The Strangest Little Things
Quarks, photons, and space-time foam—oh my!
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Are Missing Teaspoons Really Dark Matter?
Or maybe they're the larval form of some other proliferating common household object—Maya Kessler makes the case.
Burwen Bobcat Now Available as Download
We received an interesting email from engineer Richard Burwen just before the Thanksgiving business break:
Copyright Office Lists New Exceptions to the DMCA
On November 22, the Librarian of Congress issued a—take a deep breath— <A HREF="http://www.copyright.gov/1201/">declaration of exemption</A> from the prohibition against circumvention of technological measures that control access to copyrighted works. In other words, the LOC decreed that six classes of "non-infringing rights" were exempt from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which criminalized "production and dissemination of technology whose primary purpose is to circumvent measures taken to protect copyright."
What are you most interested in seeing in our live online CES 2007 coverage?
The Consumer Electronics Show is the most significant high-end audio industry event each year, attended by manufacturers, distributors, and retailers from all over the world. What are you most interested in seeing in our live online CES 2007 coverage?
Zanden 5000 Mk.IV/Signature D/A converter & 2000 Premium CD transport
We were driving to a friend's house to celebrate her dad's 92nd birthday. Halfway there, a bright yellow, ground-hugging insect pulled in front of my car from across street. "Wow, that's a Lamborghini Countach!" I exclaimed. You don't often see one of those in my neighborhood—or in any neighborhood.
Hot Stuff: Loudspeaker Voice-Coil Temperatures
As Hans Christian Oersted, the Danish physicist and founder of electrodynamics, discovered in 1819, an electric current passed through a wire generates a magnetic field. Place that wire close to a permanent magnet and the interaction of the two fields will generate a force. That, in two sentences, summarizes the operating principle of the motor that energizes every moving-coil drive-unit in millions of loudspeakers worldwide. It sounds simple, but—like everything in audio—it isn't.
Music in the Round #21
I've been tweaking my weekend multichannel system for years, but with my city system I've kinda faked it. I now realize that I listen more actively to the weekend system, and not only because that's when I have the time for it—the sound of that system is simply more engaging and psychologically immersive. So, with the growth of my library of SACD and DVD-Audio recordings to almost half the size of my CD collection, I told my wife that it was time to transform of "our" city stereo rig into a full-blown multichannel system.
Linn Troika MC phono cartridge
Some six or so years ago, the Linn Asak cartridge set new standards for imaging and soundstage reproduction. I can remember the first time I heard an Asak in a system using <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/416">Quad ESL-63s</A>—I had never experienced such depth of soundstage and solidity of imaging from <I>any</I> system, and that with Quad amplification! The Asak was relatively quickly overshadowed in this area, however, and in any case, soundstaging precision by itself didn't seem to be a high priority for the Linn design team, who were apparently more concerned with dynamics and a musical integration of the sound across the frequency range.
CES Attendees Cautiously Optimistic About the Venetian
Despite griping and grumbling about <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/100206ces/">the change</A>, many makers of high-performance audio gear appear to have settled on their new official venue at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas: the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino. Two months before the start of the 2007 CES (to be held January 8–11), all but 12 of the Venetian's 198 exhibit rooms and suites had already been sold.