened so quickly, it caught the band and its record company, Capitol Records, by surprise. Capitol Records was the US subsidiary of EMI Records, whose Parlophone label had enjoyed unprecedented success with the group in England. Those records, distributed in the US by Vee Jay and Swan, did not do well at first. But “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” which Capitol reluctantly agreed to release after passing up the group’s first three singles, turned out to be a massive hit. And American teens demanded more.

Details: CD music

December 2024

Verve Records 602468047353.1
Format: CD

Musical Performance

Sound Quality

Overall Enjoyment

Few jazz musicians have been as exhaustively documented on recordings as Charlie Parker, known to his contemporaries as “Bird.” We are some distance from the aura of magic and romanticism that surrounded his very real accomplishments, which makes it hard to grasp how much he influenced other musicians and how revolutionary his music was. Jimi Hendrix’s impact and enduring place in rock music is perhaps a more recent parallel.

Details: Pulse!

December 2024

In 1963, after two years of work at a local television station, Lee Mendelson and Sheldon Fay Jr. embarked on a production venture of their own, Lee Mendelson Film Productions (LMFP), in Burlingame, California, about a 25-minute drive from San Francisco.