LATEST ADDITIONS

Floor Loudspeaker Reviews
Snell Type C/V loudspeaker
Corey Greenberg  |  Oct 07, 2007  |  First Published: Nov 07, 1994  |  0 comments
When I say that this past—and last—Summer CES in Chicago was dead daddy dead, I'm not talking about fewer high-end exhibits and attendees than ever before. I'm talking I walked in the front door of the Chicago Hilton and almost puked from that smell of dead, mealy meat that hits you in the face and kicks-in the gag reflex. The smell of death you can taste even if you're breathing with your mouth. In most religions, it's a sin to let something that dead just sit there without at least spreading some lye on it to kill the stink. I once cut a man for misadjusting the VTA on my cartridge, and that man lying on my listening-room floor with an Allen wrench still clenched in his hand wasn't as dead as this last SCES.
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Interviews
Kevin Voecks: Loudspeakers, Crossovers, & Rooms
Thomas J. Norton  |  Oct 07, 2007  |  First Published: Mar 07, 1990  |  0 comments
Since he joined Snell Acoustics in the mid-1980s, Kevin Voecks, their chief designer (footnote 1), has been involved in the design or redesign of the entire Snell line, from the minor revision of the Type A/III (incorporation of a new tweeter), to the complete redesign of the Type C (now the CIII). Snell Acoustics is located in Massachusetts, and although Kevin spends a good deal of time there or at the measurement and analysis facilities of the Canadian National Research Council (NRC) in Ottawa, he does a great deal of his conceptual and preliminary design work, as well as his listening, in Los Angeles, where he makes his home. I visited him there last summer to gather a little insight into his background and loudspeaker design philosophy. I started by asking Kevin when had he first become interested in loudspeaker design...
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Solid State Power Amp Reviews
Threshold Stasis SA/12e power amplifier
Thomas J. Norton  |  Oct 07, 2007  |  First Published: Dec 07, 1990  |  0 comments
"Tomorrow we'll go over to Larry Archibald's house and pick up the Threshold amplifiers."
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Vote
What do you think about Radiohead's business model of allowing fans to decide how much they should spend on the band's new CD, In Rainbows?
Stephen Mejias  |  Oct 07, 2007  |  0 comments

iTunes continues to flourish, the major labels have been struggling to reinvent themselves, and CD sales keep stalling. What do you think about Radiohead's business model of allowing fans to decide how much they should spend on the band's new CD, <I>In Rainbows</I>?

What do you think about Radiohead's business model of allowing fans to decide how much they should spend on the band's new CD, <I>In Rainbows</I>?
Love it, it's the way all CDs should be sold
65% (61 votes)
Who's Radiohead?
24% (23 votes)
Don't care, the music industry is dead anyhow
11% (10 votes)
Total votes: 94
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News
Hi-Rez Recording Dems at RMAF
Stereophile Staff  |  Oct 07, 2007  |  0 comments
That, somehow, the "absolute sound" of live music is locked up within the grooves or pits of the discs we play and can be retrieved in its entirety if only we had a a good enough playback system is one of the enduring myths in high-end audio. Yet the art of recording is just that, an art, and it is entirely possible that a better playback system will sound worse with some recordings. And with the mainstream press telling would-be audiophiles that low–bit-rate MP3s are of "CD quality" and that even CD is overkill for audiophile sound quality, why would anyone need high-resolution recordings?
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News
Labels Win $220,000 in Download Damages
Wes Phillips  |  Oct 07, 2007  |  0 comments
On October 4, a federal jury in Duluth, MN found Jammie Thomas liable for copyright infringement, imposing a damages assessment of $220,000 ($9250 for each of 24 songs). It was the first jury trial resulting from the series of lawsuits the recording industry began in September 2003. Since most of those suits were settled out of court (average settlement: $4000) or defaulted, Capitol Records v. Thomas was the rare case to actually go to court and in front of a jury. It was interesting in ways other than its seemingly high damages.
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News
Radiohead's Revolutionary Rainbows
Wes Phillips  |  Oct 07, 2007  |  0 comments
Radiohead, whose last recording, Hail to the Thief, debuted at number three on Billboard's top 200 chart in 2004, announced that its new recording, In Rainbows, will be available as a DRM-free download on October 10. The new twist, however, is that consumers can pay any amount they wish for it.
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News
ArkivMusic Resurrects Out-of-Print Warner Classics Titles
Jason Victor Serinus  |  Oct 07, 2007  |  0 comments
ArkivMusic.com has just signed a deal with Warner Classics to reissue, on demand, out-of-print recordings from Teldec, Erato, and Warner Classics. The site's first 300 offerings from the Warner USA catalog, available at the end of October, will join the more than 4000 other out-of-print titles from EMI, Sony/BMG, Universal Music Group, and two dozen independent classical music labels now available on demand from ArkivMusic on ArkivCD. An additional 1000 ArkivCD reissue titles should become available by the end of 2007.
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Stephen Mejias
Almost Forgetting
Stephen Mejias  |  Oct 05, 2007  |  0 comments
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Powerline Accessory Reviews
HIFI-Tuning Fuses
Robert Deutsch  |  Oct 05, 2007  |  First Published: Sep 05, 2007  |  0 comments
Tweaks come and go. When a new one creates a buzz in audiophile circles, I generally prefer to wait and see if it's still around after the initial excitement has subsided. I'd heard about "audiophile" fuses some time ago, and although the likelihood of them making a significant difference didn't seem as farfetched as such tweaks as the "intelligent chip" or the "clever little clock," I didn't feel inclined to try them. I was persuaded otherwise by the confluence of two separate influences: a report by Michael Fremer, in the February 2007 Stereophile, that the HiFi-Tuning fuses produced a "subtle but noticeable" improvement in the sound of his Musical Fidelity kWP preamplifier; and an encounter at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show with Robert Stein of importer Ultra Systems (the HiFi-Tuning fuses are made in Germany), who said that they produced a big improvement and offered to send me some samples.
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