SoundStage! Xperience | SoundStageXperience.com

Details: CD music

January 2017

Auricle 16/17
Format: CD (2)

Musical Performance

Sound Quality

Overall Enjoyment

For both commercial and musical reasons, longstanding bands are rare in improvised music. The trio BassDrumBone, which celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2017, is unusual, then, in terms of longevity, but even more unusual in instrumental makeup. Bassist Mark Helias, 66; drummer Gerry Hemingway, 61; and trombonist Ray Anderson, 64, were all up-and-coming young men in 1977 when they got together for the first time to play in New Haven, Connecticut. Hemingway, a New Haven native, was already teaching and developing a unique approach to codifying non-traditional percussion sounds. Helias was studying at Yale, and Anderson was a nascent member of Anthony Braxton’s group. Hemingway thought they might gel as a trio, and clearly they did.

Details: Feature Reviews

December 2016

As our new house on the North Carolina coast was being built, one of the things Mrs. East and yrs trly decided was that this winter we weren’t going to shovel snow. If you’ve shoveled snow, you get this. If you haven’t, it’s like jail -- something you don’t want to experience. So what better way to adapt to coastal life than to rent a beach condo? One thing we’ve learned over many years of summer Carolina Beach rentals: Good luck getting one with anything close to acceptable audio. With good reason, seasonal landlords don’t trust renters with anything but the cheapest, most rudimentary audio and/or video gear.

Details: Blu-ray movies

December 2016

Robert Altman’s Unique Western on Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 827
Format: Blu-ray

Overall Enjoyment

Picture Quality

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Extras

American film director Robert Altman loved to bend familiar genres to his own purposes. M*A*S*H (1970) was like no other war movie that had preceded it. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) turned the typical showdown-and-shoot-out Western into a Northwestern, set in the fictional mountain town of Presbyterian Church.

Details: Pulse!

December 2016

A pro-audio company recently asked me to run measurements on a prototype recording monitor -- the kind of speaker recording engineers and producers use to listen to what they’re recording and mixing. I thought the task would be simple. I own a pair of Genelec recording monitors, and they measure almost perfectly: nearly dead flat on axis, with a smoothly increasing treble rolloff as I move off axis. But the job turned out to be quite complicated, and it raised some questions about what, exactly, I should be listening for when I test speakers and headphones.

Details: Music Everywhere

December 2016

Altec Lansing has a long and distinguished history -- the company was founded in 1936, before I was born, and I remember their speakers from my college days. The subject of this review, the Mini Lifejacket 2 ($99.99 USD), is only the tip of an iceberg -- Altec Lansing makes eight models of Jacket Bluetooth speakers, from the Mini H20 ($39.99) to the Omni Jacket Ultra and the Super Life Jacket (both $299.99).

Details: Feature Reviews

HiFiMan HE1000 V2 headphones measurements can be found by clicking this link.

December 2016

Reviewers' Choice Why are they reviewing these headphones again?

If you’re thinking that, I don’t blame you. At a glance, the HiFiMan HE1000 V2s look just like the HE1000s, and the original price of $2999 USD remains unchanged. Look closer, though, and you can see that the V2s are different in many ways. The HE1000s have been my reference for high-end headphone sound ever since I reviewed them in October 2015. I had to wonder why HiFiMan had changed them, and what effects those changes would have on their sound.

Details: CD music

December 2016

ECM 5702466
Format: CD (4)

Musical Performance

Sound Quality

Overall Enjoyment

David Mott -- baritone saxophone master, former music department head at York University, and martial artist -- once told me that the best musicians play without ego. By creating an unmediated flow of ideas, artists like John Coltrane channel something approaching the divine.

Details: Feature Reviews

Final Sonorous III headphones measurements can be found by clicking this link.

November 2016

Final is a brand from Japan that specializes in exotic, high-end headphones decorated with lots of shiny metal bits. I’ve seen Final headphones at a few headphone shows, but otherwise have rarely encountered them. That’s true of a surprising number of small headphone companies, which seem to do most of their sales through the Internet. When I found out about the Sonorous III headphones, a closed-back design priced competitively at $399 USD, my curiosity was piqued.

Details: Blu-ray movies

November 2016

Carol Reed Channels Alfred Hitchcock

The Criterion Collection 523
Format: Blu-ray

Overall Enjoyment

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Extras

Sir Carol Reed (1906-1976) was a British film director best known for three masterpieces: Odd Man Out (1947), The Fallen Idol (1948), and The Third Man (1949). After this brief flash of genius, his films went relatively unheralded until Oliver! (1968), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director.

Details: Pulse!

November 2016

The No.1 speaker brand in the US is now Amazon, with a 26% market share. It took Amazon less than two years to attain this rank.

Those shocking facts should tell you where audio is headed. While the AmazonBasics line of cheap Bluetooth speakers does well, Amazon’s meteoric success in audio is due in large part to the Echo, a voice-command speaker that has sold some five million units since its launch a year and a half ago, and is expected to sell twice that in 2017.

Details: Music Everywhere

November 2016

Expect the unexpected from Grace Digital and you’ll never be disappointed. Hot on the heels of their EcoPebble Bluetooth speaker-powerbank-flashlight, which I reviewed last month, comes another waterproof powerbank combo -- but this one’s solar powered.

Details: Feature Reviews

Beyerdynamic T 5 p headphones measurements can be found by clicking this link.

November 2016

Reviewers' Choice The new, second-generation version of Beyerdynamic’s T 5 p headphones embodies three trends I’m happy to see. First is a new interest in closed-back, audiophile-oriented headphones. I generally prefer the open-back sound, but many audiophiles must listen while surrounded by the sounds of family members or office colleagues, and open-back models let all that noise through. Second is an apparent trend toward a more natural, less treble-heavy voicing in audiophile headphones, which I noted in my review of the Sennheiser HD 800 S ’phones. Third is a trend toward greater sensitivity in audiophile headphones, to make them more practical to use with smartphones and tablets.

Details: Download music

November 2016

Chesky 389
Format: 24-bit/192kHz AIFF download

Musical Performance

Sound Quality

Overall Enjoyment

From Norah Jones to my friend and homegirl Kellylee Evans, there has been a trend among up-and-coming women jazz singers to make the jump to more commercial music as soon as they make their initial breakthrough. Who can blame them? Pop is where the large audiences -- and money -- live.

Details: Feature Reviews

October 2016

Compact, portable DACs that plug into a laptop’s USB port, extract up to 24-bit/96kHz digital audio using the jitter-eliminating asynchronous protocol, and provide amplified output for headphones and line-level output for preamps, are common enough these days. But in 2012, when AudioQuest introduced its first DragonFly DAC, the concept turned heads. The most attention-grabbing element was no doubt that the DragonFly was the size and shape of a USB memory stick. That such tiny hardware could make possible the playback of high-resolution audio through headphones -- not to mention a high-end audio system -- seemed nothing short of amazing.