I finished up my Adventures in Real Sound with Mr. Shirokazu Yazaki article yesterday, and it is now live at Positive Feedback here. It has been an immense pleasure for me to get to know Yazaki-san and to tell you about him, and his ideas & recommendations for 'Real Sound' have made a wonderful difference in my hi-fi.... Read More »

Listening Adventures With the Wonderful SPEC Amps! By Siedy Abee I am one of those guys who is a regular reader of Jeff's Place. It is always a great pleasure to open up Jeff's website and to read about his newest adventures. This year Jeff reported about a new amp from SPEC (here). I had never heard about the SPEC... Read More »

A couple of posts ago (here) I shared a little of the article Adventures in Real Sound With Mr. Shirokazu Yazaki that I am writing for Positive Feedback. I've been making good progress on the article, and I am hoping to be able to finish it this weekend, so it can get published before next week's... Read More »

I just heard from Yazaki-san, and he sent me some photographs of the DA30 SET monaural amplifiers he made for his friend Ookubo-san, and they're so beautiful I wanted to share them with you! The DA30 SET monaural amplifiers Yazaki-san made for his Ookubo-san are based on using the vintage Western Electric 310A as the driver, a vintage... Read More »

Most of you probably know Chad Kassem as the founder of Acoustic Sounds, Inc., the superb Analogue Productions record label, the Blue Heaven Studios recording studio, and most recently the Quality Record Pressings record pressing facility (there's a nice overview on Wikipedia) Thursday, when I went back to my office after a meeting, the light... Read More »

I always love the weekends, when I get a chance to cook up some fine food, listen to music, play hi-fi games, go for a bicycle ride, and just generally kick back and enjoy life! I invited my Mom & Dad over for dinner and some music listening (Mom's 90, and Dad's 92). I grilled... Read More »

I am hard at work on my article for Positive Feedback, Adventures in Real Sound with Mr. Shirokazu Yazaki, and thought I'd share a snippet of it with you. I'll add more as time goes on. Adventures in Real Sound with Mr. Shirokazu Yazaki By Jeff Day In Issue 78 I introduced you to the remarkable... Read More »

After reading Bill Dion's comment about how well he liked the interconnects he made using vintage Western Electric WE16GA wire, I was intrigued and thought I'd give it a try too. Many thanks to Bill for such an awesome comment! So out came my vintage Western Electric WE16GA wire, four Switchcraft SWC-3502AAU RCAs, my Hakko soldering station, and... Read More »

It's been a hectic time, and I haven't been able to post as much as I'd like over the last few weeks, so I thought I'd tell you about a number of things at once to make up for lost time, like vintage Western Electric WE24GA wire, some delicious vintage phono cartridges, some music 'scores', and... Read More »

"Nobody is going to believe what we're hearing from your Westminsters with this Western Electric internal wiring," said Ron, "it's hard to put into words how good it sounds." Ron and I just spent Sunday morning and a good part of the afternoon rewiring my Westminster Royal SE loudspeakers with vintage Western Electric WE16GA wire from Mr.... Read More »

It was on August 15, 1965, that my Mom took me to see Louis Armstrong in a parking lot concert at the Lloyd Center Mall in Portland, Oregon. Exactly 50 years ago today. It made a huge impression on me, and I've loved jazz ever since. So today, 50 years later, we celebrated the good... Read More »

I ordered four albums from Acoustic Sounds to get my vinyl fix for the week: First up was the 45 RPM ORG reissue of Charles Mingus' Mingus Ah Um that my buddy Leo brought over for me to listen to. After hearing it, I knew it was a must have for my jazz collection. The combination of... Read More »

I spent the last week in Chicago for a work review at Fermilab and Argonne, and since man cannot live on neutrinos alone, one of our gracious hosts - William - put on an awesome Chicago pizza extravaganza for us one night that was a blast! Many thanks to William! It also meant that upon... Read More »

I like to bring my Mom & Dad over to visit on the weekend, fix them a nice dinner, and spend some time catching up. They've been through a hard time the last few years, starting with when my Dad took a bad fall at home, ended up in the hospital, then a skilled nursing facility,... Read More »

If you've been following the blog posts here at Jeff's Place, you know that I asked Mr. Yazaki-san if he would tell us some of his thoughts about "Real Sound", and I'm very pleased to be able to share with you what he has written. Here's what Mr. Yazaki-san has written for us about "Real Sound": Dedicated to my... Read More »

There's nothing quite as satisfying as an impromptu listening session on a Friday afternoon with good friends like Ron and Leo. Ron always brings over a nice French wine, and Leo a very tasty vino from Napa (Ron's French Bordeaux was a 2009, and Leo's Napa Cabernet Sauvignon a 2005!). It's great to have friends with... Read More »

The guys over at Better Records offer records they call Hot Stampers, which are records that they have selected by ear that they say are much better sounding than the average pressing from any given run, or of the many available versions of a given album. The Better Records guys fan the flames of debate by dissing... Read More »

It seems an eternity ago when I wrote about the Sony PlayStation 1 SCPH-1001 back in 2007 at 6Moons as part of a 'Music Lovers' system. Keith Aschenbrenner of  Auditorium 23 fame told me about SCPH-1001, and how it sounded ridiculously good compared to even very expensive DACs and CD players of the time.  I said about it... Read More »

I added a "My Gear" page so that you could see all of the hi-fi gear that I use as references during the review process. I thought it would be a good idea to put together a master list of reference equipment and accessories that I enjoy and use on an ongoing basis, as the pages that show... Read More »

One of the resources I've found handy to figure out if a recording is in glorious mono is Discogs, where you can look up every version of an album, and more often than not, figure out if an album is in mono or stereo. Take the Chet is Back! album from ORG Music that I was... Read More »

My friend Leo sent me a message yesterday saying, "I found some Johnny Smith albums, I thought I'd drop them by if you're around." What a great guy! My friend Leo knows how much I love those old Johnny Smith albums on the Roost Records label, and when he's out and about he picks them up for me when... Read More »

If you read my Kindred Spirit post, you'll remember that as Mr. Yazaki-san was discussing the 'capacitor adventure' we are doing with my vintage McIntosh MC30 monaural amplifiers, he said: "Well, I think my inspirations also come from confidence in the thought that, Jeff-san’s hearing sense would be very close to mine. I understand Jeff-san... Read More »

You know, I've never paid that much attention to whether the vinyl in my collection was mono or stereo, as it really didn't matter much to me, because in the past I was only listening with a stereo phono cartridge, like my EMT TSD-15 or Denon DL 103. But these days, every time I pull out a... Read More »