Stuff I Wouldn't Know If the Internet Didn't Exist
Today's installment: Which wine pairs best with pretzels and popcorn?
LATEST ADDITIONS
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HE 2006 Special Events & Giveaways
<I>The <A HREF="http://www.he2006.com">Home Entertainment Show 2006</A> is only weeks away, running June 1–4 at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel in Los Angeles. Here is a sampling of some of the giveaways and special events that will take place at the Show. Several of these should be of particular interest to audiophiles.</I>
The Devil's Note
What do Black Sabbath, Wagner's <I>Gotterdammerung</I>, <I>West Side Story</I>, and the theme to <I>The Simpsons</I> have in common? A tritone known as the Devil's interval.
Bosnian Pyramids?
What the press didn't tell you about this "amazing" discovery.
Brokeback Download
A hilarious account of one man's attempt to legally download a video via Movielink.
When shopping, do you audition audio equipment by yourself or with others?
Some folks like the insights and companionship other audiophiles can offer, others prefer to go it alone when they hit the audio shop. Do you audition audio equipment by yourself or with others?
Euphonic Distortion: Naughty but Nice?
In 1977, just as I was about to take my first faltering steps in hi-fi journalism, the UK's <I>Hi-Fi News</I> ran two articles, translated from French originals by Jean Hiraga, that seemed to me and many others to turn the audio world we knew upside down. The second of them, "Can We Hear Connecting Wires?" was published in the August issue and is the better remembered because it introduced many English-speaking audiophiles to the contention that cables can sound different. The earlier article, published in the March issue, was less earthshaking but still an eyebrow-raiser of considerable force. Simply titled "Amplifier Musicality," it was a response to the word <I>musicality</I> being increasingly used in subjectivist circles to describe the perceived performance of amplifiers and other audio components. It was implicit that musicality was a quality not captured by conventional measurement procedures—a lack of correlation that Hiraga's article sought to address.
Snell Type A loudspeaker
One of the less-glamorous speaker systems around today, these have more to offer the critical listener in terms of satisfaction than do most of the more-exotic designs.
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Listening #40
Not only is it possible for a thinking person to now and then drastically change his point of view, if for no other reason than the sake of change—if one wishes to prevent self-seriousness and various other forms of mental decay, it's probably an outright must. So it was that I recently began to wonder if everything I know about record players might be wrong.
The Fifth Element #35
The relationship between many audiophiles and well-sung, well-recorded female vocal tracks is like the relationship between alcoholics and alcohol—or between, apparently, quite a few congresspersons and unworked-for money. The sentence, "Thank you, but I really have had enough already," is seldom heard. In defense of our hobby, buying and setting up stereo equipment so that gorgeous singing can enthrall you does no one any harm, and arguably does much good. "Beauty is truth," and all that.