"There, <I>that</I>'s where you should put the microphone&mdash;5" from the end of my bow."

"There, <I>that</I>'s where you should put the microphone&mdash;5" from the end of my bow."

"There, <I>that</I>'s where you should put the microphone&mdash;5" from the end of my bow."

Earlier this month, at the Internationale Funkausstellung 1999 in Berlin, Germany, <A HREF="http://www.syrinx.de">Syrinx music & media</A> announced that, together with <A HREF="http://www.panasonic.com/">Panasonic/Technics</A&gt; and their new DVD-Audio players (see <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10509/">previous story</A>), they successfully presented the world's first DVD-Audio disc. The Internationale Funkausstellung 1999 ran from August 28 until September 5 under the theme of "Your World of Consumer Electronics."

More than a million CD recorders have been sold in the last 21 months, making the category one of the most rapidly developing segments in the history of the consumer electronics industry. The news was delivered by <A HREF="http://www.philips.com/">Philips</A&gt; executives at the end of August at the IFA trade and consumer exhibition in Berlin, Germany.

J. Gordon Holt founded <I>Stereophile</I> in the fall of 1962 in order to promote the idea that the optimal way to judge audio components was to do what end users did: <I>listen</I> to them. Since then, Gordon has had an unbroken relationship with <I>Stereophile</I>, through its sale to Larry Archibald in 1982, my coming on board as editor in 1986, the sale of the magazine to Petersen Publishing in 1998, and the subsequent sale of Petersen to Emap in 1999. Through all this time he has been listed on the magazine's masthead as "Founder & Chief Tester." (A <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//interviews/66/">fascinating interview</A> with Gordon, conducted by his associate and friend Steven Stone, can be found in this website's "Archives.")

CD recorders are the hottest ticket in audio at the moment. Philips and Marantz once dominated the category, but other manufacturers have recently jumped on board with their own versions, among them Pioneer and Harman/Kardon. <A HREF="http://www.onkyo.co.jp">Onkyo</A&gt; will introduce its DX-RD511 dubber later this month at the 1999 <A HREF="http://www.cedia.org/">CEDIA</A&gt; Expo in Indianapolis. The machine is expected to arrive in stores in October&mdash;just in time for the holiday season.

Back in 1985, J. Gordon Holt wrote: "It seems, these days, that many of us audiophiles have become so preoccupied with the minutiae of sound reproduction that we haven't even noticed that it doesn't sound like music any more." He was talking about the obsession with soundstaging and detail at the expense of <I>musical</I> accuracy. In "<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//asweseeit/144/">Getting the Notes Right (Midrange Madness)</A>," he renders his lesson in classic JGH style, observing that "I have played on this old saw in these pages for so many years that it has turned into a dead sawhorse, but somehow the message never seems to get through. There should be no harm done by beating it into the ground a little farther."