Jim Austin

For jazz fans, a new batch of releases in Blue Note’s Tone Poet series—vinyl reissues remastered with care and cut from the original analog tapes—is reason for celebration. Fortunately, the batches come frequently. The latest releases, as I write in late October 2020, are very solid, musically and s…

Revinylization #15: More premium jazz vinyl from Craft Recordings and Blue Note  Stereophile Magazine

I’ve got a music problem. Specifically, I’ve got a rock music problem.

Even though I’m the editor of Stereophile, I sometimes struggle to get my audio system to play. It’s a little bit embarrassing. Just last night, I put on a record and there was no sound. I figured out the problem immediately: I’d forgotten to turn on the amplifiers. But the reason isn’t always so ob…

My As We See It column in the November 2021 issue of Stereophile was a sincere expression of regret over my inability to connect with current rock music. It ended with a request for recommendations. I got ’em. What’s more, most (but not quite all) of those who responded found themselves in the same …

Jay Jay French has a book out, but it’s not what you might think, or not exactly. French earned fame in the 1980s as the lead guitarist for transvestite metal band Twisted Sister, which produced some of the most recognizable—and widely licensed—rock music in history: “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” “I Wa…

I’m excited about the return of live music to New York City. I’ve attended several classical concerts in the last few weeks, and in a week or so, I’ll take in a show at the City Winery: Suzanne Vega. I haven’t yet made it back to New York’s amazing jazz clubs—the Vanguard, the Blue Note, Smalls—but …

No hi-fi is an island entire of itself; every component is a piece of the system, a part of the mains.—John Donne, from The Compleat Audiophile, 1623 Around the time I took over as Stereophile’s editor, I bought a Peloton, the internet-enabled stationary exercise bike. It was a lifesaver during the …

I remember, at High End Munich 2019, setting eyes on one of the most attractive loudspeakers I’d ever seen, in the color that, as I now know, Estelon calls Ocean Mystery. I remember it as a passive demo, no music playing, seen through glass; whether that memory is strictly accurate I don’t know. Mem…

There has been much discussion lately about ChatGPT, the machine-learning– based chatbot from OpenAI. Some experts say it will soon make human writers obsolete. Will that include human hi-fi reviewers? I decided to engage ChatGPT in an exploratory conversation; think of it as a sort of job interview. What follows has been intensively edited; many words have been removed, but none have been altered. I’m including my own comments in italics.