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Last Friday was an interesting day in the office. No one was here, but Ariel. Robert Baird was whooping it up at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, and John Atkinson and I would soon be on the road. It was the first day of spring, and snow was falling like mad.

Mikey fremers with some connections while the imposing Wilson MAXX 3 loudspeaker looks on, darth-vaderishly. Better not screw up, Mikey.

The Musical Fidelity Titan power amplifier: 1000W into 8 ohms and heavy as hell.

Another South by Southwest is in the books. My 21st out of a possible 23 festivals. Let me start with three acts that were among the most prominent participants there in terms of appearances. It seemed like every time I turned around—day, night, those sunny, warm Austin spring afternoons when the free drinks flow freely and the good times roll—there would be Raul Malo, the Heartless Bastards and/or M. Ward playing yet another gig.

Beginning with this issue, <I>Stereophile</I> readers will notice that more of the subjective equipment reviews are augmented with technical reports describing certain aspects of the component's measured performance. Although test data have lately been increasingly included in reviews, <I>Stereophile</I> has recently made a major commitment to providing readers with relevant measurements of products under review. We have just finished building an audio test laboratory featuring the Audio Precision System One, a sophisticated, computer-based audio test measurement system.

The April 2009 issue of <i>Stereophile</i> is now on newsstands. The April issue is always a bear, but this one was a hungry, 15 foot tall, 2 ton Kodiak. It's kind of a miracle that it even exists.

It’s rare that a live concert captures the mind-bending joy of mainstream post-War jazz. (Recitals of the bebop repertory tend toward the worshipfully literal, like museum pieces.) But just such a rare experience was had last night at Smalls, the convivial (and, yes, small) jazz club in the West Village, where pianist Ethan Iverson played standards with a trio that featured Albert “Tootie” Heath on drums.