As We See It

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As We See It
RFI, CB, and the FCC
Jack Hannold  |  Jun 09, 2015  |  First Published: Mar 01, 1977  |  0 comments
Editor's Note: We are reprinting this 38 year-old "As We See It" essay because if you substitute the words "WiFi" and "cellphone" for "Citizen's Band" and "CB Radio," you will realize that not much has changed in the decades since, with our audio systems still awash in a bath of RFI.—John Atkinson

Although Citizen's Band radio may hold little interest for perfectionist audiophiles, there is a good chance that it may intrude upon our activities in some disastrous ways if we, and the audio industry in general, sit back and ignore what has been going on behind the scenes in Washington, DC.

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As We See It
RIP Dr. Gizmo
John Atkinson  |  Sep 09, 2001  |  0 comments
My dogs were killing me. It was the end of the second day of the 1985 Summer Consumer Electronics Show, which I was visiting on behalf of English magazine Hi-Fi News & Record Review. I had been dutifully tramping the capacious corridors of Chicago's McCormick Center and the rooms of the (now demolished) McCormick Inn, looking for signs of musical life amid the huge promotion for the 8mm tape format, which was being heavily touted at CES as the future of both video and audio (!) reproduction. Even trade-paper headlines shouting "Audio: Not Just Video Peripheral!" failed to lift my spirits as I took the shuttle bus over to the Americana Congress hotel on South Michigan, where most of the high-end audio companies were hanging out.
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As We See It
Room Acoustics Writ Large
Jim Austin  |  Jan 17, 2023  |  9 comments
Since writing about Manhattan's renovated Geffen Hall in this space in our January issue, I've attended two concerts there. I thought I'd report back. The first of the two performances—the hall's "Grand Gala" concert, though they didn't invite me to the fancy dinner afterward—included works by young Puerto Rico–born composer Angélica Negrón (You Are the Prelude) and Ludwig van Beethoven (Symphony No.9). The second included works by Stravinsky (Symphonies of Wind Instruments), Bartók (Concerto for Two Pianos, Percussion and Orchestra, with Daniil Trifonov and Sergei Babayan), and Sibelius (Symphony No.7).
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As We See It
Roon 1.8
Jim Austin  |  Apr 15, 2021  |  28 comments
I bought my first streaming DAC in 2016, even though I wasn't yet convinced about streaming. Streaming audio was a great idea, but how would I get the music data from wherever it lives to my DAC's Ethernet port?
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As We See It
Rounding Up the Usual Suspects
John Atkinson  |  Feb 29, 1996  |  0 comments
When J. Gordon Holt founded Stereophile in 1962, it was very much the outsider. Compared with the mass-market magazine of which he had been Technical Editor, High Fidelity, Gordon's Stereophile was the very model of an "underground" publication, with a publication schedule as irregular as its production values were inconsistent. Its writing was from the heart, however.
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As We See It
Rules of Reviewing
Larry Archibald  |  Sep 10, 2006  |  First Published: Nov 10, 1994  |  0 comments
My eyes were inexorably drawn to a surprising headline this morning: "New Studies Say Universe Younger than Objects In It." A study by Indiana University's Michael Pierce has just been published establishing a new value for "Hubble's Constant" (the ratio of velocity to distance for distant, receding galaxies) which suggests that the universe may be as young as 7 billion years old; at the same time, researchers at Harvard are saying that the universe is somewhere between 9 and 14 billion years old. Quite a discrepancy! (A billion here, a billion there—pretty soon you're talking real age.)
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As We See It
SACD & DVD-A: Launch Issues
John Atkinson  |  Dec 05, 2004  |  First Published: Oct 05, 1999  |  0 comments
Someone once said that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door. Well, this month, we will see not one but two better mousetraps, in the form of Sony's and Philips' Super Audio CD and the DVD Forum's DVD-Audio. Both are intended to replace the humble CD, now in its seventeenth year; both offer higher-resolution digital audio; and both offer multiple channels. To accompany SACD, Sony's $5000 SCD-1 two-channel player is now on sale (and will be reviewed in the November Stereophile), while Panasonic has announced October sale dates for two DVD-A players, the $1000 Panasonic DVD-A7 and the $1200 Technics DVD-A10.
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As We See It
SACD & DVD-Audio: The Pre-Launch Mess
Jon Iverson  |  Dec 05, 2004  |  First Published: Aug 05, 1999  |  0 comments
Audiophiles have a mess on their hands. In a somewhat surreal press conference in May, a half dozen audio luminaries—representing Sony, Philips, and several titans of the high-end recording business—stood on a HI-FI '99 stage looking awkwardly at the audience.
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As We See It
SACD, the Way Forward?
Jon Iverson, Michael Fremer  |  Apr 05, 2003  |  First Published: Apr 06, 2003  |  0 comments
At the 2003 Consumer Electronics Show in January—see the report in this issue—Sony and Philips held an SACD Event at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. There were trippy lights. There were the Grand Pooh-Bahs of Sony, Philips, and the record labels. There was loud multichannel Big Brother and the Holding Company. And there was Sony's main SACD man in the US, David Kawakami, supplying the pep talk.
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As We See ItJ. Gordon Holt
Seeing Red
J. Gordon Holt  |  Jan 04, 2010  |  First Published: Jun 04, 1986  |  0 comments
Although inclined to mood swings bordering on the manic-depressive, I am generally a very patient, tolerant person, willing to accept and overlook the foibles of those less perfect than myself. But even my incredible equanimity has its limits, beyond which the milk of my human kindness curdles, becoming as lumpy as last month's yogurt.
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As We See It
Selling the Benefits
John Atkinson  |  Oct 06, 2002  |  0 comments
"Ever wondered how the snowplow driver gets to work?"—Doyle Dane Bernbach TV ad for Volkswagen, 1963
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As We See ItHistoricalJ. Gordon Holt
Sellout!?
J. Gordon Holt  |  Nov 30, 2000  |  First Published: Oct 01, 1972  |  2 comments
Alicia Holt, aged 18 months, devours her father's magazine

