LATEST ADDITIONS

Because loudspeakers interact with the acoustics of the room in which they are used, optimizing their positions within that room pays major dividends. Inexpensive speakers, optimally set up, may well outperform more expensive models just plonked down willy-nilly.

Yet another amp from Colorado! This is the third amp to come my way from that state (the others being the Spectrascan and the Rowland Research), and at this point, after living with it for a couple of months, I'm quite comfortable in declaring the Boulder 500 to be one helluvan amp.

<I>Dateline&#151;Chicago, May 30, 9:00pm.</I> Exploding fireworks lit up the sky above the Chicago river as 200 leading high-end designers gathered in the Hotel Intercontinental for <I>Stereophile</I>'s 30th Anniversary banquet. After a repast of four gourmet courses and five wines, the time came for after-dinner speeches to celebrate <I>Stereophile</I>'s past and high-end audio's future. <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/593">Publisher Larry Archibald</A> described his adventurous transition from the high-end car business to risky publishing. Introducing <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/historical/712">J. Gordon Holt</A>, he praised JGH's uniquely lucid writing and his unflinching insistence that equipment designed to reproduce music should be judged on its ability to do just that&#151;the unconventional view that launched high-end audio.

I have not listened to a compact disc at home in <i>months</i>. It's kind of crazy. It kind of makes me feel weird about even <i>having</i> a compact disc player. At some point along the road, I figure I'll transform all of my compact discs into invisible bits and pieces on a hard drive and trade the physical objects for more vinyl.

As <A
HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/100807jammie/">we reported</A> almost a year ago, US District Court Judge Michael Davis awarded record labels $220,000 in damages for Jammie Thomas' having posted digital files to the KaZaa peer-to-peer site. To date, that has been the RIAA's sole victory in its prosecution of file sharers and it hinged upon an instruction Judge Davis gave the jury, specifically Jury Instruction 15, which said that Capitol Records did not have to prove anybody downloaded the songs, only that Thomas had posted them. This is known as the "making available" argument and was vigorously opposed by Thomas' lawyer.

There is something refreshingly no-nonsense about the design and construction of this turntable. It looks as if someone just said, Okay, this, that, and the other thing need to be done. Let's do it. And then they did it. In appearance at least, it is about as simple a design as you're likely to find. What sets it apart from other simple designs is that this one is built like a battleship! Everything is heavy-duty (notto mention heavy), from the 10-lb, lead-laminated aluminum platter to the ¼"steel-reinforced subchassis.

I first auditioned a pair of Chario Academy One minimonitors five years ago, but the review was aborted when the Italian Chario company lost its US distribution. When I reheard the Chario Academy Ones at the 1997 WCES, I found their elegant cabinetwork appealing and their sound listenable and involving. I therefore requested a pair for review from the new US importers.