A friend once described my audio ethos as "records, tubes, big amplifiers, and really big speakers"—I always picked warmth and musicality over antiseptic neutrality, even if the former came with a few extra colors in the tonal palette. Had I listed my criteria for an audio component, <I>transparency</I> wouldn't have been near the top, and might not have been listed at all.
Conceptually audacious, elegantly designed, executed with space-age precision, and remarkably compact, Grand Prix Audio's direct-drive Monaco turntable ($19,500) aims to turn the tables on the belt-drive designs that have dominated analog playback for three decades.
Apparently they pay off.
A family in Wales went to the beach last July and discovered an intact P-38 that went down in 1942.
Robert Cialdini's science of persuasion.
Those impressive profilers you see on TV and the movies? In reality, they're not quite as effective as they're portrayed—not by a long shot.
<I>"Rave on down through the corridors,<BR>
"Rave on words on printed page!"</I>—Van Morrison, "Rave On John Donne"
The Cassini-Huygens probe has been recording the sounds of Saturn. My cats, who are thoroughly bored by everything audio (other than the gear's heat-generating properties), were quite agitated by these sounds. Good to know, <I>hee hee hee</I>.
The <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/1295awsi">announcement in October 1995</A> of the Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) set the hearts of audiophiles and music lovers pounding. Although primarily a digital video and computer-data storage format, DVD's massive capacity could be applied to a "super CD" audio-only disc. Finally we would be liberated from the musical limitations of the CD's 16-bit word length, 44.1kHz sampling rate, and two-channel format. We were tantalized by reports of 96kHz sampling rate, 24-bit word length, and multichannel playback. Digital redemption appeared to be just around the corner.