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Details: Feature Reviews

Massdrop x NuForce EDC3 earphones measurements can be found by clicking this link.

April 2018

Reviewers' Choice All by themselves, the Massdrop x NuForce EDC3 earphones tell the story of where the audio biz is headed in 2018. Although the EDC3s pack three balanced-armature drivers into each tiny earpiece, they cost just $99 USD -- about 25% of what three-driver earphones typically cost a few years ago. They’re sold not through retail outlets or even conventional e-tailers, but through Massdrop, a Web-only entity that sells products based on requests and feedback from its own online communities. Five years ago, no one would have believed you could get three-driver earphones for $99, and no one would have heard of Massdrop.

Details: Blu-ray movies

April 2018

A Glorious Restoration from Universal/NBC and Criterion

The Criterion Collection 915
Format: Blu-ray

Overall Enjoyment

Picture Quality

Sound Quality

Extras

Today, Paul Whiteman (1890-1967) is mostly remembered as the man who commissioned and first performed George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. But in the 1920s he was a superstar comparable to such contemporaries as Babe Ruth (1895-1948). He sold a million copies of every new record, and his frequent diets were front-page news. Whiteman was on the portly side, and didn’t seem to mind critics and fans who called that to everyone’s attention. He was dubbed the “King of Jazz,” yet his music was more dance-hall pop spiced with some jazz elements -- Whiteman himself called it “symphonic jazz.” He and his band, the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, led the way to the swing styles of the 1940s. Whiteman’s name was also descriptive of who he was and whom he worked with: although the musicians who created and led jazz itself were black, the faces of the virtuosos in Whiteman’s band were all those of white men -- no African-Americans, and women performed only as singers or dancers.

Details: Pulse!

April 2018

The recent launch of Schiit Audio’s Loki equalizer, which I first saw at the 2017 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, inspired me to rethink some of the ideas I’ve long held about audio. The Loki provides a simple, affordable ($149 USD) way to alter the sound of the music you’re listening to. That the Loki is one of only a handful of equalizers ever marketed to audiophiles spotlights a paradox in high-end audio: It’s generally considered verboten to use an equalizer to change the sound of the music you’re listening to, but it’s perfectly OK -- and, in some camps, preferred -- to alter the sound of music through the use of speakers and electronics that add their own sonic color. Check out the comments sections on audio websites and you’ll see that many audiophiles shun the most scientifically advanced, sonically transparent speakers (PSBs, Revels, etc.) and embrace speakers with demonstrably colored sounds -- such as any model using a full-range dynamic driver.

Details: Feature Reviews

Sonarworks True-Fi measurements using headphones mentioned in this review can be found by clicking this link.

April 2018

Anyone who’s tried a few different headphones knows their sound can vary wildly. Some sound harsh and thin, others dull and bloated, and many sound good but have a few annoying quirks. When you consider these differences, and that most headphones are now connected to smartphones and computers, it’s not surprising that many apps have emerged to equalize ’phones for better sound. One of those is Sonarworks’ True-Fi ($79 USD), an app for Windows or Apple OS that I first encountered at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show.

Details: CD music

April 2018

Experience Hendrix/Legacy
Format: CD

Musical Performance

Sound Quality

Overall Enjoyment

Sometime in the mid-’70s, one of Rolling Stone’s waggish music critics began a review of one of the pastiche post-mortem recordings that surfaced in the decade after Jimi Hendrix’s death on September 18, 1970, with the words “Scrape, scrape.”

Details: Feature Reviews

Bowers & Wilkins PX headphones measurements can be found by clicking this link.

March 2018

These days, it seems as if every major loudspeaker manufacturer has gotten into the headphone market -- but the iconic British loudspeaker brand Bowers & Wilkins has already been at it for the better part of a decade. In 2010, Bowers & Wilkins introduced their P5 over-ear headphones, and since then they’ve released a new or updated model each year. We have reviewed and been impressed with many of these, and 2017’s P9 Signature headphones won Reviewers’ Choice and Product of the Year awards for their high qualities of sound, looks, and build. Bowers & Wilkins’ latest headphones are the PX over-ear model with active noise canceling and Bluetooth ($399 USD). Will it carry on the tradition of excellence?

Details: Blu-ray movies

March 2018

Rollicking Richardson

The Criterion Collection 910
Format: Blu-ray

Overall Enjoyment

Picture Quality

Sound Quality

Extras

In 1963, director Tony Richardson set the cinematic world on its ear with his irreverent film Tom Jones. Looking back, it seems unlikely that any historical genre movie could have brought Henry Fielding’s 1749 novel, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, to such heights of hilarity. Richardson did it by playing against type and treating this work from the mid-18th century as a risqué (for 1963) ribald comedy, complete with sight gags.

