Reality check number one. Tired of reading about the latest and greatest $65,000 loudspeakers? Or even the current hot ticket at $2500? Such loudspeakers promise to bring you the audio truth, or the golly-gee-whiz, honest-to-gosh, absolutely positively real sound. And some of them <I>do</I> seem to come awfully close, though truth be told, we're still a long way from replicating reality—and will <I>never</I> do it with just two channels.
After using <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/digitalprocessors/1107bc">Bel Canto's e.One DAC3</A> with the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/mediaservers/108mac">McIntosh Laboratory MS750</A> music server, I was so impressed that I wanted to hear Bel Canto's CD transports as well. But willing as Bel Canto president and CEO John Stronczer was to supply me with a CD-2, he suggested I audition the S300iu ($2195, footnote 1).
By now, I'm sure you've already committed the name to memory: Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson.
The Sony Radio Cassette-Corder CFM-10 is an unassuming little piece of electronics. I remember back in 1995, while the devastating Hurricane Opal tore across the state of Alabama, my family crouched on the laundry room floor with a cheap green lantern giving us light. My little sister and I were wrapped up in oversized, itchy wool blankets, laughing and joking, while Opal wreaked havoc and destroyed lives. We listened to the wind howling against the house, huge tree branches cracking and crashing to the ground, as we awaited word from weather-god James Spann who spoke from a little black cassette-corder like the one I had just found.
Awhile back, Radiohead held an online contest, asking fans and other ambitious artists to remix their song, "Nude," from the superb album <i>In Rainbows</i>. I forwarded the link to my good friend Todd, knowing that he could win it all—win it all!—if only he cared enough to spend the time with it.
"I hope you don't mind me drawing your attention to the following music video on the subject of student loan default."
Ah! And it looks like I have another reason to revisit Florida: <a href="http://www.rock-n-rollheaven.com">Rock 'n' Roll Heaven</a>.
I was the Mix-Tape Master of Deltona High School. Deltona, Florida, USA. Somehow, after all these years, I've even kept tapes from way back in the day. <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/062607letting/">You reading this, Kim?</a> I still have that tape you made for me, all covered in bubblegum wrappers and Band-Aid brand bandages and your sweet profanity. Tapes packed so tight and deep with angst and desperation that songs get chopped off at their bitter ends, are left to rot in some chocolate brown Memorex hell. All Siouxsie Sioux and Jesus and Mary Chain and Jane's Addiction.
Three years ago, the idea of a solid-state integrated amplifier that sold for only $1250 yet combined some of the best performance aspects of a <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/integratedamps/660">Naim Nait</A> and a <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/tubepoweramps/992dynaco">Dynaco Stereo 70</A> seemed likely to resonate with consumers and critics alike. And it did: Introduced in early 2005, the British-built <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/integratedamps/1105exposure">Exposure 2010S</A> was an unequivocal hit on both sides of the Atlantic, and remains in Class A of <I>Stereophile</I>'s "Recommended Components." Deservedly.
The subject comes up every now and then: Audio reviewers don't write nearly enough negative reviews. One old attention-seeker on Audio Asylum went so far as to characterize <I>Stereophile</I> and our would-be competitors as "happy face" magazines—a joke in which he seemed to take tremendous pride—simply because we hand out a lot of As and Bs. By that logic, assuming that a certain percentage of underachievers is inevitable in any population, our schools aren't handing out nearly enough Fs. (I have a suggestion for where they can begin.)