Ariel Bitran

For the past few months, my system has been in a serious playback rut. The disc tray on my Oppo DV-980H does not pop out, and my Rega P1 is in unmistakably poor shape: the tonearm cable to connect the tonearm to the cartridge ripped off from the tonearm, one of the tonearm pins ripped off the tonearm cable and is firmly pinned onto the cartridge I never installed (an Audio Technica AT95E), and the needle on my old Ortofon cartridge is bent backwards, which is the reason why I needed to change my cartridge to begin with. I promise, I have reasons for all of this. Not good reasons. Thus, most of my music listening for the past seven months, has been done at work in my cubicle via different digital music streaming services, in the hopes of finding a service that would be fun and functional.

"Ain't it strange how sounds can let you down / When you're waiting for the one you love."

“Good news!” Stephen exclaimed, the second I walked into his office. I saw my Usher S-520s plopped lovingly in my cubicle. “Check your email,” he instructed.

An email from JA read:

I couldn't find anything wrong, Ariel. I measured both speakers and also listened to them…they match very closely&#151as well as the individual responses of the tweeter and woofer of the sample that didn't have the biwiring jumpers connected.*

Could that have been the problem?

Could this have been the problem…

Could this have been the problem?

COULD THIS HAVE BEEN THE PROBLEM?!