LATEST ADDITIONS

I ran into Lauren on the way home last night. Lauren is from Leicester, England. She is twenty-five years old, friendly, bright, and beautiful. It was a little before 9pm, and we were both just coming in from work. She complained about her hours. Lauren would prefer a nine-to-five job. These eleven-to-eight hours are taking up the best bits of her day. But it's a job. She's had it for only two weeks, but she's already looking for another. She doesn't know what she wants to do. By thirty-five, she hopes to be retired.

It is spring! Without doubt, it is spring. The skinny trees on Monmouth Street have suddenly bloomed all pink and purple and white, while the birds outside my kitchen window have learned to sing new songs. They make a wonderful racket in the morning. I like it. It makes me feel somehow closer to the world, to nature, to love and god and shit. This music of spring is a nice contrast to the sirens and jack hammers that normally make up a Jersey City morning.

No matter how well you think you know the specialized world of high-end audio, there are always new companies, new technologies, and new products you just haven't gotten around to knowing yet.

Managing Editor, Elizabeth Donovan, and I have spent all day in a training session for Adobe InDesign. We are finally switching over from Quark. It's going to be great, I think, but right now isn't the best time to spend an entire day in a training session. Elizabeth is also trying to ship the June issue.

<B>ENRICO RAVA/STEFANO BOLLANI: <I>The Third Man</I></B><BR>
Enrico Rava, trumpet; Stefano Bollani, piano<BR>
ECM 2020 (CD). 2007. Manfred Eicher, prod.; Stefano Amerio, Gabriele Kamm, engs. DDD. TT: 72:06<BR>
Performance ****1/2<BR>
Sonics ****

We all have biases. The trick is knowing your biases so they don't get in your way. Mine are pretty obvious. I don't like "fussy" gear that demands special care and feeding. I'm lazy&mdash;I want to just turn stuff on and begin listening. Perhaps that's why I have a positive bias toward <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/1191pass">Nelson Pass</A>'s designs. They're reliable, untweaky, and usually sound good.

To high-end audiophiles, the Boulder 500 amplifier and its less expensive derivative, the 500AE (Audiophile Edition), would not seem to be "high-end" designs. They are designed around op-amps (felt by many to be generally poor-sounding), they have scads of negative feedback (which is perhaps why op-amps sound bad), and they have only a moderately hefty power supply. Why, then, is <I>Stereophile</I> publishing a review of an op-amp&ndash;based power amplifier? Read on...