The Absolute Sound      March 2023

  The Absolute Sound is the world's preeminent source of expert product reviews, features, and commentary on high-performance audio. Since 1973, TAS has set the standard for quality audio and music journalism, helping to shape the industry and guiding audio enthusiasts and music lovers to components and recordings that faithfully reproduce the sounds one might hear in a good concert hall. The Absolute Sound's editors and reviewers, many of whom have been writing about music and high fidelity for better than three decades, bring unparalleled enthusiasm, expertise, and insight to the magazine's readers.

Long-Term Equipment Loan To A Reviewer: A Win-Win For Everyone
Robert Harley looks at the practical and ethical considerations of longterm equipment loans from manufacturers to reviewers.
Editorial By Robert Harley
In  this issue's Letters column, reader Henry Kleeman expresses concern over the magazine's policy regarding long-term equipment loans from manufacturers to reviewers. He writes: "I have always thought that the ‘extended loan' of high-end gear to reviewers is the dirty little secret of the audio-reviewing community. I'm hard pressed to understand how it doesn't create, at the very least, an appearance of a conflict of interest. If Company B has graciously given a reviewer its new state-of-the-art, half-million-dollar, ultimate speaker on an ‘extended loan' (so the reviewer can incorporate the speakers into his reference system), how does that reviewer then approach a review of Company B's new $50,000 speaker?"
---> Long-Term Equipment Loan To A Reviewer: A Win-Win For Everyone.

The 2023 Editors' Choice Awards
Our top recommendations — complete with mini-reviews — of the very best speakers, amplifiers, DACs, turntables, headphones and personal audio, cartridges, cables, phonostages, integrated amplifeirs, equipment racks, AC power conditioners, accessories, room treatments, books, and more!

12 Letters

14 The Absolute Sound's YouTube Channel! 
TAS has launched its own YouTube channel with more than 100 (and counting) videos covering high-end audio and music.

Music
188 The Killer Arises An excerpt from David McGee's biography of Carl Perkins describes the day when Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis met in Sun Recording Studios — and a couple other visitors popped in as well.

192 Bernstein's DG Mahler On Vinyl
For the first time, Deutsche Grammophon has packaged together Bernstein's second recordings of the complete Mahler symphonies on vinyl. Paul Seydor reports.

196 Rock, Etc.
Weyes Blood, My Morning Jacket, Guided by Voices, Bruce Springsteen, the Cure, Dailey & Vincent, the Flaming Lips, and Dave Alvin.

200 Jazz
Pharoah Sanders, Marc Copland, Makaya McCraven, Conrad Herwig, Santi
Debriano, and Tyshawn Sorey.

204 Classical
The Budapest String Quartet, Hilary Hahn, Anthony Davis, and Brazilian music for chamber orchestra.

208 Q&A: Michael Levy of Alta Audio.

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