LATEST ADDITIONS

I can't remember a time when I wasn't concerned about power quality. I grew up around finicky, home-brew ham-radio gear and labs full of instruments, and with both, power-conditioning gear was standard fare. When I moved into high-end audio, it seemed obvious that power quality was important. As a result, I've experimented with a wide range of power-conditioning equipment, from simple ferrite loops to huge isolation transformers, and even exotic laboratory power supplies that could vary the voltage, frequency spectrum, and shape of the AC signal.

Taken together, these unusual interconnect, loudspeaker, and AC cables brought a new measure of spaciousness, scale, smoothness, heretofore unimagined detail, and overall musical ease and naturalness to my music system. And they did it while sounding neither dull nor bright—just right.

Almost immediately on entering the analog marketplace in 1982, Franc Kuzma, a mechanical engineer based in Slovenia, then part of the former Yugoslavia, established a reputation for manufacturing finely engineered, high-performance products that sold at reasonable prices. Kuzma's early industrial designs, however, while serviceable, looked less than distinguished.

The Internet audio forum <A HREF="http://www.head-fi.org/forums">Head-Fi</A&gt; is one of the few places on the Web where you can hang out with truly passionate audiophiles and not come away despairing at the state of current public discourse. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that Head-Fi's regional and national meets have that same sense of relaxed solidarity. But what always strikes me at these events, such as the national Head-Fest 2007 get-together in San Jose on April 21 and 22, is just how darned sociable Head-Fiers are, considering they are celebrating an activity that is so intensely solitary.

On April 16, the US Copyright Review Board (CRB) denied an appeal of its decision to restructure the royalty fees for Internet radio. As we <A HREF="http://stereophile.com/news/031907internet/">reported</A&gt;, independent Internet broadcasters and the NPR called it a "stunning, damaging decision," predicting that it would price small operators and public broadcasting, which do not receive widespread commercial underwriting, out of business.

Christian <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/041607listening/">recommended…; a great new band to me: <a href="http://www.thebesnardlakes.com/">The Besnard Lakes</a>. Listening to them reminds me of Brian Wilson and Pink Floyd and My Morning Jacket. There are shiny falsettos, dream sequences, and reverb-drenched solos. It's music that I want to share with my girlfriend. A Google search then led me to the band's record label, <a href="http://www.jagjaguwar.com/">Jagjaguwar</a&gt;. There, I found a happy surprise: entire albums &#151; freely flowing streams of music &#151; not only from The Besnard Lakes, but also from a couple of other interesting bands, <a href="http://www.odawastheband.com/Odawas/Main.html">Odawas</a&gt; and <a href="http://www.alexdeliverymusic.com/">Alex Delivery</a>.