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It is a widely held belief that musicians do not assess hi-fi equipment in the same way as "audiophiles." I remember the British conductor Norman Del Mar&#151;an underrated conductor if ever there was one&#151;still being perfectly satisfied in 1981 with his 78 player, never having felt the need to go to LP, let alone to stereo. And some musicians do seem oblivious to the worst that modern technology can do. I was present at the infamous Salzburg CD conference in 1982, for example, where Herbert von Karajan, following one of the most unpleasant sound demonstrations in recorded history, announced that "All else is gaslight!" compared with what we had just heard. J. Gordon Holt proposed a couple of years back ("<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/348">As We See It</A>," Vol.8 No.1) that sound is not one of the things in <I>reproduced</I> music to which musicians listen. I have also heard it said that even the highest fidelity is so far removed from live music that a musician, immersed in the real thing, regards the difference between the best and the worst reproduced sound as irrelevant to the musical message: both are off the scale of his or her personal quality meter.

Many loudspeakers come with five-way binding posts, allowing a choice of connectors. Others are specific to one type of connector. How do you terminate your speaker cables on the speaker end?

Wandering through Tower Records the other night, I was struck by the amazing diversity of music available to us. There's music from every part of the globe, for every taste and interest, from "show-me-the-good-parts" compilations of classical highlights to obscure releases by unknown artists. There's music for the ecstatic, music for the angry, music for the straight, the gay, the bent, and the twisted. The subcategories replicate like rabbits, as if in a demographer's nightmare. Genus spawn species, which quickly mutates into subspecies, race, tribe: cult begets subcult.

Strange thing about cassettes and vinyl records: Every now and then, while listening to them, I find myself wondering what’ll happen to them when I’m dead and gone. These beautiful things will outlive me and someday someone else will “own” them. What will that person think of me? <i>Will</i> that person think of me? What do my records say about me?

We were bummed out when we heard that Steve Gritzan was closing down his wonderful and dusty record shop, <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/iris_records_closes/">Iris Records</a>, in downtown Jersey City, but heartened in knowing that he’d continue to sell albums at street fairs and at his outstanding Brooklyn Record Riot conventions.

<i>Hey kid, you think that’s oil?<br>
Man, that ain’t oil, that’s blood.</i>

If you asked me to name a single specific high-end audio component that could make or break a system, I'd name the Linn LP12 turntable. Of all the thousands of hi-fi products I've heard over the years, not a one of 'em&#151;not a speaker, amplifier, or digital processor&#151;has been able to draw me into the music, no matter what the associated componentry, like the LP12. I've heard the most highly regarded speakers/amps/processors fall flat in certain situations due to a lack of synergy with their surrounding systems, but I've never heard an LP12-based system that didn't put a smile on my face and make me green with envy.