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Rethm Maarga loudspeaker Manufacturer's Comment

Sidebar 4: Manufacturer's Comment

Editor: Let me start by thanking Art, John, and Jim for their kindness and consideration in allowing me to take it back to them for a relisten, and for remeasuring, which involved quite a bit of inconvenience for both Art and John.

Art's analogy of different cakes for different people is one of the truisms of the sensory world, be it touch, smell, taste, sight, or sound. Aesthetics, by its very nature, is genetically bound to subjectivity.

We have designed these speakers around a set of criteria that we felt would bring its reproduction…

High-End Munich Canceled

(February 28) High End 2020, aka Munich High End, has been canceled “due to the current worsening trend with respect to the spread of the novel coronavirus.” Citing a rapid increase in infections in Italy “within a few days,” and uncertainty as to how the virus will continue to spread in Europe, Stefan Dreischärf, Managing Director of High End Society Service GmbH declared, “We consider it our responsibility to act in a timely manner.”

The press release also revealed that, at the beginning of February, the society offered Chinese exhibitors options for leaving the show. Since then, the…

Listening #207

The stars are matter. We are matter. But it doesn't matter.—Don Van Vliet

Only sensibilities trained on poetry can wholly appreciate it.—T.S. Eliot (writing about Djuna Barnes's Nightwood)

In the 17th century, steam engines began appearing throughout Europe and Asia, ushered into existence by any number of different inventors. More recently, multiple inventors conceived and cooked up the atomic bomb, the jet engine, and the solid-body electric guitar. Virtually every race of Homo sapiens has invented the bow and arrow, and people on at least three different continents invented…

Listening #207 Page 2

Stereophile's enduringly healthy circulation suggests widespread support for the multiplicity of voices in our pages, and virtually every month that notion is confirmed by letters from our readers. Most of our reviewers have their fans and their detractors, and although it's been a long time since I've seen a letter demanding the head of this or that reviewer, we still occasionally hear from readers who want us to know they trust Herb or John or me or Mikey or Kal or someone else above all others.

Because the quest for wisdom is not a zero-sum game, it's possible for Stereophile to print…

Gramophone Dreams #34: The Salt Cellar System

The image above is not a modernist oil painting. It's an airport x-ray of my friend Jeffrey Jackson's backpack.

Can you identify its contents? Did you notice the red rectangle alerting the inspector of a suspicious object? Do you know what that suspicious object is? Or what it is worth?

That ominous-looking black silhouette is a 1930s-era Western Electric 555W "receiver"—ie, a compression driver for use with a horn. It's about 10" in diameter and weighs around 15lb. It requires a 7V DC/1.4A power supply for its field-coil magnet and would cost about $8000 to replace.

In…

Gramophone Dreams #34: The Salt Cellar System Page 2

Input signals were generated by mono and stereo LPs traced by a variety of stereo phono cartridges with their coils connected in series (for mono) by an adaptor at the end of the tonearm cable. The phono cartridges fed one channel of a Slagle step-up transformer, leading to one channel of a Slagle/Jackson–designed inductance-resistance (LR) phono preamp: an RIAA stage that uses no signal capacitors or coupling capacitors. That fed one of Slagle's famous autoformer volume controls, which in turn fed Jackson's single-ended, transformer-coupled 50 tube amp, which makes maybe 2 watts. (The globe…

Welcome to the EDM Jungle

In the mid-1990s, record labels were cash-flush and music magazines plentiful. Warner Bros., Capitol, Universal, Mercury, RCA, Arista, Mute, and Astralwerks shuttled US-based music journalists across the Atlantic to cover England's burgeoning Britpop, trip hop, drum and bass, and techno music scenes. The latter three genres were hailed by the press as the "electronic dance music revolution."

Back then, my writing career was divided between jazz, indie rock, and electronic music. I wrote for Rolling Stone, JazzTimes, Ray Gun, and Option, among others. There was ample work, and music…

Welcome to the EDM Jungle Classic EDM Works

Sidebar: Classic EDM Works

The Future Sound of London: Lifeforms (Virgin/ Astralwerks, 1994)
FSOL's postapocalyptic theme was reflected in Lifeforms' video, which starred a blank-faced "witch girl," ambient horror tones, and flowing-yet-glitchy beats.

Everything but the Girl, Todd Terry: Amplified Heart (Atlantic, 1994)
An established blue-eyed soul duo, EBTG made techno a household name with Todd Terry's beat-heavy remix of their torch song, "Missing."

Portishead: Dummy (Go! Beat Records, 1994)
Beth Gibbons's fragile vocals clung to Geoff…

A Yamaha 5000-Series Listening Party in LA

Thursday March 19th, 5–8pm: Shelley's Stereo, 22102 Clarendon St. in Woodland Hills, CA, will host representatives from Yamaha for a Yamaha 5000-series listening party. Appetizers, wine, and other refreshments will be provided. Shelley's will be holding a raffle, for prizes. RSVP required. BYOV—Bring Your Own Vinyl—optional.

Quad Artera Solus integrated amplifier/CD player

The Quad Electroacoustics Ltd. Artera Solus is a multifunction audio component that was designed to look smart on top of a bureau in a living room or office. It comes with a thick, removable smoked-glass top that complements its compact dimensions. It weighs 25lb, and, in addition to being attractive, feels genuinely solid and well-made. Like its Artera-series stablemates, the Artera Solus strikes an intriguing engineering and aesthetic balance between decorator-friendly lifestyle product and serious audiophile product worthy of the Quad name.

Description
The Artera Solus was…