An amplifier producing nearly 400Wpc, weighing close to 100 lbs...from <I>Rotel</I>, of all people? Don't they know their <I>place</I> in the audio world? Next thing you know, Krell will start making integrated amplifiers! Oops—Krell <I>is</I> making integrated amplifiers...
Just in case you didn't know this when you bought the Parasound HCA-3500, it says on the cover of the owner's manual: "Designed in California, USA by John Curl." Described as an "audio design legend," an appellation with which he seems quite uncomfortable, John Curl has certainly been around the audio business longer than most. He's been employed by or has consulted for some of the biggest names in consumer and professional audio—including Harman/Kardon, Ampex, and Mark Levinson—and was the designer of at least two classic products: the Mark Levinson JC-2 preamplifier and his own <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/phonopreamps/640">Vendetta Research phono stage</A>, still considered by many people to be the best phono stage ever built.
<I>The British Library </I>vs<I> DRM:</I> The <A HREF="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4675280.stm">BBC</A> reported February 3 that Dr Clive Field, the British Library's director of scholarships and collections, called the increasing restrictions of fair use by digital rights management (DRM) cause for concern.
<B>Editor's Note: </B>A reader recently complained that we publish too many obituaries and remembrances on this website. "I don't need to be reminded of my own mortality and depressed at the same time by reading all these death notices," he wrote. "I'm a baby boomer and I don't want to read about baby boomers—not their work, [not] their deaths."
<img alt="Chatting" src="http://www.stereophile.com/images/newsart/RR12.jpg" width="450" height="338" border="0" />
"If you have no catnip or kibble, you are dead to me."
"Honestly, I have no idea how those CDs wound up on the floor."
Jerome Harris sent in this tidbit, commenting, "Talk about ahead of the curve!"
A good read from <I>The New Yorker</I>. I saw a special on the Enigma Project once and they interviewed a woman who had worked with Turing at Bletchley Park. She basically said that everybody at BP was phenomenally bright, but that Turing was a genius and that the difference between being intelligent and being a genius was the difference between going from A to G and from A to Zed. Genius didn't need the intermediate steps that even the very brightest of us require.
I love these re-imaginings of film trailers. What if the ultimate two-hankie movie was much, much creepier?
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