Reference

The Complete Guide to High-End Audio
by Robert Harley
450+xxiv pp., $29.95 softcover, $39.95 signed hardcover. Published by Acapella Publishing, P.O. Box 80805, Albuquerque, NM 87198-0805. Credit-card orders: (800) 848-5099.

High Fidelity Audio/Video Systems: A Critical Guide for Owners
by Howard Ferstler
253 pages, $23.50 softcover. Published by McFarland & Company, Inc., Box 611, Jefferson, NC 28640. Tel: (919) 246-4460.

Designing Audio Power Amplifiers, Second Edition, by Bob Cordell, Routledge/Focal Press, 2019. 776pp. $160.00, hard cover; $97.95, paperback.

I first met Bob Cordell at clinics he gave at the last audio show Stereophile organized, Home Entertainment 2007, in Manhattan. At those clinics, Bob shared his views on why amplifier measurements are not always good at predicting differences in sound quality. So when I was scheduled to host a seminar—"Amplifiers: Do Measurements Matter?"—at this year's now-canceled AXPONA, Cordell was on the short list of designers I felt would offer valuable insight.

Sound Reproduction: Loudspeakers and Rooms

By Floyd E. Toole. Focal Press (Oxford, England, UK, www.elsevier.comhttp://www.elsevier.com">www.elsevier.com;, footnote 1), 2008. Paperback, 550 pages, ISBN 978-0240520094. $49.95.

Surround Sound: Up and Running (Second Edition)

by Tomlinson Holman. Published by Focal Press, an imprint of Elsevier (footnote 1) (Oxford, England, UK; www.elsevier.comhttp://www.elsevier.com">www.elsevier.com;). 2008. Paperback, 248 pages, ISBN 978-0240808291. $44.95.

Anyone who's ever looked for it knows how rare audio-friendly living space is. Perhaps someday an enterprising developer will build Audiophile Acres---a whole subdivision of audio houses or soundproofed condos that'll meet these needs---then stand by while hordes of long-suffering audiophiles stampede the sales office, frantically waving down-payments in their sweaty hands.

The promise of "perfect sound forever," successfully foisted on an unwitting public by the Compact Disc's promoters, at first seemed to put an end to the audiophile's inexorable need to tweak a playback system's front end at the point of information retrieval. Several factors contributed to the demise of tweaking during the period when CD players began replacing turntables as the primary front-end signal source. First, the binary nature (ones and zeros) of digital audio would apparently preclude variations in playback sound quality due to imperfections in the recording medium. Second, if CD's sound was indeed "perfect," how could digital tweaking improve on perfection? Finally, CD players and discs presented an enigma to audiophiles accustomed to the more easily understood concept of a stylus wiggling in a phonograph groove. These conditions created a climate in which it was assumed that nothing in the optical and mechanical systems of a CD player could affect digital playback's musicality.