2017 has been an amazing year for vinyl and an equally amazing one for AnalogPlanet editor Michael Fremer. He attended a Direct to Disc recording session at London's famous AIR Studios and during the same trip interviewed recording engineer Phill Brown and toured Rega Research. In a second London trip he visited SME and interviewed Pink Floyd's "The Wall" illustrator and balloon designer Gerald Scarfe. Later in the year after the Munich High End show he visited Pro-Ject's new Czech Republic factory and over the summer attended audio shows in Bangkok, Hong Kong and Tokyo. But the most exciting adventure was being an expert witness in the recently concluded Quincy Jones vs. The Estate of Michael Jackson lawsuit won by Quincy Jones.
Okay, the photo has nothing to do with the text but I thought you might enjoy it and it's possibly good clickbait. This little dust up with Mike Esposito was really me doing what I've been doing since calling out the B.S. that was the compact disc revolution when the industry, both on the hardware and software side, was insisting that this new format sounded better than the old one when in fact it clearly did not, especially at that time. As Chad Kassem pointed out in the stream, we and others were subjected to major levels of abuse and told to "get with the program" and that we were just used to, and preferred distortion. You still get that today but it's easier to ignore.
After posting the story "Three Percussion Records You Should Own Bob Ludwig emailed that I should get Percussion Music (Nonesuch H-71291). I emailed back that I had it and that prompted the decision to produce an all-percussion show for tomorrow’s WFDU HD2 AnalogPlanet radio show.
Back in 1994 my voice made a "guest appearance" on "Late Night With David Letterman". It was a running gag throughout the show. Tonight is the last show so now's the time to tell the story.
Credit The In Groove's Mike Esposito. To his fans he can do no wrong. Clearly he's got a great record store and he usually provides in his videos useful information. To his fans, for daring to criticize him I am a "con man" (in the words of one of them) and I owe him "an apology". For what, I'm not sure, but for them he owes none to The Electric Recording Company though his seriously flawed video trashing of the company I think requires an apology.
At a garage sale over the summer I found a copy of Dennis Wilson's chronically under appreciated Pacific Ocean Blue (PZ 34354) album originally released on the CBS distributed Caribou label. I reviewed the Sundazed reissue on musicangle.com
My two best Christmas presents. One was the record weight pictured above. Chris Stinchfeld of 1441 Engraving in Brunswick, Georgia wrote “Michael, I love your videos and would like to send you a gift.” How thoughtful and generous was that? He took the time to duplicate the AnalogPlanet logo and put it on a well-machined, attractive record weight. But I think even Chris would agree that the correspondences below from Sava Dimitrov, a young man in Bulgaria is as good a gift as one could get.
Yes, I apologized for my over the top reaction to Rob Sevier's The Wire story. Had you told me after I'd read it that he and his partner ran a vinyl record label, you could have knocked me over with an MP3.
A recently posted review of a phono preamp on a website that is not deserving of mention here once again makes the specious claim that curves other than the RIAA were used in the mastering of stereo records. This is simply not true.
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).
True that Bluetooth speakers are not AnalogPlanet's beat, but over the past few years I've found these devices super-useful for when I jog, or when traveling or just sitting outside during the summer. Longtime AnalogPlanet readers know that for large box Bluetooth speakers I like the ones from Riva Audio, but even the smaller of the two is too large for taking on a jog or a hike. For that I've used the Soundmatters FoxL , which is a flat-out amazing sounding tiny stereo speaker that uses as a "passive radiator" its flat battery encased in a rubber surround.