Press release: April 19, 2022 New York: MusicWatch, a leading U.S. research and analytics company serving the music industry for nearly a quarter of a century, unveiled today a first of its kind study conducted in cooperation with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Music Business Association. The study, titled Revelations About the Vinyl Revolution, offers a detailed look at the current state of the vinyl record market; as well as the preferences and predispositions of the purchasers and listeners to this classic format.
This is some most welcome pressing news indeed. To wit: Fidelity Record Pressing (Fidelity) has just announced a state-of-the-art record-pressing facility is being constructed from the ground up in Oxnard (Ventura County), California, and it will launch in Q1 2023.
The extensive, long planned and then delayed Contemporary Records-Acoustic Sounds series finally drops beginning May 13th with six key titles mastered AAA by Bernie Grundman, pressed at QRP on 180g vinyl and presented in Stoughton Old Style Tip On jackets. The series is a continuation of Craft Records' 70th Anniversary Contemporary Records Celebration.
We often talk about "cross-pollination" opportunities in the high performance audio world, like putting a cool system in a high-end furniture store or at trade-shows not associated with audio. It's a good way to interest a different demographic to the hobby.
I was just alerted to this event by a friend who is the oleologist (olive oil specialist) at New York's Eataly, the world's largest artisanal Italian food and wine marketplace, organized along similar lines, at Del Posto, one of New York's premier Italian restaurants—the first Italian restaurant in forty years to receive a four star review from The New York Times (in 2010).
The Italian holding company Fine Sounds, which owns McIntosh, Audio Research Corporation, Sumiko and Wadia last fall announced a new name and marketing that puts all of the brands under one roof (literally) called "World of McIntosh".
The High End Society, (which also runs High End Munich) today announced the first "live" audio show of the new year, taking place January 9th and 10th, 2021. The name has been changed from HIGH END SWISS to FINEST AUDIO SHOW, which is wholly appropriate and indisputable since for now it's the only hi-fi show on the books.
This is no April Fool's Day trick: a fire last night destroyed the Pallas Pressing Plant's CD/DVD duplication facility. Fortunately there were no injuries.
The first 27 of the hundreds of Analog Corners written for Stereophile have now been published on this site with many new accompanying photos courtesy of Ariel Bitran, Stereophile's hard working editorial assistant.
Don't know how we missed this but Bryan Ferry's first six solo albums are about to be released on vinyl, "...re-mastered from the original tapes at Abbey Road Studios and cut by Frank Arkwright." It's unfortunate that today we can't be sure if that means an AAA cut or if Arkwright used the original tapes and digitized before cutting. Hence the question mark in the headline.
"Today, Ghostly International, Numero Group and Secretly Group record labels Dead Oceans, Jagjaguwar and Secretly Canadian all join forces to announce Paved Paradise, a traveling expo bringing their music to parking lots this fall. Over the course of September 9th-26th, a 24-foot Penske truck helmed by several of Secretly's sonic specialists will visit 15 cities in the eastern United States. From the birthplaces of Secretly, Ghostly and Numero in Bloomington, Detroit and Chicago, to Third Man Records in Nashville, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, and a community of breweries, flea markets and independent venues in between, Paved Paradise will take the record store experience outdoors, with special guests and local collaborations set for every stop."
Tom Waits hit a new creative stride in the 1980s, starting with his acclaimed September 1983 masterstroke Swordfishtrombones — a breakthrough “junkyard orchestral deviation” (his words) — that culminated four LPs later with November 1993’s The Black Rider. Starting September 1, Island/UMe is re-releasing all five of these key Waits midperiod Island Records LPs via 180g black vinyl and limited-edition color variants with the first three titles slated for September 1, and the remaining two to follow on October 6. Read on to find out more about which specific Waits Island-era titles are forthcoming, and what they each entail. . .
The press release announcing this record out March 26th on Luaka Bop is more coy and less informative, though that will probably change closer to the release date. However, I have a test pressing sent by a friend. Chris Bellman cut lacquers, RTI pressed, I don't care the source
Despite surging Covid Omicron cases, the organizers of Florida Audio Expo 2022 plan on holding the show February 2022. Here's the press release. By the way, there's a new variant called OmicronMQA. You get Covid, and it unfolds in your body smallpox and diptheria (rimshot).
Ok, let’s see here — current weather in Tampa, Florida: 65 degrees, and sunny. Current weather in certain pockets of the East Coast: 23 degrees, with a chance of flurries. Hmm, where would you rather be? Looks like Tampa may win that bet, not just in terms of the weather, but also because the Florida International Audio Expo — a.k.a. FLAX — has officially gotten underway there today, February 21, 2025, and runs through Sunday, February 23, 2025. Some early, direct-from-FLAX notes follow forthwith. . .