Kudos to the editorial staff and writers for the overall excellence of the December 2007 issue!

Great articles, and an EXCELLENT manufacturer's response from Boulder!

I especially enjoyed the articles on the New Orleans music scene, MF's discussion of Intelligent Record-Cleaning Fluid, and Art Dudley's review of the Zu Audio cartridge.

Hello All:

I recently ventured into the world of hi-end audio and stumbled upon this forum. My budget afforded me:

Audio Research VSi55 Integrated Amp
Rega Apollo CD Player
Wilson Benesch ARC Speakers
An AC Filter and high-end cables

Hi,
I just read Keith Howard's article, "Heavy Load: How Loudspeakers Torture Amplifiers" and was wondering what the formula was that he used to generate the EPDR graphs? I tried deriving it myself, but got stuck halfway though.

It is said over and over that hi end audio stores' margins are paper thin. I have found out today that this is complet and total bullshit.

I was at a high end store today and I sneaked a peak at their computer screen while they were doing a component lookup and their cost came up. It was just as I suspected: they get a 100% markup on components (this was an amp, not cables). In fact the markup for this particular component was 110%

So, we are getting raped when we buy new by dealers who are not even all that nice to us.

The CD upset him? Is this normal? http://www.campuslife.cornell.edu/campuslife/housing/undergraduate/upload/Fremer.pdf

My copy of Stereophile came late, so I just finished reading AD's Listening section. He wrote about SET components and a mono record that he newly rediscovered and enjoyed. Towards the end of the article, AD writes:

Quote:

---

"The next time someone tells me that they know that the realistic reproduction of music in the home requires