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- Category: Music Everywhere Music Everywhere
Grace Digital EcoXGear EcoPebble Lite Bluetooth Speaker
December 2019
Experience has taught me that, no matter how small their Wi-Fi, waterproof, and/or Bluetooth speakers may be, Grace Digital consistently lavishes on their design and manufacture the same high level of care and quality. The EcoPebble Lite ($39.99 USD) is their next-to-least-expensive EcoXGear speaker, after the even-smaller EcoDrop ($29.99) -- the two smallest models in the ExoXGear line. But don’t sneeze at this little guy. As Grace CEO Greg Fadul puts it, the EcoPebble Lite is “tiny but mighty.” I decided to put it through its paces.
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- Category: "On HiFi" with Wes Marshall "On HiFi" with Wes Marshall
The One I've Been Waiting For: NAD's C 658 BluOS Streaming DAC
December 2019
My discovery of NAD’s C 658 BluOS streaming DAC ($1649 USD) marks the end of a very long search.
It began in high school, when I succumbed to addictions to music and audio gear. Ever since, I’ve looked for a device that would allow me to dispense with the ever-growing rack of audio components I’ve set up in -- so far -- 16 different homes. Early on, I had a turntable, tonearm, and cartridge, a phono preamp, a preamp, reel-to-reel and cassette tape decks, a tuner, two power amps, huge speakers, interconnects from each source to the preamp, interconnects from preamp to power amps, and speaker cables -- oh, and a record cleaner. Added to those, following the birth of what Sony was pleased to call perfect sound forever, were a CD player and DAC.
Best of the Decade in Jazz
December 2019
My first best-of-the-decade list was a defensive reaction to the frequently revived notion that jazz is dying, or worse. Those kinds of negative notions were swirling again in 2009, so I decided to look back at the recordings that had caught my ear over the previous ten years.
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- Category: SoundStage! Encore SoundStage! Encore
Listening with Your Eyes, with David Chesky
December 2019
David Chesky is a musician, conductor, songwriter, and co-owner of Chesky Records, Manhattan Productions, and HDTracks. In this video, Chesky talks about how, when we listen to music in a live setting, our eyes often dictate what we end up hearing. As a result, we can be tricked into hearing something we're really not.
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- Category: Blu-ray movies Blu-ray movies
"Cluny Brown"
November 2019
“Squirrels to the Nuts” -- Cluny Brown Arrives on Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 997
Format: BD
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A skewering of the British class system, and a paean to the joys of finding one’s place in life, Margery Sharp’s best-selling novel from 1944 seemed to cry out for a movie version, and in 1946 it got The Lubitsch Touch -- it was Ernst Lubitsch’s final completed film. Book and film are set in 1938 London, at the time of Hitler’s invasion of the Sudetenland. Although Sharp, writing at the height of WWII, obviously knew of the later consequences of this action, here Hitler is something of a joke, and the invasion an only potentially horrible event that takes second place to her main characters’ preservation of social decorum.
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- Category: Music Everywhere Music Everywhere
Tribit MaxSound Plus Bluetooth Speaker
November 2019
Bluetooth-enabled portable speakers have advanced to the point that we’re no longer amazed when such small boxes produce such big sound. Tribit has now upped the ante with a real speaker priced lower than any I’ve seen, and sold through Amazon.com ($55.99 USD).
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- Category: "On HiFi" with Wes Marshall "On HiFi" with Wes Marshall
Fancy a Fine-Sounding Soundbar? Try the Vizio SB46312-F6
November 2019
The cutting edge has its attractions, especially to someone who spends so much time sharing his opinions in print. I’m human -- I want to look cool. But when it comes to loudspeakers I’ve always been something of a traditionalist, and sometimes it takes me a while to catch up.
Keith Jarrett: “Munich 2016”
November 2019
ECM 2667/68
Format: 2 CDs
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Sometime around 1970, a young German bassist and record producer named Manfred Eicher sent a letter to American pianist Keith Jarrett, requesting that Jarrett consider making a trio record for Eicher’s nascent ECM Records label. As Eicher recalled it recently for a lengthy DownBeat magazine article in honor of the label’s 50th anniversary, the request was that Jarrett record with drummer Jack DeJohnette and bassist Gary Peacock. Jarrett, two years younger than Eicher, had a different idea. Already well known for his four-year tenure with saxophonist Charles Lloyd’s popular quartet, which included DeJohnette, and having recorded a handful of albums under his own name, the pianist wanted to move in a new direction.
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- Category: Blu-ray movies Blu-ray movies
"Fists in the Pocket"
October 2019
Lou Castel’s Memorable Portrayal of a Serial Killer in the Making
The Criterion Collection 333
Format: Blu-ray
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Dysfunctional families have always been great fodder for makers of film and television. You can scarcely watch a TV comedy show these days that doesn’t revolve around a screwed-up family. And filmmakers have found that dysfunctional families can be things of terror.
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- Category: Music Everywhere Music Everywhere
Music Everywhere: Harman/Kardon Citation One Wi-Fi Speaker
October 2019
Other than its AC power connection, the latest and smallest member of Harman/Kardon’s Citation line of Wi-Fi speakers is truly wireless. You can send it music via a Chromecast-enabled app, Bluetooth, or Google Assistant -- it has no input of any kind for a wired device. The Citation One seems a bit pricey at $199.95 USD, but Amazon and other dealers offer significant discounts -- even Harman/Kardon currently sells it for $159.95.
