FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—PARAMUS, NJ — Aug.11, 2025 — The sounds of vinyl will once again echo through the halls of the Westfield's Garden State Plaza with the grand opening of The Sharp Notes, a new record store owned and operated by New Jersey-based educator, musician, and music journalist Evan Toth.Located in the heart of Paramus, NJ, The Sharp Notes brings back the golden-era thrill of physical media—reimagined for 21st-century ears. The store specializes in... Read More

Jazzed by the positive review here of Ortofon's X40 moving coil cartridge, a friend asked what he should do for a step up solution. He liked his excellent sounding Graham Slee MM phono preamp and wanted to keep using it. There's nothing worse in an analog audio chain than a bad step up transformer and known good ones don't come cheap. You can take a chance on a step up transformer you find on Ebay (and admittedly I saw a few good known used ones), but... Read More

THE ZOMBIES, “BRITISH INVASION” PIONEERS, ANNOUNCE THE RELEASE OF THEIR ALBUM ODESSEY AND ORACLE MONO REMASTERED ON SEPTEMBER 26TH VIA BEECHWOOD PARK RECORDS LISTEN TO THE MONO REMASTERED VERSION OF“THIS WILL BE OUR YEAR” HERE Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees and “British Invasion” pioneers, The Zombies, today announce the release of Odessey & Oracle Mono Remastered on September 26th. The album, the first of four definitive physical reissues from their... Read More

One needn't be an Elliott Smith fan or even know who he was to appreciate Brad Mehldau's rich musical examination of emotional light and darkness using the late singer/songwriter's creativity as a guide to understanding "visionary depressives" generally, and specifically Smith and his often sad and dark, but simultaneously uplifting music. Smith fans are legion, intense, and like Nick Drake, another "visionary depressive", even in... Read More

Bill Janovitz's in depth history of The Cars puts the pride of Boston pop under detailed examination

Mapleshade Records was a haven for jazz-loving audiophiles in the 1990s, a label that combined very good music and excellent sound quality in an era when digital—which, in its early days, usually meant lousy sound—was sweeping through the mainstream industry. Mapleshade’s proprietor-engineer, Pierre Sprey, recorded all his albums on analog tape, with austere minimalism: just two microphones (sometimes three), no processing, not even a mixing board. He stacked bricks... Read More

The San Francisco Audiophile Foundation recently invited me to interview John Curl—a true audio designing legend whose decades spanning career includes working for Ampex, Mark Levinson, Parasound, Constellation and many other companies as well as designing a few equally legendary products he self-marketed like the Blowtorch and Vendetta Research preamps. Phono preampfification is a particular Curl speciality.Keeping Mr. Curl on the "straight and narrow" was... Read More

(Press release): Two of the most iconic West Coast jazz recordings return in definitive form: Way Out West by Sonny Rollins and Art Pepper Meets The Rhythm Section, now available as Ultra High Quality Record (UHQR) editions for pre-order via Analogue Productions. Pressed on 200-gram Clarity Vinyl at Quality Record Pressings and cut at 45 RPM for the highest fidelity possible, these limited editions—each capped at 2,750 numbered copies—are mastered AAA directly from... Read More

Never deemed ‘cool’ in the eyes of the mainstream and scowled by record critics, Canadian trio Rush were the textbook definition of ‘the people’s band.’ Guitarist Alex Lifeson, drummer Neil Peart, and bassist/keyboardist/vocalist Geddy Lee were anomalies amongst contemporaries who praised rock’s lewd and lascivious side. Their body of work explored science fiction, fantasy-driven, and philosophical lyrical realms while adapting to whatever musical climate they were... Read More

Guetersloh, Germany / Charlotte, North Carolina / Cleveland, Ohio – 4. August 2025 – Sonopress, a global leader in media manufacturing, is proud to announce a new partnership with Gotta Groove Records, a highly respected U.S.-based vinyl production company. As part of this collaboration, Gotta Groove Records will offer the innovative EcoRecord, Sonopress’s environmentally friendly LP record solution, to its customers in the United States.

Amina Claudine Myers should be a lot more famous than she is. A composer-pianist-organist-singer of spiritual depth and grand virtuosity, she has been recording, as a leader or accompanist, for nearly a half century, but mainly for small labels and as a member of an alliance—the avant-garde Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), which also spawned the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Henry Threadgill, Anthony Braxton, and many others—that didn’t (and... Read More

This past May I visited the Munich High-End show for the very first and, as it turns out, last time. Next year the exhibition will take place at the beginning of June in Vienna, the city that served for centuries as the capital of the Hapsburg empire before it collapsed at the close of World War I. Despite Munich’s displacement, the mood at this year’s show was anything but funereal. I was pumped to discover a passel of enjoyable and exciting audio exhibits, including... Read More

Revisiting a rave review can be uncomfortable. Was the product as good as you’d written it was? As conceptually groundbreaking and sonically spectacular as you’d described it? You never know until you return to it, unless of course you bought it and regularly use it, and even then, sometimes after a while you say to yourself “What was I thinking?” Or that but laced with expletives.The Supatrac Blackbird Farpoint got a rave review, and I bought it, but it’s not been in... Read More

Wilson Audio Specialties introduced the new $28,000 Sabrina V loudspeaker at a July 24th event at Innovative Audio in New York City. Long time Wilson employee--Director of Sales-- and award winning recording engineer Peter McGrath plays the music, only a bit of which is included in this video because what's the point of picking it up with Bluetooth microphones? Industry veteran and new Wilson employee Patrick Butler describes the considerable differences between... Read More

In the heart of the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia, just under the Market Street Elevated (‘the el’ as the locals call it), is a mural of text and visual interpretations of songs from a native’s album. That mural alone cements Kurt Vile's place within the city’s culture. Originally from the borough of Lansdowne, Kurt’s career progressed from creating low-fidelity bedroom recordings to the slickest-sounding nuggets from his home studio. Vile’s twist on... Read More

Acoustic Sounds announced today a 75th anniversary Chess Records series, with 6 titles to be rolled out 2 monthly starting October 17th, all cut from original master tapes by Matthew Lutthans and pressed at Quality Record Pressing, housed in archival quality gatefold "Tip on" jackets.

With superstar pianist Yuja Wang on top form, and conductor Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra completing their Shostakovich cycle (available on CD individually or in a box), this vinyl release of the composer’s exciting, very accessible piano concertos rivals the best of the Original Source Series in its vivid sonics.  Proving that digital can be done right, is this a new Audiophile Classic?