Stephen Mejias

It’s inevitable: Working on “Recommended Components,” as I am now, leads to fantasies of new gear, new systems, outstanding new heights of recorded playback! I have to restrain myself, focus. Focus, Daniel-san, focus.

In this">http://www.electronichouse.com/article/sharing_in_the_vinyl_groove/">th… nice piece, Arlen Schweiger, managing editor of Electronic House, describes the great amount of fun he’s enjoyed while getting back into vinyl. Even on a modest analog rig ($50 Technics turntable and $100 Cambridge Audio phono preamp), Arlen has had no trouble noting vinyl’s virtues, which in his experience include wider soundstages, better focused images, and tighter bass. Most of all, it seems, Arlen is enjoying hunting for outstanding bargains on used LPs and sharing his discoveries with friends and family. Be sure to check out the slideshow.

Since the">http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/the_room_today/">the transformation of my living room into a listening room, my record collection has been a woeful, helpless mess. Albums are grouped together more by my fleeting mood or by date of purchase than by anything usefully intelligible, or at all resembling order, such as genre or artist name. If, on some strange and rainy Saturday, I happened to have listened to albums by Mal Waldron, Crazy Horse, and Beach House, these albums will be found shelved together.

Dear Uncle">http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/021308sing/">Uncle Omar in Italy,

You missed a fine party. Though we were downright heartbroken that you could not attend, we managed to nevertheless have some fun. Fortunately, Uncle Norbert brought his new video camera, and we were able to capture much of that fun on tape! For your convenience, I've attached my favorite bit of footage, which came during one of our spontaneous sing-alongs.

I was in some sort of mood. Must’ve been the heat. I listened to:

Tris McCall has some trouble getting a hold of Joanna Newsom. Apparently, he’s not the only one. Photo: Annabel Mehran

“These are pretty,” she wrote. Attached to the e-mail was a picture of the new Davone Ray loudspeaker. Pretty, indeed.