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Sam Tellig doesn't call the office often. In the seven years that I've been at <i>Stereophile</i>, Sam has called only a handful of times. When he <i>does</i> call, however, it's serious. Sam just called.

Jon Carroll is always worth reading, but you really don't want to miss a column that has this lede: "This is such a wonderful story. It should serve as an example to us all, and as a shining light to the young. Yes, you can do something positive for society, while still breaking the law and cheesing everybody off! It's win-win."

There's a hops shortage!

Of course they should&mdash;wasn't that the core of George Smiley's appeal?James Bond may be fun to watch, but he'd never really last in the field.

Some audiophiles will only buy what they can hear, which poses a challenge if what you want is hundreds of miles away. How far have you traveled to audition or purchase an audio component? <P><I>Note to last week's vote commenters: due to a server move, we lost several days' worth of votes. We're all better now but we apologize if your comments didn't make it.</I>

Obviously, no one wants to listen to exaggerated bass, italicized highs, or colored mids. But if you (as I have in the past few months) plug in several high-quality integrated amplifiers, each designed to a different price point, into the same basic signal chain, you'll experience a wide disparity of sound signatures.

Conventional wisdom has it that large Japanese corporations are insular. But when it comes to audio, Sony bucks the conventional wisdom as much as it does in pretty much everything it does. In Europe, the company has long had an excellent reputation for producing loudspeakers using local design talent, so I wasn't surprised to see Sony launching a line of American-designed and -made speakers at <I>Stereophile</I>'s 1994 High-End Hi-Fi Show in Miami. <I>Stereophile</I> writer Barry Willis came away from that Show raving about the Sonys: "What we heard was gorgeous, absolutely beautiful: rich, warm, and deep, with a seductive midrange, a shimmering, delicate, grain-free top-end, and a soundstage to die for," he wrote about the sound of the three-way SS-M7 in Miami (footnote 1), 1 concluding that "WATT/Puppy performance is now available at Vandersteen prices in an American-made loudspeaker sporting a Japanese badge."