LATEST ADDITIONS

In "Music and Fractals" in the November 1990 issue, I discuss how digital audio's quantization of amplitude information in what was originally a continuous waveform represents a fundamental difference between analog and digital representations of music. In a letter published in the English magazine Hi-Fi Review in January 1990, John Lambshead conjectured that naturally originating sounds were pseudo-fractal in character; that is, their waveforms have a wealth of fine detail, and that detail itself has an even finer-structured wealth of fine detail, and so on, until the crinkliness of the waveform is finally enveloped in the analog noise that accompanies every sound we hear.

We're celebrating the imminent arrival of our January 2017 issue, chock full of great stuff. MartinLogan's superb Renaissance ESL15A electrostatic is featured on the cover but we also have a rave review of B&O's groundbreaking BeoLab90 speaker, measurements of Auditorium 23's retro Cinema Hommage speaker, reviews of headphone amplifiers from Audeze and Woo Audio, and an interview with a veteran of both the audio and music industries, Joe Harley of AudioQuest and Music Matters.

The English loudspeaker manufacturer Rogers [no connection with the contemporary US company Rogers High Fidelity] has had an illustrious history since being founded in 1947 by veteran designer Jim Rogers. Absorbed by the Swisstone company in 1976, it has since gone from strength to strength, the main creative work now being done by the respected English engineer Richard Ross. Noteworthy for keeping the miniature BBC LS3/5a design in continuous production for nearly 15 years, Rogers also makes a range of polypropylene-cone woofers and midrange units which are used in other models in its range.

Thursday December 8, 2016, Hi Fi Sales (1732 Route 70 East, Cherry Hill, NJ 08003) invites Philadelphia-area audiophiles to meet Gary Dayton from Bryston; December 10, and Sunday, December 11, Gary Dayton from Bryston will be appearing at a two-day open house presented by Wolfsong Audio (220 Indian Cove Drive, Dawsonville, GA 30534); Saturday December 10, Lavish Hi-Fi (1044 4th Street, Santa Rosa, CA 95404) invites Californian audiophiles to an afternoon of Music and Audio with GamuT; Saturday December 10, Take 5 Audio (105 Whitney Avenue, New Haven, CT 06510) will be presenting the Connecticut premier of amplification from Dan D'Agostino Master Audio Systems; and also on December 10, Evolution Audio & Video (5341 Derry Avenue, Suite S, Agoura Hills, CA 91301) celebrates their newly remodeled showroom!

Last week, Paul Messenger and I represented Stereophile at a Marantz press conference announcing the New Reference Series: the SA-10 SACD player/DAC and the PM-10 amplifier. The conference was held at D+M's European Headquarters located in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Josh Bizar of Music Direct, Andy Quint of The Absolute Sound, and I were the only Americans present at this session. (And naturally, the most severely jetlagged.) We were joined by nearly two-dozen international audio journalists from a handful of countries.

"Our production line was stepping on its own toes," said Boulder Amplifiers' Rich Maez, Director of Sales and Marketing, as he welcomed me into the company's new, massive 23,000 sq. ft. manufacturing and testing plant in Louisville, CO. The move to a huge, brand-new building on 3 acres of land outside Boulder, in an area devoted to light industry, was greeted with sighs of relief by a team that had formerly found itself squeezed into an increasingly over-packed 10,000 sq. ft. facility.