Of all the rockstars you can think of to hang out with, the one person I’d have really liked to have met was Dolly Parton. Everyone I’ve met who has crossed paths with her has said she was one of the most genuine, sincere people they’ve ever encountered.

Our former Music Editor Jaan Uhelszki had the chance to sit down with Dolly in Nashville and get this interview back in 2014 – when we put Dolly on the cover. Why would we not?

Here’s another look at that epic interview:


Dolly Parton has a gift of intimacy, and makes every person she comes into contact with feel like they’re the only person in the world. It’s not something you’d expect from one of country music’s most recognizable icons—someone who has sold more than 100 million records and just released her 42nd album, Blue Smoke. So, how does she do it?  “I never think of myself as a star. I think of myself as a working girl, always have. That’s why I never had any ego problems. I’m thankful and grateful,” she says. And you know she means it.  In a sit-down interview, TONEAudio talked to the eight-time Grammy winner, theme park mogul, movie star, philanthropist,  and singer-songwriter about cooking, creativity, Bob Dylan, and what she really thinks about when she’s onstage.

JU: You’ve just released your 42nd studio album. How do you know when it’s time to make a new record? Does a buzzer go off in your head? DP: Something like that. I have to weigh everything and ask myself: Should I tour? Put together a band? Record an album? I’m 68 now and I have to be smart about time. JU: So you overthink it? Or do songs usually just demand to be written and you know it’s time.

DP: Yeah, most of them do. But in this particular case, I had a lot of songs in the can. “Blue Smoke” I wrote years ago, and I used to do it onstage because it was just a fun song to do. A lot of fans remembered it and they kept saying, “Why don’t you ever put that out?” So when I got ready to do this [album], not only did I include the song but I thought Blue Smoke was a great title because I was going to do a lot of bluegrass stuff.

JU: And you love the word blue. You’ve put the name in so many of your song titles.

DP: I guess a lot of it comes from growing up in the Smokey Mountains. The Cherokee had a word, “shaconage,” and it meant land of blue smoke. That’s what they called them the Great Smokey Mountains. When I did my bluegrass album, I named it The Grass Was Blue. I was going to travel around with a bluegrass band, and at one time I thought I was going to call my band Blue Smoke. That was before I wrote the song. I was going to call my label Blue Indigo. I never thought about that until you said that. I wrote a song called  “Blue Me.”

JU: I love how you referenced the Cherokee word.

DP: Well, thank you, because I am very spiritual. I’m not religious at all but I totally believe in that. I have to. I need to. I can’t imagine anybody not believing in something bigger than us because I’d choose to believe it even it wasn’t so.

JU: You are a known early bird, and you’ve said you commune with God, or you actually write songs with him in what you call the Wee Wisdom Hours.

DP: Wee-hour wisdom.

JU: Is there a time that you always wake up? [Self help guru] Wayne Dwyer has said if you are awakened early in the morning at the same hour, you should stay up, because someone/some universal force has a message for you.

DP: Years ago, I used to wake, it was almost like clockwork, it was just a thing. I would wake up at 3:00 a.m. every day. But now that I’m older, I’m waking up earlier and earlier. I go to bed early though, but I get up really early because I love the mornings. That’s my time. Nobody else around, everybody asleep, all the energies have died down and I really feel that God’s just waiting to come there. I think about God as like a farmer, and he’s always throwing stuff out. I want to be one of those early-rising people so I get some of that stuff before it gets picked through. I always feel the energies, other people’s energies, bad or good, that the world is kind of settled about that time. So I just feel like it’s quieter and I have a clearer direction.

We all have our own time. That’s my time, anywhere from like midnight to six a.m. I’ll get up, I’ll do my spiritual work, I’ll answer mail or I’ll call in messages to be typed up, and I definitely always do my affirmations, my reading, my Scriptures, and whatever I’m doing at the time. A lot of times I write songs, especially if I’m writing for something. I wrote a lot of the stuff for Blue Smoke in the wee hours.

JU: You have some interesting things on the album. The cover of Bon Jovi’s “Lay Your Hands on Me” that you turned from hot to holy, and back to hot. Can you tell me a little bit about working with Jon Bon Jovi?

DP: We didn’t get together to do it. When I first heard that song years ago I thought, wow, that is spectacular. What a great gospel song. I grew up Pentecostal church where laying on hands meant invoking the Spirit. Or to pray for the sick. Even now I’m always asking God to lay his hands on me. And so when I first heard that I thought it was a gospel song till I started listening to what it was really saying. I’m always loving to do covers, so I thought, well, I just can’t take the liberties to think that I’m just going to go ahead and record this song without knowing if they’ll let me do it. My manager worked as Jon Bon Jovi’s tour manager for a long time, so he put me in touch with him and I just asked him if it would be okay if we turned his song into a gospel thing. He said he thought it would be fantastic. I said, “Well, you throw in some stuff, too.” He said, “Okay. I’ll throw in some stuff.” Then I called [exBon Jovi guitarist] Richie Sambora, who wrote the music for it, and made sure he was okay with it. I didn’t want to just take the liberties. I wanted to make sure that we were all okay. We sent things back and forth. This line works. What about this line? So out of all that, we got this version. I was really inspired, so I wrote a whole bunch of lines.

JU: You also cover Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” Did you feel you needed to work with him on that?

DP: No, I did not. I met him years ago but he we really didn’t connect. Although, I’ve always loved his songs. I’d recorded “Blowin’ in the Wind” years ago on another album, and I’ve sung a lot of his songs through the years. But no. We just didn’t connect.

JU: You also sang a duet with Willie Nelson, “From Here To The Moon and Back.” You too seem to bring out the best in each other.

DP: I love Willie. I’ve worked with him through the years. He’s very hard to sing with because of his phrasing. I mean, just like you’d think, because we both are stylists, and you’d think we’d be able to do it easily. It was really fun singing with him, but it was like an exercise of some sort, trying to catch him with all his little phrases and all. He called up and said, “Let’s do that moon song you wrote because I can really play some hot guitar on that one.” I love that old funky sound he gets on that guitar. I love what he played on that, too. I’m glad we did that together.

JU: Do you have any rituals before you write?

DP: I cook. I love to get in the kitchen when I’m getting prepared to write because if I’m in a good creative mood, my food is spectacular. If my food is spectacular, my writing’s going to be spectacular.  It’s very creative for me, so I always cook and write, usually at the same time. When I prepare to write, what I love to do—my favorite thing to do in the world—is to have time set aside, like two or three weeks to say I’m just going to go write. I go up to my old mountain home. Sometimes I fast and pray for a few days to get myself kind of in a spiritual place—get through the headaches, and everything with comes with the fasting till I get kind of clear. I hate to fast but I try to do that and kind of humble myself a little bit. After that, I get into the writing, then it starts to be creative, and then I can cook. After I’ve got connected.

JU: You are in tremendous shape. You’re a flirt. You say you’ve never met a man you don’t like, yet you’re a role model for women. What do you attribute that to?

DP: Well, I think women see me more like a sister or a girlfriend, or like a special aunt. I think they sense that feeling I have for them because all of my sisters—I have five—and I were very close to my mother, my aunts, and my grandmas, so I just really connect with women. But I don’t think women are threatened by me. Because I’m overdone, I’m more like a cartoon character, so I don’t think they feel threatened in that way either. Like I’m going to steal their man.

JU: In your book My Life And Other Unfinished Beauty, there are a number of photographs of you. Despite what you say, you really were a natural beauty.

DP: I’m really not, trust me. You haven’t seen me without all my makeup. Even in those pictures, I was already made-up. I’m not a natural beauty so I’ve tried to make the most of everything I’ve got. I’ve tried to turn all my negatives into as many positives as I can. That makes me feel better.

JU: You were never afraid to show your brains or your tough side. Even in less-enlightened times. Where does that come from?

DP: I knew I was a woman but it didn’t dawn on me that could be a detriment until I came up against somebody who was trying to overrun me or come on too much, or trying to offer me this and that if I would do that. It was only then that I would [get tough] because I always believed in myself. I believed in my talent. I believed in my brains. I would always go into any place of business with any man, no matter how big or strong they were, and say:  “I’ve got something to offer here. I think I can make us both a lot of money if you’re interested in this.” But if it got out of line, I knew how to walk away and say, “I guess it wasn’t meant for us to do any business.” You always have to be willing to walk away from something that’s not right.

JU: You seem like you’ve always had that brutal confidence.

DP: Well, I always was confident in myself. But I think a lot of that comes from my faith in God, and depending on him and believing that through God all things are possible. I would gather strength from that. I’ve been stronger all my life because of that. I never turned [my belief] loose. Never stopped believing, never. Never will. Even if I die a horrible death, I can’t blame God for that because I’m sure I will have brought a lot of that on myself.

JU: What do you think your job is?  You have said you would have been a hairdresser if you hadn’t done this.

DP: Or a missionary. I woulda, too.

JU: But what do you think your job really is?

DP: I pray every day, and certainly every night before I go onstage, that God will let me shine and radiate with his light

And to let me be a blessing, and let me not have people idolize me because I do not like idolizing stuff. If they see a light in me, I want them to think that it’s the light of God. And even if I don’t get to heaven, if I can help somebody else head in a better direction, that makes me happy. I just want God to use me to uplift mankind, to let me do something to point people in his direction, not mine.

JU: They say that the people that you like are a mirror for you. You’re a mirror for so many people.

DP: Well, we’re all God’s children. We’re all pieces of God, we’re all pieces of one another. Everybody I see, I relate to. I see somebody in my family in that person, somebody I love. And I try to go right to that God light in everybody, to that God spark that we all have. I try to play to that even if I don’t, well, immediately like them. I know there’s that little spark in there.

JU: One of my favorite stories is when you went to see the Judds perform in Lake Tahoe and when they went offstage before their encore, you snuck out onstage and took their bows for them.

DP: I haven’t done anything like that in a while. I still am embarrassed about that. I had to do it, just like I had to take off all my clothes and run across Tom Jones’ lawn. But don’t put anything past me. I’m capable of doing anything.

JU: You mean if someone dares you to do something, you just have to follow through. I love that personality quirk of yours—if it’s a quirk.

DP: It is. I’m just like that. So if somebody dared me to do anything right now, I’m sure I would have to be held back from doing it. But I haven’t done anything like that lately. With the Judds, I was back there watching. But I don’t think they cared that I ran out there and took their bows, but I worried that they did. I’m sure they talked about it, talked about me bad. But I just couldn’t help it.

JU: Is there one thing you’d change about yourself?

DP: Well, to change one thing would change everything. It’s like of course we all wish to have great hair if we don’t. We all want to be tall if we’re short. But I think God gives us just what we need to have and he has to keep us humble some way, so I just accept that I am who I am and how God meant me to be, and it’s working so far. People always ask me, “Do you have any regrets?” I say, “Well, I don’t think so because I never did anything I might regret.” I might regret getting caught at a few things but I didn’t regret the doing it because I never did anything that didn’t feel like the thing I had to be doing at the time, or wanted to do. I mean so how can you go back and say, ooh, I regret that?

JU: I don’t know about you, but I just regret the things I didn’t do. The shoes I didn’t buy.

DP: Yeah, that would be me. I would regret more of what I don’t do than what I’ve done. Always.

JU: UK talk show host Graham Norton talked about how much he loved you, and thought you could be friends. He wanted to. But he realized that you really couldn’t, because you were busy being Dolly all the time. Is that accurate? Are you Dolly all the time?

DP: Did you think that was a negative statement?

JU: Maybe a little. I think he was just hurt. Or wanted you to let him into your life. Into your inner circle.

DP: Well, it’s not that you don’t let them in because every time I meet somebody, like I say, I play to that little spark that I find in them, and I loved him. I thought we worked so great together. But it’s true, sort of like me and Kenny’s [Rogers] song from this new album [“You Can’t Make Old Friends”]. It’s like there’s new people all around. But it’s just that you just don’t really have the time to even be with your family and your old friends, or do the things you need to do. But it doesn’t mean every now and then there’s a person that will worm their way. But I don’t even, like I say, have time for the things I need to do.

JU: Is it difficult to be such a big celebrity and have a private life?

DP: No, not for me. My life is good. I’ve managed to manage that really well. When I’m home, I’m really home. When I’m with my husband, I’m totally with him. I figured that out early. I had to because this is what I do. I’ve dreamed myself into a corner, so I have to be responsible for all of the things that I’ve dreamed and I’ve seen come true. I’ve been blessed that my dreams come true. But there’s a big responsibility. It’s wearing. Sometimes you just physically and emotionally can hardly keep up.

But, this is what I do. I never think of myself as a star. I think of myself as a working girl, always have. That’s why I never had any ego problems. I’m thankful and grateful. And I look at the body of work that I’ve done sometimes and I’m just shocked by it. I’m amazed by it and think, “How in hell did I get all that done? In this many years. How did I do all that?” But I did it.

JU: You have many gifts, but I think one of your greatest gifts is your ability to connect. To fully see someone when you’re with them, as if they’re the only person in the world.

DP: Well, thank you. That’s what I go back to that looking for God in everybody. Finding that spark. But I do feel that way, though. People also say, “Don’t you get so tired of singing the same songs, saying the same stuff?” I say no, because every one of those little faces is not a face I’d seen before, so that’s the first time they heard it from me. First time I’ve said it to them. And I know that it’s real coming from me, and I know that it’s like an energy there. Even though I do these interviews day in, day out, it’s like looking at you and the way you ask questions and the tone of voice makes me have a whole different delivery, makes me add more to something I’ve said before. But it takes on new meaning for me.

JU: What do you think about when you’re onstage? Did I unplug the iron?

DP: You know, that’s funny. Right in the middle of a song, especially songs when I’m talking to the audience, I’m really right there with them because you can’t lose your concentration. But I’ve sung these songs so many times, right in the middle of a song my mind will trail off, and I’ll think, “Did I leave the coffee pot on? Did I unplug the iron?” Like you said. And then I’ll think, “Ooh, you better get back or you’re going to miss your words.”

20 Things You Might Not Know About Dolly Parton

1. Dolly once lost a Dolly Parton look-alike contest.

2. While it’s reported she’s Miley Cyrus’ Godmother, Parton is Cyrus’ honorary Godmother. There was never a formal ceremony.

3. It’s often reported that her breasts, measuring a reported 40DD, are insured for $600,000. False.

4. While Parton turned down Jack White’s offer to produce her, she did let him buy her and her friends dinner at an expensive Nashville hotspot.

