Why cable again?

Well, the obvious reason is that it has been a while since my last foray into Cableland (July 1988). Many new products have been introduced in the interim, so it appeared appropriate to once again open Pandora's Box. Those of you who still remember my speaker cable article of 2½ years ago will recollect the considerable controversy that evolved from that project.

Some of the response was quite predictable, though the venom with which it was laced was not. The manufacturers of those outrageously priced "garden-hose"–type cables that I failed to rave about were more than just perturbed.

Sony's first CD player, the much-maligned CDP-1 (reviewed in Vol.5 No.10), did all the things we'd been promised from CD except deliver perfect sound. It met CD's incredible claims for frequency range and linearity, harmonic and intermodulation distortion, and signal/noise ratio, yet—despite my own initial enthusiasm for it—it proved ultimately to be a disappointing-sounding player (footnote 1). Its sound was rather hard and grainy, and quite spectacularly uninvolving to listen to. But considering that it was the first of its kind, it was a good start despite its many sonic shortcomings (footnote 2).

Richard Matthews has sold upwards of 30,000 tubes in the last ten years and he still has 100,000 tubes to go! Working out of his Leeds Radio warehouse in the Bronx, Matthews has every tube imaginable in stock, as well as a vast variety of tube testers, classic radios, capacitors, beautiful vintage tube boxes and many, many collector's pieces.

In her wild ride of a memoir, A Woman Like Me (2012), eclectic soul and R&B singer Bettye LaVette spoke of being hung over a 20th-floor balcony of a Manhattan skyscraper by her pimp boyfriend. She revealed that she'd slept with Ben E. King and Otis Redding, and had even spent a minute dabbling in prostitution. She had dropped acid with George Clinton. Finally, she had her moment of satisfaction when she delivered a knockout performance of the Who's "Love, Reign O'er Me" at the 2008 Kennedy Center Honors. In the audience, all agog, were Beyoncé, Barbra Streisand, and Aretha Franklin, all more successful than she.

Chopin: Preludes, Op.28
Carol Rosenberger, piano. DED-15311.

Handel: Harpsichord Suites Nos.3 in d & 7 in g; Chaconne No.1 in G
Malcolm Hamilton, harpsichord. DEL-15322.

Scarlatti: sonatas, Vol.1.
Malcolm Hamilton, harpsichord. DEl-15321.

Szymanowski: Masques, Op.34; Etudes, Op.33; Four Etudes, Op.4
Carol Rosenberger, piano. DEL-15312.

Common to all: Amelia S. Haygood, executive producer; John Wright, Katja Andy, producers; Carson C. Taylor, engineer.

It is certainly cause for rejoicing when a new label appears that is dedicated to presenting fine artists not generally known, with recorded sound to enhance the performance. John Wright, producer for Delos records, has this philosophy and has kindly sent us four of their first five releases. The fifth will be a Schubert program played by Miss Rosenberger. The records we received were all well-produced, with fine pressings, good jacket photos, and excellent sleeve notes. Complete credits are given to the production staff on each jacket.

In the first two parts of our video coverage of Jana Dagdagan's and my visit to PS Audio in Boulder, Colorado, we toured the factory and I interviewed the company's founder Paul McGowan. In this final video, I listen to three of my own recordings played on the legendary IRS V loudspeaker system, driven by PS Audio's BHK 300 monoblocks. I recorded the sound with Sennheiser's "Ambeo" binaural system, which mounts microphones on the outer surfaces of a pair of earbuds, and if you listen along on headphones, you will hear what I heard!