March 2018
When I got into high-end audio, around 1990, I was attracted to its focus on achieving more realistic reproduction of the music that has been my passion since I was eight or nine years old. But I’m starting to feel that high-end audio now often aims at a different goal.
March 2018
It’s impossible to discuss Grace Digital’s Mondo+ without thinking of the Logitech Squeezebox Touch. Though the Logitech was discontinued three years ago, its fans are legion, and still populate several websites on which they share ideas about how to tweak its performance and the like. The Squeezebox Touch is a great little device, and it’s still what I mostly use to stream files from my computer. The Grace Mondo+ won’t win in a head-to-head competition, no foul -- it was primarily designed for use as an Internet radio.
Klipsch Heritage HP-3 headphones measurements can be found by clicking this link.
March 2018
It was high time Klipsch created something like the Heritage HP-3 over-ear headphones. For years, the company has been exploiting its deep heritage with products that reflect the classic great looks and surprisingly tenacious design concepts of founder Paul W. Klipsch’s original horn loudspeakers. Yet in the mobile space, Klipsch has focused most of its efforts on tiny, balanced-armature earphones that can’t benefit much from the Klipsch cachet. To my delight, the HP-3s look like something Paul Klipsch himself might have designed back in the 1950s.
March 2018
As other stores pull them from shelves, Waterloo Records promises to “not abandon” CDs.
-- Austin American-Statesman, February 8, 2018
This headline of a story by reporter Jake Harris caught my eye. In this age of mass murder, corruption, scandal, and sexual innuendo and assault, here is a major American newspaper devoting time and space to our little buddy the Compact Disc. For the past 147 years, the Statesman has been the primary newspaper of Austin, Texas, reputedly the “live music capital of the world,” so the statement carries some authority. Waterloo Records, an iconic record store on Lamar Boulevard, has a history of thumbing its nose at music-industry insiders in support of its local customers, and for the last 35 years Waterloo has been the heart of the local music business. In fact, the store has won the vaunted Best of Austin award from The Austin Chronicle every year since the store’s founding, in 1982.
March 2018
Water Is Life 13
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
For an artist with a wholly individual technique and a career that spanned only 25 years, guitarist Django Reinhardt’s posthumous influence on popular music is challenged only by that of Jimi Hendrix and Charlie Parker. Sixty-five years after his death, at the age of 43, Reinhardt’s melodic fluency, harmonic sophistication, and rhythmic flow not only set the bar for jazz guitarists but gave birth to an informal school of followers that flourishes worldwide.
Focal Clear headphones measurements can be found by clicking this link.
February 2018
Headphones are like loudspeakers in two important ways. First, both make sound. Second, in both categories, what was recently considered a super-high-end product is now touted as “midpriced” or “accessible.” Take, for example, Focal’s Clear open-back headphones. They’re priced at $1500 USD, which slots them between Focal’s first two high-end models, the Utopias ($4000) and the Elears ($1000). Sure, the Utopias are among the costliest headphones available today, but for most people, spending even $500 on headphones is unthinkable.
February 2018
Arrow 02.11.2017
Format: BD and DVD
Overall Enjoyment
Picture Quality
Sound Quality
Extras
It’s a delight to watch certain actors at work, regardless of the material, and for me Michael Caine has always been such an artist, using his charming voice, Cockney accent (almost always), and relaxed style to create unforgettable characters. He’s been at it a long time -- his first role was in 1956 -- and has been nominated for an Academy Award six times, and won twice, both times for Best Actor in a Supporting Role: Hannah and Her Sisters (1987) and The Cider House Rules (1999).
February 2018
I’d thought that the measuring of headphones was improving, but some recent developments have made me not so sure. Last year, the introduction of some excellent new lab gear made it possible for experienced engineers and technicians to make more useful measurements than ever before. But the introduction of some very cheap, nonstandard measurement gear has made it possible for almost anyone to make headphone measurements that are less useful than ever before.
February 2018
For this column I often select a component I’ve seen in a press release or ad that looks interesting. But sometimes a piece of equipment just lands in my lap. That was the case with Benjie’s BJ-T6HD digital music player, made by the Shenzhen Benjie Technology Company, Limited. It’s marketed under the Benjie brand, but also as the Hongyu BT1 and the AGPtek Rocker. I’ve dismissed the AGP because it doesn’t provide standard functions once the screen goes dark, an inexplicable and irritating shortcoming.
February 2018
In late 2015, Amazon launched its first Echo smart speaker, ushering in a new category of technology products. A year later, Google introduced the Echo’s first competitor, the Google Home, and in spring 2017, Microsoft announced a partnership with Harman/Kardon to bring Microsoft’s digital assistant, Cortana -- present on any PC running Windows 10 -- to a standalone wireless loudspeaker, the Invoke ($199.95 USD).
February 2018
Legacy 19075802312
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
All hail the riff. From the elemental, slow-motion growl of Link Wray’s “Rumble” through Keith Richards’s just-woke-from-my-coma fuzzy progression of “Satisfaction” onward, guitar-based rock has lived or died on memorable note choices. As advanced as amplification, electronic effects, and recording technology have become, it still comes down to how you make that joyful noise on your six strings.
AKG N60 NC Wireless headphones measurements can be found by clicking this link.
January 2018
Noise-canceling headphones are greatly prized by commuters and frequent fliers, as they subdue engine noise and other intrusive sounds. Up until now, most noise-canceling (NC) headphones have been over-ear designs, to provide a better seal. But commuters also like headphones that are smaller and lighter and can be folded up into smaller packages. AKG has therefore decided to release on-ear models, wired and Bluetooth, that can be folded up yet provide enough NC to be viable. Their Bluetooth model, the N60 NC Wireless ($299.95 USD), provides wireless transmission backed up by a wired analog cable mode. Design-wise, AKG has achieved this goal, but I have some minor criticisms, and a major criticism of something that will be, for some, a deal breaker.
January 2018
The Criterion Collection 897
Format: Blu-ray
Overall Enjoyment
Picture Quality
Sound Quality
Extras
I first saw Barry Lyndon in its original theatrical release, in December 1975. I thought it was merely okay -- a muted tapestry on which to hang a barrel of cinematic tricks. What a difference 42 years has made! In no small part thanks to this splendid transfer from The Criterion Collection, I now view Barry Lyndon as Stanley Kubrick’s (1928-1999) masterpiece.
January 2018
My recent review of the Monoprice Monolith M300 earphones, and my friend Steve Guttenberg’s review of the M300s on CNet, have raised a timely question. The M300s seem to be a knockoff of one of Audeze’s iSine planar-magnetic earphone models, but they arrived so soon after the iSines’ introduction that it makes me wonder if some third party isn’t dealing to both sides. The provenance of the tech products we buy is increasingly unclear, a situation that prompts me to ponder: Today, what does a brand mean?
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