5. Parton and her husband Carl Dean often go food shopping in the middle of the night at 24-hour Walmart near their home outside of Nashville.

6. Parton has stopped trying to disguise herself in public because people always recognize her voice. Last time she tried, some kids said: “You’re Dolly Parton in a black wig!’”

7. Although she’s co-owned the Dollywood theme park since 1986, she claims she’s “too terrified” to ride any of the rides.

8. The world’s first cloned mammal—a sheep—was named Dolly after her in 1996.

9. Parton once had a line of wigs distributed through Revlon cosmetics.

10. Parton has never made a  big decision without fasting first. She usually fasts in multiples of seven. Either seven days, 14 days, or 21 days.

11. She was rejected from the high-school cheerleading squad at Sevier County High School.

12. The Ku Klux Klan once picketed Dollywood because of Parton’s annual Gay Day.

13. She once played herself in an episode of “Alvin & the Chipmunks.”

14. Kevin Costner was the one insisted Whitney Houston record Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” for The Bodyguard.

15. “I Will Always Love You” was Saddam Hussein’s reelection theme song.

16. A photograph of Parton’s little-seen husband Carl Dean is on the cover 1969’s My Blue Ridge Mountain Boy.

17. Parton received death threats after she wrote “Travelin’ Thru” for the film Transamerica, about a transgender woman.

18. She has three tattoos: An angel on her upper left arm, butterfly on her chest, and a red flower in between her cleavage. 1

9. Her production company, Sandollar, produced the hit show “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

20. Parton hates to fly and suffers from motion sickness.

Does it all.

If you’ve been looking for a high performance component that can do everything – with a minimal (and very attractive) footprint, we highly suggest the T+A Symphonia. At $10,995, this is not a budget/entry-level piece, however the level of performance, refinement, versatility, and execution deliver tremendous value.

The Symphonia starts with the Eigentakt chipset, T+A engineers have built their own custom board, allowing them to utilize their well-proven high voltage power supply technology and wide bandwidth throughput, making it a truly unique T+A iteration of that very respected technology. to deliver 125 watts per channel into 8 ohms (double that into 4) and gives the user every audio option.

In addition to offering a built-in streaming, USB DAC that is ROON ready, there is an additional RCA/SPDIF input and an optical input too. You can also stream via Bluetooth, WiFi, or Ethernet (our preference). A single, RCA analog input is provided in case you need to connect a tape deck (yes, please) and an excellent MM phono stage.

It doesn’t stop there. For those of you that still have terrestrial radio stations that you love, there is an on-board FM and DAB tuner.

We’ll have a full review shortly, but suffice to say the audio performance is what we’ve come to expect from T+A. Dynamic, detailed, open, and musical. It drives our reference YG Acoustics Summit speakers flawlessly. And, there is even a subwoofer output should you need a line level output for that.

T+A has missed nothing here. While you might initially raise an eyebrow at the price tag, consider what you’d be spending on four sets of interconnect and mains cables, not to mention rack space. See what we mean? Furthermore, in a more design oriented environment where great sound is a plus with a minimal box count a priority, this elegant performer will blend right in. Turntable or not.

https://www.ta-hifi.de/en/audiosystems/symphonia

Hello and welcome to Distilled.

We are not abandoning our standard reviews, but for those of you that would like a little more than the canned press releases everyone else is posting, but not sure if you want to make the time investment in a full review, we present the distilled column.

A quick overview of components that will be 200-300 words. No space for blather, pontification, or a lot of “I, Me, Mine” stuff.

We’ll do our best to present a couple of good pics, a link to the full review (if it’s done and you’re so intrigued) and a link to the manufacturer. On occasion, we will even post a purchase link if it makes sense. Please NOTE: we are doing this for your convenience, and these are not sponsored or affiliate links.

Thank you for reading!

If you’ve ever been horn curious but budget conscious – consider a pair of Shatuto Audio A811b-12s.

While I heard some good sound at this year’s T.H.E. Show, I personally love high-sensitivity horn speakers, because a 97db/1-watt speaker makes it so easy to get into the audio game. You can build a decent 2A3 or 300B amp from scratch. Rebuild a Dynaco Stereo 70. It’s tough to find a bad sounding SET. Or, you can grab a low powered Japanese receiver, or maybe even a Naim Nait 50 if you can find one around anywhere. (We’ll be following up on all of that soon.)

The Shakuto A811b-12s really turned my head around, from the minute I walked in their room.

These compact, 12” 2-way speakers, featuring a port loaded 12” woofer and a compression tweeter mounted to a genuine vintage Altec Lansing 811B horn. Shakuto uses Danish Audience SB drivers here. Even out in my garage with a vintage Luxman integrated from the 90s, the sound is glorious. They clean up the vintage horns and have them powder coated to look better than new. Sexy.

Build quality is phenomenal – these speakers are beautiful to behold. Even out of the crate (very well packaged btw) the sound is room filling and luscious. Spoiler alert – I’m keeping the review pair, so that should tell you something. Moving into my studio with the Shakutos about 12 feet apart, slightly angled in, powered by the Canor Virtus I2 integrated is where serious listening begins. What makes this amplifier such a perfect match for the Shakutos is its ability to be used in triode mode, delivering 20 watts per channel through it’s KT88 tubes.

The sound is smooth, big, and glorious. Bass extension is excellent, and the compression driver Shakuto uses is silky smooth. Spinning a few jazz favorites, makes me feel like I’m in a listening bar in Tokyo!

We have a lot more to investigate. A wider range of musical styles, different amplifiers, and different cables. A full review is underway, but I’m so excited about these (and I’ve had a number of readers messaging me already) I wanted to put some initial thoughts out immediately.  At $7,900 a pair, they are an exceptional value, but at the introductory price of $5,900 a pair, they are the best high sensitivity speaker bargain going. If you’ve got a low powered tube amp, want to build one, or have a First Watt amp (yeah – they work GREAT with First Watt) but haven’t found the nirvana speaker, the Shakuto A811b-12 is my suggestion.

We’ll have a lot more info for you in a couple weeks, and you can expect to see these pop up in a number of low powered amplifier reviews going forward, as these are now my reference.

The A811-b12
Intro price: $5,900/pair
shakutoaudio.com  

If you need a super compact, super high-performance digital player/streamer/DAC, Nagra has the droid you need.

Only 7.2 x 6.5 x 1.6 inches in size, the Compact Player is the exact same size as the Compact Phono. Much like the Compact Phono, it has a small external power supply but can be upgraded with the Nagra Compact PSU power supply to get even more performance. Those owning an MPS or Classic PSU can also plug the Compact components in for better results.

For now, sticking to the stock setup, the sound is seriously incredible. While the Compact has full DSD capability, the majority of my listening was done via ROON with 16/44 to 24/192 resolution. The Compact is ROON ready and sets up in about 25 seconds.  Plug in the power supply, install an ethernet cable, click “enable” in ROON, and bam.

If you’re thinking “how can Nagra get so much performance out of such a small box?” The reason is simple. They have distilled (pun intended) the functionality down to the absolute minimum – there isn’t even a power switch! Plug it in and leave it on. One tiny LED lets you know it’s working. It will take a day or so to completely stabilize electronically and thermally, yet it sounds excellent out of the box, not to worry. It’s a Nagra, come on.

Keeping to the simple path, there is a USB input for an external hard drive or memory stick and an RJ-45 input. This is my only complaint – I wish it also had an SPDIF input, but that would add to the complexity and chipset. However, it would be incredibly cool to use this DAC with a transport.

And it’s built with every bit of care and precision that every Nagra is built with. The Compact series is not watered down in any way. Think of the Compact Player as the Tudor Black Bay of digital players.

The sound is pure Nagra, honed by decades of building some of the world’s finest gear including analog and digital recorders. Lightning fast, tonally correct, musical and involving – yet without embellishment or coloration. That is the Nagra way, and this DAC delivers performance rivaling much more expensive DACs we’ve used – but again, no functionality.

If you need a single purpose digital player, the Nagra Compact Player gets our highest recommendation. We’ll have a full, extended review shortly. This is one we wholeheartedly stand behind. – Jeff Dorgay

Photos courtesy of Nagra.

$7,495
www.nagraaudio.com

At a recent hifi event at Upscale Audio, I had the tremendous opportunity to spend an hour with the new Quad 2912X speakers after the show was over, before it was time to leave. Running through a quick list of reference favorites, it was easy to get a read on these amazing speakers. With a pair of original 57s and 63s here at TONE, the “Quad thing” is very much burned into memory over decades of listening.

The new speakers have 92% of the magic of the original 57, with much more extension at both frequency extremes, along with greater dynamic swing. If you’ve never heard the originals, you might just think these are one of the most incredible speakers ever made. Oddly enough, after experiencing the originals, chances are high you will still think the same thing, as here’s the Quad sound you know and love, but oh so much more of it, and the ability to play the Rolling Stones at a reasonable, maybe even a bit unreasonable level now.

Starting with Keith Richards’ “Wicked as it Seems” is a great place to dive in, especially with these speakers sitting between a large portrait of the Rolling Stones in Upscale’s room. Driven by the new Musical Fidelity M8XI integrated (about $7,999 courtesy of Harmonia Distribution) the big Quads deliver an incredibly large sound field in all dimensions, with a ton of bass grip.

Zipping through about a dozen well-known reference tracks, an hour goes by with the same speed as when you hit the snooze button on your alarm. Where did it go? These are speakers I could listen to all day and still want to listen to more music. The level of detail retrieval and lack of coloration is way beyond what you’ll ever get in a like-priced pair of box speakers. But now, they rock.

For those thinking that high power with Quads is counterintuitive, (and super easy to fry the early ones with) these speakers benefit from a lot of current and high damping factor. If you’ve always felt that the last (non-X) generation of these speakers was too polite, it’s worth reconsidering with an amplifier like this. My 2812s never sounded more glorious than they did, paired with the mighty Pass XS300 monoblocks. The M8XI is a much more reasonable solution.  Add your choice of analog front end for about $5k-10k and you’ve got an amazing hifi system for the price of a CPO 3-series.

We’ll be getting a pair soon enough, but if you’re on the fence on a pair of these, I can’t suggest them highly enough. As with all prior Quads, there’s a certain level of tonal purity you just won’t get from a pair of MartinLogans, and transparency that Magnepans don’t even begin to approach.

Are these your dream speakers come true? They might be. I know I want a pair. – Jeff Dorgay

The Quad ESL 2912X
$18,000/pair (approx.)
mofidistribution.com

Photo courtesy of Laura Berbaum

And we’ve got a pair!

Harmonia Distribution is pleased to announce the North American launch of the Fyne Audio Cubitt 5, a compact, fully active loudspeaker system designed to bring high-fidelity sound to televisions, turntables, desktop systems, and everyday music listening without the need for separate amplification.

Priced at $899, Cubitt 5 combines Fyne Audio’s 5” IsoFlare point-source driver with 240 W of DSP-controlled amplification, an active crossover, and 24-bit/96 kHz digital playback. Its high-density, internally braced cabinet and front-firing bass port allow the speaker to deliver substantial performance from an enclosure suited to bookshelves, desktops, and shared living spaces.

The IsoFlare driver places the high-frequency unit at the acoustic center of the bass/midrange driver, helping sound radiate from a single point. Fyne Audio’s FyneFlute surround is engineered to terminate unwanted energy at the edge of the driver cone, while the active crossover and dedicated class-D amplification allow the system’s electronics and drivers to be optimized together.

Cubitt 5 can serve as the center of a complete home audio system. Bluetooth 5.0 with aptX HD and AAC provides convenient wireless playback, while HDMI ARC/eARC allows the speakers to replace a conventional soundbar for television sound. Optical digital and analog RCA inputs accommodate additional sources, and a built-in phonostage supports moving-magnet and high-output moving-coil cartridges. A subwoofer output is also provided for listeners who want greater low-frequency extension.

“Cubitt 5 makes it possible to build a serious music system without filling the room with equipment,” says Jeff Coates, Director of Sales at Harmonia Distribution. “It retains the point-source driver technology and engineering focus for which Fyne Audio is known, while making that performance accessible to casual listeners. But we encourage audiophiles to listen to Cubitt 5 and prepare to be very pleasantly surprised.”

Designed for modern living spaces, Cubitt 5 offers the simplicity and ease of use expected from a powered wireless speaker without abandoning Fyne Audio’s high-fidelity heritage. Its compact dimensions, broad connectivity, and choice of finishes allow the system to move easily between traditional hi-fi, desktop, and television applications.

Cubitt 5 is available in five finishes: Midnight Black, Pearl Titanium, Olive Green, Pebble Grey, and Arctic White.

The Fyne Audio Cubitt 5 will make its North American public debut at Audio Advice Live, August 7–9 in Raleigh, North Carolina.

We are very excited to be at the front of the review schedule on these.

If you’ve been looking for a pair of speakers that look and sound incredibly neutral, delivering the sonic goods, yet not imposing on your personal space, consider the Frigg 02 from Ø Audio.

At $15,000/pair, they will probably not be your first pair of speakers, but they could be your last. Chances are if you’ve been on your audio journey for some time, you have a lot better handle on what you like and don’t like.

In addition to a neutral overall tonal balance, they sport a sensitivity rating of 90dB/1-watt. Remember not all sensitivity ratings are equal, because some speakers possess a wild impedance curve (not here) or a super complex crossover network that eats up the first few watts of amplifier power, making for a less than stellar matchup with lower powered tube amps. Again, not here.

Bias admitted, we love the simple, understated look of these speakers, but sound always wins the end of the day. Make no mistake, these are our Product of the Year award winner, because they embody everything we find true at TONEAudio: great sound, top quality craftsmanship, and aesthetic excellence as well. There’s nothing not to love.

You can read our full review here:

https://tonepublications2.com/project/the-o-audio-frigg-02-speakers/

The new 3000 Micro R I Evolution from SVS has taken the incredible performance of the prior model, made the cabinet a touch bigger (so little you can’t really tell the diff), and increased the driver size from 8 to 9 inches. They’ve had to up the price a little, now sitting at $999.99, but this miniature subwoofer marvel is worth every penny.

