Los Angeles—April 26, 2021 — Verve/UMe’s Acoustic Sounds series celebrates Impulse!’s 60th anniversary, releasing May 14 two of the four titles that originally launched the iconic orange and black label:
• Ray Charles – Genius + Soul = Jazz
• Gil Evans Orchestra – Out Of The Cool
Filmmaker Ben Williams is posting on YouTube a series of videos he's shot at the Los Angeles and Orange County Audio Society (LAOCAS) December Galas over the past few years. This short one was filmed the day before AnalogPlanet editor Michael Fremer received the Society's Founder's Award. BTW: below the short video is my roast of Chad Kassem when he got the award December 7th 2014. If you haven't watched it, you should!(Photo: Chad and Michael visit Thai Plastics outside of Bangkok, Thailand)
The first AnalogPlanet video in months is an hour plus worth of weird and unusual records in the editor's large collection. What makes an album "weird" or "unusual"? A wide variety of possibilities as you'll see in this amusing and entertaining video in which the website's editor literally lets his hair down.
What’s “surprising” about QHW Audio’s “The Vinyl” phono preamplifier? More than a few things, starting with its Made In Spain origin. Perhaps I’m just ignorant but other than the highest tech WADAX brand of digital electronics, an older piece of which I reviewed for Stereophile, I’m not aware of a burgeoning Spanish audio manufacturing scene. Perhaps I’m mistaken. If so, I’d be happy to stand corrected.
Hagerman Audio Lab’s 3rd generation fully balanced from input to output 3 pound Trumpet MC combines a differential JFET input front-end with a more conventional 6 dual-triode vacuum tube (4X 12AX7, 2X 12AU7) gain/ phase-splitter/driver/output (if I misread the schematic, which is possible, Hagerman will correct me!). Each tube came fitted with a damping ring.
Cleveland, Ohio based Gotta Groove Records today announced an ownership change, but it shouldn't change how the company does business, which is very successfully, or how it presses records, which is very well.
Rhino releases on June 25th a box set containing re-mastered versions of Joni Mitchell's first four Reprise albums (1968-71). The date is the 3 days after the 50th anniversary of the original release of Blue, which many fans consider a pivotal album in her recording career and one of the most thoughtful musical expressions of love lost ever. It was also her final Reprise release. Blue, like albums by Nick Drake and a few others from that era continue to be rediscovered by succeeding generations of fans and musicians alike.
Newvelle Records yesterday announced it was releasing as a "stand alone" LP from the 4 LP New Orleans Collection Irma Thomas' remarkable Love Is The Foundation.
When readers ask why “they” no longer manufacture a really high quality moving magnet cartridge, I respond “Ortofon 2M Black” ($695). Its nude Shibata stylus delivers great detail, it’s an effective tracker at 1.5 grams and it outputs a generous 5mVs. Plus, based on years of experience reviewing the company’s output up and down the product line, it’s safe to say Ortofon delivers build quality uniformity at every price point. Oh, and the 2M Black is a sweet sounding, spectrally well-balanced cartridge.