LATEST ADDITIONS

The most comprehensive seminars ever devoted to high quality computer-based playback in the home will take place at the fabled headquarters of Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, CA the last weekend of June. Entitled <A HREF="http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Computer-Audiophile-Symposium… Audiophile Symposium: From Performance to Playback</I></A>, the two "identical" seminars are scheduled for Saturday, June 27 from 3&#150;7pm, and Sunday, June 28, from noon&#150;4pm. Admission to each seminar is $279.00.

The July issue of <i>Stereophile</i> (which you should totally get a hold of; steal it, if you have to) includes <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/musicroom/robertbaird/">Robert Baird's</a> interview with Sonic Youth. Robert visited the band at their studio, Echo Canyon West, in Hoboken, NJ. I wish I could have been there. I would've laid right down on that floor and soaked it all up.

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And then I just sort of couldn't help myself. I mean, maybe you've been in a situation like this, too. I don't know. It was kind of just <i>hanging there</i>, waiting to happen. I know we had only just met&#151I hope you don't think less of me because of this&#151but I really think the time was right.

I know, I know. Things were going pretty fast, but it all felt so <i>natural</i> and neither one of us wanted it to stop. When it all got a bit too heated, we slowly moved on to the couch.

If you have more than six or seven bucks to spend, you might consider the Imagine T floorstanding speaker from PSB Loudspeakers ($2000/pair). A year ago, John Atkinson <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/408psb">reviewed</A&gt; PSB's Synchrony One speaker ($4500/pair; <I>Stereophile</I>, April 2008, Vol.31 No.4). The Imagine series is the next line down, and also includes center, surround, and bookshelf models. John Marks <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/psb_imagine_b_loudspeaker"…; over the Imagine B minimonitor in his column in the February 2009 issue.

It ain't the stuff you don't know that trips you up, it's the stuff you know that ain't so. When, at the 2007 CEDIA Expo, I encountered Klipsch's startlingly new Palladium P-39F loudspeaker ($20,000/pair), I was impressed by its looks. Tall (56"), as beautifully contoured as the prow of a canoe, and clad in striking zebra-stripe plywood, the P-39F is possibly the best-looking speaker Klipsch has ever made.