Jack White's new Third Man/Columbia album Lazaretto opened at #1 on Billboard's album charts, selling 138,000 copies, 40,000 of which were the "ultra" vinyl edition, according to Nielsen SoundScan. It was the biggest vinyl seller since the beginning in 1991 of Nielsen SoundScan's music tracking service.
Thanks to an analogplanet.com reader's excellent suggestion, the blind mat test will include the original 96/24 file from which the Chasing the Dragon LP was cut. Recording engineer and label owner Mike Valentine was kind enough to send the original file of the Vivaldi "Concerto For Two Mandolins" that was used for the mat recordings.
There's still a great deal of news to post from both the Munich High End and T.H.E. Show Newport Beach and that will be coming shortly. Meanwhile, are you ready for a mat test?
It's difficult to believe that 25 years have passed since the original release of Bonnie Raitt's Nick of Time LP, an album whose title song deals with running out of time but that's how long it's been.
During a visit to SME's factory May 19th (full photo story upcoming) company operations manager Liam Daly introduced the upcoming completely redesigned Model 10 turntable due for release some time in 2015.
On June 28th and 29th, Mastering engineer Chris Bellman (CB in your "dead wax") and recording engineer/mixer Francis Buckley will present the two day course "Analog Mastering in a Digital World" at Bernie Grundman Mastering. It's part of a Studio Prodigy Master Class Series
On Wednesday, May 7th, Nashville's United Record Pressing announced a major plant expansion with the planned addition of 16 additional presses. To meet demand the company currently operated 24/6 snd has been doing so for the past two years.
We've updated our site platform this weekend and changed a few things.
Log in to the site is now located at the right end of the nav bar at top.
We apologize that any comments that you might have added this weekend have been lost. There are still a few minor issues we are fixing, so please bear with us.
The second batch of $19.95 digitally sourced Blue Notes has arrived and it's going to take time to go through all of them but there were a few surprises, the most pleasant of which is that aside from side two of the iconic Something Else (BN1595) looking like "cake icing", visually these records appear to be extremely well-pressed.
Visual designer and vinyl enthusiast Kate Koeppel offers a collection of wooden laser cut alphabetical record dividers available for both 12" and 7" records stored either vertically or horizontally.