LATEST ADDITIONS

Recently, there has been a on-line furor over an audio manufacturer having supposedly re-badged another manufacturer's component as its own (with a sweeping price increase). This <A HREF="http://forum.stereophile.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=80790">pra…; has been going on for years: Some high-end audio manufacturers have always taken mass-market components and used them as the basis for their own products. How do you feel about this?

With all the current fuss about getting audio data from a computer to a standalone D/A processor via S/PDIF, USB, FireWire, WiFi, or Ethernet (footnote 1), it has been overlooked that the oldest way to get audio from a PC is to use a high-performance soundcard plugged into the host machine's motherboard. I remember how excited I was when I installed a Sound Blaster Pro 16 board in the 486-based Dell running Windows 3.1 that I was using in the early Clinton era, plugged its analog output into my high-end rig, and played back 16-bit/44.1kHz files.

I caught Fly—the trio consisting of Mark Turner on tenor and soprano saxophones, Larry Grenadier on bass, and Jeff Ballard on drums—at the Jazz Standard Thursday night.

The World Saxophone Quartet and the five-piece percussion group M’Boom play together at Birdland in midtown Manhattan through Sunday. It’s music to make your head sweat and spin.

Another Consumer Electronics Show has come and gone. Was there anything at CES that got you excited this year?

<i>On a clear, bright day, when the blue of the sea rivals the blue of the sky, one sees the hawk, the eagle, the buzzard soaring above the still, hushed canyons. In summer, when the fogs roll in, one can look down upon a sea of clouds floating listlessly above the ocean; they have the appearance, at times, of huge iridescent soap bubbles, over which, now and then, may be seen a double rainbow. In January and February the hills are greenest, almost as green as the Emerald Isle. From November to February are the best months, the air fresh and invigorating, the skies clear, the sun still warm enough to take a sun bath.</i><br>
&#151Henry Miller, <i>Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch</i>

For Christmas, my sister, Nerissa, received a set of <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/heartbeats_by_lady_gaga/">Hea…;, Lady Gaga’s flashy in-ear headphones. Nerissa was overjoyed&#151even moved to dramatic, rock star poses, sporting her latest fashion accessory&#151mostly because she loves Lady Gaga. I don’t think she expected the sound quality to have a great impact on her life.