Not as in counterculture, but as in the London Underground, Cool tour of unused and abandoned stations. Gosh I love this stuff—the only thing better is actually sneaking in yourself.

I'm a complete sucker for jargon. Specialized vocabulary identifies you a an insider and, whether you mean it to or not, it reveals a lot about your group.

My buddy Jeff Wong and I were talking about the collector's mentality on one of our bike rides recently. Jeff observed that there are two major strategies for collectors who have it bad: Try to collect <I>everything</I> and the other is mine a tightly defined subgenre.

Ultimate Ears, the headphone company that specializes in in-ear monitors such as the <A HREF="http://stereophile.com/headphones/1204ultimate/">UE-5c</A&gt;, is developing a new model slated to join the <A HREF="http://www.ultimateears.com/superfi/superfi.htm">super.fi</A&gt; family of products. During the prototyping period, the design crew referred to the new model as "XXX" (triple X).

Slim Devices, the company best known for the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/images/newsletter/306Bstph.html">Squeezebox<…;, has announced what it is billing as "the most advanced networked audio system available." At <I>Stereophile</I>, we hear this claim all the time, and it usually means that a computer peripheral company has added another USB port to a product aimed at the MP3 crowd.

The audio diaspora is split on the subject of bass. Some audiophiles&mdash;surely the majority&mdash;consider the reproduction of low frequencies purely in terms of the weight and drama it adds to sounds with significant bass content. Others&mdash;the generalists&mdash;take a much wider view of the significance of extended bass response, noting that an audio system's ubiquitous high-pass filters are unusual in Nature and suggesting that this is one of the factors that separate, at the fundamental level, live sound from its poorer reproduced cousin. When John Atkinson wrote on this subject more than 10 years ago (<I>Stereophile</I>, November 1995, "<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/75">As We See It</A>"), he quoted a memorable line by Kal Rubinson that encapsulates this latter view: "Something in Nature abhors a capacitor."

The audio diaspora is split on the subject of bass. Some audiophiles&mdash;surely the majority&mdash;consider the reproduction of low frequencies purely in terms of the weight and drama it adds to sounds with significant bass content. Others&mdash;the generalists&mdash;take a much wider view of the significance of extended bass response, noting that an audio system's ubiquitous high-pass filters are unusual in Nature and suggesting that this is one of the factors that separate, at the fundamental level, live sound from its poorer reproduced cousin. When John Atkinson wrote on this subject more than 10 years ago (<I>Stereophile</I>, November 1995, "<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/75">As We See It</A>"), he quoted a memorable line by Kal Rubinson that encapsulates this latter view: "Something in Nature abhors a capacitor."

It seems these days that everybody and his brother is doing something about room equalization. Sure, we had the old-time graphic and parametric EQs&mdash;now we're seeing much more sophisticated and dedicated devices, from the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/roomtreatments/437">TacT</A&gt; and <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/solidpreamps/278">Z-Systems</A&gt; standalone products to the auto-setup and EQ systems found in many A/V receivers. I was impressed with the Audyssey MultEQxt in the Denon AV-4806 receiver&mdash;see my "<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/musicintheround/306mitr">Music in the Round</A>" column in March, p.50&mdash;and a standalone AudysseyPro unit was demonstrated at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show.

It seems these days that everybody and his brother is doing something about room equalization. Sure, we had the old-time graphic and parametric EQs&mdash;now we're seeing much more sophisticated and dedicated devices, from the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/roomtreatments/437">TacT</A&gt; and <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/solidpreamps/278">Z-Systems</A&gt; standalone products to the auto-setup and EQ systems found in many A/V receivers. I was impressed with the Audyssey MultEQxt in the Denon AV-4806 receiver&mdash;see my "<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/musicintheround/306mitr">Music in the Round</A>" column in March, p.50&mdash;and a standalone AudysseyPro unit was demonstrated at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show.