On this occasion, however, John had not come over to tell me to run. Rather, he had come to tell me where to go: “Good work, but I think you’ll have to steer more towards audio,” he suggested.

This is the time of year we are generally inundated with press releases announcing new home theater products that debuted at CEDIA Expo last week (and as audionerds, er 'philes, we <I>are</I> fascinated, of course). However, this year we also received word of some interesting audio products from two of the most consistently innovative high-end audio companies, Meridian and Class&#233;.

For all of the audiophiles who lament that the industry is simply preaching to the converted, Harman International's Mark Levinson&#174; brand has a response: Wait'll you get a load of <I>this</I>.

<I>We were saddened to learn just this week that F. Alton Everest died earlier in the month. Like many audiophiles, much of what we know about acoustics was gleaned from Everest's authoritative books on the subject, including several editions of his </I>Master Handbook of Acoustics<I>, </I>Critical Listening and Auditory Perception<I>, and </I>Acoustical Techniques for Home and Studio<I>. Everest packed a lot of living into 95 years, earning a BSc in EE from Oregon State and an EE from Stanford. He taught at Oregon State and Hong Kong Baptist Universities, worked in film production for 25 years, and was an acoustic consultant for 15. During WWII, he spent four years in undersea acoustic research. He was an Emeritus Member of the Acoustical Society, Life Member of the IEEE, Life Fellow of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, Member of the Audio Engineering Society, and cofounder and past president of American Scientific Affiliation.

Seriously: Will you show me around?

The AZ9345 is on right now. And it sounds pretty damn good to me. I’m listening to Smog’s latest album, <i>A River Ain’t Too Much to Love</i>, and god, I love it. I love it. I don’t even know exactly what it is. I keep wondering, “What is it? What’s so great about this album?”

Not how. I mean to say: I should tell you something about the circumstances surrounding my personal act of listening.

The music we made in Genie Boom was not unlike the music made by the pumps and steam lines and reactors of Firmenich. Michelle drummed on garbage cans, a red school bell, a gas tank, whatever banged. Todd pressed buttons on his Casio synthesizer and Roland drum machine. I plugged five cheap guitars&mdash;old Silvertones and Kays, before they became popular&mdash;into whatever amps I could find, turned the knobs on my effects pedals all the way up, and screamed the lines from my poems into the guitars’ pick-ups.