LATEST ADDITIONS

The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, which last June became one of the first orchestras in the US to launch <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/101005milwaukee">its own e-label</A>, has now become the first orchestra to offer <A HREF="http://www.milwaukeesymphony.org/symphonystore/othermerchandise.asp">do… binaural recordings</A>. The binaural process, whose benefits are most apparent to those who listen through headphones, is based on the concept that the best way to reproduce the concert experience is to make sure that the recorded sounds that go into the listener's ears are as close as possible to what would be heard during an actual concert.

It's funny how things sometimes have to hit you in the head before you actually notice them. When Jon Iverson and I were cruising CES 2007 in January, we were stopped in our tracks by <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/ces2007/107soolooscdslot/">Sooloos</A>'s media server technology. Sooloos <I>got</I> the whole no-compromise audiophile approach, but what really knocked us out was how thoroughly it utilized the metadata from AMG (All Media Guide): Feed the the Sooloos server a disc and it would access AMG's database and collect artist name, album title, track names, cover art, genre, <I>mood</I>, side-man information, and even "associated concepts."

Carson City, NV loudspeaker company Wisdom Audio has been aggressively reorganizing itself lately. The first part of the program was re-uniting founder Tom Bohlender with erstwhile partner David Graebner to refine and perfect the magnetic planar speaker technology used by Wisdom's hybrid planar/dynamic loudspeakers. Then, in October 2006, the company appointed industry veteran Mark Glazier <A HREF="http://stereophile.com/news/100906glazier/">president</A&gt;. On February 8, Glazier announced that Jon Herron would join the company as vice president of sales.

If reviewers can be believed, the diminutive, $995/pair Epos ES11 loudspeaker has been a phenomenal success worldwide since its 1990 introduction. <I>Stereophile</I> added its voice to this hallelujah chorus in Vol.14 No.7, when the '11 kicked butt in a blind-listening-panel evaluation of inexpensive small speakers. While the ES11 did plenty of things extremely well, it was inevitable that it was limited in terms of ultimate sound-pressure levels (spls), deep-bass extension, and dynamic persuasiveness. While the ES11 was an unqualified success given its modest size and price, one couldn't help but wonder what Epos might be capable of in a larger model. (While a larger Epos model already existed in the $1695/pair <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/566">ES14</A&gt;, it predated the technology of the ES11 by four years.)

As far as I can tell, Santa Fe&ndash;based speaker engineer <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/694">John Bau</A> had designed but four commercial loudspeakers before the TC-60 was launched at the 1994 Winter CES: in order of appearance, they were the Spica SC50i (1980), the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/446">TC-50</A&gt; (1983), the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/693">Angelus</A&gt; (1987), and the SC-30 (1989). None were expensive, and all garnered much praise, both in <I>Stereophile</I>'s pages and elsewhere.

They're all in your head and they "reverberate in an electrical limbo state that almost, but not quite, comes unglued." That explains so much.

At least, according to Bagheera, is <I>down</I>. Preferably from a height.