Now on Newsstands: Stereophile, Vol.33 No.1
The January 2010 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. Hooray! A new volume! A new year! Twelve more issues of Stereophile! Whee! We are pretty excited about starting the year off with a review of a PC soundcard. And at just $200, the ASUS Xonar Essence is the least expensive product to ever grace the cover of our magazine. Plus, it’s got that pretty golden tiger thing on it. What aroused John Atkinson’s interest, however, was the ASUS’s claimed signal/noise ratio of 124dB: “True high-end territory.”
Now On Newsstands: Stereophile, Vol.33 No.10
The October 2010 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. On the cover, you’ll see a pretty much life-sized image of Logitech’s Squeezebox Touch, a real dandy of a hi-fi product that costs just $300 and seems to captivate everyone who comes into contact with it. The normally unflappable Kal Rubinson ends his review (page 118) by advising, “Get a Squeezebox Touch right now. You’ll never look back.” Even our cover photographer, Eric Swanson, fell in love with the little thing. He bought his sample. We chose the Mobile Fidelity version of Beck’s Sea Change for the cover art because it connects with Robert Baird’s feature piece on outstanding reissues (page 111), and because the colors are pretty. The colors featured on the Squeezebox Touch’s display dictated those used by our graphic designer, Natalie Baca, in her cover treatment.
Now On Newsstands: Stereophile, Vol.33 No.11
The November 2010 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. Immediately after shipping the issue to press, we had to redirect our focus to shipping the 2011 Stereophile Buyer’s Guide. And almost immediately after shipping the Buyer’s Guide, we had to redirect our focus to shipping the December 2010. While the December issue was in its very final stages, we had to fly to Denver to cover the outstanding Rocky">http://blog.stereophile.com/rmaf2010/">Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. It’s been a whirlwind and I can honestly say that I hardly remember working on the November issue.
Now On Newsstands: Stereophile, Vol.33 No.12
The December 2010 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. On the cover you’ll see the Ayre DX-5 “Universal A/V Engine.” This thing slices, it dices, it juliennes, and even Mikey likes it. Really: The DX-5 plays Blu-ray, DVD-V, DVD-A, SACD, CD, CD-R, and every other combination of “C,” “D,” and “V” you can think of, and, with its front-panel USB input, it becomes a music sever, too.
Now on Newsstands: Stereophile, Vol.33 No.2
The February 2010 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. What do you think of the cover? I like it more than any cover we’ve done since the">http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/now_on_newsstands_stereophile… October 2009 issue, which featured the lovely Zu">http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/zu_essence_loudspeaker/">Zu Essence speaker. The styling of the current cover may seem a bit soft and feminine (for Stereophile), but I think it’s elegant and graceful, like the speaker it frames. Vienna Acoustics’ Kiss is a beautifully finished three-way design with an integral stand. It uses a 1" silk-dome tweeter coincident with a 7" proprietary Spider-Cone midrange and a 9" Spider-Cone woofer. Wes wanted to make out with it. Can you blame him? He wrote: “The Kiss was exquisitely capable of revealing the emotional core of every type of music I played through it.”
Now on Newsstands: Stereophile, Vol.33 No.3
The March 2010 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. Open it up and you’ll see that Steve Guttenberg has rediscovered his faith in vinyl. Hooray! What did it for him? A new turntable: the VPI Classic. “Coming back to vinyl,” Steve writes, “I now see that digital’s primary fault is that it encourages passive listening.”
Now on Newsstands: Stereophile, Vol.33 No.4
The April 2010 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. For the cover, we selected the Monitor">http://blog.stereophile.com/ssi2009/monitor_audio_platinum_200/">Monitor Audio Platinum PL200 loudspeaker. Like Bob Deutsch, I was impressed by this speaker when I heard it at the 2009">http://blog.stereophile.com/ssi2009/">2009 Salon Son & Image, so I was especially pleased by John Atkinson’s decision to highlight it. Our cover photographer, Eric Swanson, and designer, Natalie Baca, were also pleased by the speaker’s great looks: The fine-furniture finish of its Santos Rosewood cabinet, the silvery ceramic-coated aluminum magnesium drive units, the handsome Strathspey leather front baffle, and, ooh, that sexy rear port (see the extreme close-up on page 109!) all worked to win over our design team.
Now On Newsstands: Stereophile, Vol.33 No.5
The May 2010 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. Jon Iverson opens this issue by exploring “The Holy Trinity of Audiophiledom.” The idea was born on the morning of February 9. I had sent an e-mail to Jon, directing his attention to a">http://forum.stereophile.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=82398&an=0… post in our forum regarding one reader’s experience with cassettes and cassette decks. Jon responded by directing my attention to that morning's Vote">http://cgi.stereophile.com/cgi-bin/showvote.cgi?663">Vote question, which also dealt with cassettes.
Now On Newsstands: Stereophile, Vol.33 No.6
The June 2010 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. It opens with John Atkinson’s “iPad Daze,” an exploration of a print magazine’s inherent value in this digital age, and a piece that JA’s been thinking of writing for at least two years. He figured it’d be controversial, perhaps setting the entire World Wide Web against us, but I don’t think he expected to be criticizedhttp://forum.stereophile.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=88273&an=0…; for his application of Sturgeon’s Law to today’s popular music:
Now On Newsstands: Stereophile, Vol.33 No.7
The July 2010 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. It had been far too long since we received a letter complaining about our love of reviewing insanely expensive products, so we decided to make this our “Special Aspirations Issue,” featuring, almost exclusively, products you’d have to be CEO of BP to afford.