Michael Fremer

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Album Reviews
Bill Evans Jim Hall "Undercurrent" Equals Sublime Music Making
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 17, 2013  |  10 comments
Sublime music making of the highest order despite the "shock value" cover, the collaboration between pianist Bill Evans and guitarist Jim Hall, who at 82 is still performing produced two albums of enduring beauty and quiet grace
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Cartridge Reviews
Multi-Cartridge Survey: The Hard Work Completed!
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 18, 2013  |  33 comments
The listening has been completed to the nine moderately priced cartridges for this survey. The cartridges are: The Audio Technica AT95E, the AT 95SA, the Ortofon 2M red and 2M black, the Grado Prestige Gold 1, the Sumiko Blue Point Special EVO III, the Audio Technica AT7V and AT150ANV and the Nagoaka MP300.

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Album Reviews
Rumer's "Boys Don't Cry" Will Make Some Mist, Others Bawl
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 21, 2013  |  19 comments
Real name Sarah Joyce, the 34 year-old singer-songwriter who goes by the name Rumer (after the English writer Margaret Rumer Godden), was born in Islamabad, Pakistan and is most often described as having a Karen Carpenter-like soothing, dreamy voice.

The daughter of a British woman whose British engineer husband was assigned there to work on a dam, Rumer and her six older siblings lived isolated in an ex-patriot community. Not until she was 11 and her “parents” divorced and the family moved back to England did she and her siblings discover that her father was the family’s Pakistani cook.

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News
Large Files Coming Your Way Hopefully Tomorrow!
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 22, 2013  |  10 comments
The plan is to post links tomorrow to the 10 96/24 FLAC files of Myra Taylor's "Spider and The Fly" from her My Night to Dream album (APO 2017) released in 2000 as a double 45rpm 180g LP by Analogue Productions, reproduced using the 9 cartridges identified in a previous post plus the Ortofon Anna on the Continuum Caliburn.

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Analog Corner
Analog Corner #43
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 22, 2013  |  5 comments
Every so often, when I get down (and I don't mean as in "get funky''), I wonder whether I'll run out of analog things to write about. After all, we're only a year from 2000, and this needle-in-the-groove invention is already more than 100 years old. What's left to say?

Or so I think when I get blue. But it doesn't last long, not with so many inspired correspondents writing and so many manufacturers creating new products—even though, as we all know, vinyl is dead.

And then there are the bizarre incidents.

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Record Buying Tips
Would You Buy This Used Record?
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 23, 2013  |  25 comments
Do you own a copy of Buckingham Nicks? It was Stevi Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham's pre-Fleetwood Mac pairing featuring an icky cover both probably regret. Issued on Polydor in 1973 it's credits show that the duo and producer/engineer Keith Olsen knew what they were doing!

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Album Reviews
Doug MacLeod Can Sing the Blues, But Can a Classical Engineer Record it?
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 24, 2013  |  2 comments
Back in 1995 in The Tracking Angle's second issue I wrote of acoustic folk/blues artist Doug MacLeod's performances on his Audioquest LP Come to Find (AQ 1027): "You'll hear a lifetime's accumulation of feelings, experiences and influences in his fingers, in his voice and in his songs...."

MacLeod was 46 at the time. Eighteen years or so later MacLeod is still at it, as he's been since he picked up bass and guitar as a child. He's issued 19 studio albums some live ones and even an instructional DVD. The years have only enhanced and enriched MacLeod's technical and communicative abilities. He's an even more fluid and nuanced guitarist and singer than he was back in 1995.

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Vote
Nine Cartridge Survey Produces Audible Results?
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 24, 2013  |  101 comments
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Capital AudioFest 2013
Capital Audiofest: Metro-D.C. Area Show Small, But Shows Solid Growth
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 29, 2013  |  2 comments
Veteran manufacturers and rookie enthusiasts fueled increased industry participation at the fourth annual Capital Audio Fest held this past weekend, July 26th-28th at the the Silver Spring, Maryland Sheraton Hotel.

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Capital AudioFest 2013
VPI Debuts New $4000 Classic Companion Turntable Complete With Tone Arm and Custom Grado Cartridge
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 29, 2013  |  3 comments
I wasn't expecting to find anything as new and significant at a small mid-summer show as VPI's new Classic Companion Turntable, but there it was.

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