LATEST ADDITIONS

<I>A couple of months back (<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/393awsi">March 1993, p.7</A>), I wrote that as far as I was concerned, video was television dressed up in fancy dress, thus there was no place for coverage of the medium in </I>Stereophile<I>. As the magazine's founder, <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/66">J. Gordon Holt</A>, has been a committed videophile for many years, I sat back and awaited a reaction from him. One was not long coming. I am running his response as this month's "As We See It" feature.&mdash;<B>John Atkinson</B></I>

<I>"When it comes to video, most audiophiles are insufferable snobs."</I>&mdash;J. Gordon Holt, 1984

"Some say it dates back to 1927, when <I>Gramophone</I> magazine's editor thundered that electrical reproduction was a step <I>backward</I> in sound quality," said the promotional copy for Home Entertainment 2005's opening-day event, "The Great Debate: Subjectivism on Trial." It continued: "But whenever it started, the Great Debate between 'subjectivists,' who hear differences among audio components, and 'objectivists,' who tend to ascribe such differences to the listeners' overheated imaginations, rages just as strongly in the 21st century as it did in the 20th." On April 29 at the Manhattan Hilton, <I>Stereophile</I> editor John Atkinson and one of the Internet's most vocal audio skeptics, Arnold B. Krueger, debated <I>mano a mano</I> where the line should be drawn between honest reporting and audio delusion.

This year's Home Entertainment Show in New York has just ended. If you had the chance to attend, what caught your ear?

I've been thinking about women. All weekend long. While that, by itself, is nothing unusual for me, here at Home Entertainment 2005, I''ve been thinking particularly about the small number of female enthusiasts within the hobby of high-end audio.

I used to be an audio cheapskate even worse than Sam Tellig. Anytime I saw an interesting device for sale, I immediately began to figure out how I might build it for myself for a fraction of the cost.

It's not unusual for a high-end audio company to originate in another segment of the high-tech electronics world, but it <I>is</I> a bit unusual when the spin-off is a cable company. That's the case with Empirical Audio, whose founder, Steve Nugent, spent 25 years as a digital hardware designer for Unisys and Intel. The key is that, in addition to standard design work, he chased "the more esoteric sides of design, namely grounding, shielding, ESD (electrostatic discharge), EMI (electromagnetic interference), transmission-line effects, and power delivery." <I>Voil&#224;</I>&mdash;cable design.