LATEST ADDITIONS

Talking to fellow audiophiles, I sometimes hear generalizations about power-amplifier design: "High-power amplifiers don't sound as good as low-power amplifiers." "Tube amps are more musical than solid-state amps." "Class-A circuit designs always sound better than class-AB." "Bridged amplifiers don't image precisely, throw deep soundstages, or have the transparency of non-bridged output stages." Etc.

Last week we picked on tone controls, so this week, we'll put the spotlight on the balance knob. Do you use it in your system? Is it at any setting other than dead center?

One of the great things about the DVD-Audio format is the sheer flexibility built into the standard: two-channel or multichannel (mixed for four, five, or six speakers), multiple resolutions, multiple encode/decode choices (MLP, Dolby Digital, DTS, PCM), and an assortment of special features, including video.

One would think the last thing the music industry needs right now is to further alienate its customers who are still buying discs. But that is just what the record labels are doing by secretly experimenting with technology that restricts how discs are used, says a new report.

The first half of the fiscal year has been generally kind to many Japanese electronics manufacturers, most of whom released financial reports at the end of October.

We all know that women generally have better hearing than men and enjoy music at least as much as men do, but women are conspicuously absent from every segment of the high-end audio scene. The vast majority of high-end companies are owned by men, and any head count of female designers, retailers, reviewers, or consumers will yield a pitifully small number. High-end audio is a man's, man's, man's world.

Reader Stephen M. Rose wants <I>Stereophile</I> readers to confess their audio sins. Do you ever use tone controls in your current system?