LATEST ADDITIONS

Don't get me wrong, I heard some very good two-channel sound at CEDIA—Thiel and Wisdom Audio leap to mind—but arriving at the Edge Electronics/PBN Montana room at T.H.E. Show was a breath of fresh air. Why? The Denver Convention Center is a noisy place and even the "rooms" are merely shells set up within that vast space. The Denver Athletic Club is both solidly built and quiet.

I've been loving the soap opera epic of the <A HREF="http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/01/31/purported-pollock-paintings… Matter "Pollocks"</A>currently on display at the <A HREF="http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/09/02/did_pollock_paint_… Museum of Art</A>.

I grew up in Charlottesville, VA, where E.A. Poe briefly attended college without matriculating. I used to visit Poe's bedchamber, which has been preserved as a memorial,and gawp at artifacts that almost certainly had no connection to him. Somehow I had the impression that we Charlottesvillians appreciated his gothic world view more than other folks.

A study delves the link between political views and cognitive style.

More on Hattogate. A <I>lot</I> more.

<A href="http://www.stereophile.com/audiophilesocieties/">Audio clubs</a> have been doing well the last few years, with new ones appearing every so often. Would you attend an audio club get-together if there were one nearby? Why or why not?

There's always a certain amount of jockeying for position at the very top of the High End. Every few months, a new star burns brightly, getting all the attention. While the constant turnover at the cutting edge helps to define the state of the art, audiophiles should keep their eyes on the longer term. It's a company's track record&mdash;examined over a period of years&mdash;which defines its position in the market and the credibility of its products.

Some readers may feel that it is pushing poetic license beyond reasonable limits to call the Krell KSA-50 a "new-wave" amplifier. It has, after all, been around for several years. The Krell KSA-50 is new-wave enough, however, to be an incredibly stiff class-A design, rather than a pseudo–class-A circuit, and its 50 watts per channel are supported by enough of a power supply to drive an arc welder. You get about 70 watts of RMS power with 8 ohms, 150 watts with 4 ohms, and sufficient watts into 2 ohms to threaten my load resistors. There is almost enough power to drive a pair of Apogee Scintillas at their ohm setting—though I'd prefer at least the Krell KSA-100.

If there's a phrase that increasingly gets my dander up, it's "mid-fi." I'm even starting to lose patience with the term "High End."

<A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/cedia2006/091906soundfield/">Once again</A>, I was treated to a demonstration of Eminent Technology's $12,900 TRW-17 rotary woofer and once again I was baffled by its seeming lack of practicality, while being amazed at its creative approach to producing the lowest notes.