Vivid Audio Introduces Giya Cu Loudspeakers
KEF Debuts New Finishes for Blade One Meta and Blade Two Meta
Sennheiser Drops HDB 630 Wireless Headphones
Sponsored: Radiant Acoustics Clarity 6.2 | Technology Introduction
PSB BP7 Subwoofer Unveiled
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Sponsored: Pulsar 121
Sonus faber Announces Amati Supreme Speaker
Sponsored: Symphonia
CH Precision and Audiovector with TechDAS at High End Munich 2025
Sponsored: Symphonia Colors

LATEST ADDITIONS

A Bad Idea That Would Make a Worse Law

As the May issue was being put to bed, the Internet was all aflutter over a proposal by digital strategy consultant Jim Griffin to have Internet Service Providers (ISPs) levy a $5 surcharge—a "network licensing model"—on all broadband users. Under this model, Griffin proposes that ISPs collect the fee, which would then be paid into a pool to "compensate music-copyright holders." Griffin says that consumers who do not download digital music files would not be forced to pay the surcharge, but that he anticipates "70–80% would pay" for all the content they could download.

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Listening is Love

Similarly, hi-end audio is a selfless act. We are workers for the world of music and its performers. The thousands of dollars that audiophiles spend on monstrous loudspeakers and thick, slick cables are not shameless self-indulgences, but expressions of grand devotion to the recreation of an expression, an emotion, a feeling! To truly take someone's words to heart. To find yourself in someone else's soundstage. To give yourself away and believe in somebody else's dreams instead of your own.

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Westlake BBSM-6F loudspeaker

I've been musing much of late on what enables some hi-fi components to sound natural while others always seem to add an edge of artificiality to their sound. This dichotomy was examined in last month's "<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/109">As We See It</A>," where I asked a representative group of <I>Stereophile</I> writers to discuss the fact that many high-end components regarded as being neutral in their sonic character, with apparently little wrong in their measured performance, can actually sound quite unmusical. This would seem to suggest that the <I>nature</I> of what a component does wrong is of greater importance than the <I>level</I> of what it does wrong: 1% of one kind of distortion can be innocuous, even musically appropriate, whereas 0.01% of a different kind of distortion can be musical anathema.

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