This year’s Ambassador, Iggy Pop, has this to say:

During my recent trip to Seattle for Definitive Audio’s Music Matters 7 event, I decided to compare Thinksound’s ts02 ($79.99) to their ms01 ($99.99), the first model in the company’s new Monitor Series.

On Saturday, March 3rd, during an unusually warm and sunny afternoon in Jersey City, the Audio Doctor held an open house to introduce new products from Unison Research. Our hosts for the event were Dave and Paula Lalin of the Audio Doctor and Colleen Cardas and Marc Phillips of Colleen Cardas Imports (CCI), the exclusive US distributor for Unison Research and Opera Loudspeakers.

Before listening, Lalin invited us into the kitchen for some delicious food and drink. “This is a party!” he said. After I stuffed my face with meatballs, chicken wings, chips, and cookies, we headed into my favorite of Lalin’s four listening rooms—a medium-sized room at one corner of his beautiful Victorian home, packed with hi-fi gear, and home to “The Rack.”

There, Colleen Cardas introduced herself and told us the story of how she and her business partner, Marc Phillips, the Vinyl Anachronist, became involved with Unison Research and Opera.

I was also pleased to see that In Living Stereo now carries Wharfedale’s affordable overachiever, the Diamond 10.1 loudspeaker ($350/pair), and its considerably bigger brother, the 10.2. At just $100/pair more than the 10.1, the 10.2 at least looks like it can provide a much bigger, more solid and controlled sound.

Julia Holter hit my radar in November 2011, while I was preparing my year-end list of favorite recordings.

In the conclusion to our CES show report, I wrote: “Hi-fi is about making music. CES is about making money.”

But maybe I was being naïve. Though I’d love to pretend otherwise, high-end audio is as much about commerce as it is about music. This fact is inescapable. Yet the focus on money was so great at CES that I left Las Vegas wondering whether there was some better way. Isn’t there a better, more appropriate way to showcase high-end audio, one that sets aside monetary matters and, at least for a short while, puts music matters first?

I left Seattle last week wondering if we had already found that better way.

The album utilizes Batoh’s Brain Pulse Music (BPM) machine, a wildly futuristic device partnered with headgear, goggles, and a motherboard, said to be developed and built by MKC, Inc. The BPM machine, editions of which will also be available for sale from Drag City, monitors brain waves and transmits them via radio waves to the motherboard, which, in turn, converts the radio waves into pulses that are then outputted as sound.