Validating Newton's Second Law
Apparently, Newton, not those modifiers, was right all along. F=ma totally rules!
 
		Apparently, Newton, not those modifiers, was right all along. F=ma totally rules!
The Fraunhofer Institute is working on an active soundproof window that's "particularly effective at frequencies of 50–1000Hz." I want one now—but it'll be four years before they make it to market.
We'd say we told you <I>Sound Grammar</I> was a winner, but we were really just echoing what Fred Kaplan said. His essay on the record is worth reading again—or for the first time, if you didn't take our word for it the first time around.
Walking to the office on this sloppy Monday morning, through April's cold rain, with a mind full of dreams and promises of warmer, brighter things, I got the feeling that it might as well be last Friday all over again. What the hell?
After last week's question about money spent on recorded music each year, reader Joe Hartmann wants to know how much do you spend on live performances in a year?
Not that I had any idea what Sigur Ros' "Hoppipolla" was about (actually, I never know what any Sigur Ros song is about), but this video wouldn't have even made the top 20 possibilities.
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Four Tet has done something I would have thought impossible: produce an entertaining Morris dance video.
But he's still amazing, as this subdued (for him) performance of "Le Moribond" proves amply. Leave it to Brel to put this much life into a song about dying. Forget "Seasons of the Sun," this was the original and still the greatest.
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As well as being the 20th anniversary of FSI, 2007 also represents a change in its leadership. <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/fsi2006/032706fsi/">Marie-Christine Prin</A>, whose hard work, efficiency, and charm had built up FSI to its current success, has passed the reins to Michel Plante, an industry veteran with an impressive background in audio at the technical as well as the sales/marketing level. The transition in leadership appears to have been seamless, a fact that Michel credits largely to the work of Céline Roy, who was Marie-Christine Prin's second-in-command, and who has stayed on with FSI. Michel Plante has ambitious plans to expand the mandate of FSI, making it appeal more to the trade as well as consumers, and finding more ways to attract young people to the audiophile hobby. His rationale for including gaming in FSI is that young people with no current interest in audio may come to check out the latest in games, but in the process of attending FSI would be exposed to some high-quality audio as well, and come to appreciate what it has to offer. Listening to Michel Plante talk about his plans, it's impossible not to be impressed by his commitment and enthusiasm. He's pictured here with one of the lovely FSI hostesses, Virginie Fisette.
Readers with really long memories may recall the ESS Heil speakers, which had a tweeter whose working principle was described in ads as being like squeezing a cherry pit. Oskar Heil was undoubtedly a gifted inventor, and the Heil "Air Motion Transformer" principle is gathering new adherents. Elsewhere in this show report blog, I discuss the products from Adam Professional Audio, whose Accelerated Ribbon Technology is a variant of the Air Motion Transformer principle. Speakers from the Chinese company, Mark & Daniel, fall in the same category. They call their drivers "Directly Responding Emitter by Air Motion Structure" (DREAMS). The pair of Mark & Daniel Aragon Monitors (CN$5500), mounted on Aragon stands ($1900), which act as bass extenders. They sounded quite good, driven by the new Audio Oasis AMP-D1 amplifier (100Wpc, class-D, Made in Canada, CN$1495).