Features

A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album
by Ashley Kahn; Foreword by Elvin Jones. New York, Viking Books, 2002; hardcover, 260 pages, 9" by 8". $27.95.

If there is one thing I've learned in almost 28 years (ouch) of audio writing, it's that audience reaction is fickle. Sometimes readers will swallow the most contentious pronouncements without indigestion, only to choke on throwaway lines you've invested with little importance. It just goes to confirm that human communication involves senders and receivers, and they aren't always in synchrony.

If you missed Part">http://www.stereophile.com/features/105kh">Part 1 of this article (Stereophile, January 2005), or it has faded in your memory, here's a résumé. (Readers who recall Part 1 with crystalline clarity, please skip to paragraph four.) The accurate measuring of loudspeakers requires that the measurements be taken in a reflection-free environment. Traditionally, this has meant that the speaker be placed atop a tall pole outdoors or in an anechoic chamber. Both of these options are hedged around with unwelcome implications of cost and practicality. To overcome these and allow quasi-anechoic measurements to be performed in normal, reverberant rooms, time-windowed measurement methods were developed that allow the user to analyze only that portion of the speaker's impulse response that arrives at the microphone ahead of the first room reflection. MLSSA from DRA">http://www.mlssa.com">DRA Labs is the best-known measurement system to work on this principle, and both John Atkinson and I use it in the course of preparing our loudspeaker reviews.

FM Antennae

Pick an expletive—one you would normally use to express deep intellectual frustration—but don't vocalize it. Hold it in reserve for a few minutes, letting it simmer to concentrate its intensity. I'll tell you when to let rip.

High-quality digital audio systems require that all digital interfaces in the signal path exhibit signal transparency. The widely adopted AES/EBU and S/PDIF interfaces have been criticized for a lack of signal transparency; here we (footnote 1) address possible problems with such interfaces and present methods for improving the interface standard.

TEMPLES OF SOUND: Inside the Great Recording Studios

by Jim Cogan and William Clark; Foreword by Quincy Jones
San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2003. Softcover, 7.5" by 10", 224 pp. $24.95. ISBN 0-8118-3394-1.