Kevin Bresnahan

The 1999 RVG CD reissue of Jimmy Smith's "Cool Blues" was the second time it was released on CD in the US. The first time was in 1990: Those other titles were released in a special Connoisseur batch that was made of all unreleased material.

I don't think I have any of those DMM LPs left in my collection... maybe Mobley's "Straight No Filter"? I remember not liking the sound of those DMM LPs very much. The new Tone Poet LP of "The Rajah" sounds very nice. I have no complaints.

Dan might be right that The Three Sounds' "Babe's Blues" might be the only one.

Didn't the notes from the Freddie Redd Mosaic box say that that session went unreleased partly because Lion and Freddie got into a shouting match about it?

Chet Baker - "Chet Baker In New York" (Riverside/Craft Recordings). Recently released reissue from Craft Recordings, Concord's specialty label akin to Rhino in the 90's but a little more upscale. Nice cut done by Kevin Gray. Nice jacket too. Craft recently reissued 4 Baker titles. I picked up the 3 instrumentals. Not a huge fan of Chet's vocals.

Nick was a favorite of mine. I never missed him when he played in the Boston area. "On A Different Level" is a great CD.

My wife and daughters are both teachers and they both just got their first vaccine shots last week. My wife has been extremely nervous going into work these past 7 months. I think she has only managed to stay COVID-free because of her paranoia. She comes home with her face all red from never taking off her mask. My daughter teaches Kindergarten and those younger children have a tough time with personal boundaries, much less 6 feet. She uses so much hand sanitizer that her hands are chapped and split. I hope as the vaccination levels rise, this can fade into an ugly memory... until COVID-22 or 23 comes along.

I'm just trying to let you know that your negative result should not make you think you're in the clear yet. It's great news that you're negative and I'm sure I speak for us all in our wish that you stay that way. BTW - the reason I was so concerned with my co-worker's negative test result was because I had met with him 1 on 1 for over an hour in a closed office, so when he told me he was negative, My wife & I breathed a sigh of relief. When he called me 3 days later to say he was now positive, I was a bit freaked out. It was lesson to always be aware of the precautions needed to protect those around you. Luckily, I did not get it that time, but I was glad I kept my daughters away for those two weeks. They were planning a visit that weekend. I would've felt terrible if they had visited and I later found out I had it but was asymptomatic. BTW II - Are the Netherlands still in lockdown?

I have a co-worker whose roommate was diagnosed positive. My co-worker got tested and came back negative. He still had to quarantine. 3 days later, he tested positive and he had a pretty bad case.

Maine suddenly lowered the eligibility age to 50 effective March 23rd (next Tuesday). It was planned for April 1st. I jumped onto the website instantly and booked my first shot for Saturday the 27th.

But that will only work if your preamp/receiver also supports a 2.8 MHz DSD input. I think the Yamaha CD-S1000 is pretty slick looking. On sale at Music Direct for $1,300.

Man I wish Bob Brookmeyer hadn't been such a cantankerous jerk on the old Jazz Corner forums. Now, whenever I see one of his records, it's one of the first things I think of.

Multichannel sound can be just as audiophile as stereo if you use full fidelity speakers for the surround channels. I think a lot of the "surround is not audiophile" talks starts when talking about the use of PCM for bass management. 5.1 SACD playback needs bass management for the .1 to sound best. I think there are only one or two SACD decoder chips that do this in DSD. Most implementations of bass management for 5.1 SACDs convert the DSD to PCM. My Oppo Digital player does this and as I said above, I think it still sounds great. I will admit that most of the best-sounding surround SACDs are rock recordings. Having said that, Bob Belden went all out on the surround mix for his SACD of "Black Dahlia". It is pretty amazing to hear with a good surround system. Bob was big on surround. He felt it was the future of music. He'd be disappointed with the audiophile world killing it off like they are. Once you hear "Black Dahlia" in surround, you might see what he meant.

Do you have a budget in mind? Marantz does make some nice players but they are priced on the higher side and they only offer stereo SACD playback. Does your Sony play multichannel SACDs? And just a note that these lower-end SACD players convert the DSD to PCM to output the signal through the HDMI port. While I am not a purist about this, others might be. I think the music sounds great either way.

I still can't listen past "rockets red glare".

So bummed not to see Mabern's name in the piano chair...

I never did get a chance to see Freddie. Whenever he seemed to show up in the Boston area, it was always "off the beaten path" and usually by the time I heard about it, it was either in the past or sold out. I wonder if Freddie's career would've been different if he never did that Boplicity date of "The Connection" that supposedly upset Alfred Lion?

RIP Freddie. "Shades of Redd" is a very nice date. I'll have to give that a spin today.

I think the premise of these aftermarket cords, cables, isolation tables, anti-vibration feet, absorptive materials, etc. is to make lots of money. Anything after that is just marketing 101. If a company were making and selling something like a $10,000 amplifier and they absolutely knew that a different AC cord, special feet or a special isolation platter would improve the sound, they would include it. But here's the thing - they test their products and know what the output looks like into a speaker load. They probably have tons of real data showing how their amplifier performs. And I'm sure that they've repeated these tests with all kinds of variables like different AC cords or with the amp on different feet or on a anti-vibration platter. They know how this amp performs under varying conditions. That's how amp design works. And I'm sure they rely heavily on measurement science - an area I've made a living in for decades. FWIW, I test amplifiers that operate from MHz to 100 GHz. I have to measure these amps under all kinds of test conditions like varying voltages, temperatures & power levels. Design & product engineers do everything under the sun to see if they can improve the device's performance and go through extremes to avoid anything that would degrade that performance. It's worth repeating that if any of these add-ons improved the performance, they would be added to that product before it shipped out the door.

I really cannot understand that Buck Clayton price... that sucker used to sell for big bucks. $89? Cheaper than new. I wonder what happened? Not enough fans of swing Jazz?

Why call? They have an on-line ordering system: http://bluesandjazzmart.com/mosaic.htm

The Blue Note store and the UMusic store both suck at delivering in a timely manner. I ordered from both of these places during sales and in both cases, I had to wait several months to get anything. It got so bad with the last UMusic sale, that I actually cancelled my entire order after 3 and a half months of waiting.

I think it's absolutely snake oil. Any piece of electronic gear using the AC feed is designed to filter out line noise. If your amplifier is so poorly designed that it allows any AC line noise into your audio, you have a very poorly designed amplifier that probably should be replaced. On top of that, any improvement of the AC feed, and I'm not saying there would be with this unit, would only duplicate the filtration already built into your AC device. All consumer electronics that use AC Power have EMI suppression such as AC line filters. SOP for any consumer electronic device designer. And lastly, this filtering of the AC (60 Hz) power line cannot result in your amplifier suddenly having "deeper blacks" and "brighter highs" as many of the sellers of the AC power strips claim. Now - having said all that - I do have a Belden power strips on both of my audio/TV systems. I bought them for one reason. They have surge suppression. Many years ago, our television blew during a storm. A lightning strike wiped it out. I have used surge/spike suppressors on my AC feeds to my audio gear and televisions ever since. I mean really - if an external filter somehow improved the sound of an audio amplifier, don't you think that some of these high-end, super-expensive audio companies would include them? Of course they would. Same with a fancy AC power cord. They don't because they know they don't need to.

"Audio equipment"? Not in my book.