Stephen Mejias

The November 2010 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. Immediately after shipping the issue to press, we had to redirect our focus to shipping the 2011 Stereophile Buyer’s Guide. And almost immediately after shipping the Buyer’s Guide, we had to redirect our focus to shipping the December 2010. While the December issue was in its very final stages, we had to fly to Denver to cover the outstanding Rocky">http://blog.stereophile.com/rmaf2010/">Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. It’s been a whirlwind and I can honestly say that I hardly remember working on the November issue.

The December 2010 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. On the cover you’ll see the Ayre DX-5 “Universal A/V Engine.” This thing slices, it dices, it juliennes, and even Mikey likes it. Really: The DX-5 plays Blu-ray, DVD-V, DVD-A, SACD, CD, CD-R, and every other combination of “C,” “D,” and “V” you can think of, and, with its front-panel USB input, it becomes a music sever, too.

The February 2010 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. What do you think of the cover? I like it more than any cover we’ve done since the">http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/now_on_newsstands_stereophile… October 2009 issue, which featured the lovely Zu">http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/zu_essence_loudspeaker/">Zu Essence speaker. The styling of the current cover may seem a bit soft and feminine (for Stereophile), but I think it’s elegant and graceful, like the speaker it frames. Vienna Acoustics’ Kiss is a beautifully finished three-way design with an integral stand. It uses a 1" silk-dome tweeter coincident with a 7" proprietary Spider-Cone midrange and a 9" Spider-Cone woofer. Wes wanted to make out with it. Can you blame him? He wrote: “The Kiss was exquisitely capable of revealing the emotional core of every type of music I played through it.”

The April 2010 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. For the cover, we selected the Monitor">http://blog.stereophile.com/ssi2009/monitor_audio_platinum_200/">Monitor Audio Platinum PL200 loudspeaker. Like Bob Deutsch, I was impressed by this speaker when I heard it at the 2009">http://blog.stereophile.com/ssi2009/">2009 Salon Son & Image, so I was especially pleased by John Atkinson’s decision to highlight it. Our cover photographer, Eric Swanson, and designer, Natalie Baca, were also pleased by the speaker’s great looks: The fine-furniture finish of its Santos Rosewood cabinet, the silvery ceramic-coated aluminum magnesium drive units, the handsome Strathspey leather front baffle, and, ooh, that sexy rear port (see the extreme close-up on page 109!) all worked to win over our design team.

The May 2010 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. Jon Iverson opens this issue by exploring “The Holy Trinity of Audiophiledom.” The idea was born on the morning of February 9. I had sent an e-mail to Jon, directing his attention to a">http://forum.stereophile.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=82398&an=0… post in our forum regarding one reader’s experience with cassettes and cassette decks. Jon responded by directing my attention to that morning's Vote">http://cgi.stereophile.com/cgi-bin/showvote.cgi?663">Vote question, which also dealt with cassettes.

The July 2010 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. It had been far too long since we received a letter complaining about our love of reviewing insanely expensive products, so we decided to make this our “Special Aspirations Issue,” featuring, almost exclusively, products you’d have to be CEO of BP to afford.

The August 2010 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. The cover, with its mellow tones, is one of my favorites. To a greater degree than any other cover we’ve released, this one got a buzz going around the office. People would walk by and say nice things. I hope the cover works the same magic for people browsing the newsstands.