SVS calls it a “lifestyle-friendly” 11-inch cabinet that fits anywhere, which is a large part of this small but mighty subwoofer’s attraction. They are available in gloss black or gloss white. The white blends in so well you barely know it’s there. At the risk of starting a squabble, you can probably sneak one right into your listening room, and no one will even know! And…you can use a handy SVS adaptor to connect it wirelessly too. Awesome. Now you have no excuse to be deprived of the bass you deserve.

If you’ve got some small-ish speakers or a set of small- to medium-sized panels in your listening room, you might not have the floor space for a big subwoofer, but nearly everyone wants more low-frequency extension, right?

The 3000 Micro R I Evolution is the perfect solution. And thanks to their built-in DSP with Parametric EQ and room correction – all available from their app, it doesn’t get easier than this to make a major upgrade. We’ve got a full review coming down the road, but suffice it to say this one works well with everything from a pair of Magnepans to your favorite box speakers. It goes without saying that the match to my reference pair of SVS Ultra Evolution Towers is killer. At that point, $4k makes for an amazing, full-range system that is well within reach of most music lovers.

In case you don’t know about SVS’s legendary customer service and support, that’s a huge positive as well. They even offer a 45-day hassle-free return. Yep, they even pay the return freight if you don’t love it. No one else does that. So if you’re on the fence, take a test drive. I’m going to bet you don’t return it.

Please click here for more details and full tech specs.
https://www.svsound.com/products/3000-micro-revolution-subwoofer

You can also purchase here. We DO NOT receive commission for this link; it is merely for your convenience.

Photos courtesy of SVS…

By now it’s old news that Dynaudio is leaving North America. While nearly everyone else merely posted the press release, they are a company that is worth a lot more introspection.

First, Dynaudio is a company whose products I’ve always really enjoyed. TONE has had a partnership with Dynaudio for nearly 20 years, and I’ve had the privilege to go to their factory in Denmark a few times. Their commitment to engineering, execution, and above all great sound has always been exciting. Considering all the amateurs measuring speakers in their garages and back yards with all kinds of different setups, seeing their gigantic room, with multiple mics and tons of test equipment is amazing.

Bias admitted, I’ve always loved the sound of their speakers, and being a huge fan of Scandinavian design, the look and craftsmanship as well. Most of the folks I’ve met at the Skanderborg facility have a pretty decent sense of humor too.

Yeah, I’m losing some advertising bucks, but more importantly, some great people and an excellent relationship. Mike Manousselis, the President of Dynaudio North America has been there since before I started TONE, and his 2^nd in command, John Quick has also been in the industry forever. I’ve worked with him at dCS, and Nagra prior to his stint at Dynaudio. They have both always been very supportive of TONE, and I’ll always appreciate their support.

So, it was more than business. It’s hard not to become friends with people that you’ve spent hour upon hour at trade shows, on press trips, and over at your house setting gear up for years.

While I have no concrete reason why they are making this ultimate decision – it affects not only Mike and crew, but all of the people in North America that derive part of their living selling Dynaudio products. And I’m sure that secondary prices will plummet, even though Dynaudio is assuring us that they will continue to support everything. But if you’ve ever had an absentee landlord, it might all give you pause, especially if you have one of the higher priced Dynaudio speakers.

I’m going to miss them.

Cover Story:
The Ø Audio Frigg 02

Old School: ESS AMT1 Tower – by Jeff Dorgay
Audiophile Apartment: The Dynaudio Legend Speakers
Journeyman Audiophile: The conrad-johnson Classic SE Phono – by Darin Kong
Review: The LTA Century Monoblocks
Review: Rega Mercury and Solis – Amp and Pre
Short Take: New Grounding Device from Vera Fi!
Stereo Stories: Buying Tape Decks on Super Bowl Sunday

1095: S.M.S.L. CD player-$150 killer! – by Jerold O’Brien
Long Term: Back next issue!

TONE Visits:

Axpona – Chicago

MINE – It Should Be Yours:

Fun things that you know you want

Music

Playlists:  We share our readers choices from around the world
IN House:  The Soundtrack of the Issue
THE SACD Report:  Chatting about the other shiny discs

Future Tense

Gear in our immediate future

GOOD. BETTER. BEST.

Just slightly more than 44 years ago, Van Halen’s wackiest album hit the shelves. Mostly covers. Sure, part of their initial success was their cover of The Kinks “You Really Got Me,” but “Pretty Woman,” and “Happy Trails?” You had to be a true fan to sign off on this one. Yet, years later, this oddball VH record stands up, and in some cases, seems like an interesting exercise for this band on the run.

Comparing the original pressing that I bought the day this record came out, to the later Chris Bellman release, and the current MoFi ONE-Step is an easy task indeed. The original is, like all the original VH records, compressed, with a truncated bottom end. Was that passive aggressiveness towards the affable Michael Anthony, or just oversight for better radio play?

Conspiracy theories aside, the Bellman version definitely brings back a lot of what’s been lost, and is a major step in the right direction. But there’s more lurking in that master.

You need go no further than the “Big Bad Bill…” cut to see the genius in the execution of the MoFi version. Yes, it rocks harder in every way, and the lost bottom end is restored to perfection, but the smoothness of the tone in Van Halen senior’s clarinet is incredible. And good as the MoFi SACD is, this is one of those instances where the magic of vinyl rules the day.

So, considering that Google lists a search for the opening track as a “Song by Van Halen,” won’t you tell me, where have all the good times gone?

Record of the Day is brought to you by Bergmann Audio, dCS, and Supreme Acoustic Systems.
The table featured here is the Modi, with their Thor linear tracking arm.

CD’s and SACD’s are auditioned on the dCS Varese

Cartridge is a modified LYRA Helikon SL, modified by Ana Mighty Sound

Phono Pre is the award winning XP-17 from Pass Labs

Cables by Cardas Audio

All on top of the Pagode Master Reference MKII, courtesy of MoFi Distribution

Mini Music Powerhouse

$995.00
fiio.com/k17

Nestled in between my mighty Klipschorns, with ROON playing “Paranormial” by The Art of Noise, it amazes a few of my audiophile buddies that the source is the tiny FiiO K17 DAC. And it’s not just a DAC, it’s a full-blown streamer, preamplifier (though I am only using it as a DAC/Streamer here), and headphone amplifier. It even has a 31-band digital parametric EQ built in!

The bass is extended, defined, and full of texture. Mids are natural and clean. The treble range is well represented, perhaps a touch grainy when compared to much higher priced kit, but completely livable. And the Khorns are a bit extended on top as well, so it’s all good. Going from here to Tom Waits’ “What’s He Building?” reveals just how much midrange detail, texture, and depth this digital front end is capable of. Following it up with Lou Reed’s “Vanishing Act” and Allan Taylor’s rendition of “Tennessee Waltz” confirms it. This is an incredible product.

With so many people out on YouTube complaining about the cost of things hifi, I submit the FiiO K17. To put this in perspective, I own a dCS Vivaldi ONE that is currently being updated to APEX spec, so that’s about a $100k digital player. I’m not saying this to boast about my system; I want you to know that I have an incredible digital front end, and yet at $995, the K17 is not only a tremendous value, but it delivers tremendous performance and amazing flexibility.

Why is this so exciting? At $995, the K17 gives budding audio enthusiasts a great jumping-off point, and for those wanting to build a great system that won’t require refinancing the house, an incredible anchor. Or, if you are a deeply committed audio enthusiast, it is the perfect building block for a second or third system.

Using the K17 in concert with a vintage Proceed PDT CD transport and streaming via ROON, Qobuz, and Tidal makes for a digital music center that is out of this world good. Taking advantage of some pretty advanced tech, both in circuit design and sheer engineering might, assembling all of this in such a small (about 8” x 8” x 2”) package is a masterpiece of execution.

A quick look at the FiiO site shows everything they’ve packed into this small enclosure. The K17 is truly a masterpiece of miniaturization – there is no wasted space anywhere. Around front, there is a 3.93-inch high-resolution touch screen, making it easy to see what is going on and control everything from the front panel. It’s a smartly attractive piece with a slightly retro style, almost like early Mark Levinson gear, albeit a small one!

In addition to volume and menu controls, there are three headphone jacks and multiple selectors for power, function, and gain. Our review sample arrives in silver with black lettering but is slightly difficult to read because the type is so small. I’d buy mine in black, for the additional legibility, but that is truly the only complaint I have about the K17.

As a DAC/Streamer

You really need to head over to the FiiO site to see everything that the K17 is capable of. In the context of this review, it was primarily used as a DAC/streamer, as a ROON endpoint. The K17s analog stage has RCA and balanced XLR outputs. They say it is a fully balanced design, but since my ampsandsound preamplifier is RCA-only, most listening was done with the RCA outputs.

Thanks to multiple inputs around back, any source can be accommodated. There are digital inputs for coaxial SPDIF, optical, and USB sources.

Being able to stream anything from anywhere makes the K17 incredibly flexible. It even decodes MQA files if that is still a thing for anyone. Bluetooth playback with Spotify from my iPhone is exceptionally good, too.

As mentioned in the spec sheet, the K17 decodes everything. I was able to decode everything in my library with ease, and again. It works flawlessly, using it as a DAC with my vintage Proceed transport to play CDs via the coax SPDIF input. If you’ve got an older player that still functions fine, this is a great way to breathe new life and functionality into an old deck.

As a headphone/PRE

Not being a big headphone user these days, I still keep a couple of good phones around just in case, so putting the K17 to work strictly as a headphone amplifier proves this component is more than worth the asking price if that’s all you use it for.

FiiO claims 4 watts of power, with discrete output devices in the headphone amplifier section. Listening sessions with the Focal Clear MG, original Audeze 2s, and a pair of Grados all prove musical.

Back to that EQ for a minute. As you head-fi’ers know, there is so much variation in the way different phones mate with different amps, and having the ability to make minor adjustments over this wide of a frequency range is helpful. Best of all, this can be adjusted with your phone or tablet using their app. Everything else can be controlled here as well.

While my studio is a pretty good-sounding room without major issues, my living room is dreadful. Being able to surgically cut out a bit of boom here, and boost a bit of cloudiness in the upper mids goes a long way at making that room a lot more listenable. That may grate on your audiophile sensibilities, but it is great to have available. And we all know not all records are created equal.

Thanks to its fully balanced design, you can easily place the K17 where it’s convenient and run a long set of balanced interconnects to a power amplifier and speakers elsewhere in the room. I tried this in my living room, running a 6-meter pair of Ranger XLRs to a Pass Labs XA30.8 power amplifier. Back in the studio, the K17 is the anchor for System 3, but is only used as a DAC. You can choose fixed or variable outputs from the front panel. There’s even a handily placed USB-C port there, and around back, a ground lift switch. FiiO hasn’t missed a thing to make the K17 easy to integrate into your system.

However, using it as a line level preamplifier, direct to amplifier works well, making the K17 a fantastic building block to a modestly priced, yet high performance two-channel system. Thanks to the single analog input, it’s easy to add a turntable. Connecting the Hagerman Trumpet MC to a vintage Technics SL-1100 makes for an excellent combination, using the Vera-Fi A40 class–A power amplifier, driving vintage Acoustat 2+2 speakers. Because there is no loss of information at low volume, I am assuming that FiiO has implemented the volume control in the analog output stage.

The $100k question

So, is the K17 a dCS killer? Nope. But it’s core sonics are excellent, and the level of sonic refinement it does offer is way beyond what I suspect you’ll find at $995. Doing some side by side comparisons with players from Advance Paris, Naim, and Marantz with price tags nearly double – the K17 holds its own.

Beyond that, considering it’s unique set of features, it outperforms everything else I’ve encountered at over double the price. That’s great value. It may not be a dCS Vivaldi or an Esoteric Grandioso, but that’s not who this is intended for. I think putting the K17 in the context of a $3k – $10k+ system, you will be thrilled. I know I am.

I definitely want one

At $995, the FiiO K17 is one of the best values I’ve ever encountered in high-end audio in a long time. It’s more than worth the price asked, even if you were merely using it as a preamplifier, headphone amplifier, DAC, or streamer alone. That you get all four in one neatly executed box is incredible.

I’m happy to give this our first Exceptional Value Award of 2026. Regardless of where you are in your hifi journey, this is one to check out. I’m keeping the review sample. And we’ll have a little more up on YouTube in the weeks to come, too.


Peripherals

Digital source(transport)                     Madrigal Proceed PDT

Analog source                         Technics SL-1100/wSME 3009 and Denon DL-103r

Phono pre                                            Hagerman Trumpet MC

Amplifier                                            Pass XA30.8, VeraFi A40

Speakers                                              Klipsch AK7 Klipschorn, w/ SVS 5000 sub

Cable                                                   Ranger signal and power

The letters DD usually mean something else to me, but in this case, they mean direct drive. Not something you’d usually expect from Thorens, long time makers of idler wheel tables, that have become famous the world over. So this reimagined version, has a mega reputation to live up to.

Without having a well preserved (or restored) original to do a direct comparison, I can only go on my memories. Packaged with a 9-inch Thorens arm, and thanks to the folks at MoFi Distribution, Ortofon’s latest SPU cartridge, designated the TD124, how can I go wrong?

The table sets up quickly, and unlike its ancestor, does not have a cast iron platter (though the supplied one has plenty of mass) to destroy your favorite moving coil cartridge. #askmehowiknow.

All the styling cues are here, and the only thing that seems a little off is when you lift the platter it looks more like an SL-1200 than a Thorens. But that’s progress. Playing through the MoFi Master Phono phono stage in current mode is lovely. The sound is big, lush and dynamic.

We’ve got a lot more to unpack here, and we will be doing a proper comparison to a vintage 124 as well, because if nothing else – I want to know. Stay tuned.

www.mofidistribution.com

Announced the day of the opening of Axpona last week, Dynaudio’s new Legend speaker is “The Best ultra-compact speaker we’ve created so far,” according to Otto Jorgensen, the head of Dynaudio Academy.

Big words indeed, coming from the people who have given music lovers a long line of high performance, compact monitors. Many of these have been reviewed in our pages. It’s no secret that we’re big fans of the brand. The combination of understated aesthetic excellence, and the ability to pack so much performance in such a small cabinet is virtually unmatched in the industry.

And, at $7,000/pair, these mighty miniature monitors will bring great sound to small spaces everywhere.

Combining Dynaudio’s 28mm Esotar 3 tweeter, a new 14cm mid/bass driver, and crossover components all derived from their top speakers, these are a winner. Destined to live up to their name.

And the sound?

Awesome AF. That’s how they sound.

