LATEST ADDITIONS

<A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/he2007">Home Entertainment 2007</A> was a blast for me, as it is every year. Not only did I get to perform with <I>two</I> jazz bands, <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/musicrecordings/907att">Attention Screen</A> and the John Atkinson Trio, but I enjoyed good to extraordinary sound in every room I visited. I've been attending hi-fi shows more than 20 years, so I'm rarely surprised, but HE2007 had two big surprises in store. First, the percentage of rooms sporting analog front-ends&mdash;vinyl <I>and</I> open-reel tape&mdash;was the highest I've seen at a show in over a decade. Second, there was a surprising number of <I>very</I> expensive loudspeakers. In fact, I counted more speakers costing over $50,000/pair than I did costing under $500/pair.

Visit www.stereophile.com and look at the <A HREF="http://cgi.stereophile.com/cgi-bin/showvote.cgi?522">Vote Results for June 17, 2007</A>: You'll see that when we asked our readers to name the one audio product that's spent the greatest amount of time in their systems, the most common answer by far was the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/turntables/1103linn">Linn Sondek LP12</A> turntable (footnote 1). Little wonder that Scotland's most famous record player endures as an object of attention for various and sundry commercial <I>tweaks</I>.

Most people are familiar, at least in outline, with the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale "The Princess and the Pea." In the story, the Queen decides that it's time for her son to marry, and the Prince&mdash;apparently a very fussy young man&mdash;decides that he can marry only a true princess, as measured by her sensitivity to small discomforts. It's like being an audiophile, but with peas.

I think my favorite is #311.

Huckleberry lurks in the shadows.

The casual interest soon transformed into an addiction and an obsession. Does <i>obsession</i> come before <i>addiction</i>, or after? I'm not sure. Either way, the salsa didn't seem to mind. It started in early August with two albums: <i>Siembra</i> by Ruben Blades and <i><a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/la_gran_fuga/">La Gran Fuga</a></i> by Willie Colon. These two led me to several others which led me to more still. I read one pretty crappy Hector Lavoe biography, sent dozens of fiery e-mails to my family in Puerto Rico, devoured tons of liner notes, and watched a gazillion YouTube videos. I've now collected over 20 albums (all on CD), have lured one uncle into sending me rare and classic songs from his library of MP3s, coerced another into donating to my cause his entire LP collection (we'll see about that), and uncovered an entire world of really deep, incredibly hot tracks. The addiction is not fading.

Taking a <I>really</I> close look at Leonardo's portrait.