High definition vinyl?

Yes!

Imagine a vinyl record that has 30% more capacity, 30% greater volume, and double the audio fidelity of a typical LP sold today.

The technical specifications for High Definition Vinyl, or ‘HD Vinyl,’ have now been detailed in a European patent filing exclusively shared with Digital Music News on Tuesday.  This is a concept that could potentially be on the market within three years, according to details shared by Rebeat Digital, the company that filed the patent.

Rebeat, based in Tulln, Austria, submitted the EU-wide patent with Joanneum Research, with plans to quickly secure additional patent protections in the United States and worldwide.  The patent filing was viewed by Digital Music News in a private session, and we were not allowed to keep a copy of the filing.

Hopefully, more, MUCH more, soon...

Brooklyn's Daptone Studio - where analog is still alive and kicking!

"The sessions' analog tapes are edited by cutting them with a razor blade and spliced."

... this simple statement makes my heart beating faster;-)

Read the story here... not the only studio doing it the old way... yet, chapeau!

Thanking Steve Guttenberg.

Roscoe Mitchell & Michele Rabbia live in Padua, October 6th, 2016

What a concert, pals... what a concert!

One of my heroes, a founding member of AACM and Art Ensemble of Chicago with its infinite declinations...  Roscoe Mitchell, now 76, is an elegant, intense, soft-spoken gentleman whose playing and creativity seems endless.

The stage improviser and companion of Mr. Mitchell was Michele Rabbia, a percussionist and sparingly used live electronics musician whose skill, inventivity and sensitivity while interacting with saxello, soprano and alto saxes truly impressed me...


A deep, strong impression, an experience both aural and visual... while Mitchell was blowing his soul out of his instruments, Michele was dancing around his drums and cymbals and assorted percussions...

A showcase of human relationships - i.e among musicians and audience and venue.

I loved this concert as I loved taking some extempore pixies with my mobile.

Nagra IV-S four-tracks head mod!

Due to my recent 4-tracks tapes fever/syndrome and the little, humble Tandberg 3500 on duty of the bulk of pre-recorded tapes in my hands and coming, I was thinking and pondering and... well: my old, trusty, beloved Nagra IV-S and QGB will soon have fitted a 4-tracks head.

My karma asks for that;-))) and my tech-head extraordinaire will flawlessly made it!

Chad Kassem did it!

You want it, you've got it!

Acoustic Sounds is bringing first 12 titles analog tape copies priced at $450 each...

Ready your ears for something special! From Acoustic Sounds, Inc., the world leader in audiophile music sales, comes the highest quality analog reel-to-reel tape album reissues — Analogue Productions Ultra Tape! Twelve masterpiece titles are featured in this new reissue series, each a 15 ips, ¼-inch analog tape copy sourced from a copy of the original analog master tape. Transferred real-time, using an ATR-modified Ampex Tape Machine with flux magnetic heads. Each copy is housed in a custom slipcase cover.

The first two titles —  Janis Ian's Breaking Silence and Ben Webster's Gentle Ben — are slated to be released before 2016 ends. Analogue Productions is the vinyl, SACD and now audio tape reissue label owned by Acoustic Sounds. 

The remaining titles include: Rickie Lee Jones' It's like This / Hugh Masakela's Hope / Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances (the famous Turnabout recording) / Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Scheherazade (RCA Living Stereo) / Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Pines of Rome and Fountains of Rome (RCA Living Stereo) / Leopold Stokowski's Rhapsodies (RCA Living Stereo) / René Leibowitz and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra The Power of The Orchestra (RCA Living Stereo) / Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Lieutenant Kije and Stravinksy's Song of the Nightingale (RCA Living Stereo) / Abel /Steinberg - Beethoven Violin Sonata (Wilson Audio) / and  Lowell Graham's Winds of War & Peace (Wilson Audio).

Each reissue copy is priced at $450. The entire series is available by subscription and subscribers will pay for 11 titles and receive the 12th one free!

