When I attend <I>Stereophile</I>'s annual Home Entertainment show, I rarely sit and listen to music for very long. Instead, I try to hit every room, press the flesh, find out about new products, and play a little jazz.
I'm not sure what motivated me to read the owner's manual for the Audio Valve Eclipse, but I'm glad I did: As it turns out, this line-level preamplifier has at least one distinctive feature that I would have missed otherwise.
For a hobby based on science and technology, audiophilia has more than its share of unscientific elements. That's not necessarily a bad thing; not all of those elements are obvious snake oil, and there's more than science to creating—or re-creating—a musical experience. Still, for the more technical-minded it's a little disconcerting that even the most basic distinctions, such as why two CD players sound different from each other, are hard to explain using technical measurements and simple scientific concepts.
B. R. Myers is fightin' mad about high-faluting writin'.
Bagheera tries her hand at the dramatic chipmunk <A HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1Y73sPHKxw">meme</A>.
Admit it—the lad simply smolders.
<I>Silicon Alley Insider</I> tells a horror story.
When it comes to trash talk, it would seem so. Numbers two and four completely cracked me up.
Once we understand it, maybe we can create more of it.
Ten years after Big Blue beat Garry Kasparov, people are still fighting over the definition of "really playing chess" is.