LATEST ADDITIONS

<B>Editor's Introduction: </B>Thirty years ago this month, in September 1962, <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//interviews/66/">J. Gordon Holt</A>, lately Technical Editor of <I>High Fidelity</I> magazine, was working on the contents of the first issue of <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//features/708/">his brainchild <I>The Stereophile</I></A>, a magazine that would <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//asweseeit/711/">judge components on how they actually sounded</A>. We thought it appropriate, therefore, to use the occasion of the 1992 Summer Consumer Electronics Show, held in late May in Chicago, to invite some 200 members of the international high-end industry to a dinner to celebrate the occasion. Larry Archibald dug deep into the magazine's coffers; Ralph Johnson took time off from organizing the 1993 High End Hi-Fi Show to burn up the long-distance telephone lines faxing invitations; the conversation was excellent, the food superb, and the wine even better. Which is probably why the venerable JGH took the opportunity to remind the assembled luminaries what this whole business is supposed to be about. Here follows the text of his speech. I hope you find it as stimulating reproduced in these pages as did those who heard it live.&mdash;<B>John Atkinson</B>

In the April 1992 <I>Stereophile</I>, reader Hilary Paprocki expressed his belief that recording engineers are unconcerned about sound quality. Indeed, he went so far as to allege that engineers intentionally use inferior miking techniques so that they can bill clients for additional time spent trying to fix the sound. The example he used was the engineer who places a microphone directly in front of a guitar amplifier, a technique Mr. Paprocki felt captured only "4%" of the sound. Mr. Paprocki also likened recording engineers to "featherbedders."

It's useful to ponder the wonders of democracy in this election year&mdash;not because of elections, but despite them. Were you to judge democracy by this election year, you might conclude that it consists of judging who has the best PR people, who the best pollsters, and who can muster the nastiest, most effective "negatives" about the other guy.

The audio community's "Great Debate" has reached an amazing level of absurdity. On one side are the Objectivists, whose rationalist argument insists that all human auditory experience is the result of electro-physical phenomena which can be measured and mapped using established scientific methods. On the other side are the Subjectivists, romantics who believe in the synergistic interplay of music, room, equipment, and listener, and whose attempts to describe their experiences tend toward the florid and metaphorical.

Bass constitutes one of the least understood aspects of sound reproduction. Opinions vary greatly on matters of bass quality, quantity, and perceived frequency range or response. Moreover, the bass region is subject to the most unwanted variation in practical situations due to the great influence listening-room acoustics have on loudspeaker performance. Every room has its different bass characteristic, and changes in the position of speakers or listener also constitute major variables at low frequencies.

<B>High Fidelity Audio/Video Systems: A Critical Guide for Owners</B><BR> by Howard Ferstler <BR><I>253 pages, $23.50 softcover. Published by McFarland & Company, Inc., Box 611, Jefferson, NC 28640. Tel: (919) 246-4460.</I>