LATEST ADDITIONS

"How many new records did you buy today, Stephen?"

It was New Year's Eve, and our large group of friends occupied the entire ground floor of our favorite restaurant, Jersey City's Satis Bistro. We had already been presented with a beautiful buffet of meats, cheeses, and breads, and now more appetizers were being served. A waiter placed before me the world's most delicious date, stuffed with gorgonzola, wrapped in bacon, and baked to perfection. I immediately stabbed it with my fork and popped it in my happy mouth. I chewed, savored, silently wished that I could make this moment last forever, and contemplated a way to answer Nicole's question. From her tone, I knew that she was only looking for an opportunity to mock my weakness for buying new LPs. I've grown used to it. Nicole is nothing if not a ballbuster. I decided to go with the truth.

Norman Granz: The Man Who Used Jazz for Justice
By Tad Hershorn. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. 470pp. Hardcover, $34.95.

One night in 1942, Billie Holiday was singing at a Los Angeles nightclub. Between sets, she crossed the street to have a drink with Norman Granz. She was in tears because some black friends who had come to hear her had been turned away.

In 1862, skepticism among the educated was exemplified by the medical establishment, which ridiculed Joseph Lister's notion of "animals in the air." By contrast, the professional skeptic of 2012—yes, it's now possible to make a comfortable living in the field—finds himself inconvenienced by 150 years of discovery, and makes do with ridiculing Lister for his Quaker faith. I guess that passes for progress in some circles.

The early bird catches the worm, but the well-warmed playback system is another thing altogether: So it was when I visited New York’s Stereo Exchange on the morning of April 13, mere minutes after they opened their doors for the day. Nevertheless, the ever-genial David Wasserman and his staff hit the ground running, cheek-to-jowl with eager customers and representatives from 11 equipment suppliers, whose presence had at least something to do with the New York Audio and AV Show.

Stephen Mejias: On Thursday, April 12, Stereophile’s editorial assistant, Ariel Bitran, and I left the office at around 5pm, walked over to Grand Central, hopped on the 6 train, and made our way to New York City’s Lyric Hi-Fi.

As Ariel discussed last week, Lyric was one of two premier NYC dealers&#151the other was Stereo Exchange&#151that opted against participating in the New York Audio & AV Show, and instead held their own events.

Because both Lyric and Stereo Exchange are successful operations, run by smart people, we figured they must have good reasons for doing things their own way. But, even as the weekend approached, those reasons weren’t fully clear. Were financial obstacles impossible to overcome? Were issues of logistics too much of a burden? Had there been some sort of communication breakdown between the dealers and the show’s organizers? Did it simply make little sense for Lyric and Stereo Exchange to participate, or were they just being hard-nosed, stubborn, elitist?

Perhaps we would find some answers inside.

The dipolar Gradient speakers from Finland being demmed in the SimpliFi suite had an advantage over conventional speakers at the NY Show, in that they better coped with the Waldorf=Astoria's often-problematic room acoustics. Partnered with Bladelius electronics and DNM cabling, the Revolution speakers (right) were paired with the matching Radiant subwoofer (center), which features two 12" drivers to produce uncolored, full-range low frequencies. Stephen Mejias was sufficiently impressed to look up from his notebook. The white speaker is Gradient's Helsinki 1.5, which Art Dudley reviewed in August 2010

High Water Sound, the New York City-based retailer and distributor, created one of my favorite demonstrations at the show, as much for proprietor Jeffrey Catalano's choice of music—Gabor Szabo's instrumental version of Donovan's "Three King Fishers" was playing when I came in—as for the exotic and unassailably musical system on display: TW Acustic Raven Black Night turntable ($40,000) and 10.5 tonearm ($5500), Tron Seven GT line-level preamp and phono preamp ($18,000 each), Tron Telstar 211 SET amplifier ($40,000), and the striking Affascinate loudspeaker ($62,000) from Cessaro Horn Acoustics, the latter using an 11" woofer in a back-loaded horn, a proprietary compression driver for the spherical midrange horn, and a modified horn-loaded TAD beryllium tweeter. The sound was tactile, impactful, and thoroughly involving on every recording I heard.