LATEST ADDITIONS

It was a dark and stormy night. A biting, cold wind cut through Sam's skimpy jacket; ice crystals clung tenaciously to his bushy moustache. As he approached his front door, visions of a toasty-warm, Krell-heated listening room softened the chill. He could feel the glow already; his Krell amp had been on all day, awaiting his return.

When I <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/musicintheround/854">started out</A> on my multichannel mission in 2000, it was with an all-digital <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/201">Meridian system</A> that relied on lossy, compressed sources like the original Dolby Digital and DTS formats, or on synthesized surround based on Dolby Pro-Logic or Meridian's own TriField. With the appearance of first SACD and DVD-Audio and then Blu-ray, discrete lossless multichannel recordings became available, but there was no way to output those signals in digital form for interconnection to other components for playback or further manipulation. Most audiophiles, me included, already had analog preamps and power amps. It was only with the appearance of HDMI and the accompanying HDCP content protection that we could output those digital signals, and over a single cable to boot. Today, there are A/V receivers, some costing less than $500, and more than a handful of audiophile-oriented preamp-processors, that can accept such lossless high-resolution multichannel content as PCM, DSD, Dolby TruHD, and dtsHD Master Audio.

<B>Backstory in Blue: Ellington at Newport '56</B><BR>
by John Fass Morton, foreword by Jonathan Yardley. Rutgers University Press, 2008. Hardcover, 336 pages, 107 B&amp;W photos. $34.95.

Returnal (Editions Mego EMEGO 104), the fourth full-length release from Oneohtrix Point Never, explodes into the listening room (or out from the speakers or out from the headphones) with real violence and penetrating force. We are thrust into a heavy storm, a maelstrom; we find ourselves standing beneath an ocean of falling glass, falling sky, falling electronic haze. If instruments could scream, their screams might sound like this, like the opening few moments of Returnal, moments that don’t seem like an opening at all, but someplace else, some other time that escaped us, that started without us, before we were ready. I don’t mean scream in the way that guitars and saxophones and other instruments can and do scream. I mean that if instruments could be dealt such pain that they were brought to life, given sentience, to wail with wonderful suffering, it might sound like this, like the opening few moments of “Nil Admirari.”

Looking back at the 2010 CEDIA Exposition, I was struck by a couple of new products which, I hope, presage a rethinking of modern electronics design. Today, the streaming of program content can be accomplished by TVs, by Blu-ray players, by dedicated servers and, for all I know, someone will put that capability into a speaker system. The result is that, unless one chooses very carefully, one will be buying the same technology redundantly. By contrast, high-end companies have striven to separate their dedicated analog/stereo products from their digital/multichannel products, forcing the very picky among us into a kludgy home-theater-bypass. Again, we end up buying more boxes and interconnections than should be necessary.

Back in Atlanta's World Congress Center for the second year it is hot (around 90&#176;F) and humid outside but it is cool at the 2010 CEDIA Exposition. On the very first full day, I found a slew of interesting new loudspeakers and that's despite having seen less than a third of the Show floor. Undoubtedly more will be discovered but it is great to say that all of the most intriguing new ones are relatively inexpensive.

<a href="http://www.stianwesterhus.com/">Stian Westerhus</a> plays guitar in a band called Puma. Having enjoyed Puma’s latest album, <i><a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/puma_half_nelson_courtship/">… Nelson Courtship</a></i>, a powerful assault on the senses, I was anxious to hear Westerhus’s solo work. I expected something brutal&#151even something frightening, something perhaps verging on the unlistenable&#151but Westerhus’s second solo LP, <i>Pitch Black Star Spangled</i> (<a href="http://www.runegrammofon.com/">Rune Grammofon</a> RCD 2099/RLP 3099), is something else, something more.