LATEST ADDITIONS

I don't have to tell you that LP covers are cool. Right? You're already very much aware of all the bold colors and furious fonts and completely outrageous concepts. Photo editors back in the day must have had mad freedom. <i>Alright, cats, here's the plan: We're going to start with a gorilla. He's dressed in a tux. Give the gorilla a gigantic banana. But it's not really a banana. The gorilla will peel the banana to reveal an extremely voluptuous bartender. In one hand, she'll have a tray of martinis, while, with her other hand, she'll be lighting the gorilla's giant cigar. Dig?</i>

The oppressive heat shook hands with the violent rain, and I couldn't summon the drive to do much of anything at all. Rather than wilt, I decided to visit Tunes and dirty my fingertips with some old vinyl. Outside, the day danced furiously back and forth, the rain so hard at times that drops fell from cracks in the ceiling to land among the album stacks. I waited it out.

Ah, Miss Julie.

Reality check number one. Tired of reading about the latest and greatest $65,000 loudspeakers? Or even the current hot ticket at $2500? Such loudspeakers promise to bring you the audio truth, or the golly-gee-whiz, honest-to-gosh, absolutely positively real sound. And some of them <I>do</I> seem to come awfully close, though truth be told, we're still a long way from replicating reality&#151;and will <I>never</I> do it with just two channels.

After using <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/digitalprocessors/1107bc">Bel Canto's e.One DAC3</A> with the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/mediaservers/108mac">McIntosh Laboratory MS750</A> music server, I was so impressed that I wanted to hear Bel Canto's CD transports as well. But willing as Bel Canto president and CEO John Stronczer was to supply me with a CD-2, he suggested I audition the S300iu ($2195, footnote 1).

The Sony Radio Cassette-Corder CFM-10 is an unassuming little piece of electronics. I remember back in 1995, while the devastating Hurricane Opal tore across the state of Alabama, my family crouched on the laundry room floor with a cheap green lantern giving us light. My little sister and I were wrapped up in oversized, itchy wool blankets, laughing and joking, while Opal wreaked havoc and destroyed lives. We listened to the wind howling against the house, huge tree branches cracking and crashing to the ground, as we awaited word from weather-god James Spann who spoke from a little black cassette-corder like the one I had just found.

Awhile back, Radiohead held an online contest, asking fans and other ambitious artists to remix their song, "Nude," from the superb album <i>In Rainbows</i>. I forwarded the link to my good friend Todd, knowing that he could win it all&#151win it all!&#151if only he cared enough to spend the time with it.