Pro-Ject’s Heinz Lichtenegger pulled me aside at High End Munich 2018. He appeared agitated—not the usual easygoing (but intense) demeanor of a guy who in the early 1990s bet the farm on analog and won—bigtime.
While others tossed, self-described music executive, historian, collector, archivist and memorabilia dealer Jeff Gold (an accurate though woefully incomplete description, by the way) was one of those prescient individuals who, as a young man, saw the intrinsic value in most everything physical related to the wondrous post World War II growth of music both as culture and as business.
This March 25, 1962 recording of Ella Fitzgerald performing live at Berlin’s Sportpalast is remarkable for several reasons, starting with the then 44 year old’s exuberant, high energy performance backed by the trio of Paul Smith on piano, Wilfred Middlebrooks on bass and Stan Levey on drums.
Let’s head off at the pass what will surely be in the comments section under this review of a remarkably compact, full-featured, remote-controllable music playback system that includes in a single box, a high quality Pro-Ject Debut Carbon Esprit 3 speed turntable with dustcover, fitted with an Ortofon 2M “Silver” cartridge (incorrectly identified as OM2 on the Andover website—it’s similar to the Ortofon 2M Red but with fewer winds of the same silver-plated copper wire found in Ortofon’s 2M Bronze and 2M Black) that alone sells for $599 and includes an acrylic platter and 8.6” carbon fiber tonearm, an A/D converter, a 192/24 bit DAC, analog and digital inputs plus a subwoofer “out”, Bluetooth ( Qualcomm APT-X) streaming and built in amplification (2 x 70 Class D watts to woofers and 2 x 30 watts to tweeters) and of course multiple (6) high quality speakers (4 “long throw” aluminum diaphragm woofers and a pair of Air Motion Transformer tweeters originally invented by Dr. Oskar Heil that uses metal-etched folded polyethylene sheets to move air in process we won’t go into here!).
This is without a doubt one of the saddest/creepiest experiences I've ever had: Len Gregory, "The Cartridge Man" has for 30 years or so been manufacturing analog playback accessories, among them modified cartridges, a handy digital level and an excellent digital stylus force gauge featuring rechargeable batteries.
Talk about bad luck: Love And Theft Bob Dylan’s first album in four years, his 43rd (at the time, including live and studio) and the follow up to the million-selling, triple-Grammy Award winning (including “Album of the Year”) Time Out of Mind had a September 11th, 2001 drop date. Buildings dropped instead.
Analogue Productions returns with another in its very popular “Wonderful Sounds” series that began with a Christmas compilation and followed up in 2018 with a female vocalist assemblage.
Schiit Audio today announced a pulley update for the SOL turntable that will produce correct speeds on the SOL turntable. The new pulley is currently being prototyped and will go into production within the next 3-4 weeks, after which all current SOL owners will receive one in the mail free of charge.
(Blue Note Press Release): OCTOBER 23, 2020—We’re proud to present the Blue Note Classic Vinyl Reissue Series, a continuation of our acclaimed Blue Note 80 Vinyl Reissue Series which was launched in celebration of our 80th anniversary in 2019. The Classic Series will once again feature all-analog 180g vinyl pressings in standard packaging that are mastered by Kevin Gray directly from the original master tapes and manufactured at Optimal in Germany.
(Schiit just announced it is producing a new pulley that will run the turntable at the correct speed and will send them free to all existing customers.)Executive decision: no Schiit jokes, ok? Especially since the Sol turntable is so well conceived, designed, executed, made in America and remarkably priced at $799 including a $119 Audio Technica AT-VM95EN cartridge.
That said, if you want an “open the box, plug and play” type turntable, the SOL might not be for you. On the other hand, if you buy one with the cartridge already installed, Schiit makes the Sol reasonably easy to set up.