As We See It

Sort By: Post DateTitle Publish Date
As We See It
Snob Appeal
Art Dudley  |  Nov 30, 2013  |  First Published: Dec 01, 2013  | 
It began innocently enough. In June, Slate.com published a sampling from an exhibit by the photographer Kai Schaefer, in which classic LPs of different eras were partnered with the similarly classic record players on which they might have been played: Tea for the Tillerman on a Dual 1219, Kind of Blue on a Rek-O-Kut Rondine, Sgt. Pepper's on a Thorens TD 124—you get the idea. The photos worked as cultural documents, as good-natured kitsch, as surprisingly beautiful and compelling industrial art. I was thoroughly charmed.
Continue Reading »
As We See It
The Death of an Audiophile
Jason Victor Serinus  |  Oct 25, 2013  |  First Published: Nov 01, 2013  | 
Thanksgiving will mark two years since Charles died. I still miss him.

I first met Charles in the 1990s, around the time I began to review recordings and audio equipment. I had just left my apartment and was driving slowly down the street when I spied a somewhat bent-over, wizened-looking man carrying a copy of Stereophile under his arm. My astonishment at discovering another Stereophile reader whom, it turned out, living just two buildings away, brought my car to a sudden halt.

Continue Reading »
As We See It
The Pursuit of Audio Excellence
Henry Rollins  |  Sep 25, 2013  |  First Published: Oct 01, 2013  | 
At the time of my August 2011 "As We See It," I was using a Wilson-McIntosh system. That system is still with me and still gets quite a bit of use. Its location, however, has changed. In its place is a system that I can't see switching out or needing to replace: Wilson Alexandria XLF speakers with VTL Siegfried Series II Reference monoblock power amps, TL-7.5 Series III Reference preamplifier, and TP-6.5 Signature phono stage. It might take a small army of people to move it, but beyond that, I think I'm good to go.
Continue Reading »
As We See It
Should Music Be Free?
Steve Guttenberg  |  Aug 28, 2013  |  First Published: Sep 01, 2013  | 
No one ever had to pay for recorded music—it was always "free" on the radio—and the home taping of LPs, the copying of cassettes, and, later, burning CDs made buying music optional. Then Napster and other file-sharing sites kicked it up a notch and made it very easy to assemble a 10,000-song collection without spending a dime. Now, Spotify, BitTorrent, SoundCloud, MOG, and YouTube make music instantly accessible on demand. It raises the question: Will music lovers continue to buy music? Paying for recorded music is now, more than ever, a voluntary act.
Continue Reading »
As We See It
I'd Love to Turn You On
Colleen Murphy  |  Jul 23, 2013  |  First Published: Aug 01, 2013  | 
For over three decades, I have felt compelled to turn people on to music. Throughout my career as a DJ, all of my endeavors have been linked by the desire to spread the joy of listening to records, in the hope that people would feel something like the emotional resonance I feel. My Classic Album Sundays adventure—see www.stereophile.com/content/classic-album-sundays-bellwether— was born from this lifelong dedication to musical curating, and propelled by a eureka hi-fi moment.
Continue Reading »
As We See It
Too Many Audio Shows?
John Atkinson  |  Jun 24, 2013  |  First Published: Jul 01, 2013  | 
In the wrap-up of his coverage of the 2013 Salon Son & Image show in Montreal, which took place at the end of March, Robert Deutsch asked if there were too many audio shows. The Chicago AXPONA show was held two weeks before SSI, the second New York Audio Show followed less than three weeks later. In May, there was the humongous High End 2013, in Munich, followed two weeks later by the third T.H.E. Show Newport Beach, followed by: the Capital AudioFest, in Washington, DC (July 26–28); the fourth California Audio Show, in the Bay Area (August 8–11); the tenth Rocky Mountain Audio Fest (October 11–13); and TAVES in Toronto (November 1–3).

While this is no more shows than took place in 2011 or 2012, many exhibitors, manufacturers and distributors alike, to whom I talked at the spring events felt that the high-end audio industry is suffering from an overload of audio shows.

