The Hi-Fi Expo Sofia
Friday–Sunday, November 23–25: The Hi-Fi Expo Sofia will be held at the Grand Hotel (1 Gurko Street, Sofia, Bulgaria). More than 250 high-end brands are expected to exhibit. For more info, visit www.hifiexpo.bg.
The Home Entertainment 2000 show, planned to be held in Rye, NY this spring, has been canceled.
The Home Entertainment 2000 show, originally planned to be held in Rye, New York this spring, has been canceled. Show staff has received feedback from manufacturers and dealers, who feel that the rooms at the Rye venue are too small, and that a suburban location is not optimal. EmapUSA VP Jaqueline Augustine states that "We want to hold a successful show, and this venue could not guarantee our success."
The Home Entertainment Show Opens Today in Costa Mesa, CA
I had to pause for a moment when I saw the cover of the show guide. Could T.H.E. Show, aka The Home Entertainment Show, which opens today in the Hilton Orange County in Costa Mesa, really be North America's longest-running HiFi Audio Show?
The Hot Five
Every autumn, the Consumer">http://www.CE.org">Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) publishes its "Five Technologies to Watch" list of "technology trends poised to shape the consumer electronics industry" in the year ahead. Most of the choices may seem obvious, but the final entry on the list this year may be a surprise for audiophiles.
The Hot Shade of July
But maybe not so hot in the listening room, where you can get absorbed reading the latest issue of Stereophile. The expensive but superb-sounding Wilson Alexia 2 speaker is featured on the cover and reviewed inside, but also inside this issue is a review of the least expensive amplifier we have reviewed in decades, AkitikA's GT-102, which costs just $314 as a kit and $488 assembled and tested.
The Hour of Power
PS Audio's Paul McGowan is a man with a mission: He wants to teach audiophiles about AC power, from the creation of the universe to its final destination in our contemporary electronics components. Toward that end, McGowan wrote, produced, and narrated a one-hour documentary DVD called From Coal to Coltrane, which provides a lively look at a subject many of us take for granted.
The IAG Room: Mission 770 loudspeakers, Luxman L-507Z integrated amplifier, Lumin U2 Mini, P1, L1, Luxman D-10X CD player/DAC, Vintage Thorens TD124 turntable
I went into a room looking for Lumin's latest components and found a broad range of gear, both classic and modern. The recently relaunched Mission 770 speakers demo'd in this room represent a prime example of heritage speaker revival. Behind this exhibit was International Audio Group (IAG), the company behind Mission and other British brands, such as Wharfedale, Castle, and Quad, as well as Luxman. Peter Comeau, IAG's director of acoustic design, gave me the download on the Mission 770 redux. He mentioned that he and John Atkinson had listened to 770 prototypes in 1978. (JA will be reviewing the new 770 in a future issue of Stereophile.) Comeau owned an original pair of the Mission 770s, so he knows all about them: "We used a lot of the same concepts but everything is now up to date to make them suitable for modern sources."
The importance of being Earl
The late Bill Monroe may have been the father of bluegrass music, but it was the distinctive banjo playing of Earl Scruggs that most listeners came to recognize as the voice of an entire style. Scruggs, who died on March 28 at the age of 88, left an indelible imprint on American music, influencing virtually ever player of the five-string banjo to follow.
The Internet Audio Dilemma
News last">http://www.stereophile.com/news/11094/">last week about SafeAudio CD copy protection indicates that while fighting pirates, the major record labels are also attempting to seal off the ability of users to place their own music from CDs onto computers. If they succeed, the only alternative for consumers who want non-pirated music on their desktops will be to buy content directly from the labels themselves, or companies set up to legally supply digital audio.
The January 2015 issue is here!
We kick off the New Year with the "Loudspeaker issue" there are seven models reviewed at all price levels, from Vienna Acoustics, Sjöfn, Monitor Audio, Wharfedale, DeVore Fidelity, Revel, and KEF, a review of an affordable subwoofer from SVS, and an interview with veteran speaker designer Michael Kelly of Aerial Acoustics.