LATEST ADDITIONS

The Consumer Electronics Association (<A HREF="http://www.ce.org">CEA</A&gt;) has taken major steps to ensure that the 2008 edition of its International Consumer Electronics Show, to take place in Las Vegas, Nevada, January 7&ndash;10, will provide a model for sustainable and energy-efficient practices. According to CEA president and CEO Gary Shapiro, the world's largest international trade show for consumer technologies is "the first tradeshow of our size to reduce our carbon footprint. We will do so by reducing energy consumption, increasing our recycling efforts, improving efficiency where possible, and making strides toward offsetting our unavoidable emissions. . . . [We intend to give] this industry an opportunity to be a positive force for change and integral to environmental solutions that will ensure future generations inherit a healthy planet."

Hitting newsstands this past weekend, the <I>2008 Stereophile Buyer's Guide</I> is bursting with technical specifications for more than 5000 audio components. Loudspeakers, amplifiers, CD players, turntables&mdash;every component category is listed in full, and we worked extra hard this past summer to make sure that the products of every manufacturer were included in its 228 pages.

According to an article posted by <I>The Financial Times</I> November 20, Kim Bailey, the director general of the UK trade group Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) is urging the music industry to drop digital rights management (DRM), saying that incompatible proprietary technologies, rather than preventing unlicensed copying, discourage sales of electronic files, "stifling growth and working against the consumer interest."

Well, ladies and gents, it's been a long year. As I write this, on an unusually humid and hazy October morning, I'm still feeling the lingering effects of my beloved Mets' sudden and tragic collapse from the top of the National League East. I sat there, at Flushing Meadows' Shea Stadium, covered in peanut shells and with tears in my hazel eyes as the scoreboard went cruelly blank and Coldplay's "The Scientist" wept over the stadium loudspeakers. It was brutal.

"Why can't I just buy . . . a <I>bicycle</I>?"

How many hi-fi professionals can say that they've designed at least one of every part of a complete recording system, from microphones to tape recorders to vinyl-disc-cutting electronics? Probably only Tim de Paravicini (footnote 1). Best known to audiophiles for his extraordinarily durable EAR valve amplifiers, Tim is also an electronics guru to the professional recording world. His global reputation today is based on more than four decades of making things better, building equipment that stands the test of time.

I saw Maria Schneider’s Jazz Orchestra at the Jazz Standard last night, for at least the 12th time in as many years, and they—both she and the band—get more and more dazzling with each visit. As I noted a couple months back, with the release of her latest <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/fredkaplan/082107jazz/">CD</A&gt;, <I>Sky Blue</I> (available only from ArtistShare.com or MariaSchneider.com), Schneider’s compositions have grown both denser and airier—rich harmonies stacked on brisk, flowing melodies, swaying to rhythms at once buoyant, complex, and danceable. Her ballads are sweet and lovely without oozing into sentimentality. Her upbeat numbers are snappy without drifting into banality. In recent years, she’s been exploring Latin rhythms and styles—in Saturday night’s early set, she played compositions inspired by Brazil, Spain, and Peru, and it seemed absolutely authentic. Her band—17 members, many of whom have played with her for over 15 years—is drum-tight, and, perhaps because of this, the soloists soar more lyrically to more adventurous heights.