Jason Victor Serinus

After two years of COVID-enforced isolation, the ever-dapper Philip O'Hanlon, founder and president of On A Higher Note distribution, flew to the PNW (footnote 1) to present, on October 2, the US premiere of the Graham Audio Limited Anniversary Edition LS8/1 loudspeaker. At $9700/pair with stands, the Graham Anniversary Edition LS8/1 looked right at home in the tastefully appointed, main floor showroom of three-floor Gig Harbor Audio, a dealership located a major swim or easy drive from the Seattle-Tacoma metropolitan area.

Trio Mediæval: Solacium, Victoria: Officium hebdomadae sanctae, Ieva Jokubaviciute: Northscapes and Anna Thorvaldsdottir: Enigma.

On the face of it, playing and streaming digital music files is a straightforward process. You direct data from various sources—some local, some "in the cloud"—perhaps via a reclocker/signal conditioner to a digital-to-analog converter (DAC). "And the music comes out here."

Not so simple. Bits, it seems, aren't bits, or not only. A digital datastream is also an analog signal. Noise and other signal errors endemic to multi-function computers not designed primarily for music playback can affect how music sounds. And then there are the practical issues of setting up and connecting everything optimally, and then organizing music files correctly, which can be especially difficult when ripping files from multidisc sets.

As she moves quietly across the huge scoring stage at Skywalker Studios toward the large, comfortable control room that sits behind glass, it's obvious that Leslie Ann Jones is in charge. She wears no badge that proclaims her authority, although her professional title is impressive: "Director of Music and Scoring, Music and Scoring Recording Engineer and Mixer".

What's the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word "boulder"? I think of a rugged, mountainous landscape with jagged snow-capped peaks. I see images of the last time I drove up from sunny Boulder, Colorado, to Rocky Mountain National Park and discovered so much snow coming down that if we had dared walk too far in, our trail would have been covered with snow and we'd never have been able to find our way out. But how magical it was!

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

A great concept—sound enough to serve as the foundation for an independent democratic nation.

Yet what's sound in one sphere doesn't necessarily apply to sound in another, namely the rooms in which our systems reside. As much as we audiophiles may wish to declare our independence from room resonances, image smearing from first-order reflections, slap echo, and every other environmental and speaker-related factor that can handicap system performance, no mere declaration will make it so. Not all rooms—and not all components—are created equal.

Hexagon: Les petits nerveux, Luciano Berio: Berio To Sing, Bruckner: Symphony No.3 and Ksenija Sidorova: Piazzolla Reflections.