Last week, Capital Audiofest ruled large in the Washington, DC area, and I anointed our main product reviewer Ken Micallef to shoot as much video footage as he could of all the cool turntables and other analog-centric gear and goodies he came across at the show. CAF offered “a world of vinyl, gadgets, turntables, amplifiers, loudspeakers, and the mad audiophiles who love them,” Ken noted in a caption underneath the 16-minute video he posted for us on YouTube that you can now watch in the story below. . .

Aja is the fourth (and first non-sequential) entry in Analogue Productions' comprehensive 200g 45rpm 2LP Steely Dan UHQR reissue series — and it’s possibly the most anticipated of them all. Does the UHQR edition of Aja stack up favorably with and/or sound better than the previous LP editions from the label likes of ABC, Mobile Fidelity, and Cisco? Read AP editor Mike Mettler’s in-depth review to find out if the Aja UHQR is worth every bit of those cool 1,500 dime dances it’ll run you tp pick it up (a.k.a. $150, in normal dollars parlance). . .

Rhino just added two great titles to their ongoing AAA 180g 1LP High Fidelity series — namely, The Doobie Brothers’ March 1973 offering The Captain and Me and Herbie Hancock’s May 1972 effort, Crossings. Read on for all the AAA details. . .

Our latest Review Explosion Short Cuts serving tackles a trio of fine new LP sets thematically connected by a common love of British rock of the 1960s and ’70s. Included herein are an archival 2LP live set from The Flaming Lips circa 2003, a recent 1LP studio offering from the ever-prolific Guided By Voices, and the first official solo sojourn LP from acclaimed Irish singer/songwriter/producer Thomas Walsh. Read on to glean Mark Smotroff’s take on these wonderful LP sides that are collectively chock full of melody and imagination. . .

ARC, the ARChive of Contemporary Music, consists of the world’s largest music collection — it contains over 3 million LPs and other historical recording-related materials — but it is now looking for a new, permanent home. Read on to see ARC’s plans for the ongoing preservation and housing of this truly important collection — and how you may be able to help keep it going, if you so choose. . .

While we’re waiting to upload some first-hand reports from the intrepid AP team that attended this past weekend’s Capital Audio Fest, we thought we’d take a moment to look at some new top-shelf moving magnet (MM) cartridges from Ortofon. The Danish company just announced seven additions to their vaunted 2M series — namely, seven new MM carts specifically designated as 2MR. Read on to see what’s in the feature set for the 2MR series as a whole as well as each respective SRP for Ortofon’s fine new MM cartridge array. . .

In retrospect, Tom Waits’ trajectory from singer/song writer to down-beaten jazz-fueled street person scowling at the piano in the 1970s made perfect sense. But when he came out of the gate in the early 1980s, his transformation was almost as dramatic as David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust reinvention. Five new of-era 180g 1LP reissues from Island/UMe — namely, 1983’s Swordfishtrombones, 1985’s Rain Dogs, 1987’s Franks Wild Years, 1992’s Bone Machine, and 1993’s The Black Rider — all seek to remind us of just how fertile this period was in Waits’ overall canon. Read Mark Smotroff’s Short Cuts combo review to see if any or all of these new wonderful Waits reissues belong in your collection. . .

David Rawlings had a clear mission ahead of him. His dream was to release Gillian Welch’s acclaimed June 2011 alt-rural album The Harrow & The Harvest on reel-to-reel tape — but just how would he go about doing it? One word: DIY. During a recent phone interview with AP editor Mike Mettler, Rawlings discusses how The Harrow & The Harvest made its transition to tape, why making tape duplicates is a challenging process, why he also still loves cutting lacquers, and which Welch album might just make its reel-to-reel debut next. . .

Since we went to the upper reaches of aspirational gear with yesterday’s look at an uber-high-end phono preamp, we figured we’d swing the SRP pendulum back the other way today and eyeball a new, and quite affordable, piece of equipment from noted German manufacturer Rekkord — namely, their new F100 turntable. Read on to find out more about the budget-minded F100 ’table and its feature set. . .

Nagra is making a bold statement with their all-caps HD PHONO preamp. Read on to see all the specs of the high-end Swiss manufacturer’s flag-planting phono preamp. . .