With the arrival of the sixth and final David Bowie anthology box set I Can’t Give Everything Away [2002-2016], Parlophone has finally completed a decade-long undertaking: ruining the sound of Bowie’s entire catalog.It’s quite impressive, actually. Six hefty remaster box sets from 2015 to 2025, most with some problem of some sort, and none of them having the sound quality these records deserve. Not all of the box set remasters (and the equivalent individual album... Read More

Last month, Sacramento Nu-Metal band Deftones dropped their 10th studio album Private Music. Coincidentally, this album also marks nearly 30 years since their debut LP Adrenaline released in 1995. Deftones have come a long way in 30 years, and their longevity is rare, especially for a band associated with a style of music that mostly died off in the mid 2000s. But part of their staying power has been the musical creativity that has long elevated the group far above... Read More

To be brief: compared to the version included in the deluxe box set of a few years ago, this re-mastered One-Step version cut by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering sounds soooo much better, it's kind of ridiculous.I took it to my friend Anthony Chiarella's (he's CEO of Specialty Sound & Vision, which distributes Gryphon among other products) and played it on his system during a meeting of the New York/N.J. Audio club and the reaction in the... Read More

Following Roxy Music's epic and successful 2022 world tour, Phil and Andy decided they'd not had enough and so the two, along with original Roxy drummer Paul Thompson, went into the studio and in October 2023 released AM PM. They decided in March of 2024 to do some live shows based on the album and this is the result.Frankly, it's reassuring to know that Andy survived the Roxy tour because he appeared to be blowing his brains out and as cosmic,... Read More

To mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Arnold Schoenberg, DG's Original Source deluxe vinyl reissue series presents Herbert von Karajan's seminal survey of music by the composer and his two most famous pupils, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. In Part 1 of our coverage of this important reissue I discussed the development of atonality and serialism in the music of Schoenberg, which laid the foundation for a major strand of 20th century modernism. Here, in Part 2, I discuss how the recording industry represented this repertoire in the years leading up to the release of Karajan's game-changing box set.

Tomorrow I leave for the Making Vinyl even in Haarlem, The Netherlands, and what shows up today? The New $899 Technics SL50C turntable that comes complete with an Ortofon 2M Red and built in phono preamplifier! So let's unbox it together (in a hurry). I'm hoping tomorrow I'll have time to give it a quick spin and post video before I leave, but maybe not! Read More

Last week during a visit to REL Acoustics in Berkeley, CA, I was among the guests treated to a tour of 2200 Studios, the former legendary The Record Plant where Fleetwood Mac recorded "Rumours", Prince recorded his debut album and so much music history was written and played. The new owners just recently opened the restored facility that also contains many of the musical instruments formerly housed at Fantasy Studios, including the piano Bill Evans played on... Read More

Peter Ledermann's announcement: After 30 years in our location, we are being forced out of our Soundsmith home......with little time to move…..and we need your help. This rapid unplanned move is very expensive…so to raise funds for the move and to create an opportunity for you….Peter Ledermann is personally building a limited number of our high end cartridges - now available direct to you at a great discount for a limited time…….and he will help you on the phone... Read More

The Mack Avenue licensing deal with Strata-east Records turned out to be more successful than the label had originally thought. The first run of 2500 titles each, sold out relatively quickly and probably exceeded sales when the records were originally released, which is both amazing and gratifying. The hyperlink is to our original coverage of the reissue announcement.The re-stocked titles are available now at the Mack Avenue Store And soon will be available again at... Read More

While the snarky part of my mind tends to include Transrotor turntables in the “alien spaceships from the planet chrome” category of decks, the Strato Nero turntable that showed up for review (delivered by truck, not saucer) complete with TRA-9 tonearm again confirmed that my snark is not to be trusted. What arrived instead of a spaceship was a massive, relatively traditional looking rectangular plinth, a TRA-9 tonearm already mounted, and an accompanying Konstant... Read More

To mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Arnold Schoenberg, DG's Original Source deluxe vinyl reissue series presents Herbert von Karajan's seminal survey of music by the composer and his two most famous pupils, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Mastered and cut AAA directly from the original 4 and 8-track mastertapes by Rainer Maillard and Sidney C. Meyer at Emil Berliner Studios, this deluxe 4LP set offers the perfect opportunity to reassess how these composers played a central role in changing everything about how music was composed, listened to - and not always understood.

Zev Feldman—record producer and Jazz Detective—launches his next endeavor, the archival label Time Traveler Recordings with the label’s Muse Master Edition Series: a run of masterpiece reissues from the historic Muse Records catalog. Pre-order Muse Master Edition Series.The series begins with the October 17th release of three albums from the legendary label’s discography: drummer Roy Brooks’ seminal 1972 live album The Free Slave; pianist Kenny Barron’s 1973 work... Read More

Along with an Acoustical-Systems A*Stellar turntable to review, company founder and designer Dietrich Brakemeier brought along a remarkable sounding solo piano record his company sponsored produced and released on vinyl and CD last year, created using a purist minimal microphone technique, and Studer tape recorders. The venue was an old brewery—the Sudhaus—(which I assume translated to "suds house", the name given to my college fraternity living room), now a... Read More

(Press release): Analogue Productions is revisiting its first-ever UHQR (Ultra High Quality Record) title — The Jimi Hendrix Experience's 1967 masterpiece Axis: Bold As Love - newly remastered and available for the first time as a 45 RPM edition, in both stereo and mono pressings. Both the stereo and mono versions have been cut by noted mastering engineer Bernie Grundman from the original analog master tapes, and pressed at Acoustic Sounds' industry-leading... Read More

Sometimes, events unfold unexpectedly, forcing you to take a journey down a path you would not have considered walking. In late 2024, my analog front end was in transition when I decided to upgrade my vinyl setup by replacing my reference turntable and cartridge. Due to production delays, I was without a reference turntable for over four months. During this period, I found myself listening to streaming more critically than ever before, which led me to discover a... Read More

If you were a suburban white kid of a certain age and remember when Elvis appeared, seemingly from outer space, everything in your world changed (unless your parents were into Black music). Of course there was an Ed Sullivan, Steve Allen, and Milton Berle show "pre-reel" that you may have caught, but this person looked and sounded like no one else you'd ever seen before on television and it didn't appear to be an act. Even when Elvis goofed around... Read More

(Press Release): Frank Sinatra’s seminal 1955 Capitol Records album In The Wee Small Hours will be reissued in Blue Note’s acclaimed Tone Poet Audiophile Vinyl Series on November 14 marking the album’s 70th anniversary. Produced for release by Joe Harley, the new Tone Poet Vinyl Edition was mastered by Kevin Gray from the original analog master tapes, pressed on 180g vinyl at Record Technology Inc. (RTI), and comes packaged in a deluxe gatefold tip-on jacket featuring... Read More

The lack of archival Led Zeppelin releases in recent years makes the divided 2014-15 remaster campaign, complemented with unreleased studio rarities, a treasure trove in hindsight. Scholarly knowledge of seasoned collectors on what’s presumed to exist in the archives and what’s leaked in bootleg circles makes the group a no-brainer candidate for being one of rock’s most preserved acts. Nonetheless, Jimmy Page’s itch for perfectionism has left so little released in the... Read More