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April 2019

JBL continues to upgrade and refine its Bluetooth speakers. The Charge 4 is very similar in outward appearance to its predecessor, the Charge 3, but with significant internal differences. At $149.95 USD, it’s a good bargain in a midsize Bluetooth speaker, while allowing the Charge 3 to be sold for two-thirds its cost at Amazon.com and other retailers.

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This year is the 80th anniversary of Blue Note Records, the venerable jazz label established by Alfred Lion and Max Margulis in 1939. While other record companies played important roles in documenting jazz, Blue Note’s presence in the marketplace overshadows them. It’s doubtful that any other jazz label is better known, or has more recordings currently available in various formats -- the number of Blue Note titles in circulation on CD, as downloads, or on recent vinyl pressings is staggering. Blue Note is also a favorite of audiophile reissue labels, several of which have licensed albums from its catalog to release as new LPs.

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April 2019

Exile/Legacy Recordings 88985428402
Format: CD

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Curmudgeonly and unpredictable, at 73 Van Morrison has developed a late-career reputation that sadly overshadows his early triumphs. Like Bob Dylan, if you only judged him based on the man who shambles onstage and grumbles through an assortment of songs that are not necessarily among his best, you might well wonder why he’s considered one of the greatest singers and songwriters of the last 60 years.

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March 2019

Grace Digital has built a well-earned reputation for giving great value for the dollar, and their latest product is no exception. The modestly priced Mondo+ Classic Wi-Fi radio ($249.99 USD) is built for the future, but can be enjoyed aplenty in the here and now.

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March 2019

Orson Welles's Truncated Masterpiece Looks Great on Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 952
Format: Blu-ray

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RKO Radio Pictures cooked up this truncated version of Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) while the director was away in South America, filming his next (unfinished) film, It’s All True. At first Welles tried to communicate with RKO via long-distance calls, using fellow director Robert Wise as go-between, but to no avail: RKO made drastic cuts, rearranged the order of scenes, shot new scenes -- some directed by Wise -- and tacked on a sappy, happy ending.

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March 2019

SoundStage! has covered multiple products from iFi Audio. We began by looking at their earlier, value-centered products, many of which were involved with some aspect of headphone listening. In the last few years, iFi seems to have decided that the high end offers a promising marketplace as well. Their Pro iDSD ($2499 USD) now joins their Pro iCAN headphone amp ($1799) and Pro iESL electrostatic headphone amplifier ($1499) -- attempts to challenge the Mount Everest of the highest-quality audio products while maintaining at least a semblance of reasonable pricing.

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March 2019

A-Side 0005
Format: CD

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A decade before two young music nerds met at Bard College and sparked the evolution of Steely Dan, two other young oddballs -- 21-year-old Ran Blake and 17-year-old Jeanne Lee -- met on the same campus. Blake was a polymath pianist with a deep interest in Béla Bartók, Claude Debussy, Mary Lou Williams, gospel music, and film noir. Lee was equally eclectic, developing choreography for music by Arnold Schoenberg and simultaneously studying child psychology and literature. When she heard Blake playing piano one March afternoon in 1956, she told him he put her in mind of Art Tatum -- a musician most people would never associate with Blake’s minimalist style -- and he knew immediately that she had impressive ears.

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February 2019

A Cult Classic Done Right from Arrow Films

Arrow Films AV179-TM
Format: Blu-ray

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Produced in Spain in 1972 for a measly $300,000, Horror Express has received terrible treatment since its release. It flopped in Spain but was better received in the UK, where it got excellent reviews. The US release was a disaster. The distributor had so little interest that it provided misleading poster art and, according to some reports, released a workprint to theaters.

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February 2019

Howard Bilerman is a drummer, recording engineer, and producer, as well as a co-owner of Montreal’s famous Hotel2Tango recording studio. With recording experience that spans more than 30 years, Bilerman describes his philosophy about how to make the recording of drums sound real.

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February 2019

Ever since the huge success of Sonos’s wireless home sound systems, other manufacturers have been trying to imitate or surpass them. Bluesound seems to have come closer than anyone, albeit at premium prices. The Pulse Flex 2i might be their smallest and least costly model, but it’s packed with features, if still pricey at $299 USD -- but those features, which include a nifty app and the ability to stream from just about any source, will make it worth that price to many.

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