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December 2007 Audio Files By Mike Quinn
Stocking Sonics: Holiday-Season Gizmos for your Favorite Jazzbo
Were JazzTimes about four times as thick and totally devoted to audio and home theater topics, we would still not have enough room to cover all the new gear that comes out each year. For such a “niche” industry, the world of high-performance audio is an...
November 2007 Audio Files By Mike Quinn
Let’s Get Physical: Why Analog Always Trumps Digital
Music is a physical experience, the result of a column of air rushing through a reed, a larynx or a hammer, a stick striking a string or a membrane. So it only seems logical that a storage medium that preserves a physical analog of that physical phenomenon...
October 2007 Audio Files
Riddle Me This: Readers Ask Questions of Our Audiophile Guru
There is no question that the arena of home entertainment equipment is, like so many other specialist hobbies, littered with esoteric concepts, language and trinkets. Such that, to most outsiders it’s hard to traverse much ground without stumbling over the...
October 2007 Audio Files By Mike Quinn
Speaker Up!: Upgraded Speakers Give Music Lovers Fresh Ears
I have a friend, a true connoisseur of great jazz, who owns a pair of 35-year-old speakers which no amount of teasing, deriding or ridicule can convince him to chuck out the window. He recently had them reconditioned, and I’m sure they sound better now after...
October 2007 Audio Files By Mike Quinn
Uptown Conversation: Talking Speakers with the Legendary Ron Carter
Last year, bass legend Ron Carter admitted in this column to having become a new convert to audiophilia. He had just purchased a new pair of speakers that allowed him to hear his own playing as never before. Recently, the night after celebrating his 70th...
September 2007 Audio Files By Mike Quinn
The Current State of Solid State
Back in second grade, I was hopelessly seduced by a magazine ad for what seemed to be a miracle: a fully functional radio in a package not much larger than two packs of my dad’s filterless Camels. Before then, a radio was a large thing, possibly in a wooden...
July/August 2007 Audio Files By Mike Quinn
Are CD Players Finally Delivering What They Promised All Along?
The death knell for the relatively short-lived compact disc has been tolling for a few years now. Pundits, even within these very pages, have been predicting the end of traditional music software at every opportunity, saying that all of us, not just dorm...
June 2007 Audio Files By Mike Quinn
Around the World: DIY Systems from the Other Side of the Globe
Globalization. How many times a day do we hear that term bandied about in the news, in advertising, in political rhetoric? As a concept, it may be valid and worth considering, but the word itself is worn out. Too bad, because globalization (read: the world...
May 2007 Audio Files By Mike Quinn
Casting a Net on the Net
I get several e-mails each month from readers seeking help with selecting just the right gear, some assembling a full system and others simply wanting to replace an old component or two. (Please feel free to send in your questions to the email address at...
April 2007 Audio Files By Mike Quinn
Forward to the Past
Modern technology has made countless menial tasks in our lives so much less painful and has brought so much convenience into our day-to-day living. Who wants to boil bath water over an open fire when a 50-gallon tank sits full, steaming and waiting in the...
