LATEST ADDITIONS

<i>Photo: <a href="http://michaelschmelling.com/">Michael Schmelling</a></i>

Look: I mean, listen: I mean, look: I'm the sort of guy who is comfortable with the idea that there's more than just music to this whole hi-fi thing. It's not <i>all</i> about the music. That's bullshit. It's also about friendship and peace and art and beauty. It's about <i>belonging</i>. You can get into hi-fi even if you don't listen to music. What? Yes! It's about getting drunk and high and lost. It's about girls and boys. It's also about the gear. But you can get into hi-fi even if you don't like gear. What? Yes! It's about more than just what the gear <i>does</i>. It's also about how the gear <i>looks</i> when it does what it does. Hi-fi is a full-on sensory attack, a blissed-out mind-fuck, an ocean, a sky, a lion in the tall, yellow grass. We feel with our heads and our hearts, with our ears and our eyes and every little bit of our little human selves.

If <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/vinyl_man/">Vinyl Man</a> had a shield, it would look something like the Thorens TD 309 turntable. But it would be orange. Or green.

Neither its rather pedestrian name nor Manley Labs' own <A HREF="http://www.manleylabs.com/containerpages/100200.html">literature</A&gt; gives much of a clue as to the 175 monoblock's special pedigree. Where are the bands, the fanfare?! After all, the rolling-out of a 6L6&#150;based high-power audiophile-grade tube amplifier definitely qualifies in my book as a momentous occasion. Deplorably, such happenings are rare indeed; the 6L6 has been unjustly neglected in high-end circles.

"My vision for the future is one where all manufacturers sell their products directly to the end user. In this way, even the audiophiles in Dead Horse, Alaska can have access to all the audio manufacturing community has to offer." Thus wrote loudspeaker designer David Fokos in a letter introducing his new company Icon Acoustics to the press at <I>Stereophile</I>'s High End Hi-Fi show in San Mateo, CA last April (footnote 1). Mr. Fokos, a Cornell graduate who for some years worked for Conrad-Johnson Design and designed that company's well-regarded Synthesis and Sonographe loudspeaker models, feels very strongly that the traditional retailing setup is inefficient when it comes to exposing audiophiles to a wide enough choice of product, particularly when it comes to loudspeakers. With 300 speaker manufacturers listed in the <I>Audio</I> directory issue but even a major retailer restricted to probably six brands, even big-city audiophiles will only be able to audition a fraction of the total number of brands. "Our industry is suffering from product saturation of its retail distribution network."

Last week's poll revealed continuing support for FM radio, though other broadcast services are clearly making inroads. If you listen to "radio," what service do you listen to <I>most</I>?

<A HREF="http://nhthifi.com/">NHT</A&gt; is back. Less than five months after the veteran speaker company, aka Now Hear This, <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/nht_takes_a_break/">declared</A&gt; that it would sell off remaining inventory, pay its bills, and spend time rethinking its future, it has regrouped and returned with a new marketing approach.