Grateful Dead: "Grateful Dead (Skull & Roses)"
- Written by: Joseph Taylor
- Category: Recording of the Month
Rhino Entertainment/Warner Records R1 1935 (LP), R2 655956 (CD)
Format: LP, CD
Musical Performance: ****
Sound Quality: ***½
Overall Enjoyment: ****
The Grateful Dead’s eponymous seventh album has no official title. It’s often listed as Grateful Dead, but is better known to fans as Skull & Roses, after its unique cover art. The two-LP set, released in 1971, was the Dead’s second live album in what was then the band’s four-year recording career, and contains a number of tunes that would turn up regularly at Dead shows over the years. Drummer Mickey Hart’s three-year hiatus from the band began with Grateful Dead, and keyboard player Tom Constanten had left the previous year. As a result, the Dead sound leaner on Grateful Dead than on 1969’s Live/Dead, the band’s first live album, which was also a double LP.
Luxman D-03X CD Player
- Written by: Jeff Sirody
- Category: Full-Length Reviews
I’m an old-school kind of guy when it comes to audio. I like the physical medium, be it analog or digital. I want to see and handle the disc, read the liner notes, and appreciate the artwork or pictures that come with a recording. Luxman is old school, too—literally. Founded in 1925, this Japanese company has been making high-quality audio products ever since.
Material Obsession: Sonus Faber's Maxima Amator
- Written by: Jeff Fritz
- Category: Opinion
High-end audio is about the faithful reproduction of music. But high-end audio gear is about other things, too, such as materials and their applications in audio components. If we’re talking about speakers, those materials could consist of anything from wood to composites to fiberglass and carbon fiber, or metals such as aluminum, and even pours such as concrete.
Hemingway Audio Cable Z-core Alpha, Beta, and Sigma Power Cords
- Written by: Howard Kneller
- Category: Full-Length Reviews
Hemingway Audio Cable’s website bills the brand’s product as “The best audio cable ever created.” Reminiscent of slogans by companies like YG Acoustics (“The best speaker on earth”), ESS Laboratories (“Sound as clear as light”), and Kyron Audio (“The ultimate music experience”), this audacious assessment reminds us that the marketing claims of many audiophile companies aren’t exactly understated. Still, my friend Dave, an audiophile and cable aficionado, strongly advised me to audition Hemingway’s Z-core power cords.
Los Lobos: "Native Sons"
- Written by: Joseph Taylor
- Category: Recording of the Month
New West Records NW5514
Format: LP
Musical Performance: ****
Sound Quality: ***½
Overall Enjoyment: ****
Los Lobos are well respected for the quality of their songwriting, but throughout their career they’ve also excelled at bringing a fresh take to covers of other songwriters’ material. Their discography includes tribute albums to artists as varied as Fats Domino, the Grateful Dead, and Doc Pomus, and their recording of Ritchie Valens’s “La Bamba” was a big hit for them in 1987. Their EP Ride This (2004) comprised covers of seven songs by musicians and songwriters who had appeared on the concurrently released Los Lobos album, The Ride, including Dave Alvin, Elvis Costello, and Richard Thompson.
SPL Director Mk2 Preamplifier-DAC
- Written by: Aron Garrecht
- Category: Full-Length Reviews
Note: for the full suite of measurements from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click this link.
When I first laid eyes on the Director Mk2 preamplifier-DAC from Sound Performance Lab (aka SPL), it reminded me of a military-spec ham radio. Small yet built like a tank, it sports at the center of its faceplate a large Volume knob. At upper left is a small, red dot-matrix display, and at upper right two needle VU meters and a Standby/On toggle. At lower left is a smaller knob for selecting Mute or one of its 11 inputs, and at lower right are two toggle switches, labeled Tape Monitor Off/On and VU. The Director Mk2 is small—11″W x 4″H x 11.8″D—and weighs just 13 pounds, yet somehow exudes presence. In my many years of reviewing audio equipment, I’ve never seen such a small yet intriguing-looking preamplifier-DAC. It costs $3599 (all prices USD).
Edgar Villchur's Place in Hi-Fi History Is Set—for All Time
- Written by: Jeff Fritz
- Category: Opinion
Recently I happened on Herb Reichert’s review of Harbeth’s Monitor 30.2 40th Anniversary Edition loudspeaker, originally published in the April 2018 issue of Stereophile. In it, Reichert states, “Many a day, I think Edgar Villchur, inventor of the acoustic-suspension loudspeaker and the dome tweeter, ruined audio, and that audiophiles will never stop denying how artificially colored the sounds of domes and cones in boxes really are.” I hope Herb’s tongue was planted firmly in his cheek when he wrote those words, but they don’t read that way to me.
Helius Designs Viridia Turntable and Phaedra Tonearm
- Written by: Garrett Hongo
- Category: Full-Length Reviews
Every so often something comes along that changes everything. In childhood, the new kid gets a yo-yo, you go to a drive-in and there’s pizza during the intermission, you visit Yosemite National Park for the first time, the Beatles are on Ed Sullivan, and your father finally fires up the Dynakit Stereo 70 he’s been building and the lavish music makes the drab living room disappear. As an adult, transformative moments in audio happen so rarely that you grow used to mere incremental improvements, but then the faded pastel of your listening experience is blasted away by the bold colors of something truly radiant. The Helius Designs Viridia turntable and Phaedra tonearm were just that for me, and I’m still basking in their glories.
Curtis Amy & Dupree Bolton: "Katanga!"
- Written by: Joseph Taylor
- Category: Recording of the Month
Pacific Jazz Records/Blue Note Records ST-70/B0032877-01
Format: LP
Musical Performance: ****½
Sound Quality: ****½
Overall Enjoyment: ****½
If you’re a vinyl lover and a jazz fan, this is a great time to be alive. Blue Note Records has its Tone Poet and Classic Vinyl series, while Acoustic Sounds and Verve Records are collaborating to reissue titles from Verve, Impulse! Records, and other labels held by Universal Music Enterprises that don’t fall under the Blue Note umbrella. I’ve covered quite a few releases from all three reissue series here, and I had been planning to look elsewhere this month to mix things up until I played Katanga!, a Tone Poet reissue of a 1963 Pacific Jazz session co-led by Curtis Amy and Dupree Bolton.
SPL Performer m1000 Monoblock Amplifiers
- Written by: Aron Garrecht
- Category: Full-Length Reviews
Note: for the full suite of measurements from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click this link.
Sound Performance Lab (SPL) is based in Niederkrüchten, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, and has manufactured professional and home audio gear since 1983. With a deep background in studio mastering, SPL founder and chief designer Wolfgang Neumann got the idea of starting his own company while managing a recording studio in rural Germany in the late 1970s. In those days, the US dollar was valued at roughly 3.5 times the deutschmark, and importing US-made studio gear wasn’t cheap. This led Neumann to begin the tinkering that ultimately convinced him he could design and build better-sounding products and sell them at prices significantly below those of imported US equivalents. By 1983, he’d begun selling his products under the SPL brand, but struggled with distribution until, in 1985, he met Hermann Gier.
- Buying Guide: Your Dream Superspeakers at a Bargain Price
- MSB Technology Premier Digital-to-Analog Converter
- Ray Charles: "Genius + Soul = Jazz"
- Siltech Classic Legend 680L Speaker Cables
- Building a Supersystem Around Magico Speakers and MSB Technology Electronics
- Magico A5 Loudspeakers
- Steve Cropper: "Fire It Up"
- Allnic Audio: Humble Excellence
- Allnic Audio L-9000 OTL/OCL Preamplifier
- What Matters Most in an Audio System: The Loudspeaker Drive Unit
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