Tabla de contenidos para March 2024 en The Absolute Sound

Email the Editor: rharley@nextscreen.com or: TAS, 2500 McHale Ct., Ste. A, Austin, Texas 78758 And Thanks to You for Reading I’d like to take die opportunity to thank you for die tremendous effort you incorporate into each issue of The Absolute Sound. As I’m just returning to the family of today’s audiophiles, there are aspects of the new technology I do not fully comprehend. Your “expert advice” additions [in Issue 343’s Buyers’ Guide] clearly explain how diverse products, i,e., phonostages, monoblocks, and cables, ensure more faithful reproduction of sound. Gracious thanks to you, Mr. Harley, along with Tom Martin (in his informative videos,) Jonathan Valin, Michael Fremer, Steven Stone, Andrew Quint, and all the rest of the Senior Writers who produce informative and educational reviews that project a deeper insight of…

Welcome to the 2024 edition of TAS’ Editors’ Choice Awards, our annual recommended products feature. On the following pages we present the gear that our editors and writers have selected as most worthy of your consideration. These are components that we ourselves would buy—or recommend to friends and family. Each product category is divided into price ranges, with components listed in order of ascending cost (though some items, like accessories, are listed alphabetically). Each recommendation is accompanied by a capsule review, the original reviewer’s name or initials, and the issue number the review appeared in. Note that, in some cases, a product may have been reviewed, but the review has not yet been published; in other cases, a product may not have been formally reviewed, but has still earned a…

He’s regarded as the patron saint of prog rock. And rightly so. Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter, musician, and producer Steven Wilson rose to fame as a member of the British prog-rock band Porcupine Tree. He’s also the man behind a slew of critically acclaimed classicalbum remixes. And then there are his solo projects. Wilson has described his seventh and latest solo album, The Harmony Codex (Spinefarm), as an “experimental 65-minute labyrinth of a record…a piece of ‘cinema for the ears.’” One caveat: this dynamic recording will put your system to the test—be sure your subwoofer is up to the task (my usually reliable 200-watt, 8” B&W sub barely managed bass duties on “Inclination,” the trippy space-rock track that opens the album, though it fared better on the poppier “What Life Brings”).…

MUSIC SONICS Art Farmer: Portrait of Art Farmer. Craft Recordings. MUSIC SONICS Steve Davis: Meets Hank Jones, Volume 1. Smoke Sessions. What these two albums, recorded 50 years apart, have in common is the elegant presence of the great pianist Hank Jones. The eldest of the musical Jones brothers out of Detroit (trumpeter Thad was five years younger, drummer Elvin nine years younger), Hank moved to New York City in 1944 and soon became immersed in the emerging bebop scene before touring as Ella Fitzgerald’s accompanist for five years (1948–1953). He subsequently recorded six albums as a leader before 1958’s Portrait of Art Farmer, his second encounter with the trumpeter and first for Lester Koenig’s Contemporary Records. The Hank Jones heard on this session with Farmer is primarily in accompanist…

The word “musicality” is a once-popular term that describes an audio component’s ability to engage the listener in musical expression. “Musicality” isn’t a single sonic attribute but rather an accumulation of the component’s manifold characteristics—a product’s gestalt. It has never been precisely defined, instead remaining a nebulous catchall term. The audiophile community has been happy to treat “musicality” as some mystical property that is somehow unknowable and indefinable. I’d like to see “musicality” return to the lexicon but with a clearer understanding of what it means. In my view, the term expresses a specific combination of sonic attributes that, together, result in an effable perception of connecting with the music. Everyone recognizes musicality when they hear it; it’s time we identify what makes one product more “musical” than another. I…

At her death in October, Carla Bley may not have become a “household name” like Duke Ellington or Miles Davis, but her music had a huge impact from Europe to Japan, even more than in the United States. She was a composer, pianist, arranger, and conductor whose work spread through 60 albums, more than half under her name. Imbued in all of her orchestrations is an original sense of humor. Diagnosed with brain cancer in 2018, she recorded her final album the next year and titled the record Life Goes On. “Avant-garde” showed up in some obituaries, while others labeled her “modernist,” “operatic,” “funky,” “free jazz,” “easy listening,” and “comedic.” Her music contains all of those qualities and more. For my money some of her best big band music borrows…

To read Thurston Moore’s memoir, Sonic Life, I wandered around my own city with the book in hand. It felt strange to read it at home on the couch when the book itself is restless, depicting a young Moore constantly in motion, always heading to the next gig, the next record store, the next job. I took the dust jacket off to carry it around, and whenever I spent hours reading it, the cover left a little residue on my fingertips, a reminder of where I had disappeared to. And no matter where I read-libraries, coffee shops, bus stops, planesmy mind would leave that place and become immersed in the punk and downtown music scenes of 1970s and 80s New York City, emerging later completely dazed by my actual surroundings.…

MUSIC SONICS Sommerro: Borders. Groven, Engelberg, Thorsen. Trondheim SO, Davies. 2L (Pure Audio Blu-ray & SACD). If you want to experience Dolby Atmos in its purest form, Dolby TrueHD—as opposed to the very lossy Dolby Digital Plus variant that’s streamed—your choice of music is pretty limited. As of this writing, there are under 150 albums (discs and/or downloads) with a Dolby TrueHD program and I’d estimate that a third of them come from the Norwegian label 2L. Morten Lindberg, 2L’s cofounder and engineer/producer, undertakes a truly immersive approach to recording, placing his microphone array in the middle of an ensemble, sometimes presenting a 360-degree representation of a performance. 2L’s catalog includes some jazz and a lot of classical. In terms of the latter, there is 18th and 19th century material,…

ATC C4 Sub Mk 2 Subwoofer ATC’s C4 subwoofer deploys its latest proprietary 12” SS75-314SC sub-bass driver, powered by a newly developed 300W Class AB amplifier—both elements hand-built and installed in a substantial cabinet at the company’s Stroud-based production HQ. The design exploits ATC’s signature longgap/short-coil configuration with an exceptionally long 30mm magnetic gap, surrounded by a 6” N48M neodymium magnet—the most powerful ever assembled by ATC. Two balanced line inputs provide connectivity for stereo or AV/home-cinema systems, while two balanced outputs are available to feed partnering “main” stereo loudspeakers or multiple subs. Low-pass filters are analog, 4th-order Linkwitz-Riley. In addition, an industry-standard 80Hz low-pass filter and an “off ” option (for use with external processing) is joined by a polarity switch, variable 180° phase adjustment, and a stepped attenuator…

MUSIC SONICS Peter Gabriel: i/o. Real World/Universal. After a 21-year spell that produced only film scores, covers, remixes, and reimagined hits, Peter Gabriel has delivered a vital album of new studio material. He culled i/o’s 12 tracks from sessions recorded in 2021 with guitarist David Rhodes, bassist Tony Levin, drummer Manu Katche, and several guests. Brian Eno contributed synthesizers and sound design. Each song has received a Bright-Side Mix by Mark “Spike” Stent and a Dark-Side Mix by Tchad Blake, as well as an Atmos-ready In-Side Mix by Hans-Martin Buff. Gabriel parsed out i/o throughout 2023, releasing a streaming single on each full moon, starting with the cautionary “Panopticon.” The final track—“Live and Let Live,” a paean to pacificism—dropped in late November. Gabriel struggled to not be too moody on…