Stephen Mejias

Busy here in Stereophile HQ. As the salsa blares ("Clavo saca clavo!"), we're happy to be working on Issue Number 1 of Volume 31. That's January 2008. And I just sent the 2007 Article Index to our copy editor, Richard Lehnert. Having compiled this list of every equipment report, column, interview, and feature we've published over the past year, I can confidently say:

We kick ass.

Also on the agenda is the creation of our 2007 "Product of the Year" plaques. This is a fun project. I make a(nother) list and take it across the street to Crown Trophy, where the woman behind the counter remembers my name (first and last, with proper pronunciation), gives me a quick look, and says: "You're all set."

"I am?"

Winners will be announced in our December 2007 issue.

Then, also, we're reprinting our Test CDs 1 and 3 for your system-analyzing pleasure. Interesting: While proofing the liner notes for Test CD 1, which include the text of a reading by J. Gordon Holt (in whose ears we, apparently, trusted), originally published in our Vol.1 No.4 (March-April 1963), it became very clear to me that Gordon was a damn good writer. It's a shame he's no longer writing. Even more interesting: Gordon's words then weren't very different from his words in last month's "As We See It." It takes some serious conviction, I imagine, to hold the same opinion for forty-something years. If anything, he just sounded a lot less pissed off back then. He wrote:

Many writers of books and articles about high fidelity advise the prospective buyer merely to choose what sounds good to him. Certainly there is no sense in anybody's choosing a music system he doesn't like, but in a field where definite standards of quality exist, simply liking something does not mean that it is good, by those standards.

This is a fine point. I can even agree with it. But what's wrong with choosing a system that sounds good to you, while also acknowledging that, in terms of Gordon's vision of high fidelity, the system you've put together sucks?

Nothing! Nothing is wrong with that. Let us screw the definite standards of quality! I see a new, brighter future of hi-fi, one in which men don't need to be told what to listen to or how to listen or that their components are the very best, or truest to the original, whatever that might be. I envision a hi-fi world where confident, strong men are proud of their shitty-sounding systems.

My name is Stephen Mejias and my system sucks!

How much does your system suck?

This does raise the question of whether high fidelity can, or should be, better than the real thing.

Shit, dude. Really, what's the question? If there's a choice, I say everything should be better than the real thing. I love sitting at home on my orange couch with my legs up listening to Sonic Youth or Van Morrison or Grupo Folklorico through my shitty system without having to stand in line in the cold weather waiting for tickets to be squeezed into a smelly crowded bar where the drinks are watered-down and cost a small fortune and the band doesn't go on until after midnight and I still have to somehow catch a train back to Jersey City and go to work the next day. Love it! Hi-fi should always be better than the real thing. Why not? The real thing is a pain in the ass.

Maybe this isn't hi-fi we're talking about. Maybe it's higher-fi. Whatever. I'm all for it.

What else?
Hmm... That's it, I guess. Cheers.