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Meridian’s collaboration with Ferrari bore fruit as the F80 CD-Radio. "CD-Radio," by a long shot, is an unworthy designation for such an unusual device. Sure, it is an AM/FM radio of high quality and, yes, it will play CDs and DVDs and do all sorts of other neat things but you can go to www.thef80.com for all that info. What I want to tell you is that this $2999 clock-radio is drop-dead gorgeous and is a serious audio instrument. In a press conference room that I estimate was 25'x50' with 15' ceiling, Meridian's Bob Stuart popped in first one disc and then another to the amazement of…
Once again, I was treated to a demonstration of Eminent Technology's $12,900 TRW-17 rotary woofer and once again I was baffled by its seeming lack of practicality, while being amazed at its creative approach to producing the lowest notes.
For $12,900, you get the motor (pictured) and bass manager and amplifier. However, you also need to build a room adjacent to your listening room (or, more likely, home theater) in which to house it. A vent or crawl space ports the bass into the room. And then, you'd better really brace your room, the bass chamber, and, most likely, your foundation…
I grew up in Charlottesville, VA, where E.A. Poe briefly attended college without matriculating. I used to visit Poe's bedchamber, which has been preserved as a memorial,and gawp at artifacts that almost certainly had no connection to him. Somehow I had the impression that we Charlottesvillians appreciated his gothic world view more than other folks.
Over the years my infatuation with Poe ebbed and waned. My early love for him gave way to my realization that many of my peers didn't find him "cool." Later, I discovered that Poe was cooler than many of my friends, as I discovered his…
I've been loving the soap opera epic of the Alex Matter "Pollocks"currently on display at the McMullen Museum of Art.
Thomas Hoving, who hasn't seen them, opined that when he attended art school, it was common practice to have students produce a "de Kooning," a "Rauschenberg," and a "Pollock" and so on. That's what he suspects the Matter Pollocks to be.
Don't get me wrong, I heard some very good two-channel sound at CEDIA—Thiel and Wisdom Audio leap to mind—but arriving at the Edge Electronics/PBN Montana room at T.H.E. Show was a breath of fresh air. Why? The Denver Convention Center is a noisy place and even the "rooms" are merely shells set up within that vast space. The Denver Athletic Club is both solidly built and quiet.
Edge's Steven Norber was demoing his $5600 GCD CD player, a prototype preamp (price and name TBD), and G8 statement monoblocks ($9500/pair). PBN's Peter Noerbaek brought along his Montana XPS floorstanding…
Magnepan's Wendell Diller promised to demonstrate "an intriguing solution to the center channel," which was nebulous enough. Imagine my surprise when he demoed his new solution with a stereo! A three channel stereo, true, but a stereo nonetheless.
The system consisted of Bryston $2395 BCD-1 CD player, three $7500 Bryston 28B SST monoblocks, and $4995 SP-2multichannel preamp/processor, not to mention a pair of Magnepan 1.6s ($1775), a CC3 center channel speaker ($995), and a prototype ceiling-mounted magnetic planar speaker (price TBD) with a motorized lift that pulled it up to the…
"'Music's first offering, an eclectic, disparate, but mostly functional compendium of influences from 5000 B.C. to present day, hints that this trend's time may not only have fully arrived, but is already on the wane,' [editor in chief Ryan] Schreiber wrote. 'If music has any chance of keeping our interest, it's going to have to move beyond the same palatable but predictable notes, meters, melodies, tonalities, atonalities, timbres, and harmonies.'"
God, I love The Onion.
Match the side-effects with the commonly prescribed drugs. I only scored 40%—and only that high because I had taken one of them. Kind of scary.