Kevin Bresnahan

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.

Expensive as heck there days though...

Yes - originally released in 1992

Does anyone know if Steeplechase has announced anywhere that they are switching to CD-Rs? I recently received a batch of 7 Steeplechase CDs and one of them was a CD-R.

I already have a great-sounding LP cut by Kevin Gray of Gordon's "One Flight Up" on the Cisco label. No need for me to pick this one up. And Hill's "Passing Ships" is probably going to be a bit expensive as it's 3 sides, so that might hurt the sales.

So I finished the book last night. A bit of a bummer by the end, with Phil talking about his drug and alcohol addictions and how it ran in his family and ended up with his daughter dying from it. He seemed proud that he had a good relationship with 2 of his kids when he had 2 others wouldn't even talk to him for 20 over years. All in all, by the end of the book, I didn't think that highly of Phil the person as much as Phil the musician. By his own words, he described a guy who was a bit of a dink to anyone who wasn't on the bandstand with him... except Jill. Also, it was weird when the book ended and my Kindle said the book was only 68% complete. So one third of the book is a few nice reminisces (Brian Lynch & a Billy Joel interview), a discography & an index. And by the way - if Phil's description was accurate, Al Haig was one weird dude.

John Zorn as part of The Sonny Clark Memorial Quartet - Voodoo (1986): and again in 1988 on News For Lulu

That big band put out a couple of self-produced LPs: Big Fat Nothin' & Satin Doll. Maybe this CD is a comp with those two LPs?

Dexter had emphysema, which would make it hard to blow like he does. Phil Woods had emphysema and the last two times I saw, he played with a oxygen line.

Chris (Hardbop) Heaney is on Facebook. We were just reminiscing today about the defunct Up/Over Jazz club in New York. I saw a few great shows there.

I see that this LP has recently been released in Japan on 2 CDs on the Solid Records label with what appears to be some added tracks. The audio samples I've heard have been pretty good. I'm still not sure if it's worth picking up. I'm curious though - Are these CDs bootlegs or are they legit releases?

My favorite Brignola date by far. I actually prefer this one from the 80's (1981):

https://jazztimes.com/features/tributes-and-obituaries/ralph-peterson-jr-1962-2021/?fbclid=IwAR1VoGd2FQ1_Ti0giDcuKW6TUkxXtJJgLPdiO9YQJRtJrPIm_12ASRxdDfw