Kevin Bresnahan

I'm also a fan of direct drive turntables. If I were to buy another turntable now, I'd look at the Cambridge Audio Alva: https://www.cambridgeaudio.com/usa/en/products/alva/alva-tt

It took me several attempts, but I finally got that page to come up. It references this upgrade kit: https://www.henleyaudio.co.uk/products/SE-Upgrade-Kit It seems like a pretty inexpensive fix. BTW - if you can't get that page to come up (Error 404), follow the link I posted and click on the "Download" tab below the "Buy Now" button. Like I said in my post above, some Debut users have gotten similar results by simply loosening and/or tightening the 4 mounting screws for the motor.

Sound samples here: https://www.highresaudio.com/en/album/view/ux63s2/eric-alexander-eric-alexander-with-strings Not a big fan of strings on Jazz recordings... well, I do like Getz's "Focus", but that's about it. As much as I dig Alexander's work, I won't be picking this up. Why is this so short though? 36 minutes is barely even LP length.

That is true. But at the same time, how hard could it be to get a better cover scan and make sure it looks good? It still says "Blue Note" on it so that should stand for something. It's not like it says "Applause Records".

Cuscuna did say that he gave Horace Silver the recordings made at Pep's in 1964. I think you're right Lon... I seem to remember that he said that he gave one to Shorter. Wasn't it that 1970 date? The one that Shorter blamed Duke Pearson for messing it up?

This'll sound weird, but put on a crappy LP that exhibits this rumble and while it's playing, gently lift up the turntable until it's no longer contacting the shelf to see if the rumble goes away. That'll eliminate the environment. If that doesn't eliminate the rumble, we're on to checking to see if the motor is properly isolated. I've read that there are mounting screws for the motor and if you loosen/tighten them in different combinations, you may find one that works. If none of this works, you'll have to make sure your ground is good.

And look at the covers of these two pressings. Blue Note has embarrassed themselves with these things. Damn - I forgot to take the vinyl sleeve off of the older pressing... and yet, it still looks better than that new one.

I pulled out a recent 80th Anniversary LP purchase, "Una Mas", and I saw the dead wax on Side 2 and did a double take: Then I realized that I had a mid-70s RVG cut in the racks. Here's Rudy's cut on Side 2: Huge difference. Soundwise, the new record is obviously quieter as my old RVG LP is well worn. But surprisingly, I think the new cut rolls off the highs on Kenny's trumpet where Rudy allowed it to nearly overload the playback. I don't which one is better. There seems to be more bass in the new cut. My wife listened with me (a rare occurrence) and she said, "They sound the same to me".

Cassette? Ok. I have one of these: It's the best sounding boombox I've ever owned. However, these days, I use a Bose Soundlink II Color and my cell phone for listening to tunes on the back deck: This little sucker sounds great to my old ears. I play either MP3 files from my SD card or the XM radio app.

Mark my words, with climate change and MLB adding more and more playoff games, there's going to be a "blizzard" before a World Series game before I die. The next thing you know, they'll start having the World Series at a neutral warm weather location like the Super Bowl does.

Just remember that "sound" to humans is merely what our mind does with those electrical signals from our nerves when those little hairs in our ears vibrate. As such, our mind can and will play it's usual tricks. Things that sounded good one way will sound better another... even if they are exactly the same. This is not something that's inherently wrong or right and its's definitely not something you can fix. Expectation bias is a well understood example of the human subconscious mind at work. It's not woo or really science, unless you stick to the technical definition that biology is a science. It's just a natural thing our minds do. If you hear an improvement - good for you. Go for it. One thing to leave you with is this - companies that manufacture these sound improvement devices never publish any data to back their claims. This is precisely because they live off of your expectation biases and not on any measurable metric.

True, but the Go Fund Me's goal was $100,000. They didn't close the fund when they reached their goal. The fund now sits at $250,000, which I think is about $100,000 lower than the amount they actually raised. That extra $150,000 could do a lot of good for a lot more lesser-known Jazz musicians in the hands of the Jazz Foundation. The amount of financial aid shouldn't be tied to the artist's fame. FWIW, I do think that the Burrell campaign and all the weirdness around it, is going to negatively affect campaigns like this one.

I actually did reach out to the Jazz Foundation and I also messaged Jimmy's daughter via her Go Fund Me. I hope they can help as well. I am just a little leery about these Go Fund Me things after that Kenny Burrell campaign. I don't think we ever got the whole story there to this day. I'd almost rather we support the Jazz Foundation instead of individual artists like these Go Fund Me pages. The Jazz Foundation support all artists due to their need and not due to their relative fame. Kenny Burrell's campaign raised over $250,000. If that same money was in the non-profit Jazz Foundation's coffers, they could give support to many more musicians.

