LATEST ADDITIONS

When I was first getting interested in "high fidelity," as we called it back in the 1960s, there was an audio dealer in Worthing, England called Bowers & Wilkins. Their advertisement in the February 1966 issue of Hi-Fi News features their annual sale, with a Quad Electrostatic Speaker priced at £30 instead of the manufacturer's recommended £37, and offering other bargains, from ReVox, Quad, Rogers, Leak, and Armstrong. Conspicuous by their absence from the ad are Bowers & Wilkins speakers. The first reference to those I could find was in the August 1968 issue of what was then called The Gramophone, when race-car driver turned audio critic John Gilbert raved about the P2 Monitor. Designed by avid concertgoer John Bowers with Peter Hayward and featuring an EMI bass unit and a Celestion tweeter, the two-way P2 was priced at more than twice the Quad speaker, at £159/pair.

Music reproduction has certainly come a long way since the early wax cylinder. But will we ever be able to perfectly reproduce the sound of, say, a live jazz quartet in our living rooms?

UPDATE: On Monday, February 9, Tower Records, Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection at the US Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware. Industry observers had predicted the move in the weeks leading up to the filing. MTS, Inc., as the company is officially known, listed "more than $100 million of assets and more than $100 million of debts in its filing," according to a report from Reuters news service. "MTS expects to emerge from Chapter 11 within 45 to 60 days. It plans to swap $110 million of senior debt for $30 million of new senior notes and an 85% equity stake. Existing equity holders would retain a 15% stake," the report continued.

<A HREF="http://www.lehmannaudio.de">Lehmann audio</A> has carved out a small niche for itself in the analog market with the Black Cube phono preamp (first noted by Michael Fremer in the October 1998 issue of <I>Stereophile</I>). The company now hopes to reach a wider audience in the US and Canada for the Black Cube and the rest of its products with a new distribution arrangement between itself and <A HREF="http://www.lehmannaudio.de/hudsonaudioimports/">Hudson Audio Imports</A>.

<A HREF="http://www.sunncomm.com">SunnComm</A&gt; and others have been trying for years to find ways to prevent consumers from copying music discs. While their success in preventing digital copies <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/11754/index.html">has been mixed</A>, lurking in the background was a problem many felt could never be solved.

<B>THE BEATLES: <I>Let It Be...Naked</I></B><BR>
Apple/Capitol CDP 5 95227 2 (2 CDs). 2003. George Martin, orig. prod.; Glyn Johns, orig. eng.; Paul Hicks, Guy Massey, Allen Rouse, reissue prods., mix; Steve Rooke, reissue mastering. AAD. TT: 57:00<BR>
Performance <B>*****</B><BR>
Sonics <B>*****</B>

<I>To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.</I>&mdash;Sir Isaac Newton, 1687