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Book Review: "High Fidelity Audio/Video Systems: A Critical Guide for Owners"
Corey Greenberg  |  Dec 21, 1991  | 
High Fidelity Audio/Video Systems: A Critical Guide for Owners
by Howard Ferstler
253 pages, $23.50 softcover. Published by McFarland & Company, Inc., Box 611, Jefferson, NC 28640. Tel: (919) 246-4460.
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Reference
Lossy Compression: the Sonic Dangers
Peter W. Mitchell, Robert Harley  |  Dec 10, 2013  |  First Published: Dec 01, 1991  | 
Editor's Introduction: In 2013, lossy compression is everywhere—without lossy codecs like MP3, Dolby Digital, DTS, A2DP, AAC, apt-X, and Ogg Vorbis, there would be no Web audio services like Spotify or Pandora, no multichannel soundtracks on DVD, no Bluetooth audio, no DAB and HDradio, no Sirius/XM, and no iTunes, to quote the commercial successes and no Napster, MiniDisc, or DCC, to quote the failures. Despite their potential for damage to the music, the convenience and sometimes drastic reduction in audio file size have made lossy codecs ubiquitous in the 21st century. Stereophile covered the development of lossy compression; following is an article from more than two decades ago warning of the sonic dangers.—Editor
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ReferenceSolid State Preamp Reviews
Aunt Corey's Homemade Buffered Passive Preamplifier
Corey Greenberg  |  Nov 06, 1995  |  First Published: Nov 06, 1991  | 
"An' then ya bring alla ground wahrs to uh, uh single po-wint..."
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Reference
Enough Room?
Thomas J. Norton  |  Oct 07, 1991  | 
Room acoustics, and their importance, may not be subjects which we ponder daily here at Stereophile, but they are never far from our consciousness. Two recent events served to spotlight them yet again: the setting-up of our first-ever panel listening test of moderately priced loudspeakers (Vol.14 No.7), and a letter from a reader requesting advice on room problems. Both reminded us---if a reminder was needed---that although the perfect room does not exist, there are things that can be done to make the most of even an admittedly difficult situation. That reader's letter, in particular, brought home the fact that we cannot really discuss this subject too often. It's easy to forget that comments made here months (or years) ago are beyond the experience of newer readers. A new audiophile's most frequent mistake is to overlook the significance of his or her listening room, while the experienced listener will too often take the room for granted.
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Audiophile EssentialsReference
JA on Loudspeaker Measurements
John Atkinson  |  Feb 11, 2020  |  First Published: Oct 01, 1991  | 
Author's Note: Although I started accompanying Stereophile's loudspeaker reviews with measurements soon after I joined the magazine in 1986, it wasn't until 1989, when we acquired an Audio Precision System One electronics analyzer and the then-new MLSSA speaker measurement system from DRA Labs, that I developed the standardized data presentation that is still featured in our reviews more than three decades later. In this article from October 1991, I summarize the results from the first two years of using MLSSA to test 69 loudspeakers.—John Atkinson
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HistoricalReference
PASC & Philips' DCC
Peter W. Mitchell, Barry Fox, Peter van Willenswaard  |  Jul 05, 2016  |  First Published: Apr 01, 1991  | 
Editor's Note: In the 21st Century, lossy audio data compression, in the form of MP3 and AAC files, Dolby Digital and DTS-encoded soundtracks, and YouTube and Spotify streaming, is ubiquitous. But audiophiles were first exposed to the subject a quarter-century ago, when Philips launched its ill-fated DCC cassette format. What follows is Stereophile's complete coverage on both DCC and its PASC lossy-compression encoding from our April 1991 issue.—John Atkinson
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ReferenceJ. Gordon Holt
Audio Basics: A Is For Ampere
J. Gordon Holt  |  Mar 19, 1991  | 
In the real world, "knowledge is power" means that if I know more about something than you do, I am better able than you to control it or use it to my own advantage. This is no less true in high-end audio, where a gut-level understanding of how a component works can free its owner from the constraints and frequent inaccuracies of instruction manuals, folklore, advertisements, and the nugatory, nullifidian nonsense in the mainstream audio press assuring you that most of what you know damn well you are hearing is really only a figment of your imagination.
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Cable ReviewsReference
Lindsay-Geyer Highly Magnetic Cables
Dick Olsher  |  Mar 08, 2018  |  First Published: Feb 01, 1991  | 
Why cable again?

Well, the obvious reason is that it has been a while since my last foray into Cableland (July 1988). Many new products have been introduced in the interim, so it appeared appropriate to once again open Pandora's Box. Those of you who still remember my speaker cable article of 2½ years ago will recollect the considerable controversy that evolved from that project.

