I think every audio reviewer hopes for a surprise—when a good, but not outstanding, product is refined by the manufacturer into something special. The review then becomes an exciting discovery, reaffirming the pleasure one takes in good audio, and in listening to music being reproduced as it should be. It makes the listening exciting and the writing easier. The Classé Fifteen solid-state stereo amplifier is just such a surprise.
Have you guys seen those <a href="http://www.wsdistributing.com/">Vincent Audio</a> ads? (See page 128 of the April issue, or page 130 of the March issue or, even better, page 183 of the January issue.) I love them all.
I'm old enough to remember my family's first table radio that was made out of plastic. It was cream-colored, and it sat on the rearmost edge of our kitchen table: a less-than-timeless design in its own right, destined to be discarded at the end of one era and treasured again at the dawn of another, for more or less the same reason. But in 1958, a cream-colored plastic radio looked fresh, clean, and right, and its cheap wooden predecessor seemed dowdy and sad by comparison. That would all change in later years, of course. Then it would all change again.
For years, I have espoused the use of the same speakers (except subwoofer) in all positions for multichannel music. To have no speaker in the system contributing a different voice to the choir seems as intuitive as having the room acoustics not color the sound. Of course, this still doesn't guarantee perfect timbral match—positioning and room acoustics usually impose some unique characteristics under all but the most perfect and symmetrical conditions. You can hear tonal imbalances even between the left and right speakers of most <I>two</I>-channel systems simply by switching pink noise between them. On the other hand, there's no reason to superimpose on these unavoidable differences the additional imbalances inevitable with using different speakers in a multichannel array.
On March 24, the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division stated that, "after thorough and careful review" (<I>translation:</I> more than one year) Sirius Satellite Radio's $5 billion offer to purchase XM Satellite Radio "is not likely to harm consumers."
I still sometimes forget that the year is 2008. It'll take me a few more months to get used to it. No doubt about it, though: 2007 is old news. I can tell by the copyright dates on my new CDs. It's 2008. The birdies are making all sorts of happy racket outside my kitchen window; the high temperatures are creeping up, up, slowly up; Opening Day is less than a week away.
Visitors to the 2008 International Auto Show, currently taking place at NYC's Jacob Javits Convention Center, might discover something different at the Bentley display: a high-end audio listening room. Bentley Motors and Naim have teamed up for the <A HREF="http://stereophile.com/news/022108bentley/">"Naim For Bentley"</A> program, which will be offered as a sound package upgrade for all Bentley models by year's end.
We already know that your life is devoted to music and audio, but what comes next? In addition to being an audiophile, what else are you passionate about?
"I thought starting an audiophile record label was hard," Chesky Records co-founder Norman Chesky told <I>Stereophile</I>. "That was <I>nothing</I> compared to this. We've spent three years developing <A HREF="http://www.hdtracks.com/index.php?file=staticpage&pagename=aboutus">HDt…;
This is my fourth review of a Revel loudspeaker, and I was even more excited by the arrival of the Ultima Studio2s ($15,999/pair) than I was when their predecessors, the original Ultima Studios ($10,799/pair when first reviewed; $15,000/pair when last listed in "Recommended Components"), were delivered in 2000. (See <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/302">my review</A> in the December 2000 <I>Stereophile</I>, Vol.23 No.12.) After all, the Studios were my reference speakers for years and, along with the larger Ultima Salons, were statement products that were the product of the talented designer Kevin Voecks and the considerable resources of Harman International, parent of Revel as well as of JBL and Infinity. Over the years, I've also reviewed Revel's <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/244">Performa F30</A> (May 2000, Vol.23 No.5) and <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/706revel">Concerta F12</A> (July 2006, Vol.29 No.7), each outstanding at its price point. If, after all these years, Voecks and his team were ready to reconsider their statement products, they should be something special.