AUDIO INSIDER

OH DEAR: Knowing your hi-fi enemy

I get a lot of flack for my dislike of USB as a medium between the computer and DAC. Truth is, it’s not USB I don’t like. It’s what USB connects with that bothers me. Noisy computers. Here’s the deal. We all know computers are vile, noisy affairs that hopefully are as far away from […]

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SYNAESTHESIA: How people with the condition can taste colours, feel sounds and overwhelmingly make music

Emily Jupp writes: When Lowell, a Canadian electro-pop musician, listens to “Ain’t No Sunshine” by Bill Withers, she sees a wave of blue water crashing over her. When she hears the experimental group Animal Collective, the layered synths, clicks and vocals in the music create multiple textures and colours, so listening becomes like looking through […]

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BONNIE RAITT and LOWELL GEORGE: Ultrasonic Studios 1972 (CD)

  This show from 1972, the era of open opposition and student revolt at the U.S. in Vietnam, is in essence a blues fest with some of the up-and-coming youngsters on the scene of the time. Bonnie Raitt took blues away from the sturm und drang of Janis Joplin and softened it, but to no […]

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THE GRATEFUL DEAD: Pandora’s Box 1966 – 1995 Is A Miscellany Volume #1 (Limited Edition 3CD … 1,000 only

New series of 3CD limited edition sets, brimming with rarities and unreleased music from 1966 through 1995. Impromptu radio session jams, television performances, interviews and solo obscurities will all feature on these four hours, 3CD releases. What a long strange trip it’s been……. Highlights in volume one to include, Garcia & Grisman radio session at […]

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Quill

DIGITAL: Do you own your content?

It used to be so easy: your photographs filled up boxes and albums; your CDs, books and films filled up shelves; your thoughts and ideas filled up notebooks and diaries, and when you died there were physical things to be distributed among your family and friends. Technology has changed the way we keep and share […]

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NIKKO: Gamma V FM tuner test review

Howard Popeck writes: Only a mini test for this one I’m afraid. My notes from that time are not very comprehensive. Anyway … Built in 1978, the Gamma V is a very sensitive and selective rack-mount style digital tuner. It cost around £400 when new, as best I can recall. Construction is all frame and […]

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MUSIC IS THE

JAZZ: 50 CD Japanese Warner Jazz Reissue Bundle (Very Limited 50CD)

The Modern Jazz Quartet Concert In Japan Vol.2 Ella Fitzgerald Things Ain’t What They Used To Be The Modern Jazz Quartet Concert In Japan Vol.1 Sarah Vaughan Songs Of The Beatles 90th Bday Of Artist Jaco Pastorius Big Band Twins Ii Jaco Pastorius Big Band Twins I Miles Davis Amandla 25th Anniversary Of Album Alice […]

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WILCO JOHNSON: Oil City Confidential

  Review by Vac Fagan, Pics by Andy Hall – “Julien Temple’s “Oil City Confidential” documentary of the rise of Dr. Feelgood launched across the UK with a ground breaking rock & roll cinema event as fans saw the film in their local cinemas, followed by the gig beamed live. Our crack team our Feelgood […]

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Geoff Muldaur / Geoff & Maria Muldaur / Maria Muldaur Pottery Pie – AllMusic Review by Brian Beatty

One of just two albums to be released by the easier-going American equivalent of Richard & Linda Thompson (without the brooding gloom and biting irony), this set includes some virtuoso folk-blues performances, as well as the version of “Brazil” made famous in Terry Gilliam’s movie of the same name. Though the ten tunes here are […]

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Quill

READERS’ LETTERS: Where tubes sound best

PAUL S writes: I have encountered the best sound quality ever from a tiny vacuum tube power amp (single ended triode) driving a single driver crossoverless wide-banner loudspeaker. The only limitation: no wall & floor shaking bass and limited overall SPLs – but perfect for near-field listening. JOE writes: in my opinion hybrids make no […]

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Quill

READERS’ LETTERS: What type of cable terminations are best?

Mr. R writes … Terminations are only required for bundling odd shaped, large or solid conductors, or pre terminated for people that have trouble terminating conductors them self. Use indeed spades, these allow much, much higher contact pressure than banana’s. But, any stranded conductor fitting straight into the terminal of the amplifier or speaker: go […]

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Quill

READERS LETTERS: Is digital pure?

PAUL writes: Reconstruction of a sine-wave based on only two sample-point is only possible because the “algorithm” was told to construct a sine-wave! Neither a square-wave, nor a saw-tooth wave etc! However music is characterized by more or less steep transients being only captured and reproduced when using DSD as you mentioned, Paul, for those […]

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MUSIC IS THE

JULIAN LENNON: Emotional echoes of the artist’s complicated public history reverberate through his album’s solid collection of mature mid-tempo rockers and ballads

Calling his seventh album Jude was an act of reclamation for Julian Lennon. In a recent interview, the 59-year-old explained that, while 1968 song “Hey, Jude” is “a great chanting song, a favourite Beatles song”, for him it had always been “a harsh reminder of what actually happened in my life, which was that my […]

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MUSIC IS THE

THE PRODIGY: Raved about then, ignored now – whatever happened to the band’s incendiary 1997 album? Ed Power revisits its multiple controversies to find out

T he crab snapping its claws on the cover of The Prodigy’s The Fat of the Land can justifiably claim to be the most famous crustacean in pop. It also has become a slightly unfortunate metaphor for a record that raised a huge, click-clacking ruckus when it first came out, but which has ultimately ended […]

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Sylvie Proulx Les Tendres Plaintes: Works by Jean-Philippe Rameau – AllMusic Review by Blair Sanderson

    Sylvie Proulx’s 2018 release on Centaur offers selections from the keyboard music of French Baroque composer Jean-Philippe Rameau in transcriptions for classical guitar. In his time, Rameau was famous as an opera composer, though his reputation as a music theorist and composer of keyboard works grew in the modern era with the early […]

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AUDIO INSIDER

HERTZ: An introduction

I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve written the abbreviation, Hz—1 kHz, 1,000 kHz. It is, of course, short for Hertz. The car company? Heinrich Rudolf Hertz was a German physicist who first proved the existence of electromagnetic waves. Invisible forces that had a specific periodicity (frequency) that later were named in […]

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