LATEST ADDITIONS

In his review of the J.Sikora Initial turntable, Stereophile's resident artist/sage Herb Reichert wrote, "Extended bathing, lighting candles, making tea, and preparing food are ritual work forms that prepare my senses to accept both pleasure and illumination."

When it comes to playing records, I too have a ritual. It involves carefully cleaning the vinyl, first on a Pro-Ject VC-33, followed by immersion in a HumminGuru Ultrasonic vinyl cleaner. Before and after, I inspect the record's grooves with a pricey VisibleDust Quasar R magnifier. Only then—black coffee hot, glasses cleaned, stylus brushed free of contaminants, notepad at hand—am I ready to receive the messages ingrained in a shiny black vinyl disc.

Advance Paris, the French hi-fi manufacturer, has announced the release of LINK, a new series of cables designed for high-fidelity audio setups.

Bryston CEO James Tanner is not only an Audiofest regular but an affable, down-to-earth guy who refuses to use either high-end cabling or hi-rez files at his show demos. Why? Because he doesn’t want visitors to think that the sound from his system is shaped by anything other than Bryston gear. That doesn’t mean he denies that better-designed cables or hi-rez files through his streamer will elevate sound quality—only that, when you hear his system at a show, you know exactly what Bryston gear sounds like. I found that an interesting viewpoint.

"Paul Klipsch was a genius," Roy Delgado told me recently, with the sound of genuine amazement in his voice. "Me, I'm just a tinkerer." I've spoken to Delgado, Klipsch's chief audio engineer, a handful of times over the past few years and find him affable, plainspoken, and almost absurdly humble. His LinkedIn page describes him simply as "engineer at Klipsch." His bio on the Klipsch Museum website lists his interests as "a closer relationship with God [and] the pursuit of the ever-elusive largemouth bass." To be sure, Delgado holds several patents, has an intimidating grasp of loudspeaker design, and is anything but a tinkerer. But it was still weird to see him—dressed in the T-shirt, light jeans, and work boots of an Arkansas fishing enthusiast—at the Nine Orchard Hotel during last year's New York Fashion Week.

We were there for the launch of a loudspeaker, a collaboration between the Little Rock–based Klipsch Group and Ojas, the nom de solder of artist and designer Devon Turnbull.

Discovering music as it is being recorded—singer Holly Cole seeks that kind of spontaneity on her recordings including her latest, Dark Moon on Rumpus Room/UMG Records. As she put it, she wanted this record with her longtime quartet to capture "the moment when the light turns on for us."

"On Dark Moon, you hear the essence of when we discover a song," she said during a recent interview. "We had very brief rehearsals, and then went in and recorded. I had a lot of faith in this band, and that's why I cherry-picked them. They know me, they know I'm a minimalist, and we were able to arrange in the studio. Some of the tracks are first takes. The more complex the arrangement, the longer it took. They are all three, four takes at the most. People have to be hard listeners in this band, or it will fail. That's the case on Temptation, and that's on this record."

Holy cannoli—was there bass in retailer Laliberté Électronique’s room. But not just bass. Also transparent mids, smooth highs, and floods of detail blowing through a vast soundstage. Even so, there’s no doubt this system was configured to appease the bass gods.

I remember when everyone but my grandmother wanted a pair of Von Schweikert VR-4 speakers. They were the talk of the town. The press loved them, customers praised them. And they weren’t too expensive. Things have changed since, of course—the VR.thirty on display at the Audiofest costs $88,000/pair, but it’s also quite a bit more ambitiously designed than the VR-4 was. The VR.thirty also sounds ambitious.