Esoteric Grandioso C1X

LINE PREAMPLIFIER

BOOK REVIEW

CHAIRMAN AT THE BOARD: RECORDING THE SOUNDTRACK OF A GENERATION, by Bill Schnee. Backbeat Books, 2021. 219pp. $24.49, hardcover; $21.49, Kindle e-book.

Classical Rock / Pop Jazz: Record Reviews

In its sixth year, International Anthem seriously stepped up production. 2020 saw the Chicago label releasing a fast succession of rewarding albums, including a standout disc by Tortoise guitarist Jeff Parker and adventurous jazz by Rob Mazurek and the collective Irreversible Entanglements.

NAD C 298

POWER AMPLIFIER

ELAC Alchemy DPA-2

POWER AMPLIFIER

Fun with Moose and Squirrel

’Cause, it’s hard to say what’s real / When you know the way you feel —Flaming Lips, “One More Robot/Sympathy 3000-21,” from Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

Marten Parker Trio Diamond

LOUDSPEAKER

GRAMOPHONE DREAMS

The bijou sub We have inherited an infinitely vast library of recorded musical art, the majority of which is well-recorded but has yet to be fully and completely reproduced.

Clearaudio Concept Active Wood

TURNTABLE

Focal Aria K2 936

LOUDSPEAKER

DCS BARTOK DAC/HEADPHONE AMPLIFIER

THIS ISSUE: Herb Reichert on the dCS Bartók; Ken Micallef reprises his Schiit Sol review, trying it out with some better ancillaries.

The magnificent eight

The Story of the Grateful Dead, a 14-LP, 8-album collection of Grateful Dead recordings with booklet and deluxe packaging, from Vinyl Me, Please (VMP-A006, 2020), is intended as a curated sampling of the high points in the Dead’s extensive catalog. The first seven albums were cut from analog tape, while Without a Net comes from the original digital master. The sound is breathtaking.

T+A Solitaire P headphones and HA 200 DACheadphone amplifier

What I categorize as mainstream, dealer-based, fancy-pants stream-ers and big-speakers audio is actually only the gold-plated tip of a gigantic asteroid-like monolith that extends (underground) from New York to Hong Kong, from the Arctic Circle to Antarctica. This immense audio-social mass is mostly invisible to the Madison Avenue mainstream, but simple Google searches expose millions of proletarian audio-gear constructers (DIY’ers) working in shops, basements, and garages, scratch-building everything from turntables to tonearms to phono cartridges, to capacitors and vacuum tubes, to amplifiers, headphones, ribbon and electrostatic speakers.

MAKE MORE NOISE!

The title of this set—4 CDs and a book—comes from British suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst’s call to arms for women to fight for their rights: “You have to make more noise than anybody else,” said Pankhurst, who died in 1928.

RECORD REVIEWS

EDITOR’S PICK - RECORDING OF THE MONTH

Landscape into music

It says something about the power of music that some individuals fading into dementia can still recognize the music they knew earlier in their lives. Not to denigrate new music, or music one hasn’t heard before, but our mental jukeboxes award top chart numbers to music that we have lived with over time. Those DJs making their playlists in our brain are the toughest of critics. They don’t care what anyone else might think, “Close to You” is staying in the rotation. Music and memory are linked.

Some great new reissues

For jazz fans, a new batch of releases in Blue Note’s Tone Poet series—vinyl reissues remastered with care and cut from the original analog tapes—is the reason for celebration.

PS Audio Stellar M1200

MONOBLOCK POWER AMPLIFIER

McIntosh MAC7200

STEREO RECEIVER

Marantz Model 30

INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER

KEF LS50 Meta LOUDSPEAKER

LOUDSPEAKER

Cambridge Audio CXA81

INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER

BOWIE, CURATED

FIVE YEARS AFTER THE ICON’S PASSING, A FAN REVIEWS THE POSTHUMOUS RELEASES

Acora Acoustics SRB

LOUDSPEAKER

Some truly affordable phono cartridges

Someone once asked me, “If I buy your $90,000, 25W amplifier, what will I get that I am not getting with my $2000, 200W amplifier?” My answer was simple: “Goosebumps, tears, and smirking.” Great, well-tuned audio systems, at all price levels, give their owners less of the annoying and distracting stuff and more of the exciting and engaging stuff. Great systems offer more opportunities for smirking pridefully while listening to great recordings.

Scrubbing bubbles

THIS ISSUE: A new ultrasonic record-cleaning machine and a very pretty cartridge with a body made from Blue River Agate.

Alta Audio Alyssa

At first look, our November 2020 review of the standmount loudspeaker ($5000/pair) from Alta Audio1 appeared to be a thorough vindication of the Stereophile method of reviewing, combining measurements with a subjective listening journal. John Atkinson’s measurements were generally fine, but he uncovered “strong discontinuities in the impedance traces at 174Hz and 291Hz [that] imply the presence of resonances.” They could only be internal airspace resonances, since he found the Alyssa’s cabinet to be admirably inert.

MBL NOBLE SERIES N31 CD PLAYER–D/A PROCESSOR

In Stereophile’s February 2018 issue,1 I reviewed the MBL Noble Line N31, a baroque-styled CD player and D/A processor from German manufacturer MBL.2

LOOKING BACK AT FLEETWOOD MAC

TWO REISSUES SHOW THAT THE BAND WAS GREAT BEFORE IT WAS FAMOUS.

Gryphon Essence Mono

POWER AMPLIFIER