LATEST ADDITIONS

A letter in the April 1988 issue (Vol.11 No.4) from reader Harold Goldman, MD, decried the seemingly appalling failure rate of high-end products, citing a $10,000/pair power amplifier, an $11,000 turntable, and a $1500 CD player which had all been reported in recent issues as having failed during or shortly after testing by <I>Stereophile</I>. And Dr. Goldman's list was far from complete. We have also experienced during the past couple of years the failure, or inoperation upon delivery, of two $2500 solid-state power amplifiers, a $1700 subwoofer, a $5000 hybrid amplifier, two pairs of $1200 loudspeakers, several pairs of under-$1000 loudspeakers, and many CD players costing over $1000 each, mainly those based on Philips transports.

Some time ago I wrote about the need for high-end audio companies to constantly reinvent themselves: You may be receiving accolades for your latest and greatest product, but you'd also better be well along the path to developing its replacement. High-end audio is a field of constant change; no product remains supreme for long.

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

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.

Um, Vinyl Man's favorite colors are orange and green, obviously. This photo was taken by intrepid crime photographer, Michael Lavorgna, outside the old Justice League Europe Headquarters in Paris, France.

"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."

Looking for a small, manageable paperback to read on a commute to Great Neck and back, I picked up a vintage paperback of Ross Macdonald's <I>The Drowning Pool</I>, a novel I'd read 25 years ago. I didn't exactly remember the plot clearly, but my recollection of my fling with Macdonald was that most of his plots dealt with the sins of the grandfathers being visited upon the third generation after.