LATEST ADDITIONS

We're lucky. There's always an enormous amount of great live music to be enjoyed in New York City, but this week is especially crammed with sound. The CMJ Music Marathon is here. As I type, our very own Mikey Fremer is moderating a discussion titled "Hi Fidelity for the Future." Panelists include NYU professor Jim Anderson; David Chesky of Chesky Records and <a href="http://www.stereophile.com/news/052008hdtracks/index.html">HDTracks.com…;; <a href="http://www.stereophile.com/news/11283/index.html">D&M Holdings</a>' Jeffrey Cowan; and <a href="http://news.cnet.com/audiophiliac/">the Audiophiliac</a>, Steve Guttenberg.

In the Stereophile forum, "ncdrawl" asked:

Toward the end of the 1992 Summer CES in Chicago, <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/66">J. Gordon Holt</A> ambled into Audio Influx's demonstration room. He was curious about which <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/recordingofthemonth/592rotm">PDQ Bach CD</A> we were playing, as a fitting end to the show. We chatted about PDQ Bach live concerts and the grand-spoof entrances made by Professor Peter Schickele. Suddenly he said, "You know, these speakers sound real," going on to mention that he hadn't heard many real-sounding systems. I told JGH that most of what I heard at shows and in dealer showrooms nowadays was <I>sur</I>realistic sound.

Don't be confused by the MBL 6010 D's oddly baroque, even retro looks. Behind all the glitz—the oversize, perfectly finished, black-lacquered faáade; the two big, solid brass knobs plated with 24-karat gold; the ornate lettering; and the incongruous digital volume display—resides a thoroughly modern, remote-controlled, unusually versatile, and well-thought-out solid-state preamplifier. Not that the 6010 is a new design. It's been around for a long time, and the current "D" iteration is at least five years old.

The best, most enduring audio products have in their favor more than great sound: They have some sense of history as well. Particularly good examples abound from the British companies Spendor, Rogers, and Harbeth, some of whose products were actually commissioned into being by the British Broadcasting Corporation. Better that, I suppose, than existing to fill a price point.

<I>Stereo Review</I>, the world's most popular audio magazine during most of its time on Earth, was a common target of derision from the hobby's so-called <I>high-end</I> press, not least of all from me. We criticized its nerdy, boring prose, its uniformly positive reviews, and, most of all, its shameless pimping of the notions that measurements reveal all there is to know about a component, and that all competently engineered components sound equally fine.

I live by the axiom, “So many records to listen to, so little time.” That’s not an excuse; just reality. And it has nothing to do with being a music writer. If you’re a voracious music fan, there’s no way, no matter how many records per day you slug through, that you can hear it all. If today, I started listening to just my Beethoven Symphony cycles, it would literally be months before I could come up for air.