Stephen Mejias

The August 2010 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. The cover, with its mellow tones, is one of my favorites. To a greater degree than any other cover we’ve released, this one got a buzz going around the office. People would walk by and say nice things. I hope the cover works the same magic for people browsing the newsstands.

You might say that brown boxes serve as a metaphor for our lives here at Stereophile. Some days are fuller than others. Right now, I’m buried.

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"I love hard work," John Atkinson had said earlier. "I can watch it all day long."

Speaking of upgrades, this just arrived in the mail. Rega’s drive belt upgrade ($59) is supposed to do something good for my P3. It has something to do with tolerances and stuff.

So easy to look at, so hard to define.

This is the Ion TW1S tweeter module found in the Acapella High Violoncello II loudspeaker ($80,000/pair). As you can see from this picture, taken in JA’s listening room, the tweeter module rests beneath the Acapella’s midrange enclosure. (That big, purple bell&#151the color is actually Porsche Amethyst&#151has a diameter of 18.5”.) Housed in a perforated metal box and powered with its own AC cord, the tweeter module is a completely self-contained unit; it accepts a line-level input from an RCA jack and amplifies the signal with a class-A amplifier.