March 2014

In This Issue...
Moving Forward
A heartfelt bravo to everyone within the high fidelity audio industry!
Article By Steven R. Rochlin

  About two years ago I was at the 2012 RMAF sow harping about the industry needing equipment with apps to grab the modern music lover. This issue features a great article by Craig Allison of Lavish Theaters called 'The "Good Life" Lifestyle... What's Missing?'. Craig covers some of this and much more so ensure you don't miss his great article within this issue. Meanwhile we have many more companies embracing the modern audiophile and music lover by offering apps to control their system. Then we have the other end of the spectrum with the new Astell&Kern AK240 being an incredible portable media player that can handle high rez audio, both PCM and DSD, with the ability to grab music from online music services and your NAS drive via Wi-Fi implementation. For those who want more memory for their mobile devices, SanDisk's Ultra 128 GB microSDXC (microSD) is on sale right now at Amazon for $120. It is great to finally see many of the big companies offering apps and look forward to the smaller guys also taking advantage of meeting their modern customer's needs. Of course our affection is also with tube amplifiers and the continued popularity of the turntable. Maybe one day someone will find a way to have a record changer of sorts that also produces truly high-end sound. Sure it would have to be a brilliant robotic/mechanical design, yet there are many people worldwide who might invest $50,000 to acquire such an amazing unit.

In this edition of Enjoy the Music.com’s Review Magazine we feature four world premiere reviews! Clayton Audio’s S100 Class A stereo amplifier is quite a powerhouse with Class A being alive and well within this great amplifier! Next we head off to Italy with Franco Serblin’s Accordo Grey stand-mounted loudspeaker, which is naturally a thing of beauty both visually and sonically. Following that we have Maker Audio's NL14+ monoblock powerhouse of an amplifier that produces an outstanding 325 Watts and can easily drive even the most demanding loudspeakers. Speaking of speakers, Enjoy the Music.com's world premiere review of NOLA’s Micro Grand Reference Gold loudspeaker shows how this model continues this award-winning company’s accomplishments. If you have never seen and heard NOLA products you owe it to yourself to check them out. They are sunning visually and my ears have always loved their wonderful ability to produce a precise and musically satisfying presentation.

After a few months of absence, we welcome back the Lifestyle & Design section with micro imaging and the Freq iPhone horn-loading speaker accessory. Simplicity in design wins the day with the Freq! Then we have the new Lotus Motorcycle C-01 as the shape captivates us whilst the performance will satisfy virtually every rider. Lastly, we have Swatch's SISTEM51 automatic winding mechanical timepiece where you can enjoy a variety of models to fit your lifestyle. Years ago few people could acquire a brand new self-winding Swiss-made mechanical timepiece for under $300 if it were not for Swatch. Having owned their popular Body & Soul since its initial release, am looking forward to acquiring the new SISTEM51.

It may reside within our DIY section, yet Grey Rollin’s article titled "The 'piranha' aspect of electricity" is a must-read for everyone. It covers quite a bit about the power that feeds our equipment. In his article Grey writes "It pains me to see the number of people who have no earthly idea what electricity is. In this day and age, given that nearly everything uses electricity in ways both large and small, I feel that it should be mandatory at the high school level to demonstrate at least some rudimentary understanding of electricity. But who am I fooling? Not myself, and certainly not you. Ain't going to happen."

Of course we have classical music reviews with Sony's chamber music treasure-chest of Heifetz-Piatigorsky concerts. We follow that with a truly great Prokofiev, yet sadly disappointing Rachmaninoff concerto. This hit-n-miss recording is recommended for the Prokofiev eyt we'll leave it up to you to decide if the glass is half full or half empty. Lastly we round it up with the incredibly well recorded Reference Recording release of Strauss blockbusters.

For those curious, this past month (February) has been exceeding busy with a family celebrations, a Bat Mitzvah plus my own wedding anniversary, and thus had no time to add new videos within Enjoy the Music.TV. We plan to produce some amazing new content in March, which will lead right to the live streaming video during the AXPONA 2014 event in Chicago. We look forward to seeing you there! If you are an exhibitor at AXPONA you should contact us ASAP to reserve your spot within our live steaming TV broadcast!

As always, in the end what really matters is that we all...  

Enjoy the Music,

Editor and Creative Director, Enjoy the Music.com