LATEST ADDITIONS

In a perfect world, I would own the following: one good turntable (footnote 1), one good tonearm, one good pickup head, one good step-up transformer, one good integrated amplifier, and two good loudspeakers. And some decent cables. That's all, except maybe a home and a dog and some records and some books and one good guitar.

The Leben RS-30EQ phono preamplifier ($2695) incorporates a pair of common dual-triode tubes (12AT7) for phono gain, but breaks with tradition by using a CR-type equalization circuit rather than the more common negative-feedback type. Total gain is specified as 23.5dB, which is sufficient for moving-magnet pickups; an external transformer is recommended for use with moving-coil types. A silicon full-wave rectifier supplies heater voltage, while the rail is supplied by a 6X5GT rectifier tube.

Tomorrow night, from 7 to 8pm, in the Rare Book Room of Manhattan’s wonderful Strand Bookstore (828 Broadway), author Kevin Avery will sign copies of his new book, Everything is An Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson.

Who was Paul Nelson?

Photo: Dino Perrucci/Blue Note Jazz Club

Chick Corea is at the Blue Note in New York City all for the entire month, celebrating his 70th birthday by riffling through all the chapters of his wildly eclectic career, playing different music with different bands, shifting casts and moods each week, sometimes from night to night.

I caught the early set Thursday, a trio with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Brian Blade, and it was a thorough delight...

On Friday, October 21, Stereophile editor John Atkinson presented the Richard Heyser Memorial Lecture at the 131st Audio Engineering Society Convention, held at the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan. A couple of days later, JA spoke with Home Theater’s Scott Wilkinson about some of the points he made during the event.

From the safety of your own home or office (without the threat of JA throwing a baseball at you or pouring a glass of water on your laptop), you can tune in to Scott’s podcast and enjoy much of what JA covered in his fascinating lecture, titled “Where Did the Negative Frequencies Go?”

Listen here.

I should begin this review by confessing that I've never been a fan of subwoofers. Most subwoofer systems I've heard have been plagued by a familiar litany of sonic horrors: poor integration between subwoofer and main speakers, boom, bloat, tubbiness, slowness, excessive LF output, and an overall presentation that constantly reminds the listener he is hearing a big cone moving. To me, subwoofers often sound detached from the music, providing an accompanying thump that bears little relationship to the sound from the main speakers. Rather than revealing the music's harmonic underpinnings, subwoofers often obscure them in a thick morass of featureless boom. In addition, adding a subwoofer often destroys the qualities of the main speakers that made you buy them in the first place—just to name a few of my observations (footnote 1).

Other than that, I like subwoofers.

The Random House Dictionary of the English Language defines "myriad," derived from a Greek word meaning "ten thousand," as "a very great number of persons or things." British and unabashedly ambitious, Myryad Systems has set itself myriad design goals for its M-series stereo components: audiophile performance, real-world pricing, convenience, circuit simplicity, common remote-control function, and physical beauty.