LATEST ADDITIONS

The Philadelphia Orchestra, one of America's prestigious "Big Five" orchestras, has established its own <A HREF="http://www.thephiladelphiaorchestra.com/">digital online music store</A> to directly market its soundboard recordings of current Philadelphia Orchestra performances.

We all know the refrain. Classical music is losing its audience. With shorter attention spans, the ascent of the iPod, a penchant for music (and spoken word masquerading as music) in the background, and the submergence of audio by home theater, fewer and fewer people in the United States are being exposed to art music of the past and present.

Best known for its omnidirectional loudspeakers, the German manufacturer mbl also produces three complete lines of high-performance electronics that, despite being large and built to jewel-like perfection, are sometimes lost in the shadow cast by the dramatic-looking—and -sounding—Radialstrahler 101E, which I reviewed in October 2004.

RCA's time-honored 6SN7 may be the coolest tube of all. The octal-based dual-triode has its own Wikipedia entry&mdash;something not even the 2A3 or 300B can boast&mdash;along with its own <A HREF="http://www.6SN7.com">website</A&gt;. The 6SN7 is chunky, rugged, and handsome. Best of all, it's <I>available</I>, probably because people keep coming up with very good uses for it. In that sense, the 6SN7 is the Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup of the tube world.

There are many colorful characters, many high-profile movers and shakers, in high-end audio, but there are only a few whose influence extends far beyond the promotion of their own brands. One of this exalted and mighty handful is Robert Stuart, chairman and technical director of the UK's Meridian Audio.

I've always been partial to Rabelais' "Je m'en vais chercher un grand peut-&#234;tre." (I am off in search of the great perhaps.)

Bagheera is outraged that I powered off her heated perch.