The benefits of more choice or an audiophile disaster? It seems that Sony/Philips' SACD and DVD-Audio are on a collision course in their race for the title of the next high-end audio format. If they decide to duke it out, we'll get to compare the two formats ourselves, but is this good or bad for the audiophile?
Imagine that you are a Canadian with a mid-sized accounting business. You have tons of data to keep track of, and have found the recordable CD to be an excellent form of storage: convenient, reliable, and cheap---until New Year's Day, when the cost of blank discs suddenly doubled. You may not have the slightest interest in music, but one of your basic costs of doing business has just skyrocketed because someone, somewhere, has allegedly made an illegal copy of a commercial music CD.
It is with regret that I announce that Wes Phillips has resigned from <I>Stereophile</I> in order to take a position, beginning January 1, 1999, with PR company J.B. Stanton Communications, Inc. Wes and his wife, Joan, will be relocating to Connecticut. I wonder how Wes's unreconstructed Virginia ancestors will take to his becoming a Yankee!
How can a reviewer possibly put a value on a loudspeaker as costly as the Wilson Audio Specialties X-1/Grand SLAMM? When he reviewed Wilson's WATT 3/Puppy 2 system ($12,900-$16,000/pair, depending on finish) a few years back (footnote 1), John Atkinson said that it was "one of the more expensive loudspeakers around." The Grand SLAMM costs almost five times as much!
<B>EMMYLOU HARRIS: <I>Spyboy</I></B><BR> Eminent EM-25001-2 (CD). 1998. Emmylou Harris, prod.; Buddy Miller, prod., eng.; Dean Norman, Doug Dawson, engs. AAD? TT: 67:07<BR> Performance <B>****?</B><BR> Sonics <B>****?</B>
The shock news on November 18, 1998---that the highly regarded British speaker brand Mordaunt-Short was to be closed down (see <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10316/">previous story</A>)---seems to have achieved the desired result. On December 30, Audio Partnership plc announced it was acquiring the Mordaunt-Short brand from TGI plc (Tannoy Goodmans International).
As this is filed, there are only a couple of days until the end of the year, but still plenty of time to get these predictions under the interconnect. You can find part one <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10054/">here</A>, and part two <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10064/">here</A>.
We are saddened to learn of the passing, on December 13, of audio writer Ann Turner. Ann, who was diagnosed earlier in the year as suffering from clear cell carcinoma, was a stalwart of high-end audio magazine <I>The Abso!ute Sound</I>---Editor Harry Pearson tells me he used to refer to her as "the Aquarian War God," a phrase she liked. She was also the inspiration and the driving force behind that publication's web site, <A HREF="http://www.theabsolutesound.com"><I>The Abso!ute Sound</I></A>.
Our question about <I>Stereophile</I>'s equipment reviews two weeks back generated hundreds of responses. Let's dig a little deeper: Other than equipment and music reviews, what do you find most useful or enjoyable in the magazine?