LATEST ADDITIONS

Part of the problem is that I'm almost always thinking about what I should, or could, be writing here on the blog. I'll be in the shower, thinking: "Man, I haven't written anything <i>good</i> lately. Haven't written anything that's inspired discussion. Maybe, today, I'll write about my father and how his alcoholism relates to speaker cables…."

The conventional wisdom in publishing is that magazines are dependent on scoops&mdash;that getting the news out to the readers first is of primary importance. Yes, being timely with what it has to say is important for any publication. But soon after I joined <I>Stereophile</I> in 1986, a series of negative experiences with review samples that were little better than prototypes led me to rethink the need for scoops. As a result, I decided to impose restrictions on what we chose to review; this would allow us to focus the magazine's review resources on products that were out of beta testing and were ready for prime time, and, most important, would be representative of what our readers could audition for themselves at specialty retailers, confident in the knowledge that what they heard would be what we had reviewed.

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Her name was E. and the gentle quaver in her soft voice gave me the impression that she was nervous, anxious, young. Something about it seemed sweet, seemed sincere. Which made me want to help her more. She was calling from England, and the connection was crystal clear. I could hear her perfectly, though she was so far away. She was doing research on the high end hi-fi industry.

My first record cleaning purchases: A Hunt EDA carbon fiber brush for dry-cleaning (footnote 1), a MoFi brush for wet-cleaning, a couple bottles of MoFi fluid (Super Deep Cleaner for the really nasty records, and Super Record Wash for the plain old dirty ones), 100 Polyline inner sleeves (because of all the different options these were the least expensive per sleeve, but, at some point, I'd like to try the MoFi rice paper sleeves), and 100 4-mil outer sleeves (because 4-mil seemed just thick enough, and because I liked the packaging).

Alon Wolf can be mesmerizing. When the founder of Magico gets going on one of his favorite subjects, loudspeaker design, the strength of his convictions, depth of technical knowledge, and sureness of response are enough to hush many a skeptic into silence.

You know how life is: It's just one damn thing after another. I spent some time attempting to re-imagine this blog and I dealt with a health issue. <A HREF="http://www.sadtrombone.com/">clickfor sound effect</A> Well, I'm better now and I have some fun things (I think) in store.