LATEST ADDITIONS

In the Fall of 1989, <I>Stereophile</I> magazine released its first recording, of Gary Woodward and Brooks Smith playing flute sonatas by Prokofiev and Reinecke, and a work by American composer Griffes that gave the LP its title: <I>Poem</I> (footnote 1). The <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//interviews/527/">full story</A> was published in the September 1989 issue (p.66). We wanted to offer our readers an LP of acoustic music made with the minimum of electronics and processing&mdash;the sounds of the instruments would be as true to reality as possible. The images of the instruments were also captured with a purist microphone technique so that, with even a halfway decent system, a true soundstage would be created between and behind the loudspeakers when the recording was played back.

When sociologists tell us America is a highly mobile society, they don't just mean we do lot of driving. What they mean is, we do a lot of moving. The good old three-generation family homestead, immortalized in nostalgia TV and literature, is a thing of the past. According to census information, almost 20% of America's population changes its address every year. Of course, it's usually a different 20% every year, but pulling up roots and moving---to a bigger house, a better neighborhood or a nicer city, not to mention a place where your employer decides to transfer you---is almost as commonplace across the US of A as marriage, divorce, and unbridled greed.

"Hoom! Hoom-hoom! <I>HOOM!</I>"

<I>"You'll wonder where the yellow went, when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent."</I>

It is always a matter of great interest when a difficult question, in this case the audibility of differences between amplifiers, is put to an empirical test. When the question is tested by such intelligent, knowledgeable, and unbiased investigators as <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//features/113/">John Atkinson and Will Hammond</A> (see the July issue of <I>Stereophile</I>, Vol.12 No.7, p.5, the interest is even greater. Unfortunately, when the test turns out to have been flawed by errors in design and in use of statistics, as was the case here, the disappointment is also even greater.

Why had a high-end hi-fi magazine felt the need to produce a classical <I>LP</I> when the thrust of real record companies in 1989 is almost exclusively toward CD and cassette? Why did the magazine's editors think they had a better chance than most experienced professional engineers in making a record with audiophile sound quality? Were they guilty of <I>hubris</I> in thinking that the many years between them spent practicing the profession of critic would qualify them as record producers?