About once a week, I hear about some new audio accessory heralded by breathless claims of stunning performance gains that "you've got to hear for yourself." Most of these I ignore, and of those I do consider, nearly all wither when subjected to logical engineering analysis. Every so often, however, one of these wonder widgets finds its way into my system.
The Hartleys I wrote about <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/artdudleylistening/106listen">last month</A> may be the loudspeaker drivers that time forgot, but the venerable Lowthers of Sidcup, England, reign supreme as the horseshoe crabs of the loudspeaker world: strange, ungainly things that have scarcely changed since the days when Franz Schmidt and Robert Johnson walked the earth. Literally.
Mark Wilder, senior mastering engineer for Sony Music Studios, looked expectantly from John Atkinson to Bob Saglio to me and asked, "Are you ready?" As it had been my inquiry that had resulted in this mind-boggling, once-in-a-lifetime, peak-experience get-together, and as no one else was speaking up, I replied, "As ready as we'll ever be."
Irony reigns supreme on this week's installment of <I>XM Daze</I>.
A special treat today: the new Rye Coalition album, <i>Curses</i>, to be released by <a href="http://www.gernblandsten.com/">Gern Blandsten</a> on April 18th, arrived in our office. Robert brought it over to me. I've been listening to it all day.
Bagheera looks put out at Huckleberry's 15 minutes of fame.
How collaborative filtering is making jaded listeners engaged listeners again.
Go to the external link and click on "The Big Finale." Stick around for "The End."
When you're listening to music?
It has survived <I>my</I> penmanship, so it's obviously quite robust.