<B>Audia Flight:</B> <A HREF="http://www.musicalsounds.us/">Musical Sounds</A> will be distributing the Italian electronics manufacturer <A HREF="http://www.audia.it/">Audia Flight</A>'s line of components in North America. Audia Flight manufactures the CD One CD player, Flight 100 and Flight 50 power amplifiers, Flight ONE integrated amplifier, Flight PRE preamplifier, and Flight 3.100 multichannel amplifier. (North American prices TBA)
The International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) will play host to the Technology & Innovation Emmy Awards for the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) in January 2007. The awards ceremony will be the CES' opening event on January 8, 2007, and will kick off the show's 40th-anniversary celebration.
When, at the beginning of this century, the market profile of the high-end Mark Levinson brand took a dip due to the parent company's reorganization, one of the companies that took advantage of the opportunity was Classé Audio. Founded in 1980 by engineer Dave Reich (now with Theta Digital) and run by engineer-entrepreneur Mike Viglas since the mid-1980s, the Canadian electronics manufacturer's Omega line of high-end <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/solidpoweramps/878">amplifiers</A> and <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/solidpreamps/132">preamps</A> had universally impressed <I>Stereophile</I>'s scribes, and its Omega SACD player (<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/hirezplayers/474">reviewed</A> by Jonathan Scull in November 2001) was the first such product to come from a North American company.
John Ötvös, the father of Waveform Research Inc. and The Waveform Loudspeaker, hesitates not at inviting ultracritical examination: "The Waveform is the most accurate, the best, forward-firing loudspeaker in the world." Period. Reviewers, of course, welcome such statements, and I'll be examining that one, but I'll also try to answer the inherent reviewing question of whether the Waveform is a good place for you to park $9800 on your way to "the highest of high-end sound" (that was our slogan for the first Santa Monica High End Hi-Fi Show).
It seemed a bit like the game of Telephone: Someone at the head of a long line of people whispers a sentence or two into the ear of the next in line, who in turn passes it along. By the time the last person in line repeats aloud what they think they've heard, the message is often barely recognizable to the first person.
<B>GRAM PARSONS: <I>The Complete Reprise Sessions</I></B><BR>
Rhino/Reprise RS 74669 (3 CDs). 1972–73/2006. Emmylou Harris, James Austin, reissue prods.; Hugh Davies, Ed Barton, orig. engs.; Dan Hersch, Bill Inglot, remastering engs. AAD? TT: 2:01:26<BR>
Performance *****<BR>
Sonics **1/2 to ****1/2
Things are quiet now. Kristina's iPod has gone to sleep. Aside from some street noise — a passing siren or a honking horn — the only music in our office comes from the printer. Soon these coarse black and whites will be colorful glossies. These proofs will grow to be the pages you turn.
Fred, Brooklyn's "honorary detective" undercover kitty, is dead at the age of one.
Today's Jon Carroll column doesn't <I>exactly</I> answer yesterday's link to Clay Risen's critique of Claire Hoffman's Joe Francis story (man, is this blog getting self-referential or what), but it does neatly expose Risen's glaring flaw: Journalism isn't just one thing.
Watch the blooming of Brooklyn Botanic Garden's titan arum (<I>Amorphophallus titanum</I>), aka the "corpse flower" because it "releases a monstrous stench of putrefaction at peak bloom."