Author Archives: James Hale

Note: for the total suite of measurements from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click on this hyperlink.

June 2023

If you caught final month’s column, you’ll know that one of many recordings I featured was Van Morrison’s signature major-label debut, Astral Weeks. I famous that—sometimes for a pop recording within the late Sixties—the recording setup was fairly primary. Morrison’s voice is centered within the soundstage, and there seems to have been little or nothing altered in post-production. One consequence is that Morrison often sounds barely off-mike. Having seen Morrison carry out a number of instances, I anticipate these off-mike incantations have been deliberate.

May 2023

For most of my “Art+Tech” columns thus far I’ve led with the music. More typically than not, I’ve used the artwork to see how nicely a chunk of know-how can reproduce it.

Note: for the full suite of measurements from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click this link.

April 2023

Composer Wayne Shorter died on March 2 this year, at the age of 89. Along with the release of a massive, career-capping biography of fellow saxophone giant Sonny Rollins, this is a landmark—the symbolic end of a jazz era studded with remarkable iconoclasts. Miles. Monk. Trane. Wayne. Sonny. We all know their unique sounds; hearing them in our heads as soon as those single names pass the lips.

March 2023

This is a narrative about creativity, energy, and selection. It’s additionally about breaking from what’s anticipated and taking a threat in new territory.

Note: for the full suite of measurements from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click this link.

February 2023

When the user’s manual for a desktop DAC has 68 pages—68 pages of very small type—you know you’re not dealing with just another digital-to-analog converter. At $1299 (all prices in USD), RME’s ADI-2 DAC FS isn’t priced like most of its competitors, either. I slid it into the place normally filled by my $199 iFi Audio Zen DAC V2, between my iPad Pro and my Focal Alpha Evo 50 studio monitors.

Note: for the full suite of measurements from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click this link.

February 2023

When the user’s manual for a desktop DAC has 68 pages—68 pages of very small type—you know you’re not dealing with just another digital-to-analog converter. At $1299 (all prices in USD), RME’s ADI-2 DAC FS isn’t priced like most of its competitors, either. I slid it into the place normally filled by my $199 iFi Audio Zen DAC V2, between my iPad Pro and my Focal Alpha Evo 50 studio monitors.

Note: for the full suite of measurements from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click this link.

January 2023

If there’s a psychiatrist out there who wants to delve into the connection between weather and music, I’d be happy to lie on your couch. Deep in my Canadian psyche is the need to hear extremely buoyant–yet-meditative instrumental jazz on late-autumn days. Pianist Keith Jarrett’s 1973 album Solo Concerts: Bremen / Lausanne is the ideal way to scratch that itch. That stems from the first time I saw Jarrett in concert: a crisp, fall night in 1975, which gave way to an exceptionally snowy morning. I woke to it with his music still in my head.