LATEST ADDITIONS

Okay, let's return to the power grid. In the February installment of "Fine Tunes", we learned that typical domestic 110V AC supplies are derived from that 220V transformer out on the pole. The center-tap 110V supply is unbalanced, but if you take 220V service, you're getting balanced power. One thing you can do is take 220V down to 110V with a step-down transformer. George Cardas swears by it. He's also experimenting with a Statpower Technologies Prosine 1000 Full Square Wave Converter hooked to a big mutha battery to power his front-end components.

Call me na&#207;ve, but I thought the Hi-Fi Wars were merely in-house squabbles. Yes, meter-carrying objectivists and wide-eyed subjectivists can carry on worse than Republicans and Democrats in Congress. But I always figured that once someone cues up <I>Dark Side of the Moon</I> or <I>Kind of Blue</I>, the partisanship subsides as we revel in our common passion for music and sound. C'mon, everybody&mdash;group hug! Okay, I exaggerate.

We get requests all the time from readers who want to know what audio components others have purchased. What we're looking for is a description of what loudspeaker products you own and why you like them. Here goes . . .

Accidents and disasters have no sense of good timing, and when they strike have a way of fouling even the most promising love affairs. Case in point: loudspeaker manufacturer <A HREF="http://www.vonschweikert.com/">Von Schweikert Research</A> and the small town of Watertown (pop. 30,000) in northern New York, about three hours' drive from Toronto.

Last week, in <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//reference/101/">Book Review: <I>High Fidelity Audio/Video Systems: A Critical Guide for Owners</I></A>, we ran Corey Greenberg's scathing review of an audio book that misses the mark by a wide margin. This week, in <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//reference/102/">Book Review: <I>The Complete Guide to High-End Audio</I></A>, we examine a book written by erstwhile <I>Stereophile</I> consulting technical editor Robert Harley. He does not emerge unscathed!

On a very special Saturday night in early September&mdash;late winter in Australia&mdash;I was deeply moved by hearing Brahms' Symphony 1 in the concert hall of the Sydney Opera House complex. Perhaps it was Marek Janowski's fiery, inspired conducting, but I keep recalling the hall itself. Earlier that day, I had photographed&mdash;first from my hotel room, later from a ferry&mdash;the huge, nesting sail-like roofs, covered with a million white ceramic tiles, that enclose an opera theater, concert hall, and restaurant. Twenty-five years in construction and costing over $107 million, the Sydney Opera House is described in my <I>Fodor's '98 Australia</I> guide as "the most widely recognized landmark of urban Australia." Attending the concert that night&mdash;all 2679 seats were occupied&mdash;I found the acoustics lovely, dark, and rich.

I literally dropped everything when Rega's new Planar 25 turntable arrived a few weeks ago. I'd heard the 'table compared with the Planar 3 at designer Roy Gandy's house when I visited Rega last fall&mdash;see "Analog Corner" in the January '99 <I>Stereophile</I>&mdash;and was anxious to audition it in my own system and tell you what I heard.