On this video I tell the story behind the new vinyl record I'm releasing along with my friend Robin Wyatt, on newly formed Liam Records. Bob Ludwig mastered the Duke Markos engineered recording that we collectively mixed with input from "Tone Poet" Joe Harley. Caelan Cardello is an exciting young pianist. Only after we decided the live performance deserved to be released on record did we find out that Caelan has quite a following in the New York area... Read More

October 20th, 2023—Deutsche Grammophon today announced the next releases in its highly regarded and well reviewed "The Original Source" series. The titles are "Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4" with Claudio Abbado & The Vienna Philharmonic, Richard Strauss "Tod und Verkärung/Vier letzte Lieder", Gundula Janowitz, soprano, Herbert von Karajan & The Berlin Philharmonic and a three LP set of recordings by William Steinberg and the Boston... Read More

In 1957, Robert "Mack" McCormick began working as a cab driver in Houston, Texas. He was twenty-seven, and to that point, his life had been one of debilitating depression, rootlessness, dissatisfaction, and failure. He and his mother had moved twenty times before he was sixteen. Listening to jazz and big band broadcasts was the joy of his drab and lonely life. At fifteen, he hitchhiked to New Orleans to meet Orin Blackstone, who was compiling Index To Jazz,... Read More

From its late '60's beginnings to today, progressive rock has always had cult status. Musical boundary pushing lengthy arrangements replete with elements of jazz and classical provide challenges for mainstream audiences. Therefore, a prog rock band's desire for commercial appeal then and now is often at odds with its creations and with the execs at the labels to which they are signed.

Analog Solutions SL, Fuerteventura, Spain, October 16, 2023- Analog Solutions SL (formerly Swedish Analog Technologies AB) is thrilled to announce it has chosen MIBS Distro NA to manage all aspects of SAT's distribution, marketing and brand management in North America, effective immediately.SAT is among audio's most coveted and exclusive brands. Since the introduction of its original Pickup Arm in 2015, SAT has cemented its place at the pinnacle of the audio... Read More

In his liner notes for the new Vinyl Me, Please reissue of Iggy and The Stooges’ 1973 album Raw Power, Andy O’Connor says it’s “not a record for audiophiles.” Then why give this record a sumptuously packaged all-analog reissue?Because despite the somewhat rough recording quality, few records are as historically important as Raw Power. It’s not even the best Stooges record, but it’s inarguably their most influential. Forget proto-punk; Raw Power was the first punk... Read More

Martin Scorsese's 2008 film Shine A Light concert film documented a 2006 Rolling Stones Beacon Theater engagement, but Jack White's "Loving Cup" performance with Mick Jagger almost stole the show. White appeared to be having the rock'n'roll time of his life, hardly able to contain his pleasure in an almost "I can't believe I'm here doing this! Growing up, it's what I dreamed about one day doing." Maybe that's... Read More

Clint J. Holley III's Well Made Music mastering studio opened in Cleveland, Ohio in 2010 and began cutting lacquers. In 2021 the company moved from the birthplace of Rock 'n' Roll and home of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, to Bristol, Virginia, known as "the Birthplace of Country Music". The studio currently cuts on two restored Neumann VMS-70 lathes (the number refers to the year of manufacture). Both have been in service since the early 1970s. One was obtained in 2009 from somewhere in New Jersey. The second was shipped over in 2013 from The Netherlands.

Here are notes on a selection from my favorite books on the history of recording technology, the history of the record business, and the interactions between recording technology, the record business, and the art of music. One example of what I mean by all that is, in the late 1920s, piezoelectric “crystal” microphones supplanted carbon microphones for radio broadcasting. Crystal microphones had a better signal-to-noise ratio than carbon microphones. Therefore, the... Read More

At the bottom of every page is the site's "housekeeping" and indexing area where you can select and go directly to content columnized into "Features", "Music" and "Equipment". The contents are further broken down beneath each header. It's all there neatly segmented as hyperlinks. A newly added link under "Tracking Angle Information" takes you to the Meet the Writers page. In case you don't often head... Read More

