Synaphaï: Gene Gaudette's Blog

It must be nearly a decade since I've popped any of pianist Egon Petri's recordings into the CD player. I'm very pleased to have made his reacquaintance.

If you like classical music and care about quality, you should check out Passionato.com (full disclosure: I'm helping them with Web presence expansion).

I know, I know -- the market for music recordings is in flux if not chaos, and there are growing indications that downloads are finally starting to hit the head of a "tipping point" among the non-teen-and-college-age demographic. And yes, a growing share of my own acquisitions are file downloads. But for the most part I remain an unreconstructed consumer knuckledragger who orders finished product online, bids on scarce audio gratification in disc formaat on eBay, and frequents the handful of well-stocked "record stores" left in Manhattan.

Audioholics busts high-end audiovisual manufacturer Lexicon for re-chassis-ing a $495 Oppo blu-ray player and selling it for $3500. (Via Gizmodo.)

If you have not yet stumbled upon Grumpy's Classics Cave, you are depriving yourself of some extremely rare aural treats. Yes, a bit of time is required to download Grumpy's lossless .flac files, but your patience will be well rewarded. His latest offering from the cave is an exceptional vintage recording of lute music by John Dowland played with pre-historically-informed, almost neo-Romantic passion by Mildred Clary.