Continue Reading »
As We See It
Are you listening more but enjoying it less?
Steve Guttenberg  |  May 29, 2013  |  First Published: Jun 01, 2013  | 
I have a hunch that the overwhelming majority of Stereophile readers have pretty decent hi-fis, but they probably listen to a lot more music in their cars, or through computer speakers, or on the go with headphones. I'm in that last group, and log more hours listening to Jerry Harvey's astonishing JH13 Freqphase custom-molded in-ear 'phones than to my Magnepan MG3.7 speakers—but music moves me more through the 3.7s.
Continue Reading »
As We See It
What Price Audio?
Robert Deutsch  |  Apr 29, 2013  |  First Published: May 01, 2013  | 
Few topics ignite more heated arguments among audiophiles than the price of audio equipment. How much do you have to spend to get really good sound? Are people who buy expensive gear wasting their money, or is it simply a matter of getting what you pay for? There are many such issues, most of which have been discussed at length in Stereophile and various online forums; here are a few I haven't seen addressed except in passing.
Continue Reading »
As We See It
There's No Business Without Show Business
Jason Victor Serinus  |  Mar 28, 2013  |  First Published: Apr 01, 2013  | 
Cole Porter: An All-Star Tribute (DVD, VAI) includes outtakes of the great Ethel Merman filming for TV, in 1960, a performance of Irving Berlin's "Alexander's Ragtime Band." In take after take, something goes wrong. Each time the director shouts "Cut!," Merman stops in her tracks, almost as if deflating; when the director yells "Action!" she starts from the top, fresh as new, the model showbiz professional.
Continue Reading »
As We See It
A Reviewing Life
John Atkinson  |  Feb 26, 2013  |  First Published: Mar 01, 2013  | 
It's been 30 years since I began work on my very first equipment report, of the Goldbug Brier moving-coil phono cartridge, for Hi-Fi News & Record Review. That review appeared in the British magazine's May 1983 issue; I have lost track of how many equipment reviews I've written since then, but my review of the Vandersteen Treo loudspeaker in this issue is at least my 500th.
Continue Reading »
As We See It
Music? Or Sound?
Jason Victor Serinus  |  Jan 30, 2013  |  First Published: Feb 01, 2013  | 
The demo seemed simple enough. A distributor proposed a session for the Bay Area Audiophile Society (BAAS) that would pit his relatively low-cost speaker cable against an ultra-expensive competing model named for a Norse god. We would listen to the music first with the high-priced spread, then with his cable, then discuss the differences. As far as the distributor was concerned, everyone would hear that the Nordic Emperor had no clothes.
Continue Reading »
As We See It
The Road to Analog-Sounding Digital: Are We There Yet?
Michael Lavorgna  |  Dec 26, 2012  |  First Published: Jan 01, 2013  | 
To say that a digital source "sounds like analog" has always struck me as coming up short. The notion that one format sounds like another is not really sensible or even ideal. While I love listening to LPs, there are some physical attributes of vinyl that, ideally, you don't want to reproduce. You know what I'm talking about because, every chance they get, LP haters remind us about pops, ticks, skips, surface noise, inner-groove distortion, etc. So when we say that a digital source sounds like analog, what we're really saying is that it doesn't sound like digital.
Continue Reading »
As We See It
Voices to Live For
Jason Victor Serinus  |  Nov 29, 2012  |  First Published: Dec 01, 2012  | 
Every music-loving audiophile has a unique story—a story of the first time he or she was grabbed, body and soul, by a first, usually low-budget listen to a 78, LP, CD, open-reel, cassette, or MP3—a story that continues today in that audiophile's quest for high-end bliss. For me, it was my desire to move closer to the voices of the singers I most loved.
Continue Reading »
As We See It
50 Years of Stereophile!
John Atkinson  |  Nov 02, 2012  | 
Fifty years ago this month, Vol.1 No.1, Issue No.1 of The Stereophile, published, edited, and mostly written by J. Gordon Holt out of Wallingford, Pennsylvania, hit the newsstands. Gordon had worked for two major audio magazines, High Fidelity and HiFi/Stereo Review (later renamed Stereo Review), and had been disgusted by those magazines' pandering to advertisers. Not only was The Stereophile going to tell it like it was, it was going to judge audio components by listening to them—a heretical idea in those days of meters and measurements. "Dammit," said Gordon, who died in 2009, "if nobody else will report what an audio component sounds like, I'll do it myself!"
Continue Reading »
As We See It
Accuracy Is Not the Answer
Steve Guttenberg  |  Sep 25, 2012  |  First Published: Oct 01, 2012  | 
Before 1982, when the Compact Disc arrived, I didn't love LPs. Analog was already very old tech, and while every trick in the book had been applied to turntables and LPs, they still wowed & fluttered at 33 1/3 revolutions per minute. Vinyl's deficiencies were legion: warped LPs were more common than truly flat ones; surface noise, clicks, and pops sang along with the tune; LPs rarely had perfectly centered spindle holes; inner-groove distortions popped up at inopportune moments; and each time an LP is played, its sound quality degrades, if only ever so slightly. The LP format? Imperfect sound forever.
Continue Reading »

Pages

X