LATEST ADDITIONS

I was having breakfast in my hotel room on December 13, 2008, finally getting down to preparing the presentation I was to give at the Los Angeles and Orange County Audio Society scant hours later (footnote 1). I procrastinated a little more by checking my e-mail one more time. The message from Ivor Humphreys, once my deputy editor at the UK's <I>Hi-Fi News &amp; Record Review</I> magazine (now just plain <I>Hi-Fi News</I>), and for many years technical editor at <I>Gramophone</I> magazine, was typically terse: "John Crabbe has died. He had a fall on the wintry ice a few days ago and broke an arm. He died at home yesterday. He was 79."

You've seen the ads from YG Acoustics: "The best loudspeaker on Earth. Period." It sounds arrogant. But come on&#151;high-end audio has never been a field of shrinking violets. When <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/1101ivor">Ivor Tiefenbrun</A> of Linn announced that the turntable, not the cartridge or loudspeakers, dictated the sound quality of an audio system, that was a man convinced that he was right and taking on the world. And was Krell's <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/1203dagostino">Dan D'Agostino</A> any less arrogant when, in 1980, he introduced the KSA-100 power amplifier? In a world where small size and high wattage were the norms, didn't it take a pair of big brass 'uns to bring out a honkin' huge slab of metal that put out only 100Wpc?

As an audiophile, one of my core beliefs has always been that, once they have heard better sounding music, everybody would want it. That's how it worked with me: My friend Bill sat me down in front of his Quad '57s and cued David Bowie's <I>Heroes</I> on the turntable and once I heard all of those new sounds coming out of my beloved old LP, I was a changed man.

When my LP collection grew larger than space allowed for them on the couch, I started stacking records up against my short stools. A stack of a dozen or so LPs soon became a stack of three or four dozen LPs; soon became impossible to move and stretched from the left side of one stool all the way to the right side of the opposite stool. I had the Pulaski Skyway of vinyl LPs arcing through my small apartment.

I had made room for LPs on my tall bookshelf, carefully placing vinyl records along the cheap chipboard until the shelf bowed in the center and threatened to collapse. I didn't like this very much at all. I spent days away from home fearing that the shelf would give way. I'd come home from a long day in the office to find The Byrds and Henry Fiol, Herbie Hancock and Sam Beam, all in a jumbled mess of vinyl and plastic and wood and carpet. Yet, more LPs would soon arrive.

The LP rack now stands in place of the small bookshelf. Books: Who needs them?

My new Rega P3-24 sits atop a Polycrystal equipment rack given to me by Jonathan Scull. Radiohead's <i>Kid A</i> never sounded so good.