LATEST ADDITIONS

Who am I to critique somebody else's field of study?

It's Monday. It's raining. And people, tourists in particular, (excuse me, why don’t you just poke out the other eye while you're at it!) cannot walk with umbrellas, so let’s talk Ticketmaster.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda—some "superior" formats just didn't achieve dominance.

Sometimes, we don't listen to music for days at a time, just so it sounds fresh again when we finally do. And sometimes we just yearn for something better and are willing to hit pause until we discover it. Are there times when you just don't want to listen to music? Why not?

Back in the bad old pioneer days of high fidelity, the 1960s and early 1970s, amplifier manufacturers embarked on a specifications war, claiming ever lower percentages of total harmonic distortion. But, as J. Gordon Holt presciently pointed out in the 1960s, without reference to the spectrum of the distortion harmonics, the actual percentage was not in itself a reliable indicator of an amplifier's sound quality. And as those early low-THD models had distortion spectra that were heavily biased toward the sonically objectionable fifth, seventh, and ninth harmonics, and suffered from other related ills, they tended to sound quite nasty.

That harmonious accord between SoundExchange and the Digital Media Association (DiMA) on webcasting that we <A HREF="http://stereophile.com/news/071607internet/">reported</A&gt; last week? Apparently not so harmonious&mdash;and possibly not even an accord.

There's something a bit oddball about the notion of a $16,500 integrated amplifier&mdash;until you stop to consider that the market is fairly drenched with preamps and power amps that, together, cost that much and more. And putting both pre- and power amp in a single chassis cuts down on storage (one less shelf), accessories (one less pair of cable), and electrical outlets (one socket freed up).