October 2021
I have a self-imposed rule when assigning stars for albums I review for SoundStage! Xperience or on my other gig at DownBeat magazine: As a service to consumers, I deduct half a star if the artist provides less than the 45 minutes of music I would expect on a typical album without discounting the retail price.
September 2021
Whether the credit is due to his Florida upbringing or his longtime residency in California, singer-songwriter Tom Petty had an incredible knack for writing summertime anthems. Songs like “Even the Losers,” “You Don’t Know How It Feels,” and “The Waiting” had extra resonance when played on a car radio on a sultry day, and there was something related to yearning and the quest for freedom in many of his songs—or those he cowrote—that naturally led to the open road or the beach.
August 2021
In 1940, Chicago was home to 278,000 black residents. Twenty years later, that number had climbed to 813,000—the result of a massive northward migration of African Americans, largely from rural parts of Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee. The institutionalized racism in the South was at the root of much of this migration, but intertwined economic factors also shaped the movement.
Note: for the full suite of measurements for the iFi Audio Zen Phono from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click this link.
July 2021
When the stars align, the intersection between art and commerce can benefit both artist and audience, but the meeting is never anything but unpredictable. Sometimes, the two forces collide with terrible results.
Note: for the full suite of measurements for the KLH Albany II loudspeaker performed in the anechoic chamber at Canada’s National Research Council, click this link.
June 2021
Everybody Digs Bill Evans—the name of a recording released in 1959—seems like little more than a hip album title until you reflect on the broad admiration the late jazz pianist engendered in most of the people who encountered his playing. Even in the atypically aggressive performances toward the end of his life, listeners could hear his sensitivity and heart, to say nothing of his deft touch and ability to find original ways of phrasing—even with a hoary chestnut like “Danny Boy.” So outsized is his influence it’s actually possible to make the case that Evans played a disproportionate role in making Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue the album that many people—including those who generally dislike improvised music—cite as their favorite jazz recording.
Note: for the full suite of measurements for the Rotel A11 Tribute from the SoundStage! Audio Electronics Lab, click this link.
May 2021
Thanks to a spate of influential recording sessions, 2021 is a landmark year for albums marking their 50th anniversary. From the Allman Brothers Band’s At Fillmore East to The Who’s Who’s Next, 1971 saw the release of more exceptional rock or rock-related albums than perhaps any other single year, with the possible exception of 1967.
April 2021
Dear Audiophile: If you’ve slid over here from SoundStage! Hi-Fi or even SoundStage! Ultra, welcome. But, listen, perhaps you should skip ahead a couple of paragraphs; I’m going to reveal something sacrilegious.
Note: for the full suite of measurements for the Clarus Cable Coda DAC-preamplifier from the SoundStage! Audio Electronics Lab, click this link.
March 2021
Everyone has songs in their memory bank they can call forth at will—tunes that relate to special moments, or just pieces they’ve heard so often they can hum them note for note.
Note: for the full suite of measurements for the Music Hall a15.3 from the SoundStage! Audio Electronics Lab, click this link.
February 2021
In opera, musical theater, the blues, country music, and, of course, in pop music, the human voice is an essential instrument. The skilled application of breath, glottal manipulation, timbre, tone, and other singing techniques can touch our hearts, draw a tear, raise a smile. It’s straight from human throat to human ear; there is no more elemental communication.
Note: for the full suite of measurements for the NAD PP 2e from the SoundStage! Audio Electronics Lab, click this link.
January 2021
As a professional writer, I’ve spent a lot of my life interviewing electrical engineers about technology and then communicating how things work to lay audiences. From the basics of sending voices down copper lines to cloud storage for data, I like to think I’ve done a good job of explaining technology. And while I could do the same with the way physical vibrations are generated on a record and transformed into sound, there’s a black magic to that particular feat of engineering that always makes me shake my head in wonder.
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