<B>Wes Phillips on the Sessions</B>
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One of the enduring myths of audiophilia is that of the recording as a true and honest picture of a musical event—a sonic "snapshot" that captures a unique moment of time the way a photograph captures the light of a day long since past.
<I>Flip flip flip</I>]...Where the heck is it?...[<I>flip flip flip</I>]...Got it!" What am I looking for? There, in black and white, on p.634 of J. Gordon Holt's <I>Really Reliable Rules for Rookie Reviewers</I> (footnote 1), is the Prime Directive On Loudspeaker Setup: "Never, ever, choose a loudspeaker that has too much bass extension for your room!"
Kalman Rubinson enthused over JL Audio's Fathom f113 powered subwoofer in his November "Music in the Round" column. Unfortunately, brainfade on my part when I wrote the text for the cover of that issue of <I>Stereophile</I> meant that the subwoofer was credited to "JL Labs." And in all the proof-reading that goes on while an issue of the magazine is being prepared, we all noted a) that the words "JL Labs" were both spelled correctly on the cover and b) that the words "JL Audio" were also spelled correctly on the contents page and all the way through Kals's column.
Until 2006, <I>Stereophile</I> covered audio Shows in the print magazine, usually between three and five months after the event. In 2006, its Show coverage was published almost entirely on this website, live during the Shows. (See, for example, our <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/rmaf2006/">report from this weekend's Rocky Mountain Audio Fest.</A>) Do you appreciate this change in policy and if you had to choose, which do you prefer: delayed coverage in the print magazine or live website coverage?
It's a jungle out there. The shrinking shelves of your neighborhood newsstand drip with the blood and corpses of magazines that have gone under in the intense battle for browsers' eyeballs. And only if we can make our latest issue's cover sufficiently eye-catching to get enough newsstand browsers to pick up and buy a copy do we get to play another round of the game. (Conventional publishing wisdom holds that, <I>at most</I>, a magazine's cover has six seconds to get its message across.)
<B>John Atkinson on the Recording</B>
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"This will fix it!" Kimber Kable's Ray Kimber placed some acoustic baffles around the table on which sat my Apple TiBook. We were recording <A HREF="http://www.robert-silverman.com">Robert Silverman</A> performing one of Beethoven's masterworks for piano, the <I>Diabelli Variations</I>, Op.120, and I had been bothered by a faint whistle underlying the music. It turned out to be the sound of my laptop's fan, an unforeseen drawback of my decision to dispense with tape and record straight to hard drive for the August 2004 sessions. We had already had a problem with a slight slapback echo from the balcony of the Austad Auditorium at Weber State University in Utah, which Ray had fixed with drapes, and a problem with low-frequency rumble from airplanes overflying the college campus during one session had been solved by Ray phoning the air traffic control tower. However, even Ray couldn't deal with thunder, so that was the one session we decided to finish early.
After a series of unforeseen delays, for which we apologize, the CD of Robert Silverman's performance of Beethoven's monumental work for solo piano, the <I>Diabelli Variations</I> (<I>Variations</I>, STPH017-2), is available for purchase from our <A HREF="http://ssl.blueearth.net/primedia/home.php">e-commerce page</A> today, Monday, October 2.
Like all Wilson Audio Specialties' speakers, the Series 8 redesign of the venerable WATT/Puppy combination is available in flawless, clear-coat automotive finishes. I do wonder, however, how many of the Utah company's customers choose more conservative finishes than those on display at CEDIA. Arrival of a pair of WATT/Puppy 8s in reviewer Wes Phillips' listening room is imminent. What color will they be?