The Jazz Foundation of America was established just for situations like this. Has the family contacted them? If not, they should. They might be able to take care of this in a more private fashion. https://jazzfoundation.org/

As baseball writer Mike Petraglia wrote, "One more irony of this Mookie situation is that the problem with the 2020 #RedSox isn't their offense. They are still pretty loaded, even without Betts. Their rotation and bullpen look incredibly thin. Nothing has been done to address that this offseason - at all." Also, if Betts doesn't sign with the Dodgers, he can still come back to the Sox in 2021.

So you believe that the Red Sox should have signed Mookie to a 12 year/$426 Million contract? $35.5 Million per year until he is 39? When history has shown that players of his stature don't usually play well past 32? We'll have to agree to disagree on that. BTW - what did Mookie do for the Red Sox last year? His stats were there, so why did the Red Sox finish 12 games out of a playoff spot? One player does not take a team to the playoffs.

Price's departure is addition by subtraction. He's an a-hole. I am so glad he's gone. Mookie just wanted too much money and this is all happening too close to the ongoing Pedroia fiasco. The Red Sox did the right thing with Jacoby Ellsbury and got so much flak that they did the wrong thing with Pedroia. They don't want another one of these albatross contracts hanging over them. Sure, they are probably letting Betts go a year too early, but this way, they are at least getting something for him. And I say this as a big Mookie fan. He was a nice guy on top of being a great player. I just don't want to see him getting $30 Million or some such nonsense when he's 37 and sitting in an ice bath and not on the field.

Exactly. The problem is that it has now swung way too far in the other direction, with mastering engineers compressing some recordings so much that it's a wall of sound. No nuances. No soft passages. Everything is "right there" in an "in your face" way.

Which is why it was in the first batch of Connoisseur releases. Those first 12 Connoisseur releases were chosen specifically because of their scarcity.

https://www.wbgo.org/post/lucien-barbarin-soulful-trombonist-and-link-new-orleans-musical-tradition-has-died-63#stream/0 Lucien Barbarin, trombonist extraordinaire, has died after a 2 battle with prostate cancer. He was 63. I got to see him once with Harry Connick Jr.'s band and he was quite the entertainer.

But again, if you ever play a CD that goes out of it's way to take advantage of as much dynamic range as possible, the quiet passages will be extremely quiet and this is the problem, not the louder passages. If you touting this Feldman CD because it's explosive, you're not talking about a CD with super-wide dynamic range. I always liked Schubert's Symphony No. 8 - Unfinished, so when CDs came out, I picked this up: https://www.discogs.com/Mendelssohn-Schubert-Philharmonia-Orchestra-Sinopoli-Schubert-Symphony-No8-Unfinished-Mendelssohn-Sy/release/7516381 This CD utilizes a lot of those 96 dBs of dynamic range.

Drummer Bob Gullotti has died. He was 70. He will be missed by all of us around the Boston area. I have been lucky enough to have seen/heard Bob many times over the years as he played regular gigs around Boston with The Fringe and as a sideman. https://www.wbgo.org/post/bob-gullotti-drummer-and-teacher-known-legendary-tenure-fringe-dies-70#stream/0

Most of these claims stem from the fact that the most-used "Dynamic range meter" out there today, TT Meter, does not work well with vinyl. See the video below to see what a mastering engineer has to say. But... There is another thing at work here. In the digital realm, many newer releases are seriously compressed ("The Loudness Wars" at work) and when measured with TT Meter, the resulting dynamic range numbers are usually much less than what digital can theoretically deliver. So technically, you could have an LP released with the most dynamic range they could eke out of their vinyl pressing, which is around 60 dB, and then take an overcompressed digital version and measure less than that. BTW - you would probably not want to hear a musical recording that utilized the full dynamic range of 16 bit digital audio (~95 dB) because it's literally too much dynamic range for the human ear. I have some older classical CDs and the volume difference between the soft parts and the loud parts are so far apart, that I have to turn the volume up & down as I listen. I doubt that the difference between these two passages is anywhere near 96 dB either.

I've been to shows in larger venues where I've heard a little moan/groan when the band calls out a ballad. In general, people like the barn-burners and it's likely especially true when the band, JATP, is known for them.

In my opinion, the 80th Anniversary issues are just as good as the Tone Poet issues with the exception that they use cheaper LP art and press them at Pallas in Germany instead of at RTI on the US. Some would say that being pressed at Pallas is a good thing. Both are mastered and cut at Cohearant Audio by Kevin Gray and have similar audio signatures. Gray also mastered and cut the Music Matters LPs. I don't think you can go wrong with one of these pressings as long as sub-par artwork doesn't bother you. Some of the cover scans on these LPs are pretty bad.