As We See It

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As We See It
It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Schwing
Corey Greenberg  |  Oct 09, 2005  |  First Published: Jul 09, 1992  |  0 comments
Epiphanies only come when you stop looking for them, and mine came in a room full of preschoolers watching cartoons at a Pizza Hut. I was taking my little nieces Alix (4) and Casey (1) out for dinner, and the last thing on my mind was audio; we wanted to PARTY! So my girlfriend Dara and I bundled them up in their car-seats and we high-tailed it over to the Hut, with visions of continuous-loop Tom'n'Jerry and cheap buffet pizza dancing in our heads.
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As We See It
The Absolute Experience
Jim Austin  |  Sep 17, 2005  |  0 comments
I've never lived in New York City, but I've visited often, especially the Upper West Side, where my wife's grandparents lived for many years. There's a little jazz bar there, on Broadway near 106th Street, aka Duke Ellington Boulevard.
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As We See It
DVD-A vs SACD
John Atkinson  |  Sep 10, 2005  |  First Published: Nov 10, 1997  |  0 comments
"This is offensive!" muttered usually mild-mannered Malcolm Hawksford, who was sitting next to me. "I'm leaving." The good professor was right. One thousand or so attendees at the 103rd Audio Engineering Society Convention, held at the end of September in New York, were being subjected to truly terrible sound. The irony was that the sound was that of 2- and 5-channel recordings made with 24-bit resolution and a 96kHz sampling rate, being played over a colored PA system to demonstrate the future of audio, in the form of DVD-Audio.
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As We See It
The Blind Leading the Blind?
Jon Iverson  |  Aug 14, 2005  |  0 comments
The first epiphany I experienced in blind audio testing took place in the Dunfey San Mateo Hotel, in Northern California. We were stuffed into a largish, well-lit room in which dozens of listeners sat in chairs, and others stood around the back or sat on the floor. Up front were two large B&W Matrix 801 speakers on tall stands spaced far apart, behind them, opaque curtains hid a small pile of audio equipment. John Atkinson and Will Hammond stood at stage left.
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As We See It
Blind Tests & Bus Stops
John Atkinson  |  Jul 17, 2005  |  0 comments
On mornings when I can get up early enough after a late-night listening session, I take the last express bus from my Brooklyn suburb to Stereophile's Manhattan office. An inveterate people watcher, I notice that while my fellow travelers and I don't form a traditional queue at the bus stop, preferring instead to mill around in something that resembles a jelly donut, we still enter the bus in the order in which we arrived at the stop. The balance between individualism and social necessity is thus preserved.
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As We See It
In Defense of the CD
Robert Harley  |  Jun 26, 2005  |  First Published: May 01, 1997  |  0 comments
Attacking the compact disc has lately become almost a blood sport among audiophiles and audio writers. Not a month goes by that I don't read—often in Stereophile—some vehement statement about how CDs are a musical abomination.
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As We See ItHistorical
Ken Nelson 1928–2004
Laura LoVecchio  |  Jun 12, 2005  |  0 comments
On Friday morning, March 25, 2005, my friend Maura Rieland, Stereophile's show coordinator through the second half of the 1990s, e-mailed me to say that she had just learned of the passing of Ken Nelson.
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As We See It
When The Music Stops
John Atkinson, Larry Archibald  |  Jun 05, 2005  |  First Published: Sep 05, 1997  |  0 comments
An acquaintance in the world of CD distribution recently gave me an astonishing statistic: that the average classical title sells fewer than 2000 copies worldwide in its first year of release; which in turn means that many titles sell only about 500 copies! Given that the cost of producing a classical orchestral album can include up to $100,000 in union-mandated musician fees, such minimal sales guarantee financial disaster.
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As We See ItAural RobertHistorical
Aural Robert #1
Robert Baird  |  Jun 05, 2005  |  First Published: Jan 05, 1997  |  0 comments
Please let me explain. Because I've never been especially adept at making lifelong commitments and irrevocable decisions, when it came to naming this new column, Managing Editor Debbie Starr and I decided that we would gather the passionate (and supremely efficient) minds of the Stereophile production staff, add a near–life-threatening amount of margaritas, and put the question to them.
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As We See It
Chips for Chumps
Jim Austin  |  May 15, 2005  |  0 comments
In his "From the Editor's Desk" in the March issue of Stereophile's e-newsletter, John Atkinson recounts how, years ago, "erstwhile audio scribe Enid Lumley" demonstrated her pizza-box-tripod tweak at a hi-fi show. Lumley, JA writes, "placed the tripod atop a CD player and convinced her audience—including me—that the sound was better."
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As We See ItJ. Gordon Holt
I Say It's Video!
J. Gordon Holt  |  May 08, 2005  |  First Published: Jun 08, 1993  |  0 comments
A couple of months back (March 1993, p.7), I wrote that as far as I was concerned, video was television dressed up in fancy dress, thus there was no place for coverage of the medium in Stereophile. As the magazine's founder, J. Gordon Holt, has been a committed videophile for many years, I sat back and awaited a reaction from him. One was not long coming. I am running his response as this month's "As We See It" feature.—John Atkinson
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As We See It
I Say It's Television...
John Atkinson  |  May 08, 2005  |  First Published: Mar 08, 1993  |  0 comments
"When it comes to video, most audiophiles are insufferable snobs."—J. Gordon Holt, 1984
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As We See It
Old Wine, New Bottles
Wes Phillips  |  Apr 17, 2005  |  0 comments
These days, too many audio stores are like hushed mausoleums. Audio gear is displayed like dead art, and the sales staff, unless you're known as a regular customer, either greets you with a predatory gleam or, certain that you've wandered in by mistake, ignores you.
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As We See It
Hi-Rez Media: When Will They Learn?
John Atkinson  |  Mar 13, 2005  |  0 comments
"No!"
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As We See It
What is the Absolute Sound?
Jonathan Scull  |  Mar 05, 2005  |  First Published: Jun 05, 1999  |  0 comments
Just what is the absolute sound, and how do you get there from here? What the heck are we looking for as we endure the mirth of others while purposefully setting up our high-end systems? Is it, indeed, the sanctified sound of acoustic instruments in real space? Can we ever really achieve that? Or is it the accurate realization of the signal on the master tape? Or—as was recently suggested at the New York Noise single-ended lovefest, covered in this issue's "Industry Update"—are some of us looking for the emotion and the artist's intent?
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