Details: Pulse!

March 2018

When I got into high-end audio, around 1990, I was attracted to its focus on achieving more realistic reproduction of the music that has been my passion since I was eight or nine years old. But I’m starting to feel that high-end audio now often aims at a different goal.

Details: Music Everywhere

March 2018

It’s impossible to discuss Grace Digital’s Mondo+ without thinking of the Logitech Squeezebox Touch. Though the Logitech was discontinued three years ago, its fans are legion, and still populate several websites on which they share ideas about how to tweak its performance and the like. The Squeezebox Touch is a great little device, and it’s still what I mostly use to stream files from my computer. The Grace Mondo+ won’t win in a head-to-head competition, no foul -- it was primarily designed for use as an Internet radio.

Details: Feature Reviews

Klipsch Heritage HP-3 headphones measurements can be found by clicking this link.

March 2018

Reviewers' Choice It was high time Klipsch created something like the Heritage HP-3 over-ear headphones. For years, the company has been exploiting its deep heritage with products that reflect the classic great looks and surprisingly tenacious design concepts of founder Paul W. Klipsch’s original horn loudspeakers. Yet in the mobile space, Klipsch has focused most of its efforts on tiny, balanced-armature earphones that can’t benefit much from the Klipsch cachet. To my delight, the HP-3s look like something Paul Klipsch himself might have designed back in the 1950s.

Details: Feature Articles & Reviews

March 2018

As other stores pull them from shelves, Waterloo Records promises to “not abandon” CDs.
-- Austin American-Statesman, February 8, 2018

This headline of a story by reporter Jake Harris caught my eye. In this age of mass murder, corruption, scandal, and sexual innuendo and assault, here is a major American newspaper devoting time and space to our little buddy the Compact Disc. For the past 147 years, the Statesman has been the primary newspaper of Austin, Texas, reputedly the “live music capital of the world,” so the statement carries some authority. Waterloo Records, an iconic record store on Lamar Boulevard, has a history of thumbing its nose at music-industry insiders in support of its local customers, and for the last 35 years Waterloo has been the heart of the local music business. In fact, the store has won the vaunted Best of Austin award from The Austin Chronicle every year since the store’s founding, in 1982.

Details: CD music

March 2018

Water Is Life 13
Format: CD

Musical Performance

Sound Quality

Overall Enjoyment

For an artist with a wholly individual technique and a career that spanned only 25 years, guitarist Django Reinhardt’s posthumous influence on popular music is challenged only by that of Jimi Hendrix and Charlie Parker. Sixty-five years after his death, at the age of 43, Reinhardt’s melodic fluency, harmonic sophistication, and rhythmic flow not only set the bar for jazz guitarists but gave birth to an informal school of followers that flourishes worldwide.

Details: Feature Reviews

Focal Clear headphones measurements can be found by clicking this link.

February 2018

Reviewers' Choice Headphones are like loudspeakers in two important ways. First, both make sound. Second, in both categories, what was recently considered a super-high-end product is now touted as “midpriced” or “accessible.” Take, for example, Focal’s Clear open-back headphones. They’re priced at $1500 USD, which slots them between Focal’s first two high-end models, the Utopias ($4000) and the Elears ($1000). Sure, the Utopias are among the costliest headphones available today, but for most people, spending even $500 on headphones is unthinkable.

Details: Blu-ray movies

February 2018

Gangsters, 1972 Mediterranean Style

Arrow 02.11.2017
Format: BD and DVD

Overall Enjoyment

Picture Quality

Sound Quality

Extras

It’s a delight to watch certain actors at work, regardless of the material, and for me Michael Caine has always been such an artist, using his charming voice, Cockney accent (almost always), and relaxed style to create unforgettable characters. He’s been at it a long time -- his first role was in 1956 -- and has been nominated for an Academy Award six times, and won twice, both times for Best Actor in a Supporting Role: Hannah and Her Sisters (1987) and The Cider House Rules (1999).

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Bowers & Wilkins PX Noise-Canceling Bluetooth Headphones

"Tom Jones"

Rollicking Richardson

Is High-End Audio Still About Music?

Music Everywhere: Grace Digital Mondo+ Wi-Fi Radio

Klipsch Heritage HP-3 Headphones

I Love Music. You Love Music. Can We Agree on a Few Other Things?

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Focal Clear Headphones

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