After much searching of soul and of bank account, we have reached an earth-shattering decision. The Stereophile is going to start taking ads.

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As We See It
Servers, deconstructed
Jim Austin  |  May 13, 2021  |  10 comments
Jukeboxes were probably the first music servers to take a form we would recognize: a music-playing device that allows you to choose from several, or many, songs. The first commercial jukebox, Wikipedia says, was introduced in 1927 by the Automatic Musical Instrument Company, which came to be known as AMI.
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As We See It
Shaken, Not Stirred—and Welcome Back, Martin Colloms
Jim Austin  |  Oct 10, 2023  |  9 comments
Martin Colloms, pictured on HiFiCritic magazine's website.

A few months ago, the hi-fi world learned that Audio Research, perhaps the most storied hi-fi brand in US history (McIntosh would be the other choice), had a new owner. The company had overextended itself, then filed for "Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors"—somewhat like Chapter 11 bankruptcy but different. The company was then acquired by a group led by a Canadian, Valerio Cora of Acora Acoustics. In the September issue's Industry Update, I wrote, "Audio Research, that great American hi-fi company, is now Canadian."

Not long after the issue came out, I received a note from Dave Gordon of Audio Research Corporation. With typical good humor, Dave suggested that my characterization was not correct—that ARC is not in fact Canadian. Why? Because Audio Research's parent company is based in ... Delaware?

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As We See It
Should Music Be Free?
Steve Guttenberg  |  Aug 28, 2013  |  First Published: Sep 01, 2013  |  33 comments
No one ever had to pay for recorded music—it was always "free" on the radio—and the home taping of LPs, the copying of cassettes, and, later, burning CDs made buying music optional. Then Napster and other file-sharing sites kicked it up a notch and made it very easy to assemble a 10,000-song collection without spending a dime. Now, Spotify, BitTorrent, SoundCloud, MOG, and YouTube make music instantly accessible on demand. It raises the question: Will music lovers continue to buy music? Paying for recorded music is now, more than ever, a voluntary act.
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