Acoustic Sounds has enlisted Gus Skinas, of the Super Audio Center in Boulder, Colorado, to handle the tape transfers, which are made using the Ampex Tape Machines in the control room at Blue Heaven Studios, here in Salina.

For more than a year, at every trade show and on more and more phone calls and emails, our customers  have hammered away with the same request: “When are you going to start selling tape?!”

You spoke, we listened. We know tape's advantages: greater dynamic range, especially at frequency extremes; minimal signal processing; and unsurpassed richness and realism — it's the closest to hearing the master tape. You're going to be blown away when you experience playback of our Ultra Tape reissues from Analogue Productions! Order your subscription today!

I can only but swear it will be an HUGE success... I'd only wish prices for ALL the analog tapes' makers would be tamed to USD 200-250... this alone would spread this marvellous media a lot, making it almost pop;-), while still making a good deal, business-wise...

More Tapes Nuggets!

Sealed Crosby & Nash... 19 cm/s!

... and always on Memory Row, this great, seminal fave of mine...

Yeah! Once you taste'em, you're hooked!

Antill's Corroboree on Everest tape!

What a find, folks... the Goossens' directed Antill's Corroboree, the pastiche whose recording belongs to the Olympus of Awesome Sound, ever!

I got the fever... I want tapes,  t a p e s,  T A P E S,  T  A  P  E  S,   T   A   P   E   S!


Thanking my pal Tom... I'm in debt with you, mate!

Site of the Day - TEDEd

A nice site, indeed...

... worthwhile.

Zsofia Boros - Local Objects - ECM 2498 (2016)

ZSÓFIA BOROS

LOCAL OBJECTS

Zsófia Boros Guitar

ECM 2498

The second album from the Hungarian-born Vienna-based guitarist finds her embracing a broad scope of music, broader even than on her outstanding debut En otra parte. 

This time the range extends from contemporary composition to jazz etude via music from Brazil, Argentina, Italy and Azerbaijan - all embraced with imagination and creative flair. Pieces played here by Zsófia Boros include Egberto Gismonti’s challenging “Celebração de Núpcias” (made famous on Dança das cabeças), Franghiz Ali-Zadeh’s “Fantasie”, Al Di Meola’s “Vertigo Shadow”, and Carlo Domeniconi’s Turkish-influenced “Koyunbaba”. 

These Local Objects are rendered universal by Boros’s subtle and sensitive playing in an album recorded at Lugano’s Auditorio Stelio Molo in November 2015, recorded by Stefano Amerio and produced by Manfred Eicher.

Pink Floyd's Holy Grail

Cows, again, folks;-)))

USD 5,000.00 from Japan... being auctioned on Ebay... anyone?

Atom Earth Mother

I felt under Hipgnosis looking at these cows... so placidly chewing in such marvellous meadows...

... pretty sure they felt I'm not a meat-eater;-)))

Francesco's Hiraga Class A on-steroids

My best-friend Francesco is such an humble kind of guy: he's not able to do everything, but what he can do, he does perfectly.

He's an architect, a musician, an electronic technician and my choice for attending to my several Hiraga Le Classe A and Le Solstice and my Gerrard 301 and Lentos'.

He built many pieces of his audio system: the speakers, the 301's plinth, his J-Fet preamp and battery phono-stage and, recently, he added 2 Farads... YES! TWO FARADS caps to his own 20W Class A Hiraga's.

This makes an impressive 2,5 Farads total... serious stuff!

The job is nicely executed and the sound... well...

It's very smooth and effortless, dynamic and natural... reminding my own Le Classe A 30W, maybe even better.

A nice achievement, indeed.

Bravo!

Ted Jordan - Jordan Watts' dad - passed away...

A true original... his creations are among the very few out of the choir speakers... he'll possibly soon meet Klipsch and Voigt, somewhere... his only, true peers.

RIP and thanks, Ted..