Features

Just had to sneak this in before heading for vacation. Riva Audio's Wand is a spectacular-sounding wireless Wi-Fi based distributed audio system that features open architecture, meaning you can stream using Google's Play app via Chromecast, or Apple's Airplay, or directly from a hard drive via DLNA or control the system Riva's own Wand app, at up to 192/24 bit resolution. It has Spotify built in.

Friday night at this year's Blues Masters at the Crossroads in Chad Kassem's Blue Heaven Studios featured emcee and blues veteran Doug MacLeod and an outstanding talent lineup: Jontavious Willis, Marquise Knox, Lucky Peterson, Alabama Slim and Robert Finley.

Phono specialist/electronics designer Jim Hagerman of Hagerman Audio Labs recently published a PDF file containing really useful tips for reducing and hopefully removing from your system hum and other forms of phono playback noise pollution.

AnalogPlanet asked the question Should You Buy a MM Only Phono Preamp If you are using a MM cartridge? and then provided readers with capsules of 8 phono preamps followed by 8 unidentified 96k/24 bit files, asking readers to listen and vote "blind".

You've seen videos here of the world's largest audio show, "High End" Munich. Back in the 1990s, the show, held in Frankfurt's Kempinski Hotel, more closely resembled a sleepy American affair—as this vintage video demonstrates. It was a very "German" show at the time, musically and otherwise, though even then you'll hear "Take Five" and "Belafonte at Carnegie Hall". Today's High End show is an international affair.

On March 30th 2017 we posted a story called Audio Porn Experiment Part #1 and #2.