sonnyhill

Andrew Hill - Dusk (Palmetto)

Matt Brewer - Ganymede (Criss Cross)

Gerald Cleaver & Violet Hour - Live at Firehouse 12 (Sunnyside) J.D. Allen - tenor saxophone Andrew Bishop - bass clarinet, soprano & tenor saxophone Jeremy Pelt - trumpet Ben Waltzer - piano Chris Lightcap - bass Gerald Cleaver - drums

Sunn O))) - Life Metal (Southern Lord)

Charles Tolliver - All Stars (Strata East)

Matthew Shipp Trio - The Unidentifiable (ESP-Disk) Matthew Shipp, piano Michael Bisio, bass Newman Taylor Baker, drums

Woody Shaw - Bemsha Swing (Blue Note)

I listened to a bit of the Butcher, Lehn, and Shipp on Bandcamp; I like it. I will pick it up on Bandcamp Friday in November.

Blue Note has re-released Woody Shaw's Bemsha Swing digitally. It is on Spotify and Apple music if you stream. It can be downloaded in FLAC at Presto Jazz. Blue Note Records @bluenoterecords · Oct 1 Now Available Digitally: #WoodyShaw "Bemsha Swing"—A 1986 live recording featuring the great trumpeter with Geri Allen (piano), Bob Hurst (bass) & Roy Brooks (drums) at Baker's Keyboard Lounge in Detroit. Hear "In a Capricornian Way" on #TheBlueNoteMonthly https://bluenote.lnk.to/BlueNoteMonthly

Dayton Audio b652 Lepai LP-2020TI Arcam CD73 My main system, which is comprised of a Rouge Stereo 90 tube amp, Conrad Johnson tube preamp, and Spendor speakers, is in "storage." I was looking for an inexpensive desktop system. I ran across a few good reviews of the Dayton Audio b652 and Lepai LP-2020TI amplifier used as a combo. Parts Express sells the combo for $65.00. I purchased them on sale for $65.00 shipped. I was prepared to be underwhelmed. I figured that if I did not like the speakers, I could use them for rears in a home theater set up. I have used the combo with my Arcam CD73 cd player (which I purchased for about $700.00 new many years ago) and hooked it up to my PC using the included 3.5'' cable to play FLAC files. I am a discriminating listener. I have been pleasantly surprised how good the combo sounds, especially given the price. To my ears, this combo would more than hold its own against systems that I have heard costing several thousands of dollars. Highly recommended for anyone looking for good sound in a small to medium sized room.

Woody Shaw - Lotus Flower (Enja)

Wadada Leo Smith/Jack DeJohnette - America (Tzadik)

Mal Waldron - Mal Waldron Plays the Blues (Enja) Manfred Schoof, Akira Sakata, Yosuke Yamashita, Takeo Moriyama - Distant Thunder (Enja)

It does depend to some extent on how comfortable you are with computers. An OS change should have little to do with the maintenance of a digital music collection. For me, the key is the external hard drive. I download in FLAC to a micro sd card that I keep seated in my computer for my music collection. I stopped using Mac laptops after Apple got rid of the sd card slot on their laptops. I then back up the sd card and music that i download to external hard drives, which are inexpensive. I purchase new external hard drives periodically and retire the old ones. Redundancy is important, you should have at least one back up of your back up (this is the same with photos or any other important files stored on a computer hard drive). If you change computers or operating systems, your music files can easily be transferred from the external hard drives if necessary. Some advocate backing up to the cloud, but I never felt comfortable having my files sitting on someone else's server resulting in that person or entity having control over my access. I still am somewhat a cd die-hard, but I am at the point now where I have no qualms about purchasing a download of the same resolution as a cd.

At this point, lack of a cd version does not bother me so long as a full resolution download is offered for purchase. What upsets me is when a title is offered LP only without an option for cd-quality download or cd.