LATEST ADDITIONS

As you read this, are you listening to your stereo? Whatever the music, what you're actually hearing is your public utility's AC as modulated by your power amplifier. No matter how good the gear, the final result can be only as pure as the power feeding your components. Unfortunately, plenty of sonic schmutz usually comes along for the ride.

<I>Why don't you review affordable gear? </I>

It's a jungle out there. The shrinking shelves of your neighborhood newsstand drip with the blood and corpses of magazines that have gone under in the intense battle for browsers' eyeballs. And only if we can make our latest issue's cover sufficiently eye-catching to get enough newsstand browsers to pick up and buy a copy do we get to play another round of the game. (Conventional publishing wisdom holds that, <I>at most</I>, a magazine's cover has six seconds to get its message across.)

A four-day break between the Top Audio Show in Milan (September 14&ndash;17) and the <I>Hi-Fi News</I> Show in London (September 22&ndash;24) presented the perfect opportunity to accept a longstanding invitation from speaker manufacturer Focal-JMlab to visit its manufacturing facilities in France.

Surprise! If you love Beethoven, Schnittke, Reich, and Richard Strauss, and frequently play classical music on your iPod or hard drive, you're far from alone. Results of an Internet poll of classical music listeners commissioned by the British magazine <I>Gramophone</I> reveal that 75% of those surveyed use 21st-century media&mdash;everything from PCs to MP3 players&mdash;and 57% have ripped some of their classical CD collection to another digital format. In fact, 20% of respondents not only download classical music legally, but prefer to listen to it on their MP3 or other digital music player.

Conceptual music and anti records (and CDs): A brief overview.

Bagheera may only weigh six pounds, but she can keep two (relatively) normal-sized humans perched on the outer edges of a queen-size bed. It's hers by dint of occupation&mdash;and she defends her space like it was a trademark.