<B>HILLIARD ENSEMBLE/JAN GARBAREK: <I>Officium</I></B><BR> Medieval & Renaissance Chant & Polyphony by Morales, Perotin, Dufay, de La Rue, Anon.<BR> The Hilliard Ensemble, vocals; Jan Garbarek, soprano & tenor saxes<BR> ECM New Series 78118-21525-2 (CD only). Manfred Eicher, prod.; Peter Laenger, eng. DDD. TT: 77:41
<I>More than 20 years ago, when the turntable was considered a perfectly neutral component in the playback chain, Ivor Tiefenbrun single-handedly demonstrated to the world that the turntable was not only an important part of a hi-fi system, but perhaps the </I>most<I> important part. That radical idea was the basis for the legendary Linn Sondek LP12 turntable, the product that launched Linn, and which is still in production 22 years later.</I>
The future is rarely what anyone expects it to be. I still remember reading, as a child, predictions in <I>Popular Science</I> that everyone would have a personal helicopter by 1980. It never happened, though it sure seemed like a reasonable projection of events. Events, however, have their own agenda.
During a recent visit to Canada's National Research Council, I noticed stuck to the wall of the prototype IEC listening room a page of results from one of Floyd Toole's seminal papers on the blind testing of loudspeakers. The scoring system was the one that Floyd developed, and that we adopted for <I>Stereophile</I>'s continuing series of blind tests. "0" represents the worst sound that could possibly exist, "10" the perfection of live sound—a telephone, for example, rates a "2." The speakers in Floyd's test pretty much covered the range of possible performance, yet their normalized scoring spread, from the worst to the best, was just 1.9 points.
<B>TERRY EVANS: <I>Blues for Thought</I></B><BR> PointBlank/Charisma/Virgin 39064 2 (CD only). Ry Cooder, prod.; Mark Ettel, eng. AAD? TT: 49:18
<B>LYNN ARRIALE: <I>The Eyes Have It</I></B><BR> Lynn Arriale, piano; Jay Anderson, bass; Steve Davis, drums<BR>DMP CD-502 (CD only). Lynn Arriale, Tom Jung, prods.; Tom Jung, eng. DDD. TT: 62:22
Canadian speakers from such companies as Mirage, PSB, and Paradigm have acquired international reputations for offering good sound at more-than-competitive prices. The latest Canadian speaker manufacturer to hit the big time might well be Energy, which has actually been around for about 15 years, but has only recently introduced a flagship speaker. Energy's $6000/pair Veritas v2.8 earned Tom Norton's commendation for having produced one of the best sounds at the 1993 Las Vegas WCES. [<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/551/">TJN's review</A> appears in this issue.—Ed.]
<B>RICHARD THOMPSON: <I>Mirror Blue</I></B><BR> Capitol CDP 7 81492 2 (CD). Tchad Blake, eng.; Mitchell Froom, prod. AAD. TT: 55:13