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SoundStage! Encore
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"Art+Tech"
Where music meets equipment

Art+Tech

Latest

Some Holiday Favorites

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Pulse!

December 2023

Every November, around Thanksgiving Day, I move my holiday music collection into the living room. It takes some effort, because I have to shift a couple of CD storage shelves down to the basement and bring my seasonal CD collection upstairs. Then I bring the holiday LPs up from the basement, and they displace the records I’ve been playing recently. I don’t know how much of my holiday music ends up hitting my turntable or CD player from late November through early January, but it takes up a good bit of living-room real estate.

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Herbie Nichols, the Tone Poet, and the Triangle Borea BR03 BT Powered Loudspeaker System

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Art+Tech

December 2023

I recently visited a twentysomething relative who works as a lawyer in a large city. Like many young professionals, she lives in a compact one-bedroom apartment, sacrificing living space for the downtown location. She has a large-screen TV, a small desk, and little room for anything else. One thing she does have is a vintage turntable, but it isn’t hooked up. For music, she streams through a Sonos speaker.

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The Byrds, Curated

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Curator

November 2023

For a few years in the 1960s, the Byrds were a great American rock’n’roll band; maybe, the great American band. They popularized the 12-string electric guitar, sang in complex, indescribably beautiful harmonies, and did interpretations of Bob Dylan’s songs that even people who thought they didn’t like Dylan could love. The band’s first five albums stand easily beside the best music of the time, and members of the band wrote terrific songs with strong melodies that still sound fresh.

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Reappraising . . . or Maybe, Just Enjoying

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Pulse!

November 2023

One of the best things about listening to and collecting music is that you get the chance to challenge old opinions and hear things with a fresh ear.

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Deep in the Woods with Composer Roger Eno and Focal’s Bathys Wireless Headphones

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Art+Tech

November 2023

One of my favorite comedians is a lesser-known Canadian performer named Ron James, who has a particularly wry way of looking at the world. Like me, he’s a man in his 60s, and some of his observations have me doubled over laughing. One I particularly like is his take on trends and Western humanity’s obsession with “the new.” In a cascading series of punch lines, he notes that things like the iPhone 11 in your pocket are not “old”; the Dead Sea Scrolls are old.

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R.E.M.: “Reveal” and “Accelerate” Reissued

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Vinyl music

October 2023

Reveal
Craft Recordings CR00548
Format: LP

Musical Performance
***

Sound Quality
***1/2

Overall Enjoyment
***1/2

Accelerate
Craft Recordings CR00550
Format: LP

Musical Performance
***1/2

Sound Quality
****

Overall Enjoyment
****

Drummer Bill Berry left R.E.M. in 1997, due to health issues. The group carried on as a trio for five more albums, bringing in other drummers for sessions and touring. Craft Recordings has reissued R.E.M.’s last four albums on vinyl, making them available in that format for the first time since their original release dates. I’ll be looking at the vinyl reissues of Reveal (originally released in 2001) and Accelerate (2008). Kevin Gray of Cohearent Audio cut the lacquers for the new pressings using Bob Ludwig’s digital masters, and the LPs were manufactured by Memphis Record Pressing.

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Audiophile Atmos—Dominique Fils-Aimé Surrounds with "Our Roots Run Deep"

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SoundStage! Encore

October 2023

On September 22, 2023, Canadian-singer Dominique Fils-Aimé released her fourth album, Our Roots Run Deep. This new album signifies the beginning of a new trilogy of albums for her, and it’s also the first time she’s released an album in Dolby Atmos, a music format she now loves.

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The Well-Tempered (Affordable) Turntable

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Pulse!

October 2023

As vinyl grows in popularity, Heinz Lichtenegger of Pro-Ject Music Systems, Harry and Mat Weisfeld of VPI Industries, Roy Hall of Music Hall Audio, and Roy Gandy of Rega Research must be pleased that they kept their faith in LPs and continued to manufacture turntables. Companies that had scaled back or even dropped their turntable lines are back in the game. Audio-Technica and Technics are making turntables for the audiophile market after years of sticking with DJ or entry-level ’tables.

