LATEST ADDITIONS

One question posed by John Atkinson at the July 1991 <I>Stereophile</I> <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/features/109">Writers Conference</A> had to do with the ease of reviewing: Is it harder to write a bad review of an expensive product than a good review? I find it hardest to write a good review of an inexpensive product. If I admire a less expensive loudspeaker, for example, it may become a recommended component, and can displace a more expensive speaker (that received mixed comments) from our twice-yearly rankings. This can be a big responsibility; even a conditional rave of a low-cost product means that JA may assign another <I>Stereophile</I> reviewer to do an immediate follow-up report. The Snell Type E/III loudspeaker may be a good case in point.

Wadia was showing its almost ready-to-ship CD/SACD player, the $15,000 781. (A 781<I>i</I> with digital inputs and outputs is also in the works.) The 781 uses two signal processors feeding a programmable gate array and the company's proprietary DigiMaster 2.5 upsampling software. This, Wadia claims, results in a data rate of 1.4112 million samples per second. The 781 also sports Clocklink jitter reduction for both CD and SACD.

I was riding the elevator yesterday, when I spotted Attention Screen's Mark Flynn and Chris Jones. I jumped out of the lift and asked, "What's up?"

The first evening of the show, I had a most pleasant dinner with John Atkinson, <I>Stereophile</I> associate publisher Keith Pray, columnist John Marks, and the folks from Dynaudio and Simaudio. During the pre-dinner conversation, John Marks illustrated a point he was making by singing a bit, ably demonstrating his ex-choirboy credentials. His performance was apparently noticed by the people at the next table; at the end of the meal, one of the ladies at that table came over to us and said that this was her friend's birthday, and asked if the gentleman who was singing before could sing "Happy Birthday" to her.

The Galactus-sized Audio Research Reference 610T monoblock amplifiers ($20,000/ea) put out 600W. They require 8 matched pairs of 6550C output tubes, one 6550c regulator, one 6H30 as an amplifier regulator, a pair of 6550Cs as drivers, two 6NIP input tubes, and a 6H30 follower&mdash;that's a <I>ton</I> of tubes.

I always look forward to visiting recording engineer Ren&#233; Laflamme of <A HREF="http://www.fideliomusique.com/">Fidelio</A&gt; at FSI, because he always has new fun recordings to play.

While Thiel's Ken Dawkins and I were talking, he said, "Have I told you about the SCS4?"