This beautifully designed and annotated set appeals to seasoned classical collectors and newbies alike with its gripping performances of three of the master symphonist’s most compelling works in outstanding sound and video.  Amidst all the tinsel and seasonal levity, give this set serious consideration.

Whether the members of Cream were considered “cream of the crop” players or ELP debuting before a crowd of 600,000 at the Isle of Wight, supergroups became a hot-button commodity that granted success in the late 1960s. Although Humble Pie may have included members of Small Faces, The Herd, Spooky Tooth, and the Apostolic Intervention, they were keen to distance themselves from any preconceived connotations by the music press. The foursome established a sound rooted in... Read More

With "retro" industrial design having been a "thing" in audio for the past few years, especially in loudspeakers and receivers, I've been wondering why VPI hasn't stepped up to the audio plate and knocked one out of the nostalgia Ozone Park with a re-imagined vintage VPI turntable (yes I do spend my spare time thinking of such things). Well here it is— a new and improved take on the venerable HW-19, proving there's VPI life beyond... Read More

The years after the liberation of France from German occupation in August 1944 were not easy ones for the great guitarist Django Reinhardt. Somehow, during the occupation, he had managed to remain in France and continue to play professionally with great success and even record while hundreds of thousands of fellow members of the Romany ethnic group were murdered by the Nazis.After the war, he and violinist Stephane Grapelli, on several occasions, the last in 1948, had... Read More

Here's how I produce a 42 pound lasagne every Christmas "from scratch" (bad word to use around records, I know)—and it's related to this channel's mission: vinyl records. How's that? But first: you might want to attempt this recipe. It's incredible. Back in 1997 I got a phone call from the wife of United Federation of Teachers founder Albert Shanker (referenced in Woody Allen's movie "Sleeper"). Shanker had recently... Read More

When jazz aficionados see the phrases Miles Davis and Prestige Recordings in the same sentence, they think of the “marathon sessions” of 1956, where the trumpeter and his quintet (known in retrospect as his 1st Great Quintet: John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones) blazed through four albums’ worth of material (released over the next few years as Relaxin’, Steamin’, Workin’, and Cookin’) in just two days (May 11 and October 26), to complete... Read More

According to Musical Fidelity, the newly introduced M6xTT combines "the inert mass" of 14.5 pound metal alloy platter and "zero resonating" hand polished double acrylic base structure plus an electronically controlled (33 1/3, 45rpm) outboard motor. The 9" aluminum tonearm features azimuth and VTA/SRA adjustability and a 5pin DIN jack output. The M6xTT sits on four height adjustable feet and includes a leather mat and high mass aluminum record... Read More

David Bowie recorded Station to Station—one of his greatest records IMO—at Cherokee Studios sometime in 1975 the same year as this Basie, Bellson, Brown album was put to tape in the same place. Bowie was in mid-career greatness, the jazz masters were clearly playing prime time but not at peak musical creativity, nor, to be honest, were most jazz fanatics paying much attention. Norman Granz started the label to give these greats an outlet, almost as a tribute space.... Read More

When my friend Robin Wyatt (Robyatt Audio) and I decided to release this live performance on vinyl we vowed to produce it "cost is no object" and we didn't do it to make money—not that we are against making money and we actually did make some. I sent as a gift to the about to retire Bob Ludwig what I thought were the finished, ready to be cut to lacquer files but he got back to me and insisted that he'd like to master it and have his name on it... Read More

The top photo was taken back in 2005, at the Stereophile Home Entertainment Show, New York Hilton Hotel, where Garth Leerer raffled off this swell Clearaudio turntable and I hosted the giveaway. Beginning in the late 70s/early 80s, Musical Surroundings' Garth Leerer has been an eye witness to and participant in the growth of high performance audio. I've known Garth for more than thirty years but mostly we're like two ships passing in the day and night... Read More

The TT-Hub turntable and its included isolation base are constructed of bamboo ply—a material chosen for acoustics, durability, and sustainability. The belt drive turntable features a quartz clock-regulated controller with fine speed tuning, feeding an outboard AC-synchronous motor housed in a heavy aluminum chassis. A precision bearing, consisting of a PEEK (polyetheretherketone) thrust pad and jeweled ball, supports a 30mm thick acrylic platter with a special... Read More

This was a difficult piece to write. I had to do more than my usual amount of listening, swapping gear, and thinking about how best to convey the Audio Note UK sound if such a thing exists. Many thanks to Peter Qvortrup and Adrian Ford-Crush of Audio Note for their help and patience.Audio Note has been on my radar for quite some time. I’ve read a bit about the origin of Audio Note Japan and, later, Audio Note UK - it’s an interesting and somewhat usual story. I’m not... Read More

I can't better describe this than the annotation's second sentence, but might as well begin with the first: "The celebration of YULE in Northern Europe harks back to a transition from ancient Pagan Germanic culture to the more formal spirituality of the newer Christian rite. Christmas, as we mostly now call it, gave us hymns, processions and chants, and in between, silence in church. Yule meant a vibrant pre-Christian secularity, with feasting and... Read More

Christmas comes early for followers of the spectacular Original Source vinyl reissues.  Prime your bank accounts for preorders starting December 13th… (Plus the winners of the OSS Test Pressing raffle are announced - in a unique way...)

(December 10, 2024 - Los Angeles, CA) Rhino Entertainment is proud to announce the launch of a new audiophile vinyl series, Rhino Reserves, offering legendary albums on 180-gram premium-quality black vinyl. Ensuring the highest audio quality, Rhino Reserve will be pressed locally at Fidelity Record Pressing’s brand-new plant in Oxnard, CA, and cut by renowned mastering engineer Matthew Lutthans at The Mastering Lab. For these inaugural releases, however, the lacquers... Read More

My main job in real life (to the extent any of our lives are real) is national-security columnist for Slate. Around this time every year, since 2003, its indulgent editors have let me write a piece on what I see as the year’s best jazz albums, usually the 10 best new recordings and the three best historical releases (which I have usually confined to music that for the most part hasn’t been issued before—in other words, excluding mere reissues). This past Wednesday,... Read More

This past Wednesday (December, 4) at Tribeca listening bar All Blues, Analogue Productions’ Chad Kassem, reissue supervisor Steve Berkowitz, and jazz scholar Ashley Kahn presented Birth Of The Blue, the new compilation of the Miles Davis Sextet’s May 26, 1958 session. Recorded almost a year before Kind Of Blue and featuring the same lineup—Miles, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers, and Jimmy Cobb—this set of four songs has never seen its... Read More

Costly, exotic phono cartridges are fun to write about and of course to listen to and own but they represent a tiny fraction of the business for large, "industrial grade" producers like Audio-Technica. Though most of the company's cartridge output centers on "bread and butter" models like the AT and VM 95 series, maintaining high precision, manufacturing excellence requires exercises in forward thinking design and execution.... Read More