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Real Sound for Real People

A happy family. The all-new PSB Image Series (from left to right): The B4, B5, and B6 monitors; the T6 and T5 towers; the C4 (top) and C5 center channels; the S5 surround.

In my July 2009 "As We See It," I talked about high end audio's need for more gateway products at gateway prices, components that could potentially attract a new and wide audience to the small but greatly rewarding pastime of listening to music on a hi-fi.

We should be thankful. PSB and designer Paul Barton have done it again; the company's revamped Image Series takes technology from the outstanding…

Monster Magnet

You know there are days and then there are DAYS. Yesterday I had one of the latter, but music in the end was what saved me.

First, came a meeting with Pierre Schwob, the founder and owner of Classicalarchives.com. A website that has been up in some form since 1994, Schwob’s numbers look like this: 620,000 recorded tracks, representing 7,800 composers, 27,000 artists from 110 plus record labels. The deal is $9.95 a month or $99.50 a year. For that you get unlimited streaming for free, and a ten percent discount on anything you download.

So how is this different from any of the…

AUDIO VERITY

If you can find some of the oldest issues of Stereophile, you'll see that several of the covers hold a short, sweet, often humorous "AUDIO VERITY." These nuggets of hi-fi wisdom were written by Stereophile founder, J. Gordon Holt.

Here are just a few:

AUDIO VERITY: High fidelity in an auto is like Arpege in a glue factory.

AUDIO VERITY: A music lover is someone whose disc of Also Sprach Zarathustra has as much wear on Side 2 as on Side 1.

AUDIO VERITY: Things that should be audible but aren't are more tolerable than things that shouldn't be but are.
…

J. Gordon Holt

In 1962, J. Gordon Holt started a magazine based on the simple, beautiful idea that the quality of an audio component should be measured, first and foremost, by how it sounds. That magazine, of course, was Stereophile.

Though I never had the opportunity to meet Mr. Holt, I have heard some brilliant and incredible stories, stories of martinis and cigars and Hunter S. Thompson and more, stories that have led me to admire and fear the man, as if he wasn't a man at all, but a sort of inextinguishable blaze. I don't know what I would have said or done had I had that opportunity to meet…

Now on Newsstands: <i>Stereophile</i>, Vol.32 No.8

The August 2009 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. See that spiffy-looking integrated amplifier/USB DAC thingamajig on the cover? That's the Peachtree Nova. When I was at Stereo Exchange a couple of months ago, Novas were just flying off the shelves. Old guys were digging them, young guys were digging them, and girls were digging them, too. Everyone wanted one. Can't blame 'em, really. The Nova offers a lot in a tidy, attractive package. Look at that styling, all retro-modern Eames with its high profile and its real-wood veneer wrapping round those perfect curves!

I…

Destination: The Needle Drop

I like to stop by The Needle Drop, where usual dude, Anthony Fantano, offers his interesting, thoughtful, and often very funny takes on new music and music technology. Check it out.

His review of Wavves's "Beach Demon" from the oddly titled album, Wavvves, is particularly right on, I think.

Charlie Haden Duos

Charlie Haden, the world’s most distinctive and enticing bass player, seems to have adopted a new tradition. It started as a special occasion, a dozen years ago, in celebration of his 60th birthday, when he played a week of duets at the Blue Note jazz club in New York, each night with a different pianist. He repeated the experiment on his 70th, and this week he’s doing it again, just short of his 72nd, not a round number, which leads me to suspect he’s doing it—and may do it again, semi-regularly—simply because it’s so thrilling, so fun.

The duet is, in a sense, jazz at its purest—group…

A New Angle to an Old Discussion

If you're new to hi-fi, you might not be aware of the fiercely controversial and seemingly endless argument regarding the importance of blind listening in determining a component's worth. Essentially, there are those who believe that if differences in sound cannot be perceived while listening blindfolded, or under similarly exhausting, stressful, and inhumane conditions, then differences do not exist, and we're all just full of shit when we tell you that the $30,000 Musical Fidelity Titan sounds nothing at all like the $159 Sonic Impact Super T, that, in fact, they're basically the…

More Monkeyhaus

You see, JA, if you play the ride cymbal with a chicken wing, you're bound to get a lot more air in the upper octave… Photo by Jeff Wong.

If you'd like to hear more about the fun times at John DeVore's Monkeyhaus, be sure to read Michael Lavorgna's latest Road Tour.

Destination: Sound Opinions

I like to stop by Sound Opinions, where rock critics, Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot, slap each other in the face with their favorite album covers. No, they don't really do that. Sometimes they agree. They're smart and funny and loveable. Jim is from the Chicago Sun-Times and Greg is from the Chicago Tribune, and they love rock and roll.

This week on Sound Opinions, Jim and Greg will perform a thorough dissection of one of the greatest freaking albums of all freaking time, Prince's Purple Rain, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary.

Here in NYC, you can listen at…