If this sounds like just what you’ve been looking for, head over to your Dynaudio dealer and listen. They were a major hit at the show. We can’t wait to get them in for review.

www.dynaudio.com

This picture was taken about 90 seconds after Axpona opened on Friday. 20 minutes later, the place was packed – wall to wall people.

That’s exciting for a lot of reasons. For the first time since we got stuck with Covid, it felt great to see the place packed. It’s a good sign for the hifi industry and the hobby in general. There were still people in rooms on Sunday night at 6pm (and the show officially closed at 4) listening to music.

If you’re new to TONE, and you’re looking for a bunch of “Best sound at the show” awards, don’t waste your time. We don’t give them out. I always look at a hifi show as a hostile environment for producing sound, because there are so many variables. That everyone’s stuff gets there unharmed and set up in itself is amazing. And I mean this in the most respectful way. Think about it, 200+ rooms got set up and rocking in a day or so. That takes hard work and dedication.

What does “best sound at the show” really mean? It means the sound you preferred. Considering there were systems from a couple thousand dollars to a couple million, any attempt to do this isn’t fair to the manufacturers, or you – the reader. And, there was such a wide range of different systems, it was exciting to see it all in one place.

But I’ll tell you this – I heard more rooms that had well executed setups, big and small, than I’ve ever heard at any hifi show. Ever. We’ve got a few pics over on our Instagram page, with a few more to post in the next couple of days.

https://www.instagram.com/toneaudiomagazine/

Again, this is great for the people that took time off from their jobs and families to come on down and hang out. I truly hope that if you were someone new to the world of hifi you got to hear enough great sound, that you’re motivated to go further and seek out a good dealer.

It was great to be part of it, and to see as much as I could pack in. I’m already looking forward to next year. If you’d like to experience a massive cross section of hifi, I can’t think of a better place to go. – Jeff Dorgay

Ed. Note:  While I was searching for something else on the site that was mis-labeled, I came across this. Considering we could all use a few more smooches, I’m still good with this list 12 years later! Do with it what you will.

Today, Spotify announced their list of “Top 10 Shagging songs” here:

http://www.theladbible.com/now/music-spotify-reveals-the-top-10-shagging-anthems-and-one-lasts-127-seconds-20160804

I agree that most music is subjective, and we all have our favorites to initiate or accompany the mating ritual. Here’s mine – in no particular order. If this is all TMI, sorry about that! I hope you’re open enough to either be inspired or amused. Keep in mind, these are not staff choices. Like Captain Kirk, I stand alone on this one. Let the comments begin.

1.  Prince – One Night Alone

2.  Mickey Hart – Eliminators

3.   Pat Metheny – Are You Going With Me?

4.  Anja Garbarek – Big Mouth

5.  Dylan – I Want You or Just Like a Woman

6.  Crash Test Dummies – I Want to Par-Tay!

7.  Crowded House – Whispers and Moans

8. Dusty Springfield – Breakfast in Bed

9. The Tubes – Let’s Make Some Noise

10. Art of Noise – Moments in Love

Extra Credit:

Stephen Pompougnac – Hotel Costes (the entire series)

The Pretenders – Bad Boys Get Spanked

Judas Priest – Turbo

Kiss – Deuce

Squeeze – Tempted

Betty Davis – Game is my Middle Name

Sly & The Family Stone – You Can Make it if You Try

Fun, But Obvious:

Marvin Gaye – Let’s Get it On

Beatles – Why Don’t We Do It In The Road

And of course:
Yello – Oh Yeah!

Never:

Anything by REO Speedwagon, Journey or Styx

Pub. Note: This was originally published about 11 years ago, but with our upcoming review of the replacement model, we thought it would make sense to make this easier to find, as we compare it to the new XS Pre 2.

Of the thousands of tracks auditioned during the Pass XS Preamplifier’s stay here, Lou Reed’s “Vanishing Act” sums it up perfectly. As he sings/speaks, “It must be nice to disappear…” the words to describe the XS Pre appear. It just disappears, calling no attention to itself, perhaps the toughest thing for an audio component to do.

Just like buying a car, test driving a premium audio component is usually a shorter first date than you’d like. In the end, it requires a certain leap of faith, and if you blow it, it’s going to cost you dearly. Much as I love Pass products, if you decide that the $38,000 XS Pre isn’t for you, there will be a stiff penalty, should you turn it over for something else. Like any other five figure hi-fi component, putting this two-chassis beauty back on the secondary market after a few months of use will be an expensive proposition unless you have an incredibly forgiving dealer, used to you doing this kind of thing on a regular.

The good news is that the above mentioned scenario probably won’t happen. I’d even go out on a limb to bet about 100 to 1 odds that it won’t. I’ve been using the XS Pre for over a year now, and I’ll do my best at describing it so that you won’t make a misstep.

First, and most importantly, where the Pass XS and XA series amplifiers have an ever so slight tip towards the warm side (which I happen to prefer) of what I’d call neutral tonality, the XS Pre is as close to having a straight up, 12 o’clock, right in the center neutral tonal rendition as I’ve ever experienced. The only other preamplifier I’d put in this category is the Boulder 3010, and to a slightly lesser extent my other reference, the Robert Koda K-10. Either of these preamplifiers cost as much as a gently owned BMW M3, and each is phenomenal performers.

Special and then some

Today there are a lot of incredibly competent preamplifiers, many costing less than the XS Pre and a few costing even more. Now and again, a component is so overwhelmingly good, that it’s an express elevator ride to audio heaven. My Conrad Johnson GAT2 is one of those preamplifiers too, but it’s got vacuum tubes, and only sports single ended RCA inputs and outputs so that it won’t be everyone’s idea of heaven.

 

The world’s finest preamplifiers that I enjoy impart little to no signature of their own to the music, yet they offer a bigger, broader, weightier presentation than a system is capable of without a preamplifier involved. This is a unique bit of magic that don’t completely understand because, in a perfect world, you would think that just going straight from your DAC or phonostage (provided it had a level control) would bring you closer to the music than running everything through another box and set of cables.

Good as the dCS Rossini DAC and Clock combination is on its own, running a pair of Cardas Clear interconnects directly from the dCS pair to the XS300 amplifiers sounds smaller, less focused and pale in comparison to putting the XS Pre in my reference system. How can this be? Especially considering Mr. Pass (the creator of the First Watt amplifiers – champions of the “less is more” approach to circuit design. Inserting the XS Pre in the signal path is not subtle. Again, this preamplifier does not change the tonal character or balance a molecule, yet everything enlarges. Dynamic range increases to the point where transients explode from the speakers where they merely had punch before, and the soundfield created by the system becomes much larger in all three dimensions. The sonic presentation goes from big and satisfying without the XS Pre to being engulfed in a tornado of sound. This effect was observed with every power amplifier connected, from a modest Conrad Johnson MV60SE up to the mighty XS300 monoblocks, so this can’t be a mere “impedance matching” kind of thing.

We’ve had the opportunity to use the XS Preamplifier together with the matching XS300 monoblock amplifiers to excellent result, paired with the XS Phono, making for an unbeatable combination of dynamics, tonality, and ease of use. There truly is nothing I can find fault with this trio. Ok, it’s all pretty heavy. That’s it. Fortunately, the XS Pre only weighs 80 pounds, and it is distributed between two chassis, the power supply, and the actual preamplifier circuitry. The two are connected by the same massive umbilical cords used in the XS Phono and the XS 150/300 power amplifiers. Terminated with Neutrik connectors, these are beefy cables indeed. 100,000µƒ of power supply capacitance per channel only hints at the power reserves available.

Nelson Pass and his crew have repeatedly said that they build components that they like, above all else. While many know the man with the name that adorns the faceplates as “the man” at Pass Labs, he is the power amp man. Wayne Colburn has designed all the Pass Labs preamplifiers and was given a clean slate (and pretty much a blank check) to design a companion preamplifier for the XS monoblock amplifiers. Rather than bore you with a long list of common audiophile clichés, he has succeeded on every level.

Incredibly versatile

Lovely as the XS Pre is with a full compliment of Pass components, it is equally engaging with every other power amplifier we’ve had here at TONE in the last year or so – single ended or balanced. The XS Pre circuitry is fully balanced, but it features balanced XLR and single ended RCA inputs and outputs.

As a review tool, the XS Pre is without peer. It is effortless in its delivery and consistent in sound quality, providing a similar sonic picture with balanced or single ended connections. Even if you don’t review hifi gear, this kind of flexibility offers a much wider range of options as your system and tastes change. With the XS Pre offering such a neutral rendition, it is a perfect system anchor, letting you mix, match and experiment elsewhere.

Because the XS Pre doesn’t manipulate or alter the tonal character of the music it delivers, the usual list of tracks to describe bass, treble, and imaging are almost irrelevant. Laurie Anderson once said, “Paradise is exactly like where you are right now, only much, much better.” That’s the XS Pre. It’s much, much better. Add the concept of never having to retube, along with the headache that a new set of tubes can cause, makes it a component you can just leave powered up and forget about it. Matter of fact, there is no power switch.

Setup is straightforward, provided you have two extra rack spaces and can separate the two boxes a bit, to keep every possible bit of noise at bay. Once powered up, the XS Pre took about four days to come all the way out of the fog from being fresh out of the box. As with any component, there is a slight bit of stiffness at initial turn on, but it dissipates quickly.

The front panel has a large volume control and a display friendly to read from across the room. Pass provides a simple, efficient aluminum remote that matches the casework of their other products, and this too is easy to use. The volume control has a wide range of operation, so even the most sensitive power amplifiers will have ample volume control range.

A keeper

Ultra high performance has a price, and there are a lot of great preamplifiers in the $10,000 – $20,000 range; even Pass makes one. (The XP-30) After living with a number of them, the XS Pre delivers an experience that you can’t get for $20k. That’s its justification. If you are looking for the last step up and a final justification, it’s worth every penny asked. This may be tough to swallow for some of you in the audience, but you can’t have a Ferrari 458 for $50k either. Like the Ferrari, the XS Pre will take your breath away if you have the room, system, and software to support it. And I’m guessing if you have 38 large, you do.

The Pass XS Pre does its job so effortlessly and so well if it doesn’t hit you on the head with the first track you play, just take it out of your system for about 90 sec. It’s like someone put the valet key in your Dodge Challenger Hellcat and the horsepower is gone. This is one of the purest hifi experiences I’ve had in over 15 years of reviewing components. Long term, I have even more enthusiasm for the XS Pre – every day it convinces me how special it is.

 

The Pass XS Pre Preamplifier

$38,000

www.passlabs.com

Peripherals

Analog Source            AVID Acutus Ref SP/SME V/Lyra Atlas, Grand Prix Audio Monaco 2.0/Tri-planar/Lyra Etna, Brinkmann Bardo/10.1arm/Koetsu Jade Platinum

Digital Source             dCS Rossini DAC and Clock, Gryphon Kalliope

Phonostage                  Pass XS Phono

Power Amplifier         Pass XS 300 monos, Pass XA200.8

Speakers                      GamuT RS5i, Focal Sopra no.3 w/2-REL 212, MartinLogan Neolith

Cable                           Tellurium Q Silver Diamond, Cardas Clear

The Pylon Jade 30s have raised the bar for what I thought a fun/chill out, non-audiophile speaker could be. In the past it was always the JBL L100 (the current, reimagined version, though clean NOS ones don’t suck either). The Jade 30s eclipse everything in the category.

But this 15-inch, 3 way really does it for me. Staffer Chris Harr was over for a late night listening session the other day, and while we both agreed how awesome the big system is, these speakers are cooler than cool to just hang out and spin anything you can think of.

Making use of Pylon’s own drivers, the Jade 30s are super easy to set up thanks to their built in stands, and 93dB/1-watt sensitivity. Our initial listening has been with the Pathos Inpol Heritage integrated (80wpc-hybrid design) and the Western Electric 91E. (12wpc, SET) The Quad 33 amplifier is next up.

Bass is plentiful, the highs are smooth yet extendend and the tonal balance is the perfect blend of correct and relaxed without being slow or syrupy. The finish is BEAUTIFUL, and you can have your pair up and rocking in 10 min if you have a friend to help unbox.

At $9,995/pair, this might just be the only speaker a lot of people will ever need to step up to. Curious? Call the folks at Suncoast Audio (Click here for their site) or stop by and see them at this year’s Axpona in Chicago. Tell em I sent you. If you don’t love these, your heart’s not beating.

These are one of our Products of the Year, fyi.

Please click here for the Pylon home page.

Vera Fi’s latest creation solves a common problem, and at a reasonable price.

If you’ve ever suffered the aggravation of a ground loop you can’t break, you know what we mean. But there are a few different ground issues that can add noise to your system and rob you of dynamic range. It’s not always about getting louder. And those of you with SET and super sensitive horn speakers also fall victim to that bit of noise that drives you nuts when you put your ear close to the tweeter…

Ditto, when incorporating multiple pieces of vintage gear in a system.

Some power conditioners will solve this problem, some will not. There are a whole new line of grounding solutions from premium cable manufacturers that work well, but some of them cost as much as a nice amp or DAC! Not always cost effective.

What we like most about the Ground Floor is that it is scalable. If you only have an issue with a turntable, or another single component, you only need a single unit to solve the problem. Intro price on these is $199 and if you’re struggling with noise, it’s priceless.

The Ground Floor can be configured with the supplied cables three different ways, from merely floating the ground on a device, to establish a system wide star ground, or telescoped grounds between outlets. A very versatile device indeed, and once that noise is gone, it’s a new world.

A full review will be forthcoming, but we have a number of different scenarios that both Chris Harr and I want to investigate, so we’d like to deliver a full report. No purchase link is available yet, but the folks at Vera-Fi should be able to give you more info.

Please click here to visit the Vera Fi site…

When you think of Canadian music artists, perhaps you think of Rush, Triumph, April Wine, Max Webster, or even William Shatner. hahah.

I’d say yes to all of these, but there’s one I found by accident while in a record store in Milwaukee, many years ago. And it was definitely one of those records you just buy because the art was wacky or the name of the band seemed cool. Doug and the Slugs? Why not? I didn’t even know they were from Canada till years later, but it’s a fun new wave-y, kinda power pop-y type of record.

Well produced, fairlly well recorded and well played. Plus you can stream the Slugs’ catalog on Qobuz and Tidal just in case this might not be for you.

FYI, you can usually find a great copy on Discogs or your favorite used record stores for about $5. Woo hoo.

