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Thomas J. Norton
The DQ-12 is the latest loudspeaker from Dahlquist employing their "Phased Array" technology, first used in 1973. The company was formed that year by Jon Dahlquist and Saul Marantz to produce the 
Michael, who might be termed our typical audiophile (if anything in Santa Fe can be termed "typical"), may have found his digital processor, but he's still in a quandary about choosing the right power amp to drive his new loudspeakers. He has listened to a number of them over the past few months, and has been unable to find one which satisfies him in every way. I suspect he has a lot of company. The thorny problems of room acoustics and placement aside, loudspeakers are easier. Their signatures are pronounced and generate strong feelings one way or another; it's usually no problem to narrow down one's choices in this category.
As I write these words in January 1991, we're right in the midst of an annual media feeding frenzy: the "Best of the Year" follies. This usually takes the form of lists compiled in groups of ten for reasons that must hearken back to some obscure Druidic practice. You know the routine: "Ten Best Books of the Year," "Ten Best Films of the Year," "Ten Top Personalities of the Year," "Ten Best Sports Plays of the Year." Every corner of the media seems eager to get into the act. Special-interest magazines are hardly immune. Car enthusiasts can get their fill of "Cars of the Year." Computer literates find their favorite rags full of the "Ten Best Computers/Computer Accessories/Computer Programs." And music magazines regale us with the "Ten Best Recordings of the Year." Everyone with access to a transmitter or printing press has got, it seems, a little list.
Audio journalists tend to wander the corridors of a CES in a minor state of shell-shock. There are no carnival-barkers outside the rooms enticing one to enter (not yet, at any rate), but the sounds and reputations oozing from the open doorways yield little to the "hurry, hurry, hurry" crowd. The Signet room has always, it seems, been one of the quieter oases, often eschewing sound altogether while contentedly displaying their phono cartridges, cables, and various accessories. On a recent CES hunt, I was therefore intrigued to find them demonstrating two new loudspeakers, of all things, to the milling throngs.
In their seminal work on the subject of audio "Bluff your Way in Hi-Fi" (1987), Sue Hudson and Pages
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