LATEST ADDITIONS

It's funny how things sometimes have to hit you in the head before you actually notice them. When Jon Iverson and I were cruising CES 2007 in January, we were stopped in our tracks by <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/ces2007/107soolooscdslot/">Sooloos</A>'s media server technology. Sooloos <I>got</I> the whole no-compromise audiophile approach, but what really knocked us out was how thoroughly it utilized the metadata from AMG (All Media Guide): Feed the the Sooloos server a disc and it would access AMG's database and collect artist name, album title, track names, cover art, genre, <I>mood</I>, side-man information, and even "associated concepts."

Carson City, NV loudspeaker company Wisdom Audio has been aggressively reorganizing itself lately. The first part of the program was re-uniting founder Tom Bohlender with erstwhile partner David Graebner to refine and perfect the magnetic planar speaker technology used by Wisdom's hybrid planar/dynamic loudspeakers. Then, in October 2006, the company appointed industry veteran Mark Glazier <A HREF="http://stereophile.com/news/100906glazier/">president</A&gt;. On February 8, Glazier announced that Jon Herron would join the company as vice president of sales.

<I>Stereophile</I> editor John Atkinson said one evening in 1995, "What I find fascinating is that, in an industry as mature as audio cables, a new company can appear out of the blue and upset everything." He was gently poking fun at my admission that I found cable design fascinating, in particular the practice of combining different conductor materials.

As far as I can tell, Santa Fe&ndash;based speaker engineer <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/694">John Bau</A> had designed but four commercial loudspeakers before the TC-60 was launched at the 1994 Winter CES: in order of appearance, they were the Spica SC50i (1980), the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/446">TC-50</A&gt; (1983), the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/693">Angelus</A&gt; (1987), and the SC-30 (1989). None were expensive, and all garnered much praise, both in <I>Stereophile</I>'s pages and elsewhere.

The latest edition of <I>Audio</I>'s annual equipment directory lists 238 speaker manufacturers. At best I can claim to have heard one product from 10&ndash;15% of the manufacturers on this list, and the top of the current product line from a far smaller percentage.

At least, according to Bagheera, is <I>down</I>. Preferably from a height.

Huckleberry uses the monitor to skritch that chin. Who needs humans?