Record of the Day is brought to you by Bergmann Audio, dCS, and Supreme Acoustic Systems.
The table featured here is the Modi, with their Thor linear tracking arm.

CD’s and SACD’s are auditioned on the dCS Varese

Cartridge is a modified LYRA Helikon SL, modified by Ana Mighty Sound

Phono Pre is the award winning XP-17 from Pass Labs

Cables by Cardas Audio

All on top of the Pagode Master Reference MKII, courtesy of MoFi Distribution

A great beginning to a system from Decibel+
www.decibel-plus.com

Neoson Genese Tube Integrated – $7,885
Atlantis AT 16 Pro speakers ($1,609/ea. as tested, in black leather – $1,729 ea. in white)

With such a wide range of hifi gear at your disposal, even someone who doesn’t suffer from severe FOMO can get overwhelmed in a hurry. We’ve recently run into Decibel-Plus in Las Vegas and they will be putting together some amazing system bundles that can get you rocking right away. For now, these are separate offerings, but we’ll treat the review as a “bundle,” ok?

Owner, Gabe Toro, shares space with his father, Hiram Toro, the proprietor of Supreme Acoustic Systems. While Supreme focuses more on mega gear, Gabe is carving his own niche, focusing on components and systems aimed at younger, perhaps more mid-market audio enthusiasts.

With more readers asking us for help mixing and matching components, we like the approach that Decibel+ is taking, making the process easier for music lovers who don’t necessarily want to become gear-loving (and trading) audiophiles. The Neoson amplifiers and the Atlantis speakers both hail from France. From the look and feel, they share enough design aesthetic that you might think they come from the same factory, especially with their emphasis on lighter woods and tones.

Speaking of tone

The Genese tube integrated is a 10-watt-per-channel amp that uses KT88 tubes in a single-ended class-A configuration. While this produces less power than a typical AB, push-pull amplifier, it delivers a much richer, tonally saturated presentation. A quick look under the bottom cover reveals all top-notch, premium parts as well. In addition to the ALPS potentiometer to control volume level, there’s a bevy of Mundorf MCap Evo Silver Gold caps, supported by premium PSVANE Art tubes.

Everything is beautifully finished, and the sonic signature of this amplifier reminds me of my ampsandsound Bryce monoblocks, utilizing a similar configuration. Overall, the sound is rich through the midband as you’d expect from an SET, but by using the much more robust (and affordable) KT-88 tubes, more user-friendly. And, way easier on your wallet when it comes time to re-tube.  With only a pair of KT-88s and a pair of 12AX7s, this should be easy.

Convenience abounds

With three RCA single-ended inputs, you’ve got room for a streamer, a phono preamplifier, and who knows? Maybe a tape deck?  The tubes are shrouded for those of you with pets and little ones around the house. A simple, yet functional remote is provided, but I really enjoyed walking up and interacting with the Genese; it has such a great feel, why not?

The materials used on both the amp and the speakers lend a relaxed vibe and will fit in any décor. Atlantis saves a few bucks by using an exceptional grade of synthetic leather that, even under close inspection, looks just like what you’ll see on a speaker from the folks at Sonus faber. Very nice!

Speaker setup

With a front-firing reflex port and an additional rear-firing woofer that is a match to the 7-inch front-firing woofer, this compact (about 32” tall x 9.5 wide) speaker will fit anywhere, and thanks to the variable port, can be user-voiced more for placement close to the wall if necessary.  This came in handy in my 13 x 18-foot living room, and was not an issue out in the 24 x 36-foot studio.  These speakers performed well in both environments, and can fill a big room btw.

They are easy to place, have great dispersion, and best of all, sport a 94.5 dB/1-watt sensitivity rating. A perfect match for the Neoson amp. Hence the bundle. And Gabe can hook you up with a few great streaming/DACs that fits right into the form factor (and, most importantly, your budget).

Atlantis claims +/-1dB down to 40Hz, and while we don’t carry out proper measurements, going from a 50Hz test tone to a 40Hz one feels equally powerful, though going down to 30Hz shows a significant roll-off at that point. Highly respectable for the form factor and price point. And you can always add a sub or two if the need arises and you have the space.

As with any other speaker, set them up in your room for the maximum amount of bass extension and lock on the room – that way you will get all the dynamics the system is capable of, then fine-tune for bass to midrange transition, with a little extra fine-tuning for image width and sparkle.

More Listening

The Atlantis/Neoson combo can play music as loud as most of you should need. I am always amazed at just how loud 86dB actually is. Should you need more, Decibel+ has other things in its stable, if you want one-stop shopping.

Of course, a few other things were tried, all with excellent results. The PrimaLuna ProLogue 1 ($2,595 – all tubes) and the Atoll INT-200 Evolution ($2,900 – solid state) are another great match-up. But this review is about the combo from Decibel +, so most of the review listening was done with the Neoson.

Bass is full-bodied, with definition and extension. Those 7-inch woofers deliver clean, articulate bass. Zooming through a few Jaco Pastorius tracks from the past, and some of Kim Gordon’s The Collective, from the present, shows these speakers can muster a lot of weight in the lower frequencies.

Listening to the entire 2 hours and 2 minutes of The Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness reveals these speakers to work with densely packed music. Should this be one of your faves, suffice to say all the sonic nuggets that make this record a masterpiece came through with ease. Bouncing back to that Kim Gordon record is another example of the same. The way these speakers keep the pounding bass line, the distorted instruments, and Gordon’s highly processed vocals all separate is spectacular. Ditto for some vintage Nine Inch Nails. These speakers will keep the music flowing at your next party with ease.

Atlantis does an excellent job mating the compression tweeter to the dynamic woofers, giving these small speakers a level of coherence beyond what is normally on tap for this price. Spinning the Black Crowes latest, A Pound of Feathers, which has the BC’s back to their hard rock roots, is a challenge for a speaker with limited dynamic range. Again, the AT16s impress, with a clarity that makes this music come alive.

Perfect synergy

What we really like about Decibel + is the way they are carefully curating components that work well in a small to medium-sized space, in a budget range of about $5,000-$30,000. The components chosen give you more than just a taste of what the crazy money gear costs, and look great doing it.

Where similarly priced ZU and Klipsch give you pretty basic boxes, the Atlantis speakers have a lot more style. (and I own a pair of each – so this is high praise)

Decibel + Principal Gabe Toro is 40 years old and is relatively new to the hifi retail scene. They are selling direct, but you can visit their experience center and do some in-person listening if you’d like. What he brings to the table is a fresh perspective that is much more in keeping with what his demographic might enjoy. And that’s a good thing for our industry. He’s off to a great start.

We’ll be featuring more systems from Decibel + and a few others in the future, in an attempt to draw you in. Enjoy.

NOTE: Decibel + will be offering an upcoming 10% discount on bundles on Audiogon and at this week’s THE Show in Las Vegas….



Manufacturer’s Information:

The Genese Amplifier
https://neoson8301.live-website.com/genese/

The Atlantis AT 16 Pro Speakers
https://atlantislab.eu/at-16/

This has to be today’s Record of the Day because I had the most bizarre dream last night. Aimee Mann knocked on our door and asked if she could hear a record, because she “heard I had a pretty good stereo, and she was in the neighborhood.” (Portlandia comeback, maybe? – and she was in town for shows on Thursday and Friday)

I invited her in, and she said she really wanted to hear Simon and Garfunkle’s Bridge Over Troubled Water.

“Do you have the MoFi version? They did a pretty nice job with two of my records,” she said in her signature deadpan, calm voice.

“Sure do, come on in.”

She sat down on the couch and listened to two sides of the 2-record, 45 r.p.m. set, and said, “That sounded really nice. Thank you very much.”

And as she got up from the couch to leave, I woke up.

Crazy.

Record of the Day is brought to you by Bergmann Audio, dCS, and Supreme Acoustic Systems.
The table featured here is the Modi, with their Thor linear tracking arm.

CD’s and SACD’s are auditioned on the dCS Varese

Cartridge is a modified LYRA Helikon SL, modified by Ana Mighty Sound

Phono Pre is the award winning XP-17 from Pass Labs

Cables by Cardas Audio

All on top of the Pagode Master Reference MKII, courtesy of MoFi Distribution

The reason today’s choice is not on vinyl (and I might still buy a vinyl copy just because I really love Squeeze) is that all the demo and bonus tracks are only available on the CD version.

Trixies is a concept album that dates way back to the beginning of Squeeze in the early 70s, that they wrote but never recorded. Now, they’ve revised it and launched a brilliant addition to your Squeeze collection.

But hey, enough of my yapping. Here’s a link to Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook talking about it on YouTube. Fantastic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgKBww4sHaw

Record of the Day is brought to you by Bergmann Audio, dCS, and Supreme Acoustic Systems.

The table featured here is the Modi, with their Thor linear tracking arm.
CD’s and SACD’s are auditioned on the dCS Varese
Cartridge is a modified LYRA Helikon SL, modified by Ana Mighty Sound
Phono Pre is the award winning XP-17 from Pass Labs
Cables by Cardas Audio
All on top of the Pagode Master Reference MKII, courtesy of MoFi Distribution

Say that 10 times as fast as you can!

All kidding aside, we’re big fans of SVS. Their subs deliver the goods. Well made, easy to use, and easy to set up thanks to DSP processing and a killer app that lets you dial it all in from your phone.

With 2,000 watts on tap, (5,000 peak) a massive 15-inch driver and a LF point of 17Hz, you can feel every bit of oomph from the lowest bass notes to the most powerful cannon shots. The SB-5000 is equally at home with music or movies.

We’re almost done with the full review, but the SB-5000 has been used with great effect on a number of different systems, including one built around their latest Ultra Evolution Towers. You can even connect them wirelessly if you don’t want to deal with cables.

In our other reference system featuring a pair of the latest Klipschorn AK7s, the matchup is seamless and paired with these classic horns, we could play our favorite Massive Attack and Art of Noise tracks at club volume without strain. But fear not, they possess plenty of nuance for your favorite acoustic tracks.

At $1,999.99 each, SVS offers great sonics, execution and value. You might just want two!

Please click here to visit their site…

An intriguing combination…

The Western Electric 300B tubes are pretty much the gold standard for the version, and at $1,495 a pair somewhat spendy. The good news is they last forever compared to the Chinese knockoffs, so they are an excellent long-term purchase. Considering you can have an entire integrated, built from the folks at WE for $7,999 (the new price) this has to be one of the best deals going. It even has a built in MM/MC phono section, headphone amplifier, and a bluetooth DAC. Not to mention a pair of ECC83 tubes with WE branding. Fingers crossed here.

We’ve got an extended review, waiting for fact check from the WE people, and as soon as we get the all clear, it will go live.

But in the meantime, we’ve been enjoying the heck out of this one. If you have a pair of efficient speakers, it’s all you need. WE claims this amplifier puts out nearly twice as much power as most standard 300B amps that usually deliver 6-9wpc, due to their unique circuitry.

It’s smooth, smooth, smooth, as you’d expect a great 300B amplifier would be. Remember, Western Electric wrote the book and designed the tube.

No doubt to keep costs realistic, they are using a solid-state power supply, but everything is well implemented and the casework is an industro-cool design that you’ll probably love or hate. We’re in the love column, and in addition to the black you see here, Nickel and Champagne is also available.

The 91E comes stoutly packaged in a bespoke crate, with everything incredibly well organized. This is an amp you can be proud of owning to be sure.

https://www.westernelectric.com/91e

Amazingly good for the money!

$159 won’t even buy a tank of gas for a giant SUV these days, but it will buy you a pretty bitchin’ CD player. The PL100PRO used to be $99 before tariffs, but hey – this is still less than a month’s worth of latte’s at your favorite coffee shop.

With RCA and XLR outputs, you can run it into any system with ease. Just because they were here, we did try a 20 foot pair of balanced interconnects, and the PL100PRO drives them with ease. The slot-loading mechanism feels pretty robust, and if you like the sound, buy a 2nd one and put it on the shelf for the day something bad happens.

It may not be as awesome as the yelling, screamy guys on YouTube say it is, but compared to what that $1,000 Sony CDP-100 sounded like in 1983, this is an incredible deal and a major technological advance. What it lacks is the refinement of a much more expensive player, but in the context of a nice budget or vintage system, I think you’ll be pretty excited. It also features optical and coax SPDIF outputs, in case you’d like to use it as a transport. It’s even better as a transport.

Running the PL100PRO out in the garage system with the FiiO K17 DAC via the optical input, everything sonically is well balanced. And thanks to a 5v USB-C power input, it’s easy to connect. As we bought our review sample pre-tariff, it did not come with a power supply. That may be different now.

However, using it with a basic Apple Power Book charger than happened to be around yielded great results. Stepping it up to a better linear power supply (also on hand) from Wyred 4 Sound provided benefits in terms of better bass control and a more refined top end – though that starts to defeat the “budget” aspect of this player.

Totally an Exceptional Value Award winner…

https://smsl.shop/products/pl100-pro

Cover Story:

World’s first review of the new Klipschorn AK7 Speakers!

Old School: Janszen Z-500 – by Jeff Dorgay
Audiophile Apartment: The Arcam A25+ Integrated Amplifier
Journeyman Audiophile: The ampsandsound “Stereo Preamplifier”
Review: The Atoll IN-200 Integrated Amplifier – by Jerold O’Brien
Short Take: Farewell to the Technics SL-1210G
Stereo Stories: Ask and you Might Get

1095: The FiiO K17 DAC/Streamer/Pre
Long Term: The HiFi ROSE RS520 Streaming Integrated

TONE Visits:

Supreme Acoustic Systems – Las Vegas

MINE – It Should Be Yours:

Fun things that you know you want

Music

Playlists:  We share our readers choices from around the world
IN House:  The Soundtrack of the Issue
THE SACD Report:  Chatting about the other shiny discs

Future Tense

Gear in our immediate future

Cover Story:

Speakers – Mostly

Old School: Quad vs. Quad – by Ken Kessler
Audiophile Apartment: The Dynaudio Focus 50 – by Todd Cooperider
Journeyman Audiophile: The AVA C1A Control Amplifier – by Darin Kong
Review: The Wharfedale Dovedale Speakers
Review: The Castle Windsor Duke Speakers
Review: The Volti Audio Razz Speakers
Review: The Albeda Audio Adagia Speakers

1095: The Vera-Fi Ranger Speakers
Long Term: The REL T/9xSE subwoofers

Cover Review:

The Dali Epikore 11 Speaker system

MINE – It Should Be Yours:

Last minute holiday shopping

Music

Playlists:  We share our readers choices from around the world

Future Tense

Gear in our immediate future

Why is this so cool? Because none other than Joe Nino-Hernes has mastered the first four titles. That’s why. If you aren’t familiar, Joe is the newest mastering engineer that’s been the rising star of analog for some time now.

