Added to the Archives This Week

Brian Damkroger has a wonderful moment or two as he auditions the VAC Renaissance Signature Mk.II preamplifier. As BD explains, the right musical situation can trigger those long-lost memories . . . .

"I love the sound of glowing glass, especially when I'm lonely," notes Wes Phillips as he cuddles up with the VAC PA80/80 power amplifier. "But I'm not kinky about it," asserts WP. "My real reason for loving tubed gear is that I love to wallow in that sense of emotional immediacy that hot glass seems singularly capable of presenting."

In Kevin Hayes: Knowledge from the Glass Age, Wes uncovers where VAC came from and where it may be headed.

Multichannel format war relief: Larry Greenhill and Kalman Rubinson provide a couple of short takes on the Sony TA-P9000ES multichannel analog preamplifier—a "pure audio multichannel preamplifier equipped with two inputs for 5.1 analog multichannel audio sources."

Back in 1985, J. Gordon Holt noted, "Although most people in the audio field no longer see digital audio as madness, digital denouncing is still very much with us." For his "As We See It" from December 1985, Stop Digital Madness!, Holt explores the then recently announced discovery that digitally mastered analog discs damage turntables. No kidding!

Finally, this week's addition to our "Recording of the Month" series for the online archives, Recordings of December 1996: Portraits and The Mercury Blues 'n' Rhythm Story, 1945-1955. Robert Baird finds that these two compilations suit his fancy, observing, "The rush to make a CD boxed set for every artist and genre is in the home stretch."

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