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Smalls is, well, a <I>small</I> jazz club in New York City’s West Village and, while far from the most comfortable establishment in town, it’s certainly among the most authentic and dedicated. The cover is cheap, the audience is youthful (two facts that are probably related), the musicians are usually the best up-and-coming players, and established masters sit in now and then too. (Last week, Albert “Tootie” Heath played drums with the Bad Plus pianist Ethan Iverson.)

This past Saturday night was Sonic Youth at Terminal 5.

The hurricane is coming, the fire's running down the mountain, the dust storm approaches—if you had to leave in a hurry and could only grab one thing from your audio system, what would it be?

On November 19, Scottosh manufacturer Linn Products held a press conference in London to announce that it was forthwith ceasing the production of CD players, and effectively replacing them by its new DS-series "digital streaming" components in its product portfolio.

I have reviewed and owned so many Paradigm speakers that they feel almost like members of the family. I've owned the v.2 and v.3 versions of the Reference Studio 60, and reviewed the v.3 version in <I>Stereophile</I> (in <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/1204paradigm">December 2004</A>, Vol.27 No.12). My long and intimate relationship with this speaker is founded on the best of reasons: We are extremely compatible. The Studio 60, in all its incarnations, is large enough to be used as a full-range speaker with nearly any program material, and yet is compact enough to be easily accommodated in my relatively small Connecticut listening room. It neither looms over me nor disappears into the space. Used as a center-channel speaker, it's just short enough to clear my line of sight to the video display. Finally, and despite inevitable price creep over the last decade, the Studio 60 still comes in under $2000/pair&#151;my line in the sand for a <I>reasonably</I> priced system.

"Think before you speak is criticism's motto; speak before you think is creation's."&#151;E.M. Forster, "The Raison d'&#202;tre of Criticism in the Arts," 1947 (footnote 1)

In October 2005's "<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/thefifthelement/1005fifth">The Fifth Element</A>." I said of the Harbeth HL-3P-ES2, a descendant of the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/361">BBC LS3/5A</A>, "Gloriosky, these little speakers are just great to listen to!" Later, in <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/1293harbeth/index5.html">A… 2007</A>, John Atkinson endorsed that remark.