Back in July, Steve Guttenberg wrote a dandy little article here on InnerFidelity about the test tracks he uses. Similarly, when I wrote my article on world class headphones, I described the test tracks I use for evaluation. I believe it's critical to do subjective evaluation using tracks with which I am intimately familiar.

I would very much like to put together a series of test tracks that I would be able to distribute here at InnerFidelity, so that I could talk about the exact nature of what I'm hearing for readers who've become familiar with the same tracks. Unfortunately, it would be near impossible to get permission to use some of the tracks currently in my quiver.

In my view, there are two great audiophile labels that regularly produce recordings that are of high enough quality to use as reference for subjective evaluation: Chesky and M·A Recordings. I ran into Todd Garfinkle of M·A at RMAF in October of last year, and talked with him about my project. He said, "Sure! I'd love to do it. Do you have a hard drive with you? I'll dump my catalog of albums on it so you can peruse them for your project." Damn! I didn't have one with me, nor the time to go buy one. But you can bet your sweet bippy I brought one to CES!

As Todd's collection was being laboriously transferred to my USB drive, I had plenty of time to chat with him at his booth. He's a fun guy to spend a bit of time with, and a superb recordist. All his recordings are done with a highly customized stereo pair of microphones, and a sweet extremely high sampling rate analog to digital converter. I'll let Todd tell you about his stuff.

Company Info MA Recordings 4728 Park Encino Ln #117 Encino, CA 91436 info@marecordings.com 818 907 9996 http://www.marecordings.com/