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I've been kicking myself for years for not saving the copy of The New York Times in which Hans Fantel wrote about hearing Bruno Walter's 1938 performance of Mahler's Ninth Symphony.
Alex Ross got Fantel's permission to reprint it on his marvelous The Rest Is Noise blog.
Fantel used to write about hi-fi for the NYT and audiophiles frequently derided his choices of equipment to review, but when I was an audio salesman, I demonstrated systems and components for Mr. Fantel and he clearly recognized special gear when he heard it—he reigned in his inner geek to reach a wider audience. As…
If you were sending a shout out to an alien species, what would you say? Here's what Cosmic Call sent via a 70m telescope in the Ukraine. Let's hope our fellow sapient species are brighter than I am—I had to click through to the translation.
Richard Ouzounian wishes Samuel Beckett a happy centeniary. Well, if it's Beckett we're talking about, "happy" isn't precisely the word we want—and Beckett was all about le mot juste.
As far as I'm concerned, the money quote is: "'James Joyce was a synthesizer, trying to bring in as much as he could,' he said. 'I am an analyzer, trying to leave out as much as I can.'"
The Stereophile Photo Gallery is all the way live. It's another fine way of building community and sharing the enthusiasm. I hope that you will visit it and make it beautiful. Like Madonna, she's waiting to be dressed up in your love; decorate her with images of your hi-fi gear.
We've started with ten specific galleries:
Home Audio Systems, where you can let us see what you see when you're sitting in the sweetest spot of all.
Manufacturers' Showcase, where the kings and queens of the trade can share their hottest products.
Dealers' Open House, where hi-fi…
On deadline? Need statistics to back up your project? Here's what you need.
"You've taken on a design challenge and come up with a solution that's been widely admired and won you accolades. But a year or so later, you realize you made a mistake. There's something horribly wrong with your design. And it's not just something cosmetic — a badly resolved corner, some misspaced type — but a fundamental flaw that will almost certainly lead to catastrophic failure. And that failure will result not just in embarassment, or professional ruin, but death, the death of thousands of people.
"You are the only person that knows that something's wrong. What would you do?
"…
"You've taken on a design challenge and come up with a solution that's been widely admired and won you accolades. But a year or so later, you realize you made a mistake. There's something horribly wrong with your design. And it's not just something cosmetic — a badly resolved corner, some misspaced type — but a fundamental flaw that will almost certainly lead to catastrophic failure. And that failure will result not just in embarassment, or professional ruin, but death, the death of thousands of people.
"You are the only person that knows that something's wrong. What would you do?
"…