BS&T fans fall into 4 camps: the 1st which prefers the Al Kooper led original group and the album Child is Father to the Man, the 2nd that prefers only the second eponymously titled album, which was the group's most popular, the 3rd camp that loves the first two albums and the 4th camp that loves all of the group's albums. This box is definitely for them.

A pleasant surprise arrived at my door the other day: the 180gm vinyl edition of Companion, the Patricia Barber album released last year on Premonition/Blue Note. According to the jacket, the six-track set, impeccably recorded live in Chicago last July by Jim Anderson, was mastered from a 24-bit transfer of an analog recording. You can bet the vinyl sounds better than the 16-bit CD—at less than 20 minutes a side, there's plenty of room for the recording's full dynamics.

That new record you just unboxed probably came shrink-wrapped or in a perforated sealed bag. Maybe it has a sticker or two on it or it's a numbered limited edition. Watch how all of this happens in this just produced video shot at Furnace Manufacturing with founder Eric Astor. And then go to Furnace's brand new, soon to be operational vinyl pressing plant that will also incorporate the packaging facility, which has outgrown its current location. Furnace began in the 1990s as a production and packaging agent for indie and major labels—perhaps you’re unsure about what that exactly means. After watching the video you will—and perhaps you'll come to appreciate an LP production cost you've not before considered.

VPI just announced a stand-alone dedicated moving magnet phono preamplifier based upon the circuit in the Player turntable's built-in unit.

If you were preparing to archive your LPs to CD-R, what would you do first? Right. You'd scrub your records and whip your turntable into shape—maybe even upgrade your cartridge and/or phono section. In March The New York Times's "Circuits" section published "Janis and Jimi, Come Back from the Attic," an article about digitizing and archiving vinyl that I don't think even mentioned the word "turntable." Obviously, analog is news unfit to print.

Just going to reproduce much of the press release this time:

Blue Note Records introduces Blue Note Review: Volume One - Peace, Love & Fishing, the inaugural edition of a stunning new biannual, limited edition, luxury boxset subscription series that encapsulates the storied past and auspicious future of the legendary jazz label. The beautifully curated collector's item is a limited production of 1,500 sets, and is available to order today for $200 exclusively at bluenotereview.com. Watch an unboxing video of the Blue Note Review set at that URL.

The just concluded New York Audio Show 2017 was small. Really small. It was so sad for one of the world’s greatest and most musically sophisticated cities to not be able to support an appropriately sized audio exhibition.

AnalogPlanet visits Ovation AV in Indianapolis to speak and play records for a large and appreciative audience. Here's a tour of a well-stocked store filled with affordable two channel audio and home theater. The event featured generous product giveaways on a scale rarely seen, including turntables and big screen televisions. Good show Ovation!

Day two of the international “Making Vinyl 2017 Detroit” event began with Darryl “DMC” McDaniels’ rousing keynote address in which he described growing up as a rock’n’roll fan (Beatles, Stones, Dylan, etc.) in Hollis, Queens, listening to vinyl records, and his getting drawn, along with his friend Russell Simons into the then emerging turntablist scene that evolved into rap.

Tompkins Square announced today the upcoming release of Sonny Clark Trio : The 1960 Time Sessions, a limited edition 2LP set available exclusively via participating independent record stores as part of Record Store Day, on Black Friday, November 24th, 2017.