Warner Brothers got into the record business in the late '50s releasing a series of super-corny records half-heartedly aimed at the growing "audiophile community". It was a "catch up" effort and too little too late. The label did it without its own recording studio or much of an A&R department and it showed! However, someone there knew good sound—not surprising since WB invented "The Talkies"—movies with sound. A few years later,... Read More

Wassoulou music is generally performed by women and is a form originating in the cultural area of Wassoulou (incorporating areas of southern Mali, eastern Guinea and northern Côte d’Ivoire). While their names may not be so familiar in Europe and North America, performers such as Oumou Sangaré, Nahawa Doumbia and Fatoumata Diawara are superstars in west Africa. Mali is an especially rich source of incredible musical forms and even more incredible instrumental... Read More

Do you find the idea of an unknown, songwriting multi-instrumentalist who was at one time a compelling artist yet who never truly found their lane appealing? If you answered in the affirmative, then it won’t require much arm twisting to have you explore ORG Music’s recent reissue of Tommy Court’s self-titled - one and only album - The Happy Dragon Band. The rare 1978 private pressing (only 200 albums were originally issued) has been reissued on vinyl for Record Store... Read More

Win the Rega Planar 3 50th Anniversary Edition recently reviewed on this website! According to importer Sound Organization, this is the last one made available to them, though there may be one or two lurking at dealers. Tracking Angle is giving it away to a lucky reader, one string attached. Read on!Here are the contest rules:1) you must join our mailing list to enter the contest. It's free and easy to do—just click on the Mailing List Signup" rectangle at... Read More

Note: This is a revised video necessitated because proprietary hardware and software was inadvertently presented. Both have now been either blurred or edited out.At the beginning of December while in Los Angeles to attend the 30th anniversary Los Angeles and Orange County Audiophile Society GALA, where every year I "roast" the Founder's Award winner (this year it was AudioQuest's Bill Low), I received an invitation from a publicist to visit Gil... Read More

This past summer, I raved in this space about Craft Recordings’ vinyl reissue of the Bill Evans trio’s 1961 classic Waltz for Debby, hailing it as the best-sounding of all the album’s many pressings. Now Craft has released an LP of the companion recording, Sunday at the Village Vanguard, as, once again, part of the label's Original Jazz Classics series. It too is a great album, and the Craft reissue is very much worth getting; but this time around, comparisons... Read More

The Miles Davis Sextet was in San Francisco and had off the night of June 25th, 1962. Wes Montgomery was in town and with the rhythm section of Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb, plus tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin, played to a full house at Tsubo in Berkeley, California.The great recording engineer Wally Heider set up his gear in a storeroom behind the club, which, thanks to newspaper articles and word-of-mouth, overflowed with fans anxious to witness the... Read More

It’s all fine and good to engage in passionate discourse about the importance of vinyl records and how best to preserve that believed golden format of recorded audio. But, that noble and idyllic vision has a common sense snag: what do you do with all that stuff? Recall the times you’ve uncomfortably crouched before a cardboard box of records at a garage sale, think about the moldy Reader’s Digest box sets you’ve avoided at your favorite charity shop. For just a... Read More

The first time I saw a Jacques Tati film, an arthouse cinema showing of 1949's Jour de fête back in the early 2000s, I had the gut feeling that something was wrong. This was the 1995 restoration with its slightly washed-out colors, but that wasn’t it. No, it was how the film sounded...

Enjoy a behind-the-scenes "look" at the creation of Steely Dan's classic Aja album with Donald Fagen and award winning recording engineer Bill Schnee and mastering engineer great Bernie Grundman in conversation with Tracking Angle's Fred Kaplan and Analogue Productions' own Chad Kassem. Read More

Reviewing an elegant analog system from Clearaudio.

First released in 2013 on CD and limited edition 45rpm "bundle" (with multiple festive goodies), Quality Street has been reissued in 2023 on festive red vinyl and includes a bonus 45rpm single ("Let It Snow"/"Winter Wonderland") with Lowe backed by Los Straightjackets. This one's limited too, to 1000 copies, 300 copies of which include a Nick Lowe 526 piece jigsaw puzzle box set. Oops! the limited edition red vinyl with goodies is... Read More

Dave McNair reviews a uniquely enjoyable preamplifier that pushes the envelope on the usage of italized and bold in a HiFi review. 

It’s that time of the year again. The holidays take so long to arrive and then disappear far too quickly. Most music lovers have a complicated relationship with the sounds of the season. While some folks can’t wait for their local radio stations to switch over to an all holiday music format, others - myself included - find ourselves thoroughly exhausted by those relentless playlists come December 26th. It’s not that there’s a problem with holiday music because there... Read More

Model trains are a Christmas tradition. But a real steam train traveling on the New Jersey Transit commuter line at almost 80 MPH is a rare and amazing thing not likely to be repeated but it did happen back in the fall of 1996 and I was lucky enough to take the trip from Hoboken to Port Jervis with my late father in law who worked on the railroads as a kid during the Depression. Half way through the ride to Port Jervis soot clogged the camcorder microphone so for this... Read More