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Making Dominique Fils-Aimé’s First Music Trilogy—A Remarkable Fusion of Blues, Jazz, and Soul

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SoundStage! Encore

September 2023

Canadian singer Dominique Fils-Aimé has released four albums to date: Nameless (2018), Stay Tuned! (2019), Three Little Words (2021), and Our Roots Run Deep (2023). She has a unique style and distinctive sound.

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Rock’n’Roll Death Rattle

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Pulse!

September 2023

About a year ago, Bruce Springsteen began touring again. It was the first time he and the E Street Band had appeared onstage together since 2017. Like a lot of performers, Springsteen was eager to be performing again. Some musicians who had been prevented from touring by the COVID-19 pandemic were downright cranky. Performers need to perform. They’re addicted to the stage.

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Early ECM Gems Sparkle Intensely through Focal’s Vestia N°1 Bookshelf Speakers

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Art+Tech

September 2023

I grew up listening to jazz from the 1930s and ’40s, thanks to my father’s LP collection and his devotion to the big-band dance music featured every Saturday evening on Ottawa’s CFMO-FM. When I finally found a friend who liked jazz, he played me Charlie Parker recordings from the early ’50s. Looking back, by the time I turned 16, in 1970, the closest I’d come to experiencing contemporary improvised music was a recording called Two of a Mind, a set of duets created by saxophonists Paul Desmond and Gerry Mulligan in 1962.

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The Rolling Stones, Curated

Details
Curator

September 2023

The Rolling Stones have been a working band, with a few personnel changes, for more than 60 years, and have been a visible and active part of popular culture for nearly all that time. There have been a few dull moments, perhaps, but it’s hard to think of another rock’n’roll band or musician, aside from Bob Dylan, that has enjoyed such a long, sustained stretch of popularity and relevance. The Stones may not have the hip currency now the band had in the past—who does?—but a Stones tour is still a big, stadium-filling event.

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Neko Case: “Wild Creatures”

Details
CD music

August 2023

Anti- 87824-2
Format: CD

Musical Performance
****1/2

Sound Quality
****

Overall Enjoyment
****1/2

The singer-songwriter Neko Case has been a singular voice in music for more than 25 years, both as a solo artist and as a member of the New Pornographers. Her versatility and restless creativity have led to collaborations with a number of other musicians, including the Sadies, Carolyn Mark, k.d. lang, and Laura Veirs. In 2022, Case released a 23-song compilation of solo recordings as a digital download. Wild Creatures has now been released on CD and vinyl.

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Stupid Audiophile Tricks

Details
Pulse!

August 2023

I have a friend, a guy I worked with for a long time, who drove a modest little Geo sedan for his long commute. Ugly car, really. And small. He looked after it, though; it ran well and was dependable. Every workday, he drove 90 minutes or more each way, and I don’t think he ever missed a day of work because of car trouble. When my friend retired, he stopped driving that car and got a new Camaro. He deserved that reward. I have no idea how many miles he had racked up on that Geo, but I’m willing to bet it was over 300,000.

Read more …

  1. The Mobile Fidelity Settlement—an Update
  2. The Leroy Vinnegar Sextet: “Leroy Walks!”
  3. A Second Trek through the Vinyl Jungle with MoFi
  4. Sly & the Family Stone, Curated
  5. André Previn and His Pals, Shelly Manne & Red Mitchell: “West Side Story”
  6. An Interview with Mastering Engineer Kevin Gray
  7. Three Distinctive Voices Flow through the Pro-Ject MaiA DS3 Stereo Integrated Amplifier
  8. Van Morrison: “Moving On Skiffle” | Joe Lovano: “Our Daily Bread” | Carmell Jones: “The Remarkable Carmell Jones”
  9. An Interview with Producer Joe Harley
  10. How Good Can the Focal Utopia Headphones Make Remarkable Recordings Sound?
  11. GoGo Penguin: “Everything Is Going to Be OK” | Vince Mendoza and the Metropole Orkest: “Olympians” | En Attendant Ana: “Principia”
  12. Looking Back 50 Years with Wadada Leo Smith and the NAD C 3050 LE Integrated Amplifier
  13. James Brown, Curated
  14. Ralph Towner: “At First Light” | Ralph Alessi Quartet: “It’s Always Now”
  15. Vinyl's Growing (or Not Growing) Pains

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