What? No Norah Jones New CD Thread?

There was an interesting article in the NYTimes about her a couple weeks ago. Apparently, rather than living the life of a diva, she is very 'downtown,' hangs in local clubs without fanfare, and is a jeans and t-shirt kinda gal. (Or her publicist is good enough to create that impression).
It is the constant dilemma though, isn't it? Great sonics = very lackluster performances; brilliant performances on mediocre recordings.
I have her big hit album on vinyl and though it has nice sonics, and she has a good voice, I rarely play it.

On the other hand, most of my Etta James records are not extraordinary recordings, as such, but I play those much more often (and take the trouble to see her in concert).

White chicks without soul- hmmm, Linda Rondstat, Mariah Carey;
Joplin- the stuff with Big Brother & Co. is still amazing to me.

Tab110s- not racial statement so much as statement about her 'style' if you will. perhaps I should stop while i'm ahead...

no, I didn't want my statement to be perceived as a 'racial' statement. Not disputing what you said. are we ok?

Got rid of the finite elemente heavy duty stand that I bought for the Kuzma XL, given that it didn't really do much to isolate with my springy wooden floors; the HRS platform atop my Chinese prayer table works just fine, as shown in the pics of my system. I like how the GPA works on the preamps, and am now searching for another GPA amp stand, to mate with the one I already have, for use with the Lamm amps (the one I have has the carbon shelf and Apex footers with the upgraded 'balls'). I also like the ease of use of the GPAs. Changing out equipment doesn't require the ability to press your body weight! I have no doubt that the HRS full rack is rockin' but frankly, I don't need it.
Regards, (and I note you are an Audiopax owner- nice amps- have used them very successfully with the Avantgarde Duos).

Alot. But in ways that don't make it obvious that there is anything wrong with the Audiopax amps. To the contrary. With the right tube complement, and adjustments to the timbre lock feature, the Audiopax amps are incredibly lively, musical and present a lovely, involving midrange. Jim Smith even advocated what amounts to a cheap guitar tube for the small sockets to make it sound a little rawer/edgier, compared with NOS hi-line brands. He also did not advocate using expensive KT-88s. Now, I had the Audiopax set up with long speaker runs, and the Lamms are running on a long interconnect (XLR terminated from the Lamm line stage to the amps) with short speaker runs. I also changed brands of interconnect, from Cardas Golden Reference, which was highly recommended for the Audiopax-Avantgarde Duo combination, to the K-S Emotion. So there were some variables in the change of amps.
The Lamms, by comparison, sounded a little less in your face, and far less mechanical. Not that I noticed the Audiopax amps being anything less than sweet and musical, but the Lamms suddenly sound very relaxed, music just flows out of the system in a far less 'reproduced' way, and the bass is much better (even though I am not really using the Lamms to power the woofers directly, but instead, the amp powers the midrange horn, which has a set of KS jumpers to 'speaker input' terminals on the powered woofer). The Lamms are less hi-fi and more musical in ways that can best be described by the absence of artificiality if that makes any sense. I find these abstract descriptions to be difficult but if you heard the amps, and had the opportunity to compare them, you would probably not disagree. One thing I have noticed as I have continued to improve this system- records that were not sonic marvels before are more involving to listen to now. Go figure.... (and thanks for asking).