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Stereophile's analysis of the B&W Matrix 801 was published long before the magazine acquired the DRA Labs and Audio Precision measurement systems used for its loudspeaker reviews. As my wife owns a pair of the big B&Ws, however, I have measured the speaker at various times over the past 13 years. Here, then, is a complete but never-before-published set of measurements to accompany Lewis Lipnick's 1987 review.

At an estimated 87dB(B)/W/m sensitivity, the B&W 801 is average in this respect. But as can be seen from the plots of its impedance…

In the vertical plane (fig.7), the Matrix 801's use of high-order crossover filters makes it fairly insensitive to listener position, the response hardly changing over quite a wide ±10 degrees window…

But in between is where the challenge lies, if only because amplifiers really aren't amplifiers at all: They're re-creators. Electricity isn't just their fuel, it's their raw material as well, and rather than make the music on our records louder—which is how the first record players did it—modern amps merely…

It’s not that here aren’t stories to tell either. Let’s take the most famous example: Robert Johnson. The current theory about his death is that he died because the husband of a woman he was hustling got angry and served him whiskey laced with strychnine. Supposedly, it took him three days of wailing agony before he finally died. Now if that ain’t fertile dramatic material I don’t know what is.

There have been good documentaries…

I remember listening to it. The cassette version because I wasn't allowed to play with the vinyl. I was five. I think I fell in love with "Pretty Young Thing" after listening only once. I wondered why such a great song was buried so deep into the album. But they…

Guess what?

The Wire is fiction—and even though Simon was a journalist in Baltimore, his version of what happened then is just one story among many. Not precisely a Stop the presses! moment.

In fact, the biggest reason good fiction like The Wire works so well is that it is selective, sorting through all the facts to give one part of the story its narrative pop.

Good…

I suspect that, on a given night, the Stones could still be the greatest rock band in the world. Oh, who am I kidding? Most nights these days, they might not even be the best rock band in town.

But a man can dream, can't he?

Hat tip to George Weber.

Basically, Rosen argues, it's because "the gang of 500" chooses to do things "the way they've been done." Thus, you get the same tropes over and over again—and, if they happen to be spectacularly wrong, it's because the people didn't act logically.

Hmmm. Maybe pundits, like baseball players, should post their stats.

What I find so perplexing about herd journalism is how much it means that every contest has a single, easy-to-follow story line. With 500 people covering…