So we’re just gonna give you the whole press release. Coming November 14. I’ve got my order in!

NEW REISSUE SERIES DEBUTS WITH THE VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO (1967), BOB MARLEY’S EXODUS(1977), THE BAND’S NORTHERN LIGHTS–SOUTHERN CROSS(1975), AND NAT KING COLE’S THE CHRISTMAS SONG (1962) ALL RECORDS FEATURE ALL-ANALOG MASTERING FROM ORIGINAL SOURCES BY TOP ENGINEERS, TIP-ON GATEFOLD PACKAGING WITH NEW LINER NOTES AND ARE PRESSED AT RTI ON 180-GRAM BLACK VINYL VINYLPHYLE LAUNCHES NOVEMBER 14

Los Angeles – November 3, 2025 – UMe, the centralized global catalog division of Universal Music Group, is proud to announce the launch of Vinylphyle, a new audiophile vinyl reissue series dedicated to presenting essential albums across multiple genres with uncompromising sound quality and packaging. Billed as “A premium vinyl experience for people who love vinyl,” the series will debut on November 14 with four landmark titles: The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967), Bob Marley & The Wailers’ Exodus (1977), The Band’s Northern Lights–Southern Cross (1975), celebrating its 50th anniversary, and Nat King Cole’s The Christmas Song (1962). All albums will be available exclusively at uDiscover Music and via the artist’s official online stores where applicable. Following the launch, Vinylphyle will continue with two releases per month, spanning genres and eras to build a library of must-own records. Pre-order Vinylphyle titles now: https://UMe.lnk.to/vinylphylePR Each Vinylphyle release will feature all analog mastering from original sources by an elite group of today’s top vinyl cutting engineers. The LPs will be pressed at the world-class Southern California-based audiophile vinyl record pressing plant Record Technology, Inc. better known amongst vinyl lovers as RTI, on 180-gram black vinyl. Similar in presentation and execution to Blue Note’s acclaimed Tone Poet series, the production and packaging seek to honor the stature of these recordings and will include tip-on wrapped gatefold jackets in satin matte finish, printed on clay-coated board, with archival poly sleeves and a four-panel insert featuring new liner notes by notable music journalists, personalities and fans. Backed by RTI’s craftsmanship, these releases are produced at the highest levels and include extensive quality controls at every step of the process, from mastering to plating to pressing and printing, ensuring a superb final product.  Joe Nino-Hernes of Sterling Sound has mastered the first four titles from the original analog master tapes and each album boasts new liner notes by an assortment of contributors: “the internet’s biggest music nerd” Anthony Fantano of “The Needle Drop” for The Velvet Underground & Nico, filmmaker, DJ, musician and cultural commentator Don Letts aka The Rebel Dread for Exodus, author and veteran music scribe Rick Florino for Northern Lights – Southern Cross and actor and award-winning writer James Ritz for The Christmas Song. “We are excited to launch our Vinylphyle series to provide best-in-class, audiophile quality pressings of some of the most legendary and timeless records,” said Bruce Resnikoff, President & CEO of UMe. “This series is built on uncompromising quality and all albums have all been meticulously mastered by renowned mastering engineers from analog and packaged with the utmost care and attention to detail. This new series allows both longtime record enthusiasts to hear some of their favorite albums sounding better than ever and for those just discovering vinyl to experience the warmth and richness that only vinyl can deliver and to become Vinylphyles.” Together, these inaugural selections span the underground, the political, the pastoral, and the timeless. The Velvet Underground & Nico captures New York art rock at its most provocative, a record that reshaped the boundaries of popular music. Bob Marley’s Exodus stands as reggae’s global breakthrough, marrying militant resistance with songs of joy and uplift. Northern Lights – Southern Crossreflects the maturity of roots rock in the mid-1970s, blending mythic storytelling with lived experience. The Christmas Song presents Nat King Cole’s definitive voice in holiday music, a recording that continues to return each season as if untouched by time.

Nearly everything The Bad Plus does is pretty trippy and off the map. And I say that in a really good way.

This double LP set of classic covers on For All I Care might just trigger your inner art school kid. Or you might run away screaming. One thing’s for sure… You won’t hear anything from this record at a hifi show anytime soon. (But I dare you to suggest it when the guy in the room says “Who wants to hear some female vocals?”

Bam.

But seriously, the recording quality is big, dynamic and breathy – thanks to guest vocalist Wendy Lewis. Taking on Yes, Nirvana, and Heart to name just a few, this record will engage. And Lewis’ cover of the Bee Gees’ classic “How Deep is Your Love?” is worth the entire price of this two-record set.

Leave a comment out on our Facebook page and let us know what you think!

Record of the Day is brought to you by Bergmann Audio, and Supreme Acoustic Systems.

The table featured here is the Modi, with their Thor linear tracking arm.
Cartridge is a modified LYRA Helikon SL, modified by Ana Mighty Sound
Phono Pre is the award winning XP-17 from Pass Labs
Cables by Cardas Audio
All on top of the Pagode Master Reference MKII, courtesy of MoFi Distribution

Do you remember when the video for “Ironic” broke on MTV?

With that clip, no one knew (then) that Morissette’s third record was headed for five Grammy’s and 17x Platinum status, but it was stunning then, as it is now.

30 years later, this record is still a masterpiece, combining sublime musicianship and 90s angst, and a fantastic recording all in one. And becoming a soundtrack of many women’s lives from that time. A recent performance on “Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs2Jfe2PtaE shows her in top form, voice stronger than ever. And everyone in the audience knows the words to “Ironic.”

There are a number of different anniversary editions of this record, some with a lot of bonus tracks, but the MoFi, dual-45rpm version unlocks the power behind this iconic record better than any other. The SACD version is equally impressive, should digital discs be your physical format of choice.

FYI: Chris and I will be doing a cursory sonic comparison between both versions very soon!

Leave a comment out on our Facebook page and let us know what you think!

Record of the Day is brought to you by Bergmann Audio, and Supreme Acoustic Systems.

The table featured here is the Modi, with their Thor linear tracking arm.
Cartridge is a modified LYRA Helikon SL, modified by Ana Mighty Sound
Phono Pre is the award winning XP-17 from Pass Labs
Cables by Cardas Audio
All on top of the Pagode Master Reference MKII, courtesy of MoFi Distribution

Im still in that 60s groove…

Somehow Moby Grape and Steppenwolf always make me dig out In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
Yeah, I know the new kids don’t care for this, but it’s my party and I’ll play 60s music if I want to.

When I bought my original copy of this, I mostly just listened to the title track, sometimes really loud just to annoy my parents. Ha. But over the years, the rest of the album (and for that matter the rest of the IB catalog) has grown on me. I truly like this record. So you can guess who was pretty happy when this came out on MoFi as a vinyl remaster. They did produce it as a Gold CD years ago, and it is also available on SACD from MoFi.

Mastered by Krieg Wunderlich, this rocks much better than the original, albeit slightly worn original ATCO pressing in my collection. If you need to make this journey and can grab a MoFi copy, you will not regret it!

Leave a comment out on our Facebook page and let us know what you think!

Record of the Day is brought to you by Bergmann Audio, and Supreme Acoustic Systems.

The table featured here is the Modi, with their Thor linear tracking arm.
Cartridge is a modified LYRA Helikon SL, modified by Ana Mighty Sound
Phono Pre is the award winning XP-17 from Pass Labs
Cables by Cardas Audio
All on top of the Pagode Master Reference MKII, courtesy of MoFi Distribution

Sally’s Dream is the all-female punk band I wish I’d known about when I was hanging out at punk clubs in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the 80s. I wish I would have seen them.

Unfortunately, it took till now to finally get the record out, but it’s just as awesome today as it was then.

Ironically, this foursome was made up of Cynthia Hammond (Bass, keyboards, guitar and vocals) Jenny Davis (Keyboards, bass, guitar, and vocals) Emily Jackson on drums, and Chrissie Dickinson on guitar and vocals.

If the name of the last band member sounds familiar – Chrissie Dickinson had written for the Chicago Tribune (as well as a number of other music outlets) for years, and was a member of the TONE staff for a few years, covering country and Americana. All the times we talked, she never mentioned the project.

Even more ironically, after a couple year hiatus, Chrissie and I had a lovely conversation one afternoon about her coming back to TONE. I made the joke that Tap’s “Sex Farm” was big in Japan and we needed to get the band back together again. She laughed and said she’d be more than interested. Two weeks later on May 19, 2022, the news of her sudden death was the first thing I saw on Facebook that morning. Later in the afternoon, I found out another friend passed the same day. Yikes.

But Chrissie’s good friend Cynthia Hammond kept the dream of this album alive with the rest of the bandmates and after all these years, have finally released it on Bandcamp as a CD or download.

The music stands up. It’s fast, thrashy, a bit irreverent and in your face – as a good punk record should be. Man, I wish I could have seen them back in the day. Photo courtesy of the band…

https://sallysdreamtheband.bandcamp.com/album/breaking-through

#askmehowiknow

TMR actually has a pair of my old speakers for sale. Not in “I had a pair of these,” but “these were actually my speakers.”

Back in 2010 these were $149,000 a pair. Only ten pair were made.

I’ll make this short and sweet. NOTHING out there for twice the price even comes close to the musicality that these speakers offer. Do not mistake this for the later Zodiac – which looks the same and while very good, does not offer the level of fidelity that the S9 does.

With three 13″ woofers and the midrange/tweeter from the S7, this is one speaker that doesn’t absolutely need a six pack of RELs to be awesome, yet it delivers imaging like a mini-monitor. If you have the room and the amplification they will put the music in your room like few others. I’m expressing a personal bias, but I would take the S9 over anything from the majors at $850k a pair – and I’ve heard all three.

This is one of the world’s finest speakers at any price and you can have em for under $20k. Whoever does get these will get a prize.

Time to head back to the 60s…

What a better way than some major psychedelic rock from Moby Grape? Their Wow/Grape Jam record was a two record set, released April 3, 1968. I was too young for this one on the first go, but in the early 70s when I started hanging out with a lot of the older dudes in high school that were really into Moby Grape, Iron Butterfly and Zappa, it made a big impression.

Yeah, it’s a little rambling, but that was the jam back then. Much as I love Moby Grape, I’d suggest streaming this one on your favorite streaming service to vet it first – if you aren’t familiar.

Leave a comment out on our Facebook page and let us know what you think!

Record of the Day is brought to you by Bergmann Audio, and Supreme Acoustic Systems.

The table featured here is the Modi, with their Thor linear tracking arm.
Cartridge is a modified LYRA Helikon SL, modified by Ana Mighty Sound
Phono Pre is the award winning XP-17 from Pass Labs
Cables by Cardas Audio
All on top of the Pagode Master Reference MKII, courtesy of MoFi Distribution

To those of you who knew who Virgil Abloh (the Creative Director at fashion house Louis Vuitton) was, he had a major effect on fashion, style, and the cross pollination of artistic disciplines. In that sense, he was a force to be reckoned with. Unfortunately, he succumbed to cancer at the way too early age of 41, back in 2021.

McIntosh just announced their one of one collab honoring his personal style, an MA8950 integrated amplifier painted orange to honor Abloh, who used McIntosh gear in many of his fashion shows and creative studio.

In typical McIntosh fashion, this isn’t just an off the shelf amplifier painted orange (because that’s what it is) and according to them “They are the only amplifier brand that could make a bold orange amplifier feel intentional, not accidental.”

I don’t know what they are smoking at McIntosh, but Dartzeel, Vitus, and Sugden have all been making some pretty cool orange amplifiers for some time now. Not to mention the incredibly cool cats at Metaxas and Sins. Now that’s some disruptive shit.

Don’t forget, KEF and Focal have also made orange speakers (super awesome, owned em both) and REL makes a gorgeous line of subwoofers in bright orange (yellow, green, and blue as well) too. Come on.

Of course it’s a one of one, and of course, you can’t have it. So much for all that blending of art and culture and inviting you to be part of it. Just like the McIntosh town house used to be. Cool kids club and you can’t be part of it.

I miss the old Mac. But hey maybe it’s time for a collab of my own. I submit the MC Jeff D McIntosh amp. hahahah. Who’s with me?

Jeff once asked me why I leave music playing in a room when I’m not even there. My answer goes back to something I read years ago that stuck with me.

In the 1970s, Christopher Bird and Peter Tompkins published The Secret Life of Plants. The book described studies suggesting that plants respond to music. Even earlier, in 1962, Dr. T.C. Singh found that balsam plants exposed to classical music grew 20% faster and had a 72% increase in biomass. Later, Dorothy Retallack discovered that plants thrived on jazz and classical but wilted when exposed to rock.

Are plants really “music savvy”? Probably not in the way we think. More likely, they respond to vibrations that influence growth—especially when paired with sunlight streaming through a south-facing window.

That got me wondering: if plants react to music, how does classical music affect people? For us, it can calm the body, sharpen the mind, and help regulate emotions. The exact effect depends on the tempo, harmony, and our own personal taste.

When stress builds and the world feels overwhelming, I’ve found that Mozart or Vivaldi brings me back to center. Rock, on the other hand, amplifies emotions—it can fire you up, fuel your anger, or give you the motivation to push forward.

Both have their place. Rock energizes. Classical soothes. And maybe that’s the real reason I let classical music play in an empty room—it’s not just good for plants, it’s good for me too.

-Pamela Dorgay

Bet you didn’t know I was a total closet prog-head. It started with Yes, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer many years ago. Guilty as charged.

If you loved the auspicious debut (arguably their best and most pure effort) of this prog powerhouse consisting of John Wetton, Bill Bruford, Eddie Jobson, and Alan Holdsworth, try and find this disc. Those in the know will remember the FM radio nugget “Dead of Night,” and perhaps you even saw them perform this record back in the late 70s.

This example was produced a few years ago on SHM-SACD and the sound quality is epic, now doing full justice to Wetton’s killer bass lines.

