I have a friend named Yale, a record producer, who lives in a capacious, art-filled SoHo loft with enormous windows, craggy wood floors, and a high, tin-tiled ceiling. I enjoy Yale's company because he has extraordinarily diverse, highly evolved taste in music, art, architecture, books, home furnishings, and hi-fi equipment.
In one part of Yale's loft, a large, tin cow weathervane stands on a bureau. Bolted to the ceiling above the dining room table is a greasy black 3001b electric motor with a wide pulley-the kind formerly used to turn the belts that powered sweatshop machines ca 1920. In the purest essence of 1970s SoHo style, a loft bed is situated above the closet and bathroom, and the kitchen floor is raised to shelter plumbing pipes. There's an unnamable piece of machinery, about the size of a small dog, on the floor next to the couch. It sits there because it looks elegantly mysterious, inspiring curiosity and contemplation. Yale and his architect wife spent decades creating this dreamy, comfortable space, which leads my mind to reminisce-and loft envy.
One sunny winter weekday, Yale invited me over for the express purpose of helping him decide which amp does a better job powering his patinaed 1970s Tannoy Cheviot speakers: his newly arrived, 1956 Fairchild 260 tube amplifiers or the shiny Line Magnetic 2A3 amp he'd been using for some time. His "gear table," he said, was too small for both.
As we unpacked the Fairchilds, we agreed: Those push-pull 6L6 mono amps are museum-quality masterpieces of industrial design. The Fairchild 260s are, along with the Marantz Model 2 and the Brook 12A, top classics of American mono-era amplifier design.
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Michael Des Barres and the Art of Aural Obsession
Listening to music inspires us to take action. Upon hearing an I.E.-Instant Earworm-we must then determine the best way we can go about listening to it again (and again) at our convenience.
PLANET OF SOUND
BLACK FRANCIS ON HARNESSING THAT MAGIC PIXIES DUST
T+A R 2500 R STREAMING RECEIVER PHONO MODULE
In my review of the T+A R 2500 R receiver (August 2024 issue), I covered many of its features and took as deep a dive as time and column inches allowed.
Audia Flight FLS10
The dogma of separates has long reigned supreme among audiophiles: If you're serious about sound quality, you're supposed to need a dedicated preamp and power amp.
Totem Acoustic Element Fire V2
Totem Acoustic was founded in 1987, in Montreal, Canada, by a former high school math teacher named Vince Bruzzese. The company's first product, the Model 1 loudspeaker,' impressed me so much I bought a pair.
MoFi Electronics MasterDeck
Get two mouthy jazz drummers in a room and watch the sparks fly. Talented turntable designer Allen Perkins, the brain behind Spiral Groove,2 Immedia's RPM turntables,³ and various SOTA models, is first and foremost a jazz drummer.
Soulution 727
AImost 14 years have passed since a review of a Soulution product appeared in the pages of Stereophile.\"
The Spin Doctor checks out the Kuzma Safir 9, a superarm from Slovenia.
The British audio scene from the late 1970s through the mid-1980s was pretty strange. Audio as a hobby was a big deal, with widespread appeal to a much younger crowd than today. Audiophiles were guided by a flurry of what my friends called \"hi-fi pornos,\" audio magazines that filled the racks at the newsagents.
Alex goes to Japan
Arriving in Japan from the United States is like being turned upside down. This condition lasts for much of the first week. When I visited in November, the time difference between Tokyo and New York was 14 hours. \"The floating world\" is a term for the pleasure-addled urban culture of Edo-period Japan, but it's also an apt description for the twilit and not-entirely-unpleasant weirdness of first arriving in Tokyo. Everything seems slightly unreal.
Wilson Audio Specialties The WATT/Puppy
Since the original WATT/Puppy concept kicked off in the late 1980s,' there has been a 40-year evolution leading to the latest version reviewed here.
