LATEST ADDITIONS

Tomorrow, Saturday April 23, from 4–10pm, JS Audio (4919 St. Elmo Avenue, Bethesda, MD 20814) is hosting a Wilson/dCS/Dan D'Agostino/Audio Research/Nordost event. Wilson's Peter McGrath will be introducing the new Alexx loudspeaker; Dan D'Agostino Master Audio Systems President of Sales, Bill Mckiegan, will be showing the iconic company's new amplifiers; John Quick of dCS will be discussing the latest developments in their Vivaldi (2.0), Rossini, and Debussy ranges; Dave Gordon will be present the new Reference 6 and Reference Phono 3 preamplifiers, along with the New Ref 150 SE amplifier; and Michael Taylor from Nordost will be demming the Odin 2 Reference cables and, it is hoped, he will have the New Valhalla 2 USB Cable for attendees to audition.

I first encountered the work of Dave Wilson in the late 1970s. He was then a recording engineer responsible for some great-sounding records, including pianist Mark P. Wetch's Ragtime Razzmatazz (LP, Wilson Audio W-808), which quickly became one of my favorite system-demo records.

Then Wilson turned his attention to designing loudspeakers. His first model was the Wilson Audio Modular Monitor, reviewed for Stereophile by its then-publisher, Larry Archibald, in August 1983, who described it as "the most enjoyable speaker system I've listened to, and significantly valuable as a diagnostic tool." At $35,000/pair ($83,577 in today's dollars), the WAMM may have been the most expensive speaker then on the market.

“Can you make it rain harder!”

I was in a strange mood last January when I posted this on Facebook: "Do speaker designers strive for accuracy, or for a 'sound' they think potential buyers want?" I doubted that any designer with two working ears would even attempt to design speakers that merely measured well—there must be at least some subjectivity in their process. I also assumed that few designers would go on record about where they stand on the accuracy question, so I was thrilled when Elac Americas' speaker designer, Andrew Jones, responded...

Emitt Rhodes: Rainbow Ends Omnivore OVLP-163 (LP). 2016. Chris Price, prod., eng.; Pierre de Reeder, Kyle Frederickson, engs.; Nathan Flom, Emitt Rhodes, Emeen Zarookian, add'l. engs. ADA? TT: 37:01 Performance **** Sonics ****

"A few shows here, a few shows there—Emitt eventually found himself without a label, and his career came to a halt," reads the biography on EmittRhodesMusic.net. "He had had enough. He was 24."

Go on, admit it: Everyone loves a disappearing act—the plight of the unjustly snakebit, the ghostly casualties of a business that markets creativity but doesn't respect it. Hawthorne, California native Emitt Rhodes, onetime drummer for mid-'60s SoCal garage band (and later Nuggets staple) Palace Guard, and later the cofounder and leading force of L.A. psychedelic pop band Merry-Go-Round, went solo in 1969.

AXPONA Chicago 2016 was, by all accounts, a success. JD Events, who stage the show, report that they sold 5934 tickets, a 16% increase over 2015…

Slam and visceral impact were superb, highs transparent and extended, and percussion extremely impressive in the ENIGMAcoustics room…