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Everyone loves a bargain. Everyone loves finding an undiscovered gem. But for audiophiles on a budget, finding good, reasonably priced cables isn't a luxury but a necessity. In a $1000 or $2500 system, there simply isn't money for $500 interconnects or $1000 speaker cables. Even a $5000 system&#151;which most of my well-educated, music-loving, affluent friends view as pretty extravagant, by the way&#151;can't accommodate premium cables like the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/cables/800nirvana">Nirvana</A&gt;, <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/cables/198synergistic">Synergistic Research</A>, or <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/cables/1101nordost">Nordost</A&gt; models that we reviewers rave about as "critical to getting the most out of your system."

<i>The lovely, fashionable, and hell-raising Coral, dressed to kill and with all of today's hottest accessories.</i>

I can see the scene now, Gary, the mighty Max, the Big Man, all standing around the studio, looking at their feet, afraid to tell Bruce that one of his new songs, the otherwise very charming, “Outlaw Pete,” has a melody very similiar to the one found in KISS’ “I Was Made For Lovin’ You Baby,” their successful quasi-disco single off their otherwise weak 1979 stylistic stumble, <I>Dynasty</I>.

<B>BOBBY KING &amp; TERRY EVANS: <I>Rhythm, Blues, Soul &amp; Grooves</I></B><BR>
Rounder 2101 (LP), CD 2101 (CD). Brian Levi, eng.; Bobby King, Terry Evans, prods. AAA/AAD. TT: 49:53

In my rather jaded <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/the_1986_winter_ces/">report from the 1986 Winter CES</A> (Vol.9 No.2), I remarked that there was nothing really new in the field of high-end audio. Well, I was wrong. I overlooked the Acoustic Sciences Corporation Tube Traps, a patented new acoustic device designed by Arthur Noxon (president of ASC). The Traps represent the first practical and effective solution to a perennial audiophile problem: standing waves in the listening room.

John DeVore designs loudspeakers and plays a nasty air guitar.

Among the many compelling jazz pianists still around, Ran Blake may be the oddest (and the most unjustly, though understandably, obscure). He can’t swing for more than a few bars; he tends to change keys at random intervals; for this reason, he usually plays solo, figuring that few musicians have the patience for his quirks (though some of his best albums—<I>The Short Life of Barbara Monk</I>, <I>Suffield Gothic</I>, <I>That Certain Feeling</I>, and <I>Masters from Different Worlds</I>—were collaborative efforts, involving such established artists as Steve Lacy, Clifford Jordan, and Houston Person). Yet there’s magic in Blake’s music; his chords, dissonant but heartfelt, seem to waft out of a dream. Now in his 70s, a longtime teacher at the New England Conservatory, Blake has called himself a filmmaker who doesn’t know how to hold a camera, and his albums all have a cinematic flavor. (Many years ago, he recorded the soundtrack of Hitchcock’s <I>Vertigo</I> and told me afterward that he could see scenes of the film in his head while he was playing.) Even when not playing movie themes, his songs possess a narrative impulse; he’s a very instinctive pianist (by his own admission, he’s not a strong sight-reader), and he seems to have some weird synaptic nerve that translates images in his brain to chords and intervals in his fingers.