LATEST ADDITIONS

Call me shallow, but what first attracted me to Audience's Au24 cables when I <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/cables/802audience">reviewed them</A> in August 2002 was their looks. In contrast to superstiff cables as thick as garden hoses, the Au24s were slender and elegant. They were wonderfully flexible, too, and even their custom-made RCA plugs were slim and easy to handle. Instead of having to fiddle with a system of locking collet and barrel, merely slipping them on resulted in a tight, solid connection. Compared to the Au24s, a sizable number of audiophile cables seemed excessive, even a little foolish.

For the past few years, PSB Speakers International has been replacing its older lines with new models designed in Canada, and assembled in China from Chinese-made components. Judging from the reception here of PSB's <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/408psb">Synchrony One</A> and <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/psb_imagine_t_loudspeaker"… T</A>, it's clear that the new models combine advanced performance with true economy. Now, with the new Image line, we see the result of trickling all this down to less expensive products.

<I>The best result of mathematics is to not need it.</I>&#151;Oliver Heaviside, 1850&#150;1925

In <a href="http://www.electronichouse.com/article/sharing_in_the_vinyl_groove/">th… nice piece</a>, Arlen Schweiger, managing editor of <i>Electronic House</i>, describes the great amount of fun he’s enjoyed while getting back into vinyl. Even on a modest analog rig ($50 Technics turntable and $100 Cambridge Audio phono preamp), Arlen has had no trouble noting vinyl’s virtues, which in his experience include wider soundstages, better focused images, and tighter bass. Most of all, it seems, Arlen is enjoying hunting for outstanding bargains on used LPs and sharing his discoveries with friends and family. Be sure to check out the slideshow.

Since <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/the_room_today/">the transformation</a> of my living room into a listening room, my record collection has been a woeful, helpless mess. Albums are grouped together more by my fleeting mood or by date of purchase than by anything usefully intelligible, or at all resembling order, such as genre or artist name. If, on some strange and rainy Saturday, I happened to have listened to albums by Mal Waldron, Crazy Horse, and Beach House, these albums will be found shelved together.

Dear <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/021308sing/">Uncle Omar</a> in Italy,<br>
You missed a fine party. Though we were downright heartbroken that you could not attend, we managed to nevertheless have some fun. Fortunately, Uncle Norbert brought his new video camera, and we were able to capture much of that fun on tape! For your convenience, I've attached my favorite bit of footage, which came during one of our spontaneous sing-alongs.

YBA Design's new WD202 D/A processor and headphone amplifier showed up while I was turning the pages of Don and Jeff Breithaupt's Precious and Few: Pop Music of the Early '70s, recommended by John Marks in his October 2009 "Fifth Element" column. Each page drips with great examples of why the 1970s often wind up on the wrong end of the culture stick (the Osmonds, anyone? Terry Jacks?).