Stephen Mejias

This morning, I walked right by electrician and idiosyncratic amplifier designer, Nori Komuro, and I didn’t say a word. Not even hello. Why didn’t I say anything? I don’t know. I had just emerged from the subway, and was walking up 32nd Street, toward Herald Square, and I wasn’t expecting to see an idiosyncratic amplifier designer. I was looking, instead and as usual, at the ground, at the sky, at high-heels and at skirts. I saw plenty of those. I was pulling a small handcart carrying a box of loudspeakers. Nori Komuro and I would have had something to talk about.

“Oh, loudspeakers,” Nori Komuro might have said.

Audiophiles have been buzzing about Emotiva for a few years now. The attraction is no mystery: Emotiva’s products are solidly built and modestly priced, and the company takes pride in its strong relationships with customers. Yet, other than in the usual show report, Emotiva’s products have been absent from Stereophile’s pages.

But that will soon change:

While listening to Keith Freund’s lovely Constant Comments, it’s often difficult to discern whether the sounds are coming from inside or outside the listening room. Voices, birdsong, honking horns, barking dogs, the opening and closing of doors, ocean waves and rainfall mingle, freely and happily, with crystalline and gently strummed electric guitars, synthesizer sounds, electronic burps and gurgles, tape hiss, and more.

The result is a comforting and thought-provoking ramble. Listening to Constant Comments is like walking down 3rd Street, between Coles and Monmouth, late at night, glancing into the glowing windows of strangers’ homes: I can’t help but make up stories for these scattered shards of song. The 12 tracks of Constant Comments, then, are glimpses into other worlds, at once foreign and familiar, and altogether compelling.

If I could attend just one music festival each year, it would be Iceland Airwaves, held October 12–16, in downtown Reykjavik, Iceland. Launched in 1999 (in an airplane hangar!), Iceland Airwaves holds parties and performances in a handful of the city’s best venues and sets exciting local talent alongside outstanding international acts&#151all within a landscape of stunning beauty.

Forum member “jgrossman” wants to know what’s stopping more people from getting into hi-fi. Is it the high cost of audio components, the hobby’s steep learning curve, the lack of hi-fi dealers, or something else?

Anton argues that audiophiles are the problem. “I have seen the enemy of high end audio,” he writes, “and it is us.”

What do you think? Talk about it in the Forum.

Already flooded with contenders offering innumerable models in various shapes, sizes, and colors, the headphone market grows even larger today with the launch of SOL Republic, a “music lifestyle company” dedicated to “delivering innovation in sound, style, and durability.” Four SOL Republic models will initially be offered: Amps ($59.99) and Amps HD ($99.99) in-ear models, and Tracks ($99.99) and Tracks HD ($149.99) on-ear models.

The company, whose initials stand for “Soundtrack of Life,” is led by three music lovers with impressive backgrounds in business development and marketing:

During the final episode of Radio Happy Hour, held at Manhattan’s Le Poisson Rouge on Friday, August 12, we were treated to performances by New York five-piece, Twin Sister. The band played a selection of songs from In Heaven, an unabashed pop album full of hooks and charms, to be released by Domino on September 27.

I was drawn to this music from its earliest moments&#151those celestial and far-reaching chimes, old-school synth beats, and Andrea Estella’s arresting vocal delivery, a strange and glittering coo, reaching out to “Daniel”: