Ariel Bitran

Henry Gessau. Henry Gessau! Who is this mysterious chap? He must be some time-travelling, sound-saving avenger! Color photography was not widely available until the 1950s, so based on his profile picture, Henry must have lived sometime between the years 1850 and 1950 and then tweeted into the future! But forget the man. What about his message?

As we sent the March issue for delivery to the printing presses, the April issue sat in queue for multiple rounds of edits. At the same time, the editors, writers, and a lowly editorial assistant lay the building blocks for the May issue to be released two months away. With the constant influx of communication regarding dates present, future, and future’s future, it is hard to know what month we are ever really living in, and it is a time-bending wonder whenever the new issue of Stereophile shows up on our desks. So with great excitement, we announce to you Stereophile March 2012, Volume 35, Number 3.

When we first started posting, the Stereophile team was unsure of what would be the result. Would more people buy Attention Screen CDs? Would we get more members to our forums? Or would we just be totally ignored?

On an early Thursday morning on November 10th, 2011, NHT’s John Johnsen presented his new SuperPower powered desktop loudspeaker ($398/pair) to members of the hi-fi and consumer electronics press.

For the past few months, my system has been in a serious playback rut. The disc tray on my Oppo DV-980H does not pop out, and my Rega P1 is in unmistakably poor shape: the tonearm cable to connect the tonearm to the cartridge ripped off from the tonearm, one of the tonearm pins ripped off the tonearm cable and is firmly pinned onto the cartridge I never installed (an Audio Technica AT95E), and the needle on my old Ortofon cartridge is bent backwards, which is the reason why I needed to change my cartridge to begin with. I promise, I have reasons for all of this. Not good reasons. Thus, most of my music listening for the past seven months, has been done at work in my cubicle via different digital music streaming services, in the hopes of finding a service that would be fun and functional.

Following that record, I tuned in to Luciano by Luciano Pavarotti, also found in the trash. Pavarotti sang with impact and the timpani were a joy.