Michael Fremer

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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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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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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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
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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NY Audio Show 2013
ORG Announces 15 New London/Decca and Mercury Double 45 Classical Releases
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 16, 2013  |  9 comments
ORG today announced an ambitious London/Decca and Mercury classical release schedule for the 4th quarter of 2013 and 2014.
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Album Reviews
Preservation Hall Jazz Band Celebrates 50 Years With "That's It!"
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 16, 2013  |  2 comments
Best known for playing the traditional jazz it was founded to preserve fifty years ago, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band here celebrates its next fifty with a forward looking program of audacious, often raucous and sometimes mischievous new originals mostly written by 41 year old Ben Jaffe, son of the hall's founders Allan and Sandra and current Creative Director
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Analog Corner
Analog Corner #42
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 15, 2013  |  6 comments
Mikey assembles an RB3000 tonearm—pray it won't be yours!

Politics and audio don't mix! Keep your pinko ideas to yourself. I cancel my subscription!"

How many times have we read that in Stereophile, shortly after a writer has injected a few cubic centimeters of ideology into a review or column? No doubt all of the offended parties dashed off equally angry letters to ultra-partisan House majority whip Tom (the bug exterminator) DeLay, who threw a hissy fit back in October when he found out that the EIA (Electronic Industries Alliance, the parent organization of CEMA, which runs the Consumer Electronics Show, etc.) had the gall, the nerve, to hire former Oklahoma Democratic representative Dave McCurdy as the group's president and industry spokesperson.

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News
Dr. Amar Bose Dead at 83
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 13, 2013  |  94 comments
Don't speak ill of the dead is commonly accepted wisdom to which I almost always subscribe. However, an Amar Bose obituary in today's New York Times by Glenn Rifkin that read more like an advertisement than an obit forces my hand.

The obit writer claims the Bose Corporation "..became synonymous with high quality audio systems..." and that "His speakers, though expensive, earned a reputation for bringing concert-hall quality audio into the home." Really?

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Turntable Reviews
VPI Traveler Plants American Flag on Mid-Entry Level Turntable Territory
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 10, 2013  |  39 comments
Imports crowd the $1500 turntable price-point with entries from Rega, Pro-Ject, Music Hall, Clearaudio, JA Michell, Marantz (made by Clearaudio), Acoustic Signature and some others.

Until VPI surprised the turntable world last year with the Traveler, the only American-made ‘table manufactured at this price that I can think of is the SOTA Comet, which comes with an OEM Rega tonearm.

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