Latest

January 2022

Columbia Records/Legacy 19439900841
Format: 2 LPs

Musical Performance

Sound Quality

Overall Enjoyment

I like a band with some tension in it.

Say what you will about the music made by artists who truly like one another—even after touring together in a cramped vehicle for weeks and suffering through the endless hassles of life on the road—I’ll take the music of musicians like Ray and Dave Davies, or Sam Moore and Dave Prater, people who could barely tolerate one another offstage but could create magic together once they faced an audience. From that tension comes great art.

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January 2022

Two years ago, I reviewed the initial Tribit StormBox, predicting a bright future for the company and its products. It’s been a long wait, but now Tribit has added the StormBox Pro to its lineup, and this new speaker’s performance signals that the company’s future looks just as bright as ever. At $129.99 USD, the speaker outperforms most of the contenders in its price and size range and is on par with a number of other heavy hitters in the portable Bluetooth niche.

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December 2021

A True Masterpiece Receives the Criterion BD Treatment

The Criterion Collection 219
Format: BD

Overall Enjoyment

Picture Quality

Sound Quality

Extras

Released in the United States in 1956 (1954 in Italy), La Strada has proven to be a true cinematic masterpiece capable of withstanding the test of time. The film garnered international acclaim, both for director Federico Fellini and his wife, featured actress Giulietta Masina. Since Fellini set the movie in an indeterminate era (albeit one with motorcycles) and tells the story in the form of a fable, it can still elicit the same number of smiles and tears as it did 67 years ago.

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Note: for the full suite of measurements for the EarMen Tradutto DAC from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click this link.

December 2021

For a time, about a decade ago, I had this fantasy of promoting a concert that would feature an all-star band of top-flight musicians who held PhDs. As it happens, it wasn’t as far-fetched as it seems; pianist Vijay Iyer and saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa have already collaborated, and the French Moutin twins, drummer Louis and bassist François, would make a great rhythm section.

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December 2021

Tangerine Records TRC-2107
Format: CD

Musical Performance

Sound Quality

Overall Enjoyment

Let’s begin with a quiz: There are 99 individual performances on this extensive six-disc overview of singer-pianist Ray Charles’s career. How many of the songs do you think he composed?

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December 2021

Last time, I talked about recording solo artists and duets and offered some general advice about recording. This time I’m going to focus on recording a standard rock band: drums, bass guitar, guitar(s), keyboard, and vocals. Working with a band requires more experimentation, and it will challenge you to come up with more creative solutions than recording and mixing smaller acts. But in my book, that’s part of the fun. So this time, I’ll concentrate mainly on process and production tips to help make the final product (your music) better; they may also save you some time and a few headaches. I’ve already covered some basics on microphones and how they “hear” in prior articles, so if you haven’t read those articles, now’s a good time to catch up.

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December 2021

JBL started its PartyBox lineup with the huge floorstanding PartyBox 300 speaker that I reviewed a little over a year ago. Since then, the company has added speakers of various sizes to the line, the latest being the PartyBox On-The-Go model, which is portable and can play from its internal battery without having to be plugged in. At $349.95 (all prices USD), it’s not inexpensive, but you get a lot for your money: a very good-sounding PA/disco/guitar/karaoke/party speaker with lots of neat features.

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November 2021

A Study of Banality That is Simply Boring Today

The Criterion Collection 308
Format: BD

Overall Enjoyment

Picture Quality

Sound Quality

Extras

Director Jean-Luc Godard’s film about Parisian youth was polarizing from the very start. Most praised it as perceptive and clever, others not so much. Looking at it from a contemporary vantage point, I must say that I fall in the latter camp.

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Note: for the full suite of measurements for the Arcam SA30 from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click this link.

November 2021

In 1997, pianist Brad Mehldau, then 26, released The Art of the Trio, Volume One, his second album for Warner Bros. Records. That was followed by four additional volumes, the latest in 2001. The aggressively declarative title was conceived by producer Matt Pierson, who was also the head of A&R for jazz at the label. The idea was clearly to establish Mehldau as the heir to the postwar jazz trio tradition that had been established by artists like Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, and Keith Jarrett. Each of these pianists recruited band members who could improvise at a high level and be counted on to play outside the standard role of a rhythm section.

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November 2021

The first time Bruce Dickinson, then a vice-president at MCA Records, saw The Tragically Hip play live was at the Toronto Music Awards in 1988. “I guess it was during the first song,” Dickinson told the National Post in 2016. “Gord [Downie, the band’s lead singer] drops the mic on the floor inadvertently. It comes unattached from the cord, and the top of the mic comes off. I remember distinctly, Bobby Baker [guitar] and Gord Sinclair [bass] just looked at each other like, ‘Oh, crap. What are we going to do?’ Downie, as you know, is a great improviser. He just picks up the mic, puts it back together and tells a whole story in the middle of the song that involves the mic. I thought that was really cool.”

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