This past summer, I raved in this space about Craft Recordings’ vinyl reissue of the Bill Evans trio’s 1961 classic Waltz for Debby, hailing it as the best-sounding of all the album’s many pressings. Now Craft has released an LP of the companion recording, Sunday at the Village Vanguard, as, once again, part of the label's Original Jazz Classics series. It too is a great album, and the Craft reissue is very much worth getting; but this time around, comparisons... Read More

The Miles Davis Sextet was in San Francisco and had off the night of June 25th, 1962. Wes Montgomery was in town and with the rhythm section of Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb, plus tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin, played to a full house at Tsubo in Berkeley, California.The great recording engineer Wally Heider set up his gear in a storeroom behind the club, which, thanks to newspaper articles and word-of-mouth, overflowed with fans anxious to witness the... Read More

It’s all fine and good to engage in passionate discourse about the importance of vinyl records and how best to preserve that believed golden format of recorded audio. But, that noble and idyllic vision has a common sense snag: what do you do with all that stuff? Recall the times you’ve uncomfortably crouched before a cardboard box of records at a garage sale, think about the moldy Reader’s Digest box sets you’ve avoided at your favorite charity shop. For just a... Read More

The first time I saw a Jacques Tati film, an arthouse cinema showing of 1949's Jour de fête back in the early 2000s, I had the gut feeling that something was wrong. This was the 1995 restoration with its slightly washed-out colors, but that wasn’t it. No, it was how the film sounded...

Enjoy a behind-the-scenes "look" at the creation of Steely Dan's classic Aja album with Donald Fagen and award winning recording engineer Bill Schnee and mastering engineer great Bernie Grundman in conversation with Tracking Angle's Fred Kaplan and Analogue Productions' own Chad Kassem. Read More

Reviewing an elegant analog system from Clearaudio.

First released in 2013 on CD and limited edition 45rpm "bundle" (with multiple festive goodies), Quality Street has been reissued in 2023 on festive red vinyl and includes a bonus 45rpm single ("Let It Snow"/"Winter Wonderland") with Lowe backed by Los Straightjackets. This one's limited too, to 1000 copies, 300 copies of which include a Nick Lowe 526 piece jigsaw puzzle box set. Oops! the limited edition red vinyl with goodies is... Read More

Dave McNair reviews a uniquely enjoyable preamplifier that pushes the envelope on the usage of italized and bold in a HiFi review. 

It’s that time of the year again. The holidays take so long to arrive and then disappear far too quickly. Most music lovers have a complicated relationship with the sounds of the season. While some folks can’t wait for their local radio stations to switch over to an all holiday music format, others - myself included - find ourselves thoroughly exhausted by those relentless playlists come December 26th. It’s not that there’s a problem with holiday music because there... Read More

Model trains are a Christmas tradition. But a real steam train traveling on the New Jersey Transit commuter line at almost 80 MPH is a rare and amazing thing not likely to be repeated but it did happen back in the fall of 1996 and I was lucky enough to take the trip from Hoboken to Port Jervis with my late father in law who worked on the railroads as a kid during the Depression. Half way through the ride to Port Jervis soot clogged the camcorder microphone so for this... Read More

Within the world of true artists, Syd Barrett was a national treasure. His inventive guitar work and whimsical wordplay elevated Pink Floyd’s direction away from their embryonic Stones-esque R&B roots. The sole Floyd album under Barrett’s leadership, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, resides in good company with Sgt. Pepper and others for being one of the defining albums of the Summer of Love. Non-album singles like “Arnold Layne” and “See Emily Play” demonstrated... Read More

The latest wrinkle in the 50 year Rega “vibration measuring machine” saga is a special edition of the “bread and butter” Planar 3. It’s no surprise that the cover photo of Rega’s 2016 hardcover book “A Vibration Measuring Machine” features a P3. It's the model that gets you all Rega’s core design concepts well-executed at an affordable $1595 price including a top of the moving magnet line Exact cartridge.For its 50th, Rega offers the Planar 3 50th Anniversary... Read More

The original five Chick Corea Elektric Band albums are currently back and streaming on all platforms, and as of December 1st The Complete Studio Recordings 1986-1991, a limited edition 5 album box, has been available via Candid Records. The 10 LP disc box set presents the albums in gatefold jackets, with printed inner sleeves, and restored artwork, in a deluxe slipcase. It also includes an envelope of reproduced removable memorabilia from Chick’s private archive.... Read More

“Say hello to Caelan Cardello,” Rufus Reid, whose voice sounds about as deep as his upright bass, announces midway through the first side of this album. Hello, Caelan! And congratulations!This wonderful LP, the first that Cardello has recorded, arrived a few months ago and has been in regular rotation, as the saying goes, on my TechDas Air Force Zero. Hand-delivered to me in Washington, DC by Michael Fremer--the proprietor of this website, veteran audio reviewer and... Read More

We are all products of the times in which we live, to one degree or another, though some people transcend time. Listening to John Prine's 1971 debut album makes clear that he was at that time a product of it. If you want to understand the "zeitgeist of that time using music as your guide, this album is a good a place to start. Prine opens with an obvious song about weed but younger listeners might not get the Hoffman reference. "Spanish Pipedream"... Read More