We all have biases. The trick is knowing your biases so they don't get in your way. Mine are pretty obvious. I don't like "fussy" gear that demands special care and feeding. I'm lazy—I want to just turn stuff on and begin listening. Perhaps that's why I have a positive bias toward <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/1191pass">Nelson Pass</A>'s designs. They're reliable, untweaky, and usually sound good.
To high-end audiophiles, the Boulder 500 amplifier and its less expensive derivative, the 500AE (Audiophile Edition), would not seem to be "high-end" designs. They are designed around op-amps (felt by many to be generally poor-sounding), they have scads of negative feedback (which is perhaps why op-amps sound bad), and they have only a moderately hefty power supply. Why, then, is <I>Stereophile</I> publishing a review of an op-amp–based power amplifier? Read on...
At a "Meet the Designers" panel discussion at the 1992 Los Angeles <I>Stereophile</I> High-End Hi-Fi Show, I asked a group of successful digital designers (footnote 1) each to state how much of a digital front end's sound quality they believed was due to the transport, digital processor, and interface between the two. There was virtual unanimity: Nearly everyone agreed that a digital processor accounts for about 50% of a digital source's sound quality, the transport 30%, and interface 20%.
Remember <a href="http://forum.stereophile.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=35628&an=0… forum thread</a> <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/040108id/">I mentioned</a>? It's still going on. It reminds me of one of the black and white films I watched in my avant-garde cinema class. Jean-Paul Sartre and Jean-Paul Sartre is staring into a mirror is staring into a mirror, with a with a with a knife in his hand knife in his hand, demanding demanding that the image that the image in the mirror mirror answer his questions his questions. He is outraged because the image in the mirror refuses to answer his questions. Answer his questions. Answer my questions! Demanding. Outrage!
What's this? A review of a $3000 moving-coil step-up transformer in this digital day and age? Yep. Although the market for such a product is small, the fact that the Expressive Technologies SU-1 step-up transformer enters previously uncharted state-of-the-art territory warrants these pages of editorial space. Furthermore, LP playback appears to be alive and well at the upper end of the high-end spectrum, a market segment addressed by the SU-1 (footnote 1).
About a month ago, I <A HREF= "http://blog.stereophile.com/fredkaplan/0312jazz/">lamented</A> that Sonny Rollins, the greatest living tenor saxophone player, had decided not to put out a CD of his Carnegie Hall concert of last year with Roy Haynes and Christian McBride. Rollins was dissatisfied with his playing and so he canceled his release-plans.
Speaking of vinyl, Sonic Youth has announced the <i>vinyl-only</i> release of <i>SYR 7</i>, the seventh installment of their self-released improvisations. These long pieces are often entirely instrumental, and they are lovely, moving, and beautifully-recorded. The hypnotic artwork is by artist and filmmaker, <a href="http://www.visitordesign.com/">Chris Habib</a>. In the past, the CD packaging for each release has mimicked a gatefold LP, with the CD simply sliding into an inner sleeve.
It may seem odd to end <I>Stereophile</I>'s coverage of the 2008 FSI with a report on the opening-day keynote speech. However, Noel Lee, founder and CEO of Monster Cable, had said much that I wanted to mull over. Noel may be a ruthless businessman, but he is one of the smartest, most insightful business people I have known—I first <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/1289lee/">formally interviewed him</A> 20 years ago for <I>Stereophile</I>, but I have known him almost since the beginning of Monster Cable—and FSI getting him to give the Show's keynote speech was a large feather in Show President Michel Plante's hat.
For me, the last day of a show like FSI is for checking up on rooms that I somehow missed (and that I heard people talking about), and re-visiting rooms that were particular favorites.
John Atkinson opened Saturday afternoon's "Ask the Editors" session with a brief introduction in French—which got applause from the audience—but the rest of the session was conducted <I>en anglais</I>, and the quality of questions from the audience was easily up to best that I've experienced at such sessions at the Home Entertainment shows. The questions covered a wide range, dealing with topics such as the cost of producing LPs and SACDs, advances in loudspeaker technology, the sonic quality and pricing of cables, how to allocate resources in assembling a system, and discussion of what systems had particularly impressed us at the show. I think I can speak for John Atkinson, Wes Phillips and John Marks (as well as myself) in saying that we had a good time and were most impressed with the level of interest and dedication to good sound showed by the audiophiles participating in this event. Here's a picture of the <I>Stereophile</I> crew, taken just after the "Ask the Editors" session (from left to right): John Marks, yours truly, Wes Phillips, and John Atkinson.