Features

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Michael Fremer  |  Jan 02, 2016
Bluetooth devices are not my beat but when a company making one brings it to a high performance audio show I pay attention.

Michael Fremer  |  Nov 01, 2004
TA: Let's go on the 5D era then, if we could. This is a major point of change for you guys. Your two primary sources of material, Gene Clark and then Bob Dylan were not on the record. Did you decide consciously not to do any more Dylan stuff for this record?

RM: I think maybe we got too much flack for doing too many Dylan songs.

Michael Fremer  |  Oct 01, 2004
TA: How did you select music as a career? What were the factors involved in your going that direction for your occupation?

RM: I just loved it and I kinda fell into it. I was playing it as a hobby and getting ten dollars a night at the coffeehouse.

TA: How old were you at this point?

Michael Fremer  |  Oct 02, 2003

Rush Limbaugh, the Republican Party shill and pathological liar who is addicted to blaming Bill Clinton for everything that he thinks has gone wrong in America, showed his hand on ESPN last week by claiming that Philadelphia Eagle quarterback Donovan McNabb has been given "preferential treatment," by the press because he is black and that his performance on the field is "overrated."

Blowhard Limbaugh was supposedly fired (he was allowed to resign), though the ratings that night were ESPN's highest for a game in that time slot, proving while a large number of Americans are also idiots, even more took the time to bitch-slap Disney, which owns ESPN, into reality.

Michael Fremer  |  Jun 30, 2003

Beginning with his eponymous 1970 debut, and continuing throughout eleven Warner Brothers solo albums, Ry Cooder has demonstrated that in addition to being an extraordinary folk/blues guitarist- particularly on bottleneck, and a serviceable, though hardly distinguished vocalist, he is also a high caliber musicologist and A&R man. While Cooder’s specialty has been mining the more obscure tributaries of the rich vein of American music deposited during the Great Depression, he has also unearthed musical riches from around the world, particularly the Caribbean and Mexico.

His solo albums are sprinkled with unknown and out-of-the-way delights like Dickey Doo's "Teardrops Will Fall" and the calypso "F.D.R. In Trinidad"- as well as some better known songs like "One Meat Ball", Woody Guthrie’s "Vigilante Man" Huddie Ledbetter's "Teardrops Will Fall", The Drifter’s 1954 hit "Money Honey", and Johnny Cash’s "Hey Porter".

Roger Hahn  |  Dec 31, 2011

Editor’s note: Sonny Rollins, the last of the pioneering bebop giants and a seminal figure in modern jazz throughout the second half of the 20th century, has entered his ninth decade still blowing full force.

MalachiLui  |  Aug 14, 2020
Unlike many of their competitors, Schiit Audio seemingly intends to guide hi-fi beginners up the quality/price ladder. Their direct-to-consumer standalone components, some advertised for gaming and office setups, start at just $99. Schiit’s products appear feature-packed, but does the sound live up to the specs? Or are Schiit products, well, total shit?

Mark Dawes  |  Oct 24, 2021
DJ Format (aka Matt Ford) is a hiphop DJ and producer from Brighton, England. DJ Shadow (aka Josh Davis) is a hiphop DJ and producer from Sacramento, California. Brighton and Sacramento; not the first urban centers you think of in relation to groundbreaking hiphop production. Format and Shadow, however, are at either end of a 25 year continuum of atmospheric instrumental beats. DJ Shadow’s 1996 debut Endtroducing….. which got a half-speed remastered 25th anniversary edition last month, was composed completely from samples, a methodology shared with DJ Format’s latest LP from 2021 Devil’s Workshop.

Michael Fremer  |  May 30, 2016
Yes, this is a bit “off topic”, but I do a lot of sitting in my job.

Michael Fremer  |  Jul 31, 2005

Site mascot Eno, celebrated his 11th birthday today, July 18th, 2005—a major milestone for a Bernese Mountain Dog.

This breed has an average lifespan of around 8 years due to size (big dogs have shorter lifespans in general) as well as a variety of health issues includng cancer.

Michael Fremer  |  Sep 30, 2006
Making a miserable day even worse, today, September 11th, was the day we put our beloved dog Eno, and this site's mascot to sleep.

In the context of the sorrow and suffering of those who lost loved ones on this day five years ago, the loss of a pet dog is rendered insignificant but it was our dog and our loss and we feel it deeply.

Michael Fremer  |  Nov 19, 2020
Stereophile reviewer Ken Micallef visited (mask on) recently to pick up a turntable for review. He asked if I'd do a video with him showing some of my best sounding records. I agreed and picked a bunch out that I show in these three videos shot during his visit.

Michael Fremer  |  Jul 31, 2008

Legendary photographer Jim Marshall recently said that of all the magazine spreads that have used his images over the years, the one appearing in The Tracking Angle issue 13 was one of a “handful” of the finest ever.

Mike Mettler  |  Oct 08, 2024

Many of us use platter mats to dampen resonances and minimize other vibrations whenever we play our LPs. For those not entirely in the know, these mats are typically “waffer-thin,” to borrow the enunciation of a quite specific Monty Python bit, and they go directly underneath the LP that’s spinning and in turn reside right on top of the turntable platter beneath it. Seeing how I’ve been getting, shall we say, a bit restless with my current mat rotation, I wanted to take a fresh look at and listen to something new, and that led me to the Mat Chakra Limited — a cool, current platter mat from the Italian manufacturer Sublima Audio Research. Read on to find out more about company founder Alessandro “Alex” Cereda’s philosophy behind the design of the Mat Chakra Limited, and how this platter mat just might work for enhancing the performance of your own LPs. . .

Michael Fremer  |  Apr 09, 2018
About a dozen years ago at a used record store in San Francisco I bought a “mint” original German pressing of The Beatles (“The White Album”). It was up on the store wall at $75.00. The laminated “top loader” jacket was mint, all of the head shots the poster and the black sleeves were inside looking as if none of it had been touched and the records appeared as minty as advertised.

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