LATEST ADDITIONS

Take a look into the heart and soul of my favorite radio station, Jersey City’s own <a href="http://www.wfmu.org/">WFMU</a&gt;, 91.1FM.

<object width="450" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Mi9ZikB_BUA&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Mi9ZikB_BUA&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&quot; type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="450" height="385"></embed></object>

Thursday, May 20, 6 to 9pm: <a href="http://www.meridian-audio.com/">Meridian Audio</a> and <a href="http://stereoexchange.com/">Stereo Exchange</a> will host an evening celebration to introduce the new Meridian Sooloos 2.1 music server system and Meridian 808.3 Signature Reference CD player. Wine and music will be served.

Do you feel you have developed skills for placing speakers in a room, or do you plunk them down, shuffle them around, and hope for the best?

Besides my 20th wedding anniversary and the 15th anniversary of <I>Listener</I> magazine's first issue, this year marks the 25th anniversary of Roksan Audio Ltd., easily one of the most innovative design and manufacturing firms in British audio. Before Roksan came upon the scene in 1985, none of us had ever seen a loudspeaker whose tweeter was isolated from its surroundings by a sprung suspension. Or a commercial phono preamplifier designed to fit <I>inside</I> a turntable, just a centimeter away from the tonearm base. And who among us could have guessed that the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/turntables/1103linn">Linn LP12</A>'s hegemony&#151;among flat-earthers, I mean&#151;would be broken by a turntable from outside of Scotland? Yet the Roksan Darius loudspeaker, Artaxerxes phono stage, and, above all, Xerxes turntable accomplished those things and more, to the genuine surprise of nearly everyone&#151;and to the benefit of our industry at large, as other firms took those ideas and ran with them.

In an e-mail exchange with Stephen Mejias about why the mere mention of cassette decks on www.stereophile.com can so easily inflame our readers (and John Atkinson), I began to develop the idea that the brains of audiophiles and music lovers are governed by three complementary needs, or desires, that define who we are. I joked to SM that these desires, which apparently shift over time, constitute the Holy Trinity of Audiophiledom. They are, respectively, the love, desire, and need for:

<B>Johnny Cash: </I>American VI: Ain't No Grave</I></B><BR>
Lost Highways/American Recordings B0013954-02 (CD). 2010. Rick Rubin, prod.; David Ferguson, eng.; Greg Fidelman, Jimmy Tittle, Paul Fig, Dan Leffler, asst. engs. AAD.? TT: 32:23<BR>
Performance ****&#189;<BR>
Sonics ***&#189;