On the morning of August 16, I was awakened to news of Aretha Franklin’s passing as announced on New York City’s classical station, WQXR, followed by the sound of Aretha rolling out her stunning rendition ...

The “Early-60s Folk Music Revival” incubated gigantic talents that reshaped popular music forever—Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell being the most prominent. A whole world of rock and pop music, “singer-songwriters,” and hybrid folk-rock Americana is ...

In late 2007 I was contacted by Jon Whitledge, who invited me to hear his ambitious car-audio system at the January, 2008 CES. I’d never heard of him, and the prospect of having my ears ...

What ignited your interest in the high end? Did it come from the music side or the electronics side? Both! Disassembling our old TV, taking out the speaker, and building it into an Adidas shoebox. ...

Spring Grove Avenue is a street in Cincinnati, Ohio, that, due to its wide lanes, light traffic, and limited stoplights, makes for a leisurely drive. It’s also a picturesque thoroughfare flanked with large old factories ...

Located at West 10th Street in Greenwich Village, Smalls Jazz Club has hosted concerts in a small basement room since 1994. Since 2007 Smalls has been recording and archiving all its performances, and in 2011 ...

Like Newvelle and SmallsLive, Edition Records is an artist-based jazz label. In this case the now ten-year-old pairing of pianist and composer David Stapleton and photographer Tim Dickeson has resulted in over 90 recordings. Located ...

Of the many articles and reviews that Harry Pearson wrote for The Absolute Sound, his annual Super LP List (aka SuperDisc List) may have been the most eagerly anticipated. The issue in which it was ...

Universal Music has generally chosen wisely for its important series of Blu-ray audio discs taken primarily from the distinguished Decca opera catalogue. Previous releases include the legendary Georg Solti Ring (now available complete on one ...

Please see ECM’s Spring 2018 vinyl catalog with all the ECM vinyl LPs currently in print. The catalog includes new recordings (“New Albums on Vinyl”), reissues of classic ECM titles (“From Analog Masters”), titles from ...

When Kip Hanrahan released Desire Develops an Edge in 1983, listeners in its orbit were quick to recognize a masterpiece, and that album significantly increased his visibility. Like his debut LP (1981’s Coup de téte) ...

As part of our focus on affordable speakers, we asked four of the Industry’s leading designers to describe their approach to creating the most musical speakers for the price. Dean Hartley Technical Director, Monitor Audio ...

The distinguished Finnish loudspeaker designer and one of the greatest theoreticians of speaker acoustics of modern times, Jorma Salmi passed away suddenly on May 27, 2018. Salmi’s work at Gradient became a portal into what ...

As a newcomer to the Munich High-End extravaganza, I was blown away by the unbelievable amount of high-end audio jewelry on display. Not only does Munich dwarf whatever is going on at CES, it dwarfs ...

William H. (Bill) Watkins (1929-2018), developer of the famous Watkins Dual-Drive Woofer, the renowned WE-1 large floor-standing speaker system, the recently introduced compact Generation 4 unit, and numerous other high-performance speakers, passed away at his ...