This column is sponsored by dCS, who’s Vivaldi ONE DAC/Streamer/Disc Player is my reference, and Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs, producer of exceptional audiophile vinyl and SACD releases.

Our reference system to evaluate discs features:

XS PRE, and XS 300 monoblocks from Pass Labs
The Auditorium Plus speakers from Clarisys Speakers
A Six Pack/Line array of Carbon Special Black Label subwoofer from REL Subwoofers
Cabling from Cardas Audio
and racks from Quadraspire Racks

Im still on a Joni Mitchell kick, but now that MoFi’s SACD pressing plant is back open after summer maintenance, it’s just the way things are shaking out.

This album, harkening from 1975 and 76, is a continuation of the more dense, jazzy groove that Mitchell started with Hissing of Summer Lawns. Most of this material was written during her breakup with drummer John Guerin, and according to her “very difficult to write.” The songs are personal, the playing incredible, and it really shows off the fretless bass skills of the late Jaco Pastorius.

Definitely not a casual listening hour album. One for a quiet, and blustery day. But highly rewarding and brilliantly captured by the MoFi crew here.

And best of all to this cheesehead, the photos were shot on Lake Mendota in Madison, Wisconsin by the legendary rock photographer Joel Bernstein – though the portrait superimposed on the cover is from Norman Seeff. (notice the stylistic similarities with Van Halen’s Women and Children First?)

This column is sponsored by dCS, who’s Vivaldi ONE DAC/Streamer/Disc Player is my reference, and Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs, producer of exceptional audiophile vinyl and SACD releases.

New Flagship MC cartridge from Hana / Excel Sound

Introducing the Umami Black MC cartridge $11,500

The HANA-Umami Black continues the brand’s legacy of “Brilliant and Gorgeous” sound. Master cartridge designer Masao Okada-san of Excel Sound celebrates over 5 decades of innovation and excellence with his new masterpiece, featuring a diamond cantilever and new “OKD” High-Efficiency Moving Coil Generator. The Umami Black is much more than just an Umami Red with a diamond cantilever.

Unique Umami Black Features

Diamond Cantilever

In a category first for HANA, the Umami Black incorporates a diamond cantilever, the hardest possible material, ideal for signal transfer. 

High-Efficiency “OKD” Moving Coil Generator

Another category first, the Umami Black uses the newly developed “OKD” with the world’s first “Integrated Pole Piece and Rear Yoke” and Inverted U-shaped Front Yoke, optimizing energy transfer from the diamond cantilever.

Inverted U Front Yoke

The U-shaped (bifurcated) inverted front yoke is engineered for both mechanical resonance control and magnetic field alignment, while also providing precise support for the diamond cantilever. 

High-Power Rare Earth Magnet
Unique to the Umami Black, the rare earth neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) magnet is used for the high-efficiency generator, delivering superior energy conversion. 

Hybrid Carbon Armature
A 2mm square hybrid Carbon permalloy armature, comprising 78% carbon-infused nickel-iron, is precisely hand-wound with 30-micron, 4N high-purity copper wire on Excel’s proprietary machinery. This ultra-light moving coil has an output of 0.3mV and a 5 ohm impedance.

Special Urushi Enameled Finish

The HANA-Umami Black features an exquisite Urushi lacquer finish, applied through a specialized thermosetting process, bonding to the aluminum body via vapor deposition.


Call the folks at musicalsurroundings.com for more info, and these beauties will be available for purchase after September 22.

Sponsored by dCS and Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs

As our “album of the day” column continues to get traction, we’ve decided to commit to an SACD at least once a week as well. Our friends at MoFi and dCS agree, so here we are. I honestly love the SACD format, (just like CD) because you can play both sides at one sitting. Sometimes it’s not convenient to get up and flip the record.

And no one is more committed to the SACD format than Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs.

It’s not tricky at all to enjoy one of hip-hop’s landmark albums in high-resolution digital style. Just grab a copy of Mobile Fidelity’s Raising Hell on SACD. If you can. Originally limited to 2000 copies, this one quickly sold out, as did Kings of Rock.

However, you can still get the first RUN-DMC album on SACD right here:

https://www.musicdirect.com/music/optical-disc/run-dmc-run-dmc-numbered-hybrid-sacd/

So act now, or pay later (on the secondary market, hahahah)

Please click here to visit the dCS website…

I didn’t need to watch the Netflix documentary on DEVO to shake the dust off my DEVO albums. I never stopped playing them.

However, that first record was pretty amazing, even in a day where punk was king, and new wave was a close second – DEVO was unique. It was a classic day in the record store that I worked, with the satin-jacketed guy from WB stopping in with the promo and concert tickets! Sometimes it pays off to work the night shift.

By this time, I’d seen them on Saturday Night Live and bought the first record, the one you see here – the tix were for the Duty Now For the Future album, at the Uptown Theater in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the summer of ’79

But this record, produced by Brian Eno is so catchy, it sounds completely fresh today, full of animalistic drumming, buzz saw guitars and out of this world synthesizer bits. Of course, the anthem that made DEVO famous is here in all it’s glory, but this record is 34 and a half minutes of fun.

For those of you that are interested, our own Jaan Uhelszki did an incredible interview with Mark Mothersbaugh back in issue 26, that we’ve put back on the site here:

https://www.tonepublications.com/music/looking-back-on-devo/

Leave a comment out on our Facebook page and let us know what you think!

Record of the Day is brought to you by Bergmann Audio, and Supreme Acoustic Systems.

The table featured here is the Modi, with their Thor linear tracking arm.
Cartridge is a modified LYRA Helikon SL, modified by Ana Mighty Sound
Phono Pre is the award winning XP-17 from Pass Labs
Cables by Cardas Audio
All on top of the Pagode Master Reference MKII, courtesy of MoFi Distribution

This article, originally titled, “Almost everything you want to know about Mark Mothersbaugh,” is written by Jaan Uhelszki, and was originally published in issue #26 of TONE, back in 2009. Considering the popularity of the recent DEVO documentary on Netflix, we felt it might be fun to look this one over again.

Mark Mothersbaugh would be loathe to be called a Renaissance man, but that’s what he is. Rather a savant for most of his years, he got the name and idea for his revolutionary science-cum-art rock band from a Jehovah’s Witnesses pamphlet, and nabbed the phrase, “Are we not men? We are Devo,” from a 1932 Charles Laughton movie called Island of Lost Souls. An odd title for a man who has a preponderance of soul, even if he is from Akron, Ohio.

In addition to being the bespectacled, robotic lead singer of Devo, the 59 year-old Mothersbaugh is a well respected film composer, with over 100 credits. He wrote the music for Pee-wee’s Playhouse in 1986 –and even got to sit on Chairy. He’s an accomplished artist in the “low brow school of art,” mainly because he incorporates flourescent pigments in the base of his paints so they glow when you least expect it — much like the occasional subliminal messages he inserts into the  commercials he creates, signifying only one thing: With Mark Mothersbaugh, what you see is not what you get. But what you get is a lot.

With Devo back on tour and a new album in the works, our favorite spud boy is as busy as ever.

TONE:  What’s the greatest misconception about you?

MM: Oh, good grief. The greatest misconception is that “Whip It” was the best thing I ever did.

That’s the song with the gift that keeps on giving, you know?

Yeah, all the way to being the theme song for the Swiffer Wet Jet commercial!

You did that commercial? Now, that’s de-evolution. I have to tell you it’s probably the worst product ever made for man.

It is. I got this little tiny old, inexpensive house out in Palm Springs, fixed it up really nice so it had a nice epoxy floor. And oh, there’s a little spot over there. I got the Swifter out. I’ll try it. It ate the epoxy right off the floor. Whatever it is, I don’t know, but I think it came from outer space. I don’t know if we’re even allowed to dispose of it in your trash.

You should retaliate and put subliminal messages in those commercials.

I love to put subliminal messages into commercials. It’s easy to do. We used to be into it more than we are now because nobody cared. I kept putting these messages in and nobody ever stopped or called me or got freaked out and said, “Take that out immediately!” People just acted like they didn’t hear it.      

How did you feel when Target used “Beautiful World” to sell soap?

Well, we really liked the idea. The only thing is the ironic humor was lost on them. People that really know the song, and know “It’s a beautiful world for you / But not for me,” would appreciate it even if those words weren’t used in the actual commercial.

Tell me about the importance of being from Ohio.

Ohio had everything to do with my band and myself, the people in my band and myself, our vision of the world and the particular viewpoint that we have, and have had since we were angry young men. And now we’re grumpy old whatevers.

My mom always tells me that men get meaner as they age.

I don’t think men get meaner. I think what happens, as they get older and then as lust fades away, they become more like women.

Are you the oldest kid or the youngest?

I’m the oldest kid.

Did you fit in in school?

I was kind of a loner and I fought with the teachers and I fought with the other kids. I got my ass kicked by everybody when I was in school, so when I left, when I went to Kent State. I liked it because I was anonymous. At 3:30 the bell would ring and all the kids in my class, they’d all perk up … And then they’d head off for their fraternities and their sororities and their beer houses and all the things they did, and I just stayed right there and I used all the facilities in the art department and just kept doing art all night. Did it till one or two in the morning and then get up and go to my classes and just wait for everybody to leave again.

I remember in an interview in the ‘80s you said that you’re a picky eater, so was a big deal when David Bowie asked you out for sushi? Did you eat the raw fish? 

I did. When David Bowie asks you to eat raw fish, you say “Yes.”

So David Bowie cured you of being a picky eater.

Yeah I pretty much got over my picky eating because of David Bowie.  That, and seeing the world. But my eating habits were partly economic. I used to think food was like something to take your money away so you couldn’t afford to buy a roll of recording tape that week and record a song.

During Devo’s heyday, when everyone from Mick Jagger to Jack Nicholson to Eno were asking to be your guest list and saying that you were such a revolutionary band, did you think you deserved all that high profile attention? And were you nervous when people would come backstage?

I don’t know, I was kind of nerdy. I was the guy that was happiest sitting at, before there were computers, sitting at whatever instruments I had and making music or making visual art – that’s  what made me happy. In a way, I wish I would have been more interested in meeting people and hanging out with the people that wanted to collaborate with us and stuff. And I did some collaborations. We worked with Eno and Bowie, of course. And I played on a Rolling Stones song, and I wrote some music for Hugh Cornwell and the Stranglers, and did some sessions but not all the stuff that we could have done or that we were offered to do, so it’s like in retrospect I kind of wish we would have been a little less insular as a band.

Yeah, but maybe that would have changed like your vision, too.

That’s what we thought: We don’t want to be a rock and roll band. We didn’t think of ourselves that way.

Yeah, Devo was more like an art statement.

That’s how we felt about it.

I always think that we’re all the same. It doesn’t really matter if Mick Jagger wants to collaborate with you unless you have had a meeting of the minds, you know? But I could see where there was some kind of intersection between Devo and Eno.

Yeah. That was during the Roxy Music days.

Eno always seemed like a space alien to me. Did he ever come off his pedestal? I mean, did you guys communicate well?

It was funny, Eno was one of the few people I had kind of like some sort of a reverential feeling for and I kind of lost it. I still think he’s a great guy, but …  it’s really hard to pinpoint incidents, but you know, after we finished, I never thought of him in the same way. But having said that, I always thank him because he paid for the first Devo record for us, because we didn’t even have a record deal.

I read that Iggy was also instrumental  in getting you signed?

Iggy, David, and Brian Eno all took an interest and actually were all proactive in helping us.

Now you spend most of your time scoring films and creating music for commercials. Did you feel like getting into the film music business was serendipity? Is it something you went after or did it just kind of fall into your lap?

Well, I always liked film music, but I didn’t go to school to be a composer. I went to school and didn’t know what the hell I was doing there, and then became obsessed with printmaking and then met Jerry [Casale], who I started the band with. Then everything just started falling forward.

I know you named your band for de-evolution, but don’t you feel like everything’s been like an evolutionary progression, like it’s built on each other? Or has it just been like a lot of random accidents?

I think there’s an intelligent design at work here. What’s all this bullshit about evolution and intelligent design? It’s de-evolution! Nobody knows, they’re just like ignoring the facts. Pay attention to what’s going on!

Was there a watershed moment when you really thought you got to a nadir of de-evolution, that you were prescient in your ethos?

To me it was MTV. MTV was exactly what we were predicting. Sound and vision. We were reading Popular Science. We knew about laser discs, and said, Oh, my God, it’s exactly the same size as an album but it has pictures to go with the whole thing. This is going to totally change who’s making pop art. It’s not going to be some guy sitting over there with a band in a bar, and it’s not going to be somebody that’s sitting on a hill painting a landscape, it’s going to be somebody that works in the pop media of our time. They’re going to be doing stuff that goes on television and it’s going to be music and pictures together. And that’s what we wanted to be. We wanted to be the new art form. And instead MTV came along, and it looked like, during first half a year or year, it had potential. And then all of a sudden, I remember having this realization that MTV was just Home Shopping Network for record companies.

It became less a thing of making albums; you were just making one song. And one song that was going to get on MTV because if it didn’t, you were fucked. And your whole project died, and all the money that you would have used to like seed yourself to keep going till you had your third album and maybe had a chance to have enough maturity to make a statement that was interesting from an art point of view, people never got there.

Make it one step more depressing. Oh, I know. Let’s change the format to CD’s, where now all of a sudden people feel like instead of writing 44 minutes of well-crafted music, they have to come up with 70 or 80 minutes of filler to go around the one song that’s on MTV. So you got one song for MTV and then you got 70 minutes of stuff just to fill up a CD.

Was that really anxiety-producing for you when you were in the band?

Well, by the time, our airliner was already heading to the ground where CD’s were concerned and we were weaving a cocoon to hibernate in at that point. So we saw it more than we felt it. It was already a virulent strain of anti-art that was like a gas permeating the industry, and for some reason it made record companies hopeful. It gave them a new lease on life because they reissued all their old shit. And then they went into horror when they realized, “Oh, but wait. Once we give it to them in digital form, then that’s it. They will share it with each other and they don’t need us anymore.”

When you were in the throes of Devo, did you know how cool it was? Did you have that sense that you were doing something really tremendous?

We felt like we were doing something big in the early days. There was that energy that started it. And then by the mid-to-late ‘70s, we had that power and that energy of things moving forward. And then we went into retrograde, then  with the  Freedom of Choice album it started heading downhill, there was this horrible feeling where we felt misunderstood. We felt like—”wait a minute, we have something to say, and there’s a lot of people that don’t have anything to say, and you should ignore them!” It was a frustrating thing. I never anticipated it, you know. I didn’t know then that things were cyclical and they came back. Like careers.

