LATEST ADDITIONS

It wasn't so much a vow as a prediction: After selling my last pair of Ticonal-magnet drivers and the homemade horns I'd carted around to three different houses, I supposed I would never again have a Lowther loudspeaker in my humble house.

That remains literally true: The 7" full-range drivers to which I'm listening today are from a German company called Voxativ; the horn-loaded cabinets from which they play were also designed by Voxativ, and are made in Germany by the Wilhelm Schimmel piano company. And, with all due respect to Lowther, the 75-year-old English loudspeaker firm that launched a thousand DIY fantasies—not to mention a thousand very lively wavefronts—the Voxativ drivers and horns take the Lowther concept further than anyone else of whom I'm aware.

"Good grief, has he lost his hearing?"

It was the distant past, a time so long ago that the M in MTV stood for Music, and I was watching a David Bowie concert on TV. The svelte singer was wearing what I took to be hearing aids.

Mirror Mirror, the third album from Glasgow band Sons & Daughters, opens with a single note from a vintage synth. Barely audible at first, it grows and grows and rises vertically in the soundstage&#151for 15 seconds it grows: a sharp white light in an otherwise dark room&#151building tension, warning of some sort of danger, as it goes. This high-pitched note is met first by stomping feet, then by clapping hands&#151single file and far, far off, but growing in size and intensity&#151before finally being joined by the voices of Adele Bethel and Scott Paterson, singing, strangely singing, barely singing at all, more chanting, intoning, repeating, casting:

The past 12 months have seen some remarkable developments in digital playback. Standards of digital musicality are far higher than they were a year ago, both on an absolute performance basis and in terms of what you get at various price levels. No other component category has seen such tremendous gains in value for money or number of new products introduced. It seems hard to believe that since Vol.13 No.6 (12 issues ago), we've reviewed such noteworthy digital processors as the Meridian 203, Proceed PDP 2, Stax DAC-X1t, Theta DSPro Basic, Wadia X-32, Esoteric D-2, PS Audio SuperLink, and VTL D/A. Each of these converters brought a new level of performance to its price point—or, in the case of the Stax and VTL, established a new benchmark of ultimate digital performance.

Just as these units provided stiff competition for previous products, so too will they come under the assault of improving technology. The art of digital processor design is so young that we can continue to expect further improvements coupled with lower prices as designers move up the learning curve.

Most reviewers look for a "hook" or angle of some kind when it comes time to write a review. After all, how many ways are there to get excited about audio equipment? Kathleen and I like to focus on the human side of the High End. So it was with some amusement that I watched the obstacles swirl around what I thought would be a fairly straightforward review of the Vacuum Tube Logic MB-1250 Wotan monoblock power amplifier. My thought was to return from single-ended to push-pull with a bang! I'll say...

It all began at the January 1996 WCES, where I found my shorts positively welded to the listening chair during a memorable musical blast at VTL. Luke Manley and his extreme audiophile wife Bea had a good thing going and they knew it. People were talking. "Did you hear those monster two-storey VTLs on the Alón Vs?"

For awhile, we were at our wit’s end, feeling buried alive, but everything is okay now: We just finished shipping our massive October issue to pre-press. At 212 pages, it’s our largest issue since October 2008.

We’ll see the proofs on Monday. Until then, we can relax.

To help us do that, we have Cass McCombs’ “Buried Alive,” from the achingly beautiful Wit’s End.

This is one of Jaime's favorites, and Jaime is one of mine.

Cass McCombs' Wit's End is out now on Domino Records. The album is available on CD, LP, and cassette. (Yes, cassette!)

This is absolutely outstanding. Please watch and listen as sound expert Julian Treasure offers strategies for re-tuning our ears.

Via TED. (Thanks for the link, SP.)