Music Reviews

What do you want to hear when you listen to music? Do you want a lower-fidelity version of what the artists, engineers, and producers heard in the studio? Or would you prefer to hear exactly what they heard in the studio?

Of course, you'd prefer the latter. But you're probably getting the former - unless, that is, you're listening to high-resolution downloads from HDtracks. If you're listening to CDs, MP3s, or even vinyl records, what you're hearing is not a precise copy of the original digital recording or analog tape. It's downconverted. If it's on CD, the digital resolution has been reduced. If it's on vinyl, the audio has been remastered and the record you're listening to is actually a third-generation mechanical copy.

Sure, it might sound ok. But it's not the best fidelity you can get. HDtracks is. And HDtracks and Sound+Vision have put together an introductory sampler to show you just how good high-resolution listening can be.

In honor of today’s release of A Different Kind of Truth, the first album from Van Halen with David Lee Roth as lead vocalist since 1984, we’re proud to present an interview I did with the inimitable Mr. Roth back in 2003. Our chat was ostensibly centered around his covers-oriented solo album Diamond Dave, but we quickly went into, well, a different universe. “As far as learning the alphabet of music goes,” opined the ever-quotable Dave, “I always tell young musicians, ‘Last I looked, the Bible was written in the exact same alphabet as my favorite pornography. So I guess the choice is yours, son.’” As the song says, might as well jump. . .

After becoming music director of the Minnesota Orchestra in 2003 Osmo Vänskä began recording an excellent multi-channel SACD set of Beethoven symphonies with his new group. The Finnish conductor has since returned to the work of his countryman Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), recording this multi-channel SACD of the composer's most popular symphonies, Nos. 2 & 5.

Record Store Day can be an exhilarating - and, depending on where you shop, occasionally exasperating - experience. Always a lot of fun, you can raise your odds of getting the good stuff you want on RSD by doing a little planning ahead and preparing a shopping/wish list. Really.