News

One of the hot items audiophiles were able to score at last month's 2005 CES was a hybrid SACD that Ray Kimber was handing out. Labelled IsoMike Tests 2005A, the disc is beautifully packaged and sports dozens of recorded snippets of vocal music, string quartet, piano, marching band, orchestra, blank pistol, and a local janitor.

We were saddened to learn that the great jazz organist Jimmy Smith died in his sleep on February 8. He was 76.

EMI drops: The EMI Group, the British music company, sent its stock prices plummeting 16% with its announcement last week that sales for the fiscal year ending next month would be as much as 9% below those of last year.

On the face of it, 99¢ per track low-rez music downloads don't seem like a good deal. For the same price, or maybe even less, you can get an entire CD of the same music, along with a booklet, and without the Digital Rights Management crippleware that hobbles paid downloads.

Within the confines of the cozy analog audiophile kingdom, things couldn't be better: Turntables, cartridges and phono preamps can be found in abundance, while mounds of new and used vinyl can be scored by the truckload.

If you're an audiophile, the words "hearing loss" are bound to strike terror into your heart. Of course, many of us aren't preternaturally acute—and all of us lose some high-frequency sensitivity as we age—but there's no excuse for not taking care of what you've got. When it comes to hearing, more is always better.

Some say it dates back 50 years, to when the late David Hafler introduced a tube amplifier with a "better-sounding" ultralinear output stage. Others claim it goes back to the introduction of electrical recording and playback in 1927, when Gramophone magazine's founder and editor, author Sir Compton McKenzie, thundered that electrical reproduction was a step backward in sound quality. But whenever it started, the "Great Debate" between "subjectivists," who hear differences between audio components, and "objectivists," who tend to ascribe such differences to the listeners' over-heated imaginations, rages just as strongly in the 21st century as it did in the 20th.