LATEST ADDITIONS

The outer walls of the Cooper Square Hotel reflect blue sky and angle gently as they rise to the penthouse suite. When construction on the hotel began, New Yorkers cried “Abomination!” at the idea of a glass-sheathed high-rise towering over the short brick buildings of the East Village. Now that the Cooper Square Hotel has integrated itself into the Bowery’s landscape, it is the ambitions of the building’s architects that are remembered, not New Yorkers’ gripes.

If analog disc is fading, it is a twilight of the gods. Tonearms, cartridges, and turntables get steadily better; the overall quality of the best analog disc systems today is far better than it was two years ago. Bruce Thigpen and Edison Price's new Eminent Technology Two tonearm is a case in point. It has evolved from a highly specialized product for only the bravest of audiophiles to a reference quality arm that any dealer can install, and any audiophile can safely use. More importantly, it may have no sonic equal at any price.

Jane Siberry: The Walking
Reprise/Duke Street 25678-1 (LP), 25678-2 (CD). John Naslen, eng.; Jane Siberry, John Switzer, John Naslen, prods. DDD. TT: 53:03

I came to Jane Siberry's music pretty late in the game. This is her fourth album, and the third released by a major label—No Borders Here and The Speckless Sky were released by Open Sky/Windham Hill a few years ago. Hadn't heard 'em (footnote 1). Didn't need to. On the basis of The Walking alone, it was clear Siberry is one of the most important singer/songwriters we've got.

The apparent demise of Audio Alchemy left a niche in the marketplace for a supplier of innovative, high-value digital components to provide the less-than-wealthy audiophile with state-of-the-art technology. Although Camelot Technology existed before Audio Alchemy went away, they have quickly taken over this niche with some interesting components. And I understand that some of the former AA technical personnel consulted for Camelot in the development of these products. (A recent press release indicates that Genesis Technology also played a major role in their design.)

The Dragon Pro is, I believe, the most eagerly awaited of the Camelot products. Since the disappearance of Audio Alchemy's DTI•Pro 32, no comparable anti-jitter and resolution-enhancement product has come along to replace it. (Yes, there are simpler anti-jitter boxes, and there is the Genesis Digital Lens, but these are not truly comparable in approach.) Well, the Dragon is everything that the DTI•Pro 32 was, and more!

The Dragon Pro anti-jitter box offers both jitter reduction and resolution enhancement, along with I²S in/out. Considering the number of Web newsgroup ads from folks wanting to buy AA DTI•Pro 32s, this baby has a waiting market.

Stereophile editor John Atkinson has been honored by being invited to give the Richard C. Heyser Memorial Lecture at the 131st Audio Engineering Society Convention, held at the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan. The Memorial Lecture was established in May 1999 to honor the memory of the famed audio theorist, engineer, reviewer, scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, inventor of Time Delay Spectrometry, and AES Silver Medal recipient. The Memorial Lecture has previously honored Ray Dolby, recording engineer Phil Ramone, futurist Ray Kurzweil, mathematicians Manfred Schroeder and Stanley Lipshitz, film sound pioneer and editor Walter Murch, Andy Moorer of Sonic Solutions and Adobe, Roger Lagadec, Kees Schouhamer Imminck, who developed the optical data-reading technology used in the CD, and acoustician Leo Beranek. The lecture will be at 7pm on Friday, October 21. The Convention program and details can be found here.

While August 29 was officially the day the State of Connecticut honored Sennheiser Electronic Corporation, the celebrations the US subsidiary of the German headphone and microphone manufacturer had planned were postponed, thanks to Hurricane Irene. But Tuesday, September 20 saw journalists converging on the company's headquarters in shoreline town of Old Lyme—"conveniently located midway between New York and Boston," according to company president John Falcone, pictured above—to take part in the delayed event. "This recognition celebrates Sennheiser's vital role in the business community, as well as the talented and passionate employees who are essential to its success," stated Governor Dannel P. Malloy in an official document that proclaimed August 29, 2011 as Sennheiser Electronic Corporation Day.