LATEST ADDITIONS

"My car is supercharged, not turbocharged, so you see there's no throttle lag," explained Yves-Bernard André as he reversed at what seemed like 80mph up a narrow cobbled Paris street. "D'accord," I mumbled, afraid to loosen the white-knuckled grip I had on the passenger grab handles. Yves-Bernard's car may have been pointing the right way down the one-way street, but it was not actually traveling in that direction. Okay, so it was 2am and the good residents of the Dix-septième Arrondissement were busy stacking Zs (en français, "emplier les ronflements"). But I still didn't think we would've been able to explain the logic of the situation to the gendarmes (les flics, en français).

What makes someone a good hi-fi reviewer? A fine critical sensibility? A good technical background? Ears? Eyes? Nose? Throat? So many different people are reviewing audio gear these days that it's downright impossible to characterize a good reviewer. But I <I>do</I> know that Beavis and Butt-head would make <I>killer</I> hi-fi reviewers!

Lee de Forest filed for a US patent on his "Audion"&mdash;the first triode&mdash;on October 25, 1906, but never could explain why it worked (footnote 1). It was up to Armstrong and Langmuir, in their pioneering work, to place the hard-vacuum triode on firm scientific ground. When the US entered World War I in April 1917, the Army had to rely on French tubes. Six months later, Western Electric was mass-producing the VT-1 receiving tube and the VT-2 transmitting tube. However, it was only in the decade following World War I, as designers became conversant with the triode amplifier, that many of the crucial elements of tube amplification were nailed down. Technical issues such as coupling two gain stages and selection of optimal coupling impedance were already resolved by the mid-1920s. The triode ruled supreme until the tetrode came along in 1926, followed in 1929 by the pentode from Philips's research laboratories in Holland.

Anyone who's ever looked for it knows how rare audio-friendly living space is. Perhaps someday an enterprising developer will build Audiophile Acres---a whole <I>subdivision</I> of audio houses or soundproofed condos that'll meet these needs---then stand by while hordes of long-suffering audiophiles stampede the sales office, frantically waving down-payments in their sweaty hands.

Our long-awaited laser-audio disc player (usually called the CD, for "Compact Disc") finally arrived, along with a real bonanza of software: two discs&mdash;a Polygram classical sampler of material from Decca, Deutsche Grammophon and Philips, and a Japanese CBS recording of Bruckner's 4th Symphony, with Kubelik.

"Boy, that's flat!" I whistled. I was looking at a quasi-anechoic TDS response Avalon Acoustics' Charles Hansen had produced for his latest brainchild, the two-way Eclipse loudspeaker that he was setting up in my listening room.

What did you on your wedding night? I know what I did. All three times. But Casey McKee? He spent his wedding night at the end of October installing the new Lingo power supply on his Linn LP12. I know. I was there.