LATEST ADDITIONS

This must be the month I drew the right straw to review "loudspeakers with three-letter initials." Elsewhere in this issue I describe my experiences with a pair of JBLs. Everyone knows that JBL stands for "James B. Lansing," founder of that company. You do, don't you? But PSB? If you've been paying attention here, you probably remember that JGH reviewed one of their loudspeakers back in May 1988. If you haven't, well, listen up. PSB is named after Paul Barton and his wife Sue, who formed Canada-based PSB in 1971. (Paul is still their chief designer.) The company was unknown in the US until just a few years ago, and still has a lower profile here than, well, certainly that other three-letter company. But not for lack of trying. They have at least 10 models—at last count.

I hate hi-fi stores.

Dr. Richard Cabot is one of today's foremost authorities on audio measurement and testing. Formerly an instrumentation designer at Tektronix, Dr. Cabot is now Vice President and Principle Engineer at <A HREF="http://audioprecision.com/">Audio Precision</A>. The company's System One, a computerized audio test set (used by <I>Stereophile</I>), has revolutionized the way the world measures audio equipment.

Tweaks have acquired a bad reputation in certain sectors of the audio world, probably with some justification. Warming the cartridge to exactly the right temperature, suspending cables from the ceiling (but not with cotton string; it sounds grainy and dry), stroking CD cases with a "magic" brush, drinking "polarized" (or is it <I>de</I>-polarized?) water before a listening session---gimme a break!

<I>"Why do rhythms and melodies, which are composed of sound, resemble the feelings; while this is not the case for tastes, colors, or smells?"</I>---Aristotle

Just when you thought it was safe to put green paint around the edges of your CDs without ridicule, there's yet another CD tweak that's sure to bring howls of laughter from the skeptics: cryogenically freezing CDs. They won't be laughing for long, however, when they hear for themselves the sonic results of this process.

I've been wondering whether we who write about audio will ever agree on a sensible way to express the scale of the differences we hear. If magazines like <I>Stereophile</I> and <I>The Abso!ute Sound</I> lack credibility among the broader audience of music lovers and hi-fi shoppers&mdash;and we do&mdash;one important reason may be our habit of greatly exaggerating the importance of differences that in fact are very small. A subtle improvement, one that most people wouldn't notice except in a carefully arranged comparison, is often described by audiophile reviewers in language that makes it seem like the contrast between a whisper and a thunderclap.