LATEST ADDITIONS

Amir Taheri has an interesting take on Grass' recent revelation of his Waffen SS past.

At two points in my life, I experienced cluster headaches that lasted for about six months. They're completely incapacitating&mdash;not only is the pain crippling, but you live your life <I>anticipating</I> that every change in your internal balance is the onset of your next session.

John And Rudy Dopyera's collection of one-of-a-kind musical instruments is for sale at Elderly Instruments. If you know who they are, you've already clicked the external link, so I'll tell everybody else that the trademark "Dobro" is a contraction of DOpyera BROthers and their resonating instruments changed the sound of American music&mdash;blues, Hawaiian, bluegrass all rely on that haunting, sliding sound.

Don't get the wrong idea. I <I>don't</I> watch trash TV. I am <I>not</I> interested in the doings of people who are famous merely for being famous. I was probably the last to realize that Paris Hilton was not the name of a French hotel. But the kitchen TV just happened be tuned to Channel 4 when I switched it on while I was preparing dinner. No, I do <I>not</I> watch NBC's <I>Extra</I>, but as I was reaching for the remote I was stopped in my tracks by what I saw. The show was doing a segment on the new L.A. home of Jessica Aguilera, or Christina Simpson, or . . . well, it doesn't matter. What does matter was the host's mention of all the cool stuff the bimbette had had installed in her new pied-&#224;-terre: "...and a Sonos audio system, of course."

I've had the pleasure of using The Direct Line Stage Line Stage (originally called the Director) from Ron Sutherland for the past few months. This active line-stage preamp (it has no phono section) is available from Acoustic Sounds for $3000.

<B>M. WARD: <I>Post-War</I></B><BR>
Merge MRG 280 (CD). 2006. M. Ward, Jim James, prods.; Mike Coykendall, prod., eng.; Adam Selzer, Mike Mogis, Nick Luca, engs. AAD? TT: 37:35<BR>
Performance ****&#189;<BR>
Sonics ***&#189;

Quietly tucked at the back of the main hall, Musical Fidelity had a lot of new stuff of great audiophile interest. First off is the new "audio Swiss Army Knife," as JA referred to it in his blog yesterday, the all-in-one, $9000 kW250. But among the other goodies on the Signal Path booth was the X-Package, consisting of the neat little X-RAYv8 24/192 upsampling CD player, the X-T100 60Wpc tube hybrid integrated amp, and the Triple-X power supply which powers both as well as an optional external DAC, tuner, etc. In their compact but non-resonant aluminum casings, this $3000 system was surprisingly potent.