LATEST ADDITIONS

<I>Twice a year, </I>Stereophile<I> brings some of its writers out to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to discuss the compilation of the magazine's "Recommended Components" listing, the most recent of which appeared in the October issue. Following a comment from Will Hammond, John Atkinson's collaborator on the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//features/113/">recent amplifier blind listening tests</A>, that the magazine's readers would love to eavesdrop on the conversations that take place on these occasions, it seemed a good idea to tape (footnote 1) some of the discussions and publish the transcript as this month's "As We See It" (footnote 2). Accordingly, Lewis Lipnick, Gary A. Galo, Robert Harley, Thomas J. Norton, Guy Lemcoe, Richard Lehnert, Dick Olsher, Peter Mitchell, Robert Deutsch, J. Gordon Holt, Larry Greenhill, John Atkinson, and Arnis Balgalvis all gathered in LA's palatial listening room one August Saturday. JA set the ball rolling by asking the assembled writers where they thought </I>Stereophile<I> had been, where it was, and where they thought it </I>should<I> be going, particularly in view of Robert Harley joining the magazine as Technical Editor.</I>

What kind of speaker can you get for $250/pair? The most tightly contested sector of the speaker market in the UK is right around that price. If you want to be competitive in Old Blighty, you have to offer something pretty special in that range&mdash;and because the stakes are so high, the competition is fierce.

Canadian loudspeaker company <A HREF="http://www.psbspeakers.com">PSB International</A> celebrated both its 25th anniversary in July and the 10th anniversary of the introduction of its Stratus series. (I review the latest version of the flagship Stratus speaker, the Gold <I>i</I>, elsewhere in this issue.) Started by Paul Barton and two friends in the summer of 1972, PSB Speakers was named after Paul and his high-school sweetheart Sue (now his wife). Paul & Sue Barton Speakers is now part of Lenbrook Industries, which distributes NAD, Marantz, and Bang & Olufsen in Canada, and which in turn is part of the Canadian conglomerate Lenbrook Inc.

Prejudice is bad&mdash;whether it's directed at people, places, or things. You know how it goes: digital is "bright," analog is "warm," solid-state is "brittle and etched," tubes are "smooth and soft" dynamic drivers are "low-resolution," electrostats and planars are "high-resolution" copper wire is "smooth," silver is "bright," etc. While putting everything that crosses your path into one box or another makes life simpler and seemingly more organized, the truth, musical or otherwise, usually gets mutilated in the process. Not that we all don't have <I>preferences</I>&mdash;but those are not the same as prejudices.

About a decade ago, I read in <I>Stereophile</I> about the SRC, an add-on remote-control unit manufactured by Acoustic Research. I bought one the next day ('swhat happens when you work across the street from a hi-fi shop). Suddenly I was able to make incremental changes in volume and balance from my listening position&mdash;and let me tell you that <I>that's</I> the way to do it. What a phenomenal difference in realistic dynamics and soundstaging.

Bill Eggleston builds speakers because his father did. "My dad always told me that when he started, the only way you could get really good speakers was to build them yourself. We always had drivers and parts around, and I just began building my own so early I can't even remember. Much more important, my father passed on his wide-ranging approach to music. He listened to everything, and he taught me to be open-minded about music."