It ain't the stuff you don't know that trips you up, it's the stuff you know that ain't so. When, at the 2007 CEDIA Expo, I encountered Klipsch's startlingly new Palladium P-39F loudspeaker ($20,000/pair), I was impressed by its looks. Tall (56"), as beautifully contoured as the prow of a canoe, and clad in striking zebra-stripe plywood, the P-39F is possibly the best-looking speaker Klipsch has ever made.
I've been reading Daniel Levitan's <I>The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature</I>, which makes pretty strong claims for the importance of those tones in time. (Neil McCormick conducted an interesting <A HREF="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/neil_mccormick/blog/2009/04/09/evolution_o…; with Levitan in <I>The Telegraph</I>.)
After <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/solidpreamps/1207bo">Fred Kaplan reviewed</A> Boulder Amplifiers' 810 line preamplifier and 860 power amplifier for the December 2007 <I>Stereophile</I>, John Atkinson requested that I listen to the 860 in my own system for a while. Never having reviewed <I>any</I> Boulder kit, I was curious.
I stayed up late last on April 2—late for me, anyway: 11pm. I watched the last episode of <I>ER</I> in real time. (Hang in there, peeps, there will be an audio point after the jump.)
You've seen the ads from YG Acoustics: "The best loudspeaker on Earth. Period." It sounds arrogant. But come on—high-end audio has never been a field of shrinking violets. When <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/1101ivor">Ivor Tiefenbrun</A> of Linn announced that the turntable, not the cartridge or loudspeakers, dictated the sound quality of an audio system, that was a man convinced that he was right and taking on the world. And was Krell's <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/1203dagostino">Dan D'Agostino</A> any less arrogant when, in 1980, he introduced the KSA-100 power amplifier? In a world where small size and high wattage were the norms, didn't it take a pair of big brass 'uns to bring out a honkin' huge slab of metal that put out only 100Wpc?
As an audiophile, one of my core beliefs has always been that, once they have heard better sounding music, everybody would want it. That's how it worked with me: My friend Bill sat me down in front of his Quad '57s and cued David Bowie's <I>Heroes</I> on the turntable and once I heard all of those new sounds coming out of my beloved old LP, I was a changed man.
Here's an oldie but goodie: a vintage animated Telefunken ad. NOS roolz.
<I>The Telegraph</I> has a <A HREF="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/celebritynews/4942055/… show</A> of 21 previously unpublished photographs of the Beatles and Rolling Stones, taken mostly by their US tour manager Bob Bonis.
Last week I participated in Music Matters IV, the latest in a series of evening events at <A HREF="http://www.definitive.com/">Definitive Audio</A> in Seattle. It was my first time, so I didn't know what to expect.