LATEST ADDITIONS

I was talking to a couple of oldster audiophiles standing outside the glass-walled Woo Audio room. They were raving about some Von Schweikert Audio speakers when I interrupted them to ask, "Have you heard the Abyss headphones?" They laughed and smirked…

I scored big this year, because my floors included High Water Sound's room. As usual, Jeffrey Catalano was a breath of fresh air, playing LPs of music not encountered in other rooms…

I always laugh at Andrew Jones's demonstrations, because every time he plays some bass-slamming blockbuster, the curtains behind the speakers start flapping in the breeze from the force and velocity of the speaker's rear port.

Once Pro Musica Chicago discovered that one of the electrical outlets in their room was severely handicapped, as it were, and switched to another, the VTL TL5.5 preamp with phono stage ($10,500) and VTL S200 power amp ($12,500) delivered eminently neutral sound…

Even before 10am had rolled around on opening day, eager audiophiles were obtaining badges in the lobby of the Westin O'Hare…

First things first. Yes, Dave Douglas named his new album, Dark Territory, after my new book of the same title. This may seem odd: my book is about the history of cyber war; Douglas' album is a deep-dive exploration of improvisation, composition, and technology in the risky corners of jazz and electronica. But in an email sent out by his self-owned label, Greenleaf Music, he explains that both works are about "similarly mysterious murky waters of underground activity" and that he found my title fitting because, like the characters in my book, he and his band are "playing through a similar territory without rules where the dangers and challenges of technology are much greater than normal."