LATEST ADDITIONS

Over the summer, Jon built a little, cozy shed in the valley behind his home. We took the trail down there one afternoon and got some work in.

Though many of the highway’s trails were closed due to floods and mudslides, Jon and I found one that took us right down to the ocean. <a href="http://www.hikinginbigsur.com/hikes_partingtoncove.html">Partington Cove</a> was furious, relentless, and beautiful. No subwoofer can recreate that massive sound made by the waves as they crashed into the land.

There are Vista Points all along phenomenal Highway 1. We made plenty of stops.

Recently, there has been a on-line furor over an audio manufacturer having supposedly re-badged another manufacturer's component as its own (with a sweeping price increase). This <A HREF="http://forum.stereophile.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=80790">pra…; has been going on for years: Some high-end audio manufacturers have always taken mass-market components and used them as the basis for their own products. How do you feel about this?

With all the current fuss about getting audio data from a computer to a standalone D/A processor via S/PDIF, USB, FireWire, WiFi, or Ethernet (footnote 1), it has been overlooked that the oldest way to get audio from a PC is to use a high-performance soundcard plugged into the host machine's motherboard. I remember how excited I was when I installed a Sound Blaster Pro 16 board in the 486-based Dell running Windows 3.1 that I was using in the early Clinton era, plugged its analog output into my high-end rig, and played back 16-bit/44.1kHz files.

Call it “Hollywood Alcoholism,” meaning it’s not Requiem for a Dream, that chilling and incredibly visceral film depiction of addiction, but the more common cut and dried variety&#151he came, he drank, he fucked up, he had an epiphany and of course, he cleaned up after one neat and tidy trip to the Zen rehab clinic. Having seen Townes Van Zandt and more than a few other musical substance abusers when they were riding high (which is really riding low, if you know what I mean), things just ain’t this a way. Hollywood’s way is to show addiction without any of the struggle. Oh sure, he threw up, sort of, once or twice but hell, I remember seeing Townes fall off a stage that was four inches high, and then he couldn’t get up. When I pitched in to help, the man clearly had not showered in quite some time. He’d been bingeing and playing one nighters, which is where Crazy Heart starts out.

The World Saxophone Quartet and the five-piece percussion group M’Boom play together at Birdland in midtown Manhattan through Sunday. It’s music to make your head sweat and spin.