Schiit Audio's new $399 Skoll MM/MC phono preamp features fully discrete, differential Class A zero feedback gain stages and a fully passive RIAA network. No op-amps are in the circuit. Skoll’s gain stage is a compound JFET-BJT pair running on "massive" 64V rails for enhanced linearity and freedom from overload. The result is over 100dB signal to noise ratio for 40dB of gain, and up to 70dB of gain available.Additional features are relay switched inputs... Read More

Chasing the Dragon returns with another superbly recorded classical music "warhorse" performed by the National Symphony Orchestra, U.K., this outing conducted by the orchestra's current musical director Anthony Inglis, with Leader Katerina Nazarova playing a Del Gesu violin valued, the annotation says, at 7 million pounds. The venue for this "Scheherazade" was Henry Wood Hall, an unused church turned into an orchestral rehearsal and recording... Read More

A new video on the TrackingAngle YouTube channel has gotten thousands of views in a few hours. It lets viewers hear the same record playing back on two different turntables using the same arm, cartridge and phono preamp. The goal was to put an end to "all turntables sound alike" trolls it certainly did that! The turntables are the OMA K3 prototype I own and a TechDAS Air Force III Premium both fitted with the same SAT CF1-12 arm and Lyra Atlas Lambda SL... Read More

After my last harrowing adventure through Deutsche Grammophon’s “Original Source Series”, I was hoping this next batch would prove less problematic and more up to the standards of what I had appreciated about the first few releases in the series such as the excellent Abbado Rite of Spring. Fortunately, with these two particular titles set to release officially on October 20th, my fears were abated. My colleague Mark Ward has already reviewed the romantic era thrillers... Read More

Pro-Ject has released a series of group and album related turntables, including a Yellow Submarine shaped one, a Metallica themed one and ones paying homage to The Beatles (all white), Sgt. Pepper's... (the drum image in the platter), The Rolling Stones, etc. but none as dramatic as this new one aimed at DSOTM fans. It includes an in the dark light show along with more substantial features listed below. The MSRP is $1999.

Pharoah Sanders’ 1977 album Pharoah is one of beauty and contentment, of family and love. You could even call it relaxed, a term unfit for his other 60s and 70s classics. The story behind it, however, is one of bitterness and disappointment—a complete contrast to the record’s majestic sound.The saxophonist, who’d not entered the studio for at least three years, found himself and his band in a large, concrete room with minimal adornment and a rather primitive recording... Read More

Update! 10/8/2023 My inbox was filled with "first press" info. That's one of the great things about doing these videos and reviews. You learn stuff. So, I learn that supposedly the "first pressing" I have with date of 8-13-71 is an "east coast" pressing and doesn't sound nearly as good as one with a "W1" in the lead out groove and no date. So I search my storage space and I have one. I play it. It is much better... Read More

The Bricasti M3 arrives in the familiar Bricasti black-anodized-and-silver enclosure, but with a smaller form factor. It is 14" W x 11.25" D x 2.5" H, and weighs 10 pounds. The M3 has AES, S/PDIF, Toslink (Optical), and USB digital inputs as standard. An RJ45 Ethernet connection is optional. Furthermore, you can specify that your S/PDIF connector will be a BNC jack, rather than an RCA jack. I highly recommend the BNC, even though my review sample did not have it. I know this from previous experience, because the Parasound Halo CD-1 transport has that rare and special thing, a BNC S/PDIF output jack. Compared to Bricasti’s other offerings, the M3 is actually kind of cuddly looking. If you have a moderately spacious desk (and some extra cabbage in your bankroll), I am sure that the balanced-headphone-optioned M3 would make for an amazing computer-stereo headphone-listening setup.

Binging Ornette Coleman’s discography, from his early Contemporary recordings to his historic Atlantic period then the Blue Note releases and beyond, is a truly enriching experience. One hears how his sound developed over his first decade of recordings, how certain musicians fit in his groups, how he started exploring other instruments beside his usual alto sax. Last year, Blue Note’s Tone Poet series released Round Trip, a 6LP box set containing his mid-late 1960s... Read More