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Last week's Soapbox inspired this week's question: Which do you prefer

A quarter-million dollars' worth of recording and duplicating equipment and hundreds of thousands of counterfeit compact discs and cassette tapes were just part of the booty seized by New York's Suffolk County police in what has been called the "biggest bust of bootleg music in US history." Twelve people were arrested in raids during the first week of September at warehouses in Manhattan, Queens, and Long Island.

Want to start an audio newsgroup fire-fight? Just put the three letters "ABX" in the subject line of your post, sit back, and watch the pros take over. Read where it all started 15 years ago in "<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//features/141/">The Highs & Lows of Double-Blind Testing</A>," which John Atkinson has compiled from the years 1985 and 1986, when an argumentative thread ran through <I>Stereophile</I>'s pages discussing the benefits (or lack of) of double-blind testing methods in audio component reviewing&mdash;all triggered by J. Gordon Holt's <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//asweseeit/121/">review of the ABX Comparator</A>.

When <A HREF="http://www.sony.com">Sony</A&gt; introduced the first Super Audio CD (SACD) player, the SCD-1 (see <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10445/">previous report</A> and Jonathan Scull's forthcoming review in the November 1999 <I>Stereophile</I>), audiophiles who heard it were impressed with its performance, but wondered if its $5000 price tag would keep it out of the market for a while. Last week, Sony announced their second SACD player, the SCD-777ES, to appear in October at the slightly more wallet-friendly price of $3500.

The year was 1956, and Elvis had just finshed his set on the December 15 <I>Louisiana Hayride</I> radio show. Elvis was one of a half-dozen acts that were broadcast that night on KWKH, the radio station that originated <I>Hayride</I>. After his encore, Elvis left the stage and the crowd went wild&mdash;so wild that they would not stop screaming for more of the soon-to-be king of rock'n'roll. Because several acts on the bill had not yet performed, the show's announcer, Horace Logan, went to the microphone in an attempt to quiet the audience, and ended up making a little music history.

My father could not resist buying electronic and photographic gear. As soon as he heard about a new Polaroid camera, or a new weather radio, tape recorder, or color television, he'd go shopping. He'd be even more eager to buy an updated version of what he already had, particularly if this meant there was a story to tell. He'd buy one for himself, and sometimes he'd give me and my three brothers one of our own for a birthday or Christmas gift. (I often thought he took more pleasure from giving to us than he did from getting his own.)

I've heard my share of Krells, Levinsons, Rowlands, and the like in other people's systems&mdash;expensive solid-state amplifiers are not my usual beat. With the exception of an inexpensive Adcom a few years back, for more than a decade I've owned and reviewed only tube amps. In fact, until the $7500 Ayre Acoustics V-1 showed up, I'd not had one in my system. Similarly, I'd had only tube <I>pre</I>amps until I reviewed the Ayre K-3, which so impressed me that I asked to hear the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//amplificationreviews/609/">more expensive K-1</A>&mdash;and ended up buying it.