LATEST ADDITIONS

<i>Me, listening to old MPS songs with the V-MODA Crossfade LP headphones and the <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/the_hifiman_hm-801_portable_m…; portable music player. Photo by intrepid Ariel Bitran.</i>

Belle and Sebastian’s new album, <i>Write About Love</i>, is due in stores on October 12. I spied an advance copy in the office of our music editor, Robert Baird. He’s hogging it up for himself, though. Something about having to “write a review.” Whatever. Fortunately, from now until the 12th, NPR will be <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130212728">streami… the entire album</a>, so we can get a cheap fix until we buy the real thing.

It's no surprise that high-end audio dealers are getting thinner on the ground. Even so, how often do you visit a high-end audio dealer?

It was a dark and stormy night. A biting, cold wind cut through Sam's skimpy jacket; ice crystals clung tenaciously to his bushy moustache. As he approached his front door, visions of a toasty-warm, Krell-heated listening room softened the chill. He could feel the glow already; his Krell amp had been on all day, awaiting his return.

When I <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/musicintheround/854">started out</A> on my multichannel mission in 2000, it was with an all-digital <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/201">Meridian system</A> that relied on lossy, compressed sources like the original Dolby Digital and DTS formats, or on synthesized surround based on Dolby Pro-Logic or Meridian's own TriField. With the appearance of first SACD and DVD-Audio and then Blu-ray, discrete lossless multichannel recordings became available, but there was no way to output those signals in digital form for interconnection to other components for playback or further manipulation. Most audiophiles, me included, already had analog preamps and power amps. It was only with the appearance of HDMI and the accompanying HDCP content protection that we could output those digital signals, and over a single cable to boot. Today, there are A/V receivers, some costing less than $500, and more than a handful of audiophile-oriented preamp-processors, that can accept such lossless high-resolution multichannel content as PCM, DSD, Dolby TruHD, and dtsHD Master Audio.

<B>MAHLER: <I>Das Lied von der Erde</I></B><BR>
James King, tenor; Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Vienna Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein<BR>
London (CD only). Gordon Parry, eng.; John Culshaw, prod. AAD. TT: 66:32

Returnal (Editions Mego EMEGO 104), the fourth full-length release from Oneohtrix Point Never, explodes into the listening room (or out from the speakers or out from the headphones) with real violence and penetrating force. We are thrust into a heavy storm, a maelstrom; we find ourselves standing beneath an ocean of falling glass, falling sky, falling electronic haze. If instruments could scream, their screams might sound like this, like the opening few moments of Returnal, moments that don’t seem like an opening at all, but someplace else, some other time that escaped us, that started without us, before we were ready. I don’t mean scream in the way that guitars and saxophones and other instruments can and do scream. I mean that if instruments could be dealt such pain that they were brought to life, given sentience, to wail with wonderful suffering, it might sound like this, like the opening few moments of “Nil Admirari.”