LATEST ADDITIONS

Marque sus calendarios, vinyl lovers. While I was at Iris Records on Saturday, I learned of the upcoming Brooklyn Record Riot (!!).

<B>JENNY SCHEINMAN: <I>Jenny Scheinman</I></B><BR>
Koch KOC-AD-4483 (CD). 2008. Jenny Scheinman, Tony Scherr, prods.; Scherr, eng. AAD? TT: 53:26<BR>
Performance ****<BR>
Sonics ****

I ran into Ashley over the weekend. She had the baby with her. It had been some time since last I saw them&#151about a year, in fact. It was good to see them.

I've been musing much of late on what enables some hi-fi components to sound natural while others always seem to add an edge of artificiality to their sound. This dichotomy was examined in last month's "<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/109">As We See It</A>," where I asked a representative group of <I>Stereophile</I> writers to discuss the fact that many high-end components regarded as being neutral in their sonic character, with apparently little wrong in their measured performance, can actually sound quite unmusical. This would seem to suggest that the <I>nature</I> of what a component does wrong is of greater importance than the <I>level</I> of what it does wrong: 1% of one kind of distortion can be innocuous, even musically appropriate, whereas 0.01% of a different kind of distortion can be musical anathema.

Psst! Got a minute? I'd like to bend your ears a bit and tell you about a component that'll lift you from the doldrums of audio angst and transport you to the relaxing calm induced through the enjoyment of music. That's what it's done for me, and I'm so excited about it I can't wait to tell you.

Henry Fiol lit up the stage during a tribute to the late sonero, Hector Casanova, held at New York's <a href="http://www.lqny.com/lq/html/index.htm">LQ</a&gt; on November 18, 2007.

Awarded Best Cover Art by <i>Latin New York</i> in 1976.