Monday, March 9, 2020 AXPONA announced just now that it's moved the Western hemisphere's largest show from this coming April to August 7-9 at Chicago's Renaissance Schaumberg Hotel and Convention Center.
With AXPONA a month away, and the Coronavirus on the rise, I have to decide whether or not to book my flight and go, or stay home. Already major events have been cancelled—like SXSW and two major trade shows in Chicago that were supposed to take place at the giant McCormick Center (venue for the old and most fun CES summer shows), among others around the country and the world (like Munich High End).
More than a few emails have arrived over the last few weeks touting the sonic excellence of Audio-Technica's $169 AT-VM95ML moving magnet cartridge. The $236 Ortofon 2M Blue equipped Fluance RT85 was here for review so why not procure a VM95ML and do a direct comparison?
UMe will release on March 6th, 2020 a 4 CD live box set containing on 4 CDs 4 complete UK and US 1968 Cream concerts, including 19 previously unreleased tracks that include the final ever Royal Albert Hall concert—all recorded during Cream's "Farewell Tour".
Intervention's long delayed release of Joan Armatrading's eponymously titled third album is now set to ship this May. It's now available for pre-order on the Intervention Records website.
Here are our choices for the best reissues of the past decade. They include individual LPs, box sets and ongoing series. We decided to omit from the list re-mixes such as Abbey Road, because they are not strictly “reissues” as well as “newly found” older recordings such as John Coltrane’s Blue World. Obviously, over the long decade—and one where vinyl again became the reissue format of choice—there were far too many worthwhile records than we could manageably list—Analogue Productions and Mobile Fidelity alone produced dozens of list-worthy reissues. Here are the ones we decided were most important and most worthy of your attention. Please contribute yours in the comments!
Rhino originally released this material in 1999 as a 7 CD box set, but to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the original Fun House release the label returned to the original tapes and Bernie Grundman cut lacquers directly from them for the original album and for the live concert LP. The outtakes are sourced from hi-res files. That's 21st century progress! The $399.98 15 180 gram LP plus two 7" 45 singles set is limited to 1970 copies and is scheduled for July 17th release.
Oswalds Mill Audio demoed yesterday (Feb. 27th) at its Brooklyn showroom the K3— a brand new, more than 3 years in the planning and manufacturing direct drive turntable that aims to define "state of the turntable art". What you see in the photo is not the final finish nor is it the 100% completed physical design.
As anyone reading this likely knows, over the past 40 years, commercial audio quality tanked. Beginning with the CD’s often sterile blurriness to today’s lossy 64kbps free Spotify streams, the masses’ sacrifice of quality for convenience also coincides with the decline of deep, concentrated listening. Although the two may have nothing to do with one another (after all, work commutes lengthened and other forms of media gained prominence), it’s certainly a possibility.
Oscar, With Love, was released as a 3 CD set in 2015 to observe the 90th birthday of jazz piano legend Oscar Peterson (1925-2007). To honor her late husband, Kelly Peterson assembled some of the most celebrated jazz artists in the world to perform and record on the luminary's prized personal piano, then released the recordings as a deluxe collector's edition shortly before the 10-year anniversary of the celebrated pianist’s passing. Now, a deluxe limited edition 5-LP 180-gram box set, re-sequenced for vinyl, is slated to be released on February 21 in a two-piece box with a 40-page booklet.