Reference

Although Philips invented the Compact Disc, it was only when Sony got involved in the early 1980s that it was decided—at the prompting of conductor Herbert von Karajan, a close friend of Sony's then-president Akio Morita—that the CD should have a long enough playing time to fit Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on a single disc (footnote 1). Even if the conductor was using very slow tempos, and even given the minimum pit size and track pitch printable at the time, the 16-bit data and 44.1kHz sampling rate they settled on gave them a little margin.

In the summer of 2011, Stereophile's long-time editor in chief, John Atkinson, was invited by the Technical Council of the Audio Engineering Society to give the Richard C. Heyser Memorial Lecture at the 131st Audio Engineering Society Convention in New York, October 21, 2011.

Editor's Note: The matter of whether—and if so, how—speaker cables and interconnects can affect the sound of an audio system has vexed the audiophile community since Jean Hiraga, Robert Fulton, and others first made us aware of the subject in the mid-1970s. Most of the arguments since then have involved a great deal of heat but not much light. Back in August 1985, Professor Malcolm Omar Hawksford Ph.D (of the UK's University of Essex and a Fellow of the Audio Engineering Society) wrote an article for the British magazine Hi-Fi News & Record Review, of which I was then Editor, in which he examined AC signal transmission from first principles. Among his conclusions was the indication that there is an optimal conductor diameter for audio-signal transmission, something that I imagined might lead to something of a conciliation between the two sides in the debate. Or at least when a skeptic proclaimed that "The Laws of Physics" don't allow for cables to affect audio performance, it could be gently pointed out to him or her that "The Laws of Physics" predict exactly the opposite.

"How sour sweet music is
When time is broke and no proportion kept!"

Editor's Note: This article is now only available as an Audio Engineering Society preprint, under the title "The Role of Critical Listening in Evaluating Audio Equipment Quality," preprint number 3176. The price is $4.00 for AES members, and $5.00 for non-members; it can be ordered (currently on paper only, not as a downloadable pdf) by entering the number in the appropriate field on the preprint search page at the AES website.

The main inherent advantage of the full-range electrostatic loud speaker system is that it allows a single diaphragm to embody the conflicting attributes needed for optimal performance at both extremes of the audio range. Its thin-membrane diaphragm can be made exceedingly light, for superb transient response and extended HF response, yet it can be about as large in area as desired, for extended LF response.

There was a time, as recently as 40 years ago, when frequencies below 100Hz were considered extreme lows, and reproduction below 50Hz was about as common as the unicorn. From our present technological perch, it's too easy to smirk condescendingly at such primitive conditions. But just so you're able to sympathize with the plight of these disadvantaged audiophiles, I should tell you that there were two perfectly good reasons for this parlous state of affairs. First of all, program material at that time was devoid of deep bass; not because it was removed during disc mastering but simply because there wasn't any to begin with. The professional tape recorders of the day featured a frequency response of 50–15kHz, ±2dB—just about on a par with the frequency performance capability of a cheap 1988 cassette tape deck.