LATEST ADDITIONS

I was listening to Radiohead’s new album, <I>In Rainbows</I>. It’s really as great as all the rock critics say. More than that (from this blog’s angle), it’s as harmonically and rhythmically sophisticated as just about any work of modern jazz. (I’m not saying it’s <I>like</I> jazz; rather, that on any musical level, the purest jazz purist has no grounds for looking down on it.) The album sent me to my music closet to take another listen to Brad Mehldau’s cover of Radiohead’s “Knives Out,” from his trio’s 2005 CD on the Nonesuch label, <I>Day Is Done</I>. I listened through all 10 tracks—which include, besides two Mehldau compositions, Lennon & McCartney’s “Martha My Dear” and “She’s Leaving Home,” Burt Bacharach’s “Alfie,” Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” and the title tune by Nick Drake.

Is it how much you spend or how you spend it? Is it how you organize your priorities when it comes to audio? Is it only a state of mind? Define the word "audiophile."

I think it was the only album my parents owned on both cassette and vinyl. So they could listen at home, and in the car. I remember looking at it and thinking I don't know what. This young black man in a gleaming white suit with a look on his face that says what. Looking all confident and comfortable and strange.

Blues movies, movies about the blues, continue to be a treacherous swamp for filmmakers; For some bizarre reason, they just can’t get it right.

In his July 2003 "The Fifth Element" column, John Marks enthusiastically wrote about the Benchmark Media Systems DAC1 D/A processor and headphone amplifier. Comparing its sound playing CDs with that of a three-times-more-expensive Marantz SA-14 SACD player, he concluded that the DAC 1's "Red Book" performance was at least as good as that of the Marantz, being "slightly more articulate in the musical line, and slightly more detailed in spatial nuances, particularly the localization of individual images in space, and in soundstage depth."

"What's the problem? It's warm and out of the way&mdash;I could do this for hours!"

On my travel day <I>to</I> Vegas, I awoke at 3am and flew six hours to the desert city. When I checked into my hotel, I stripped off my outerwear and napped.

For many years one of my most beloved guilty pleasures has been reading George MacDonald Frasier's books. Not just the Flashman Papers, which I have found delightful and from which I have learned a lot of 19<SUP>th</SUP> century history, but also his McAusland novels, his <I>Mr. American</I>,his spirited adventure novel <I>Candlemass Road</I> (which, at a taut 181 pages, is one of the finest examples of economical action writing ever), and his masterful history of the Scottish boarder wars, <I>The Steel Bonnets</I>.

A few days ago, <I>Stereophile</I> reader Bill Taylor wrote, "I was just strolling down memory lane and took a look at the Adcom website...they just merged with Emerson."

The Ohm Walsh 5 displaces the Ohm F at the top of the Ohm line, and the current Walsh 5 production run represents a "limited edition" of 500 pairs worldwide. There's even a certificate of authenticity&mdash;hand-signed by Ohm Acoustics President John Strohbeen&mdash;packed with the speakers that makes it all official. I think that this is more than a clever marketing gesture and clearly demonstrates Ohm Acoustics' pride in their new flagship loudspeaker.