LATEST ADDITIONS

The combination of piracy, streaming, and the accompanying devaluation of music these days has forced musicians back to the stage to make their daily bread.

Dr. Alan Hill, president of Plasmatronics Inc., was previously employed by the US Government in laser research. His assignment: To increase the efficiency of lasers so that they could do something more impressive than produce holograms, mend leaky retinal blood vessels, and punch pinholes in steel blocks. Dr. Hill earned his keep, thus advancing laser technology a giant step closer to Star Wars, and then retired from government service to design. . . a loudspeaker?!!!?

Performance Recordings is the closest thing to a one-man label. James Boyk is president, A&R director, musical director, recording engineer, production manager, jacket notes author, and the star performer. He is also Artist in Residence and lecturer in music and engineering (specifically sound recording and reproduction) at Cal Tech. And he happens to be one of digital's most ardent detractors, having conducted, and widely publicized, several controlled listening tests that proved to his satisfaction that digital recordings are destructive to musical sound. (I will not question his methodology or conclusions here; suffice it to say that James is as stalwartly pro-analog and anti-digital as it is possible to be.)

Were one in a whimsical mood, one could divide the history of hi-fi into the eras before and after Edgar Villchur (1917–2011), inventor of the sealed-box, air suspension (or acoustic suspension) bass-loading principle. It was Villchur's invention of the acoustic-suspension woofer that made possible affordable loudspeakers with deeper bass from a smaller cabinet (see Sidebar: "Sealed Boxes").

Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.—William Morris (1834–1896)

The Arts and Crafts movement, which took root in England in the late 1800s, was more than just a reaction to the poor working conditions and the soulless, shoddy, superfluously decorated wares associated with the early days of mass production. It was a rejection of Victorian attitudes toward class: of a mindset that promoted a chasm, in industry as in society, between the designer and the craftsman, the architect and the stonemason.

While it can be used when talking about any musician, having “chops” is a phrase that applies particularly to saxophonists.

There I was, making my way room-to-room toward the end of the show when suddenly Jeffrey Catalano of New York City's "2 channel with attitude" High Water Sound appears.

"Aren't you coming to my room on the 10th floor?" asks a man who clearly has been hounding the hallways . . .