Some of the response was quite predictable, though the venom with which it was laced was not. The manufacturers of those outrageously priced "garden-hose"–type cables that I failed to rave about were more than just perturbed.

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ReferenceThink Pieces
Humidity, Concert Hall Sound & Spectral Tilt
Peter W. Mitchell  |  Aug 03, 2020  |  First Published: Feb 01, 1991  | 
I want to talk about the acoustics of live music and recordings. As I write this I'm back in Boston for a week, re-calibrating my ears with (excuse the expression) the "absolute sound" of live music in various concert halls. On Friday the Boston Symphony played symphonies by Mozart and Shostakovich, producing (as always) magnificent sound with the aid of Symphony Hall's near-legendary acoustics.
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Reference
Jitter, Bits, & Sound Quality
John Atkinson  |  Mar 07, 2004  |  First Published: Dec 01, 1990  | 
Jitter is not what digital sound quality induces in the listener; rather it is the instability in the clock signal that controls exactly when the analog waveform is sampled in the original A/D conversion, or when the digital word input into a DAC results in an analog voltage being produced at the chip's output. "So what?" is the response of digital advocates, "As long as a digital one is recognized as a one and a digital zero as a zero, then how can there be any difference in sound?" goes their argument, normally culminating in a fervently expressed "Bits is bits!"
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Reference
The Non-tweaker's Guide To Tweaks
Robert Deutsch  |  Nov 29, 1990  | 
Tweaks have acquired a bad reputation in certain sectors of the audio world, probably with some justification. Warming the cartridge to exactly the right temperature, suspending cables from the ceiling (but not with cotton string; it sounds grainy and dry), stroking CD cases with a "magic" brush, drinking "polarized" (or is it de-polarized?) water before a listening session---gimme a break!
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FeaturesReference
CD Tweaks & Listening Tests
John Atkinson, Will Hammond  |  Dec 08, 2016  |  First Published: Nov 01, 1990  | 
In "Music and Fractals" in the November 1990 issue, I discuss how digital audio's quantization of amplitude information in what was originally a continuous waveform represents a fundamental difference between analog and digital representations of music. In a letter published in the English magazine Hi-Fi Review in January 1990, John Lambshead conjectured that naturally originating sounds were pseudo-fractal in character; that is, their waveforms have a wealth of fine detail, and that detail itself has an even finer-structured wealth of fine detail, and so on, until the crinkliness of the waveform is finally enveloped in the analog noise that accompanies every sound we hear.
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ReferenceJ. Gordon HoltHistorical
Tweaking your Record-Player
J. Gordon Holt  |  Jul 14, 1990  | 
While the LP-vs-CD debate continues unabated among high-end audiophiles, the rest of the world has already closed the book on the venerable LP. All but a few specialized classical record companies (footnote 1)(and some weird magazines) have ceased releasing new LPs, few record stores sell them any more, and consumers who wouldn't be caught dead owning something that wasn't trendy have long ago dumped their LP collections for cents on the pound.
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ReferenceAs We See It
Under Pressure: Loudspeakers at Altitude
John Atkinson  |  Nov 13, 2005  |  First Published: May 13, 1990  | 
"The large peak at 16kHz reported by Stereophile...was nowhere in evidence...The most probable explanation of this discrepancy is that the [Waveform supertweeter's] very light ribbon depends on the air load for damping, and that load is much smaller in the thin air up there at 7000' in Santa Fe than at altitudes where less lightheaded and scientifically more accountable reviewers dwell." Thus spake Peter Aczel (footnote 1), erstwhile loudspeaker designer and Editor/Publisher of the reincarnated The Audio Critic, a publication that advertises itself as having "unusual credibility among the top professionals in audio."
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Reference
CD: Jitter, Errors & Magic
Robert Harley  |  May 09, 2004  |  First Published: May 01, 1990  | 
The promise of "perfect sound forever," successfully foisted on an unwitting public by the Compact Disc's promoters, at first seemed to put an end to the audiophile's inexorable need to tweak a playback system's front end at the point of information retrieval. Several factors contributed to the demise of tweaking during the period when CD players began replacing turntables as the primary front-end signal source. First, the binary nature (ones and zeros) of digital audio would apparently preclude variations in playback sound quality due to imperfections in the recording medium. Second, if CD's sound was indeed "perfect," how could digital tweaking improve on perfection? Finally, CD players and discs presented an enigma to audiophiles accustomed to the more easily understood concept of a stylus wiggling in a phonograph groove. These conditions created a climate in which it was assumed that nothing in the optical and mechanical systems of a CD player could affect digital playback's musicality.
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