Your career came back when you did the music for Pee-wee’s Playhouse. Were you asked to do it because Paul Reubens was a big Devo fan?

Yeah, I’d known him for years, and he’d asked me to work on his live theater show. He asked me to score his film. And I was too wrapped up in Devo and I was traveling all over the world. I was interested, but you know how it goes. When the TV show thing came up, my drummer had just left the band to start another band. Greta, Greta. You don’t remember that? Nobody does.

When you worked on Pee-wee’s Playhouse did you hang out there a lot?

When you’re a composer, especially for TV but for film also, you spend a lot of time by yourself. It is much more solitary than you would imagine. I visited the set once when they were shooting in New York for the first season, and I sat on Chairy. The rest of them were all easier because they shot them in L.A. I’d go visit, but most of the time, I got a tape on a Monday and sent it back to them on Thursday, and watched it on the weekend.

Is the process different than writing a rock song? Do you have to use a visual kind of sense?

I don’t know how to compare that kind of writing to a rock song because when we did songs, we were thinking about sound and vision. And we oftentimes had ideas for films before we wrote the song. Write a song to go to a film idea that we were talking about, because we made our own little films, back when they were still called promo videos.

How did you get the gig doing the Rugrats music?  Were the Clasky Csupo people pretty wacky or were they fairly normal?

Gabor Csupo, of Klasky Csupo called me and wanted to license a song from Muzik for Insomniaks, a solo album I recorded in the early ‘80s.  I offered to write him something new, and a great collaboration was born. All people in animation seem to be pretty wacky, yet somewhat normal.

And the Sims video games?

That was actually Mutato Muzika, my West Hollywood muzikal think tank (www.mutatomuzika.com) that scored many of those Sims games, but Devo would be a perfect fit… Wait, didn’t they license an unheard Devo tune called, “i’ve fallen in love, (with recombinant dna)” for a WB trailer, or something?

Mutato Muzika has scored many big games, and Devo has contributed to a number of games, also.

What was the greatest thrill being in Devo?

To actually be able to pull it off. I think it’d be great if everybody could at one time go to the Forum or go to Madison Square Garden and know what it’s like to have 35,000 people all looking at you, and you move your hand and feel everybody’s eyes watch what you’re doing. Or have them sing along with words that you made up in your basement about half a year ago when you were really depressed. Then all of a sudden there’s all these people singing it together, and you’re like, “Whoa, it’s cool.” You understand what evangelist preachers feel and to know what it’s like to have the power be so concentrated, and have the ability to use that power to go over and touch somebody and they jump back like they’ve been hit by lightning. That’s what being on stage with Devo in the early years was like.

I think that music has the power to change your life, and I do think it’s just like electronic force fields. It’s a great responsibility and a great buzz. Was it hard for you to go back to the film music and kind of be in the background rather than the foreground?

I know what you’re saying. But you know what? I saw those people that had been onstage, where I was five years before, waiting backstage, you saw the way they looked at you, and I go, “You know what? It’s not going to be forever and I’m going to enjoy it while it’s here.” And to be honest with you, Devo was  a collaborative band. Although you’ll see people get credit for songs on albums, everybody contributed, because it was two sets of brothers originally. And to me, the idea of collaborating with a director and a producer, it feels more like Devo than if I would be just by myself doing solo records.

So you work well with others?

Yeah, I enjoy it.

Do you have a rule or a motto, something  you say to yourself when you just don’t feel like getting up to do it in the morning?

God, I have no great quotes. I mean I try to live my life like a virgin.

What do you think your greatest strength is?

I enjoy solving problems. I’m a good problem solver everywhere in life. The big difference between Devo and KISS is, if the plumbing wasn’t working in the hotel room when we checked in, it probably worked when we left. And if the TV had snow on it we could, it was probably adjusted properly by the time we left the room. I can fix things, yeah. You know what? Save your brain for other stuff.

When you first came out with that line, “Are we not men? We are Devo,” was that a seminal moment in your life?

Yeah. It was a great moment. I was sitting in this shitty apartment in Akron, Ohio, $65 a month apartment, and I had quack religious pamphlets that I’d been collecting. I always invited Jehovah’s Witnesses in because they had great gravitas, and they were always attacking evolution. So they were the ones who got me thinking about all this great stuff – you  know, things that I could use for pro-de-evolution. I could just use all their information so I would invite those people in and they’d stay around, and they’d walk around and look at  all the masks I had on the walls, and I could hear them saying, “He has one room. He doesn’t have a bed. What is this? Is this a real apartment, or what is this? Hell?”

Would you overhear people saying, “Are we not men?” when you’d be out in the shopping mall or at the bank?

Yeah, but they always got it wrong. They said, “We are not men.” Dammit. Of course, a rhetorical question.

What’s something money can’t buy?

What can’t money buy? Peace of mind. No, it does buy it. What does it gain a man to have all the pussy in the world but to lose his soul? No, that’s not my motto.

What’s one thing that would surprise fans about you?

I think what surprises Rugrats fans is when they find out I was in Devo.

Let’s fast forward to today. In regards to the current tour, what prompted you to play the first two albums back to back as opposed to anything else?

The two-album-back-to-back concerts were inspired by Devo playing a string of parties back in London in May ’09. We were surprised that the first album, side 1 cut 1 through to side 2 last cut format worked so well, and wanted to let the Americanos get a chance to hear it.

Will the rest of the set list have some surprises for loyal fans?

Yes… and, uh, OK… yes!  That said, I think the interesting part of this concept for a concert is, no surprises? Except extraordinarily good merch, for once.

Are you having a good time doing this music again?  A while back you said you wouldn’t do DEVO again.

First off, it’s not about having a good time.  We just do what we must do. I think I said “I wouldn’t ‘doo’ Devo, referring to wearing those uncomfortable plastic hair ‘doos’ we wore on the New Traditionalists album cover.  Of course, none of us in the band have a lot of control over “doing” Devo; it’s in our genetic encoding.

How did the first two Devo albums end up getting remastered on 180g. vinyl?  Was it a Devo decision or a Warner Bros. decision?

The vinyl remastering was spearheaded by Tom Biery at WB, I think.  He loves vinyl as much as we do. I miss vinyl and not just for the sonic reasons.

Will we see the rest of the catalog remastered?

If WB hits black gold in some Burbank oil field soon, they may want to press a whole bunch of Devo albums.

What info can you leak to us about the new album?  What else is up your yellow sleeves?

The new album is what our first albums would have been like if we would have had nurses to administer the drugs, and rascals to ride around on.  Stay tuned.

It’s been a week or so, and I’m back in the Joni Mitchell mode again. My one-step copy of Court and Spark has arrived, and while this was Mitchell’s most commercial record, it remains a favorite.

Court and Spark was Mitchell’s transition to a more jazzy period. On a parallel track, she was also part of Tom Scott’s LA Express, and this record sees a major part of that crew sitting in on this record. Here’s a little tidbit I didn’t know: Jose Feliciano plays electric guitar on “Free Man in Paris.” Maybe I should give Wikepedia $5.

I have no idea what the “definitive” pressing of this record is. Discogs says there are 204 versions of this record, and that’s way too much work. The one-step is incredibly good. Dynamic and full of detail, Joni has never sounded better on my system. The pressing is flawless, and the background noise low, low, low. You might even hear some tiny bits throughout that you missed in the past. And that’s a big part of the fun.

And yes, there is still the slightest bit of overload at the beginning of “Car on a Hill.” Is there a version that doesn’t have this? I haven’t heard it. I’m not letting three seconds ruin the experience and you shouldn’t either.

If this is a record you cherish as much as I do, consider making the one-step part of your collection before they are gone. You will not be disappointed. Fingers crossed that MoFi is going to do Hissing of Summer Lawns as part of the series…

Leave a comment out on our Facebook page and let us know what you think!

Record of the Day is brought to you by Bergmann Audio, and Supreme Acoustic Systems.

The table featured here is the Modi, with their Thor linear tracking arm.
Cartridge is a modified LYRA Helikon SL, modified by Ana Mighty Sound
Phono Pre is the award winning XP-17 from Pass Labs
Cables by Cardas Audio
All on top of the Pagode Master Reference MKII, courtesy of MoFi Distribution

This one goes way back to my early audiophile days, when anything that was “half-speed mastered” or “recorded on audiophile vinyl” caught my attention and my wallet.

A trip to my favorite hifi store of the day, Audio Emporium, just outside of Milwaukee, WI where they were playing Ms. Story’s Solid Colors on a pair of Magnepan Tympanis.

Recorded by well known engineer Steven Miller, and pressed at RTI (yep, that’s how long they’ve been around…) this was great music on the Windham Hill label before they got labeled with the new age moniker. Captured at 30ips on a 2-track Studer, this is some amazing piano playing that sounds fantastic. Who says audiophile quality equals boring?

You can still find a copy of this very reasonable. It’s pressed on JVC vinyl and is a good addition to your reference collection.

Leave a comment out on our Facebook page and let us know what you think!

Record of the Day is brought to you by Bergmann Audio, and Supreme Acoustic Systems.

The table featured here is the Modi, with their Thor linear tracking arm.
Cartridge is a modified LYRA Helikon SL, modified by Ana Mighty Sound
Phono Pre is the award winning XP-17 from Pass Labs
Cables by Cardas Audio
All on top of the Pagode Master Reference MKII, courtesy of MoFi Distribution

Just the other day, the 10-album box set of Deep Purple’s classic: Made In Japan was released. This one features the main album remixed by Steven Wilson, and if you like what he’s done with classic Yes and King Crimson, there’s a great chance you’ll enjoy this rendition as well.

I’m usually not a fan of making 10 albums out of one, but there is so much cool bonus content here, I’m gonna have to listen to this for a week to get through it all! Recorded during their first tour of Japan in summer of 1972, it was released in the Japan on December 8 of 1972, and March 30 in the US.

It’s a killer record, containing one of the most recognizable songs/opening riffs ever – “Smoke on the Water,” and continues to endure.

I would not encounter Deep Purple live until their Stormbringer tour, back in my hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin nearly a year later. But it was an incredible first concert experience. What was your first show?

Leave a comment out on our Facebook page and let us know what you think!

Record of the Day is brought to you by Bergmann Audio, and Supreme Acoustic Systems.

The table featured here is the Modi, with their Thor linear tracking arm.
Cartridge is a modified LYRA Helikon SL, modified by Ana Mighty Sound
Phono Pre is the award winning XP-17 from Pass Labs
Cables by Cardas Audio
All on top of the Pagode Master Reference MKII, courtesy of MoFi Distribution

There aren’t a lot of companies that have been making speakers for nearly 80 years, (2026 is their 80th anniversary!!) but Klipsch and the legendary K-horn are still here, better than ever.

With a sealed back since the AK6 model, they still really should be in the corner (as the late, great Paul Klipsch intended), but they have much more solid bass than ever. This mega-sensitive speaker (105dB/1-watt) doesn’t need a ton of power to shine. PrimaLuna’s EVO 100 with a full complement of EL-34s, delivering 40 watts per channel, is getting the job done nicely.

Klipsch says the KHorns will work in a room as small as 13 x 18 (Yeah, we tried that), but space is truly the final frontier. Out in the main listening room on the 24-foot wall, feeding into a 36-foot room, not only can the speakers really breathe in and out, but there is a much better sense of integration from the horn drivers about 18 feet back. And, boy, do these fill a room.

Now that the AK7 Klipschorn offers a three-way active crossover, there’s so much more of this story to tell – and that’s in the works.

For now, these $20k speakers remain an excellent investment. Much as we hate to embrace hard, fast rules in the world of music and audio, there is something undeniably amazing about listening to big music in a big room on a big pair of speakers.

Just click here to visit the Klipsch site. And stay tuned, we’ve got a LOT more to come.

While their popularity has never waned, (and the band continues to tour today) it might be argued that Los Lobos was at their peak of exposure in the early 1990s. Their soundtrack to the movie La Bamba, in 1987 sold two million copies, but Kiko was their biggest selling album, with close to half a million copies sold.

Kiko is one of those perfect records that remains as fresh and imaginative today as it did 30-plus years ago, with incredible musicianship and songwriting, propelled by an audiophile level of detail to the recording.

Go to tracks here for demo use are always “Kiko and the Lavender Moon,” and “That Train Don’t Stop Here Anymore,” but the entire album is full of sonic treats. Los Lobos is often pigeonholed as Tex Mex, or Americana/Roots rock, but Kiko – produced by Mitchell Froom (who also plays on the record) is much more experimental and creative to put in a box.

The Mobile Fidelity treatment of this record is incredible, and still available as a half speed mastered LP and SACD. As good as it gets, this one will truly show off the performance envelope of your system without resorting to stuffy, audiophile approved tracks.

Leave a comment out on our Facebook page and let us know what you think!

Record of the Day is brought to you by Bergmann Audio, and Supreme Acoustic Systems.

The table featured here is the Modi, with their Thor linear tracking arm.
Cartridge is a modified LYRA Helikon SL, modified by Ana Mighty Sound
Phono Pre is the award winning XP-17 from Pass Labs
Cables by Cardas Audio
All on top of the Pagode Master Reference MKII, courtesy of MoFi Distribution

This one is a mega classic, albeit a bit before my time. However, I think many of us can agree that Hendrix’ debut, released in May 1967 was not only one of the greatest, but most successful rock records of all time.

The low distortion of the Acoustic Sounds pressing is thought by many collectors to be the finest rendition of this album, and the lack of tracking error in the Bergmann Thor linear tracking arm has Jimi’s guitar growling like never before.

Are You Experienced? is nearly 40 minutes of non stop energy, whether you have the 38:34 UK version or the 39:29 US version. Regardless of which pressing you have, this is a great album to enjoy start to finish.


Leave a comment out on our Facebook page and let us know what you think!

Record of the Day is brought to you by Bergmann Audio, and Supreme Acoustic Systems.

The table featured here is the Modi, with their Thor linear tracking arm.
Cartridge is a modified LYRA Helikon SL, modified by Ana Mighty Sound
Phono Pre is the award winning XP-17 from Pass Labs
Cables by Cardas Audio
All on top of the Pagode Master Reference MKII, courtesy of MoFi Distribution