LATEST ADDITIONS

In a ground-breaking article from May 1990, Robert Harley uncovers the real digital story with "<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/reference/590jitter">CD: Jitter, Errors & Magic</A>." Confusion about CD tweaks leads RH "to conduct a scientific examination of several CD 'sonic cure-all' devices and treatments. I wanted to find an objective, measurable phenomenon that explains the undeniable musical differences heard by many listeners where, at least according to established digital audio theory, no differences should exist."

Running audio signals around a home's AC power wiring has been a <A HREF="integrated
Integrated http://www.stereophile.com/news/10754/index.html">consumer electronics goal</A> for several years. The reasoning goes that most folks live in homes that cannot be easily rewired for multiroom audio or multichannel surround, so why not use the AC wires that are already in the walls? Think of it as the ultimate solid-core interconnect.

Nowhere is the inflationary cycle spinning faster than in concert ticket prices. The best tickets for performances by major pop and rock stars this summer will be priced in the low-to-mid hundreds. No, that's not a misprint, and it doesn't include "service charges" and other bogus fees tacked on by ticket agencies. Good seats for Eric Clapton's summer tour will be more than $250 each; similar seating at Simon and Garfunkel's "Old Friends" show at the Hollywood Bowl will go for $700, according to "Parsley, Sage and $350 Seats," a revealing look at skyrocketing ticket prices by Ethan Smith in the May 7 issue of <I>The Wall Street Journal</I>.

Nicholas Negroponte, Professor of Media Technology at MIT's Media Lab, is somewhat of a hero of mine, not the least because in his 1995 book <I>Being Digital</I> (Alfred A. Knopf), he mentioned specialty magazines as being a paradigm (of a sort) for the information-rich future. The role of a magazine such as <I>Stereophile</I> is to act as an intelligent (we hope) filter applied to the breadth and depth of human activity. Those who define themselves by their interest in the publication's specialty can therefore go to just one source to find everything of relevance.

There's this really awful joke:

John Sands wants to know how other <I>Stereophile</I> readers view the state of high-resolution audio.

From the April 2004 issue, a must-read for all audiophiles: Keith Howard does the SACD and DVD-Audio math for "<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/features/404metrics">New Media Metrics</A>." Using a vast collection of informative graphs, KH explores hi-rez attributes and puzzlers. "In the case of SACD, why provide a potential bandwidth in excess of 1.4MHz, only to fill more than 95% of it with quantization noise?"