Interviews

In writing for magazines, there's a basic rule: Don't become the subject. And in writing about the arts, it's best to remember that you aren't in the music business or the film business: you're in the publishing business. Despite this, there are arts writers who fancy they're a part of the world they write about. All famous musicians are their "friends." The music business values their opinions. They're caught up in the delusion that the Rolling Stones sang about so deliciously in "Star Star," the closing number on Goats Head Soup.

Twenty-three years ago, in 1993, Charles Hansen cofounded Ayre Acoustics, Inc., in Boulder, Colorado. On Ayre's website, Hansen is named as Research Director for Ayre, and it seems an apt description. Along with experimenting in and developing audio-electronics hardware and software, Hansen has strongly hewn to certain design principles, among them fully balanced operation, an absence of loop negative feedback, and solid-state circuitry. Ayre's current flagship preamplifiers and amplifiers, the twentieth-anniversary R Series, have received reviews and accolades, while at the other end of the budget spectrum, Hansen's design work was a key element of Neil Young's widely publicized and crowdfunded PonoPlayer project.

John Hébert's experiences unearthing precious oddities have served him well as an adult musician, particularly when extracting deep bass sounds as one of New York City's most in-demand jazz bassists. From his 1990s-era Romanian and Hungarian upright basses and exotic stereo gear and LPs to the Baldwin grand piano that adorns the living room of his Jersey City, New Jersey home, Hébert is a perfect example of audiophile as musician.

This tale might have been scripted by Barry Levinson, the Baltimore-bred filmmaker who has set four pictures in his hometown, where much of the Sandy Gross story has also taken place. The young Sanford Gross moved there to attend Johns Hopkins University, and subsequently, in one of the city's Civil War–era houses, got Polk Audio rolling with fellow alumni Matthew Polk and George Klopfer. The company flourished, but Gross, who had minored in film at Hopkins, had an itch for Hollywood. He moved to Los Angeles, only to find the movie business tinged with illusion—much as Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett had portrayed it in Sunset Boulevard, their merciless 1950 film noir. So Gross plotted a new scenario, returned to Baltimore, and re-entered an industry committed to low distortion.

Don't get me wrong—it was a nice surprise. It's always good to find another member of the cult, someone else interested in music and sound, and proud to be called an audiophile. But . . . Peter Wolf?

"What's John Atkinson like?"

"Here's the $64,000 question: What's in your system?"

As part of his preparation for reviewing Merging Technologies' NADAC Multichannel-8 networked D/A processor in the March 2016 issue of Stereophile, Kal Rubinson talked with the Swiss company's Dominique Brulhart.

Ever since I encountered Wilson Audio Specialties' Peter McGrath (above) playing his own digital recordings at audio shows, hanging out in the Wilson Audio room has proven the consistent highlight of my show coverage experience. Nor is it simply the quality of the musicianship that continues to draw me to McGrath's rooms. As anyone who has heard his work can attest, the man's ability to capture the unique characteristics of a performance venue, as well as the natural sound of voice and instruments, is second to none.