search
After hosting three hour-long seminars on Sunday (following five on Friday and Saturday), I spent the final hours of the 2007 RMAF racing around rooms I really wanted to hear before the Show closed at 4pm. At 4:30pm, I stopped by what would be my last room, the one featuring a new name to me, Salagar Speakers. This Illinois company is aiming high: its first product is a beautifully finished, physically large two-way active design, the Symphony S210, that combines a 1" soft-dome tweeter with a 10" woofer in an unusual curved enclosure. Power is provided by internal ICEpower class-D…
Nordost has entered the realm of stratospherically-priced cabling with the introduction of Odin interconnects and speaker cable. With Odin interconnects draped around Lars of Nordost's neck, and the speaker cable seen running between Raidho Ayra C3 speakers and Burmester 001 CD, BAT preamp, and Gamut D-200 amplifier (a last-minute replacement for an ailing Burmester amp), the combination of Odin interconnects and speaker cable and Nordost Valhalla power cables—Odin power cables are yet to come —delivered one of the most breathtakingly realistic depictions of a huge, three-dimensional…
I was delighted to end the final day of RMAF 2007 in the Soundsmith room. I’ve spent quite a while in Peter Ledermann's rooms at previous shows, and loved every minute. This year was no exception.
I wouldn't be surprised if Peter’s SF-810 Strain Gauge phono cartridge achieves legendary status. Paired with the VPI HRX turntable, Schroeder Reference tonearm, and Silver Circle Power conditioner and cables, the Silversmith line-up—top-of-the-line Soundsmith Strain Gauge, Soundsmith SG-180 full-function, remote-control, 5-input preamp, HE 2006 300Wpc MOSFET power amp, and Soundsmith…
Philip K. Dick has become a huge success 25 years after his death. He'd have seen the humor in that.
The new Miles Davis On The Corner set, which Sony says is the last metal boxed chunk of Miles they're gonna release, ever, is also the most beautiful, ever. Like the LP which reached its finest, most completely perfected form just before CDs came in, the boxed set is reaching its zenith with this one. The funky characters from the original cover are now stamped into the metal casing into which the set, book and CDs combined slip into. It's the same setup that Sony’s been using since the beginning of what has proved to be colossal reissue program.
CMJ week in NYC and the collective…
Haven't heard of it yet? You will. It's an opportunistic pathogen that is extremely resistant to antibiotics—some people call it a super bacterium. Jon Carroll writes about it in his column today, which, like all of his columns, is a great read.
Jia-Rui Chong's article in the LA Times fills in with more details.
I have a hard time panicking about bird flu, but I find Acinetobacter baumannii scary.
I read Slate primarily to catch my colleague Fred Kaplan's "War Stories" column, but whenever I read Fred, I also go to Garry Trudeau's "The Sandbox," a milblog that allows military personnel stationed in Iraq and Afganistan to "vent, rhapsodize, and [inform] the folks on the home front . . . what is going on from their point of view."
David Montgomery caught up with Trudeau and two contributors to the blog recently. It's a fine piece of writing.