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This was challenging, but great fun...I'm narrowing to five with immense difficulty as I could easily give you another ten right off the top of my head. The longer I wait to reply, the more I change my list, so here goes without any editorializing:

1. "All This Useless Beauty," Elvis Costello.

2. "The Modern Adventures of Plato, Diogenes and Freud," Al Kooper.

3. "The Farthest Lights," Freedy Johnston.

4. "We Walk On," Tonio K/John Keller.

5. "The Same Sad Smile," Jules Shear.

All the best and have fun with this—I did.

Thanks to all!

The Appendix that follows lists the winning songs without their proponents' comments and with no alternates, first by multiple mentions and then alphabetically by songwriter.—John Marks

Appendix: 5 Great Art Songs of the Rock Age
The 12 Winning Lists
Arranged by Multiple Mentions, and then Alphabetically by Songwriter

In choosing the winning lists, I tried to focus only on the quality of the lists, disregarding as much as I could speculation about what selecting one list would mean for the statistical distribution of songwriters on…

For many audiophiles, them's fightin' words. We've all heard speakers with flat frequency response that don't sound nearly as good as the measurements would imply. We've also heard speakers that, while far from exemplary in the measurement realm, nevertheless contrive to sound like music. We pride ourselves in having…

The grilles are easy to remove and replace, so I spent a fair amount of time listening to music with the grilles on and off. My conclusion is that the effect of the grilles is admittedly minor, but, at least in my system, not negligible. With the grilles removed, the sound was just a bit more immediate, as if a veil—or, say, a…

Analog: Lingo'd Linn LP12 (Cirkus'd just a few days before the end of the review period), Ittok tonearm, AudioQuest AQ7000NSX cartridge. Digital: PS Audio Lambda transport, PS UltraLink processor, AudioQuest OptiLink Pro 2 ST datalink. Preamplifier: a Convergent Audio Technology SL-1 Signature, with the latest Marigo Audio Labs AC power cable (highly recommended to CAT-lovers). Power amps on hand included a pair of Bryston 7Bs, Quicksilver Silver Monos, a Luxman MQ 68C, and a Krell KSA-100S. Most of the listening was via the Bryston 7Bs and the Krell KSA-100S.

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The term "loudspeaker" is something of a misnomer. Literally, it refers to the amplification of speech (footnote 1), and only at high levels. However, a high-fidelity "loudspeaker" is used mostly for the reproduction of music, and at levels that vary from soft to loud. Rather than functioning like a "speaker," the device is more like a "singer." In fact, I think the analogy between singing and music reproduction by loudspeakers has some interesting implications.

A trained singer (footnote 2) has to have a range that encompasses all music written for…

Fig.1 shows the SC-IV's impedance magnitude and phase, measured with the MLSSA system but plotted with the Audio Precision software for consistency with other reviews published in Stereophile. The former stays between 4 and 6 ohms from 37Hz to 2150Hz, with minimum values of 3.55 ohms at 9.5kHz and 3.15 ohms at 10Hz. Though the speaker will be quite demanding of current, with its benign electrical phase angle and high sensitivity—around 91dB/W/m—it will play loud with moderately powered amplifiers. In addition, because of the small variation of impedance with…

Description: Three-way dynamic loudspeaker. Drive-units: 1" soft-dome tweeter, two 5½" cone midrange units, two 10" long-throw woofers. Crossover frequencies: not specified. Amplitude/frequency response: 37Hz–20kHz ±2dB, approximately –6dB at 27Hz. Phase/frequency response: ±20° from 200Hz–10kHz. Sensitivity: 91dB/W/m. Impedance: nominal 5 ohms, minimum 3.0 ohms, maximum 7.5 ohms including bass resonance. THD: ±0.3% for an SPL of 90dB (re: 1m) at all frequencies above 100Hz. Pair matching: better than ±0.5dB up to 15kHz. Power handling: peak 250W for 10ms,…

The $4995/pair Dunlavy Audio Labs SC-IV—which I gave a rave review in April 1994 (Vol.17 No.4), and which was subsequently named "Product of the Year" in December '94 (Vol.17 No.12)—has recently undergone some significant modifications.

Manufacturers modify products for a variety of reasons. If a product has been around for some time and sales are dropping, the manufacturer is virtually compelled to come out with a New/Improved/Series II/Signature version just to stay competitive. However, the Dunlavy SC-IV…