Ariel Bitran

Last night at top floor of the Trump Soho Hotel (New York, NY), the design-oriented firm B&O announced the release of the BeoPlay A9 as part of their new B&O PLAY lineup of products. The BeoPlay A9 is a single active speaker system designed for seamless integration into home environments. The A9 streams music wirelessly from the customers iPhone, iPad or Android device using AirPlay or your DLNA network.

During their presentation to the press, B&O suggested that this product was not necessarily made for the audiophile but instead those interested in design and feeling enriched by one’s surroundings. Apparently, this message did not sink through to the other geeky writers. During the Q&A, reporters continued to prod whether the BeoPlay A9 could be used in stereo mode with two BeoPlays, to which B&O representatives affirmed that it could, but it was not designed for that intent. While the BeoPlay A9 was designed to sound good, more importantly it was designed to look good.

In this video, Stereophile columnist and Analog Planet Editor Michael Fremer and Gary Dell'Abate (aka Baba Booey), producer of the Howard Stern Show, compare the virtues of analog playback to MP3, discuss the release of Nirvana's Nevermind on the spinning black circle, and Mikey coins the phrase 'the viral spread of vinyl.'

In late September 2012 from their headquarters in Bergen County’s own Mahwah, New Jersey, Denon Electronics announced the launch of their interactive visYOUalize Yourself website and mobile app as an accompaniment to their four headphone lines released in the summer of 2012. These four headphone divisions target offer clearly positioned models unified through product image and technological goals targeting four different sects of customers. Denon wants to know: which one are you?

After an exhausting but educational day at NYC’s In Living Stereo setting up my new Rega RB101 tonearm with the Audio Technica AT95E phono cartridge, I hailed a taxi while balancing the turntable on one hand. Thirty minutes later, the yellow cab stopped at the doorstep of my quaint Brooklyn duplex, which I share with three other roommates, a Chartreux cat named Larry, and three friendly Pakistani families.

Upon my return home with the P1, the roommates were ecstatic. Jared analyzed, “I dig its minimalist design.” Leeor cheered, “I can’t wait to play the new Animal Collective record on this!” Darryl insisted, “Yo, you need to bring some bitties back now.” Larry the Cat ignored our excitement and cuddled with my phono preamp’s glowing tube. After listening to some records together, I kicked the roommates out for some alone time with my system. No bitties yet, but I did have a mug of green tea, some LPs, and Larry.

I’ll be honest, when Klipsch invited me to see the B-52s on Thursday, August 9th, all I really wanted was for Peter Griffin to stroll across the Irving Plaza stage oblivious to the swirling lights and drifting artificial fog, whip out an acoustic guitar, and play that jangly lead from “Rock Lobster”. A bearded lobster donning a turban would then prance to the front of the stage and everyone would scream “Death to America / And butter sauce!” This never happened. However, I did successfully ignore the opening band Love Funk, had my mind blown by the B-52s, but most importantly, I discovered a bunch of new products from the Klipsch family.

“Iraq Lobstah!”

“Hi, Ariel? This is Steve Cohen at In Living Stereo. I just opened up your turntable box. There are some sweatpants in here. Oh, and the tonearm cable is missing.”

“MISSING?”

“Yes.”

Kyle studied Film and TV at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. He had a freakish obsession with penguins and spent hours at a time glued to his Macbook watching downloads of Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing. I studied marketing at NYU’s Stern School of Business, counted down the days till the release of Guitar Hero I for Playstation Two, and once paid $20 for a broken drummer monkey known as Trick Star because I wanted to feel free and alive. In the summer of 2006, Kyle and I decided to start listening to vinyl. Why? Because vinyl was cool, and we were not.