In my high-school days, I visited a friend whose well-to-do dad proudly demonstrated his new Quad ESL system for us. First up was a recording of a man with heavy footsteps traversing the space from left to right. Next came a speeding police car, siren engaged, complete with Doppler tail. I found it impressive, and a little lame at the same time. My friend and I, in love with our own artsiness, preferred Fear of Music by Talking Heads and Drums and Wires by XTC, or (in a pinch) U2's Boy.
It wouldn't have occurred to me that I'd ultimately derive frequent joy from listening to sound effects (though in my case they're usually integral to the music, not apart from it). When I hear Yosi Horikawa's bouncing marbles on Wandering, I prick up my ears and smile. A panting dog on Holly Cole's Temptation, an overhead hovercar on the Blade Runner 2049 soundtrack ... bring it on. A babbling river on Andrew Bird's Echolocations; seed pods on Tom Waits's Blood Money; liquid splashes and crinkling paper on Felix Laband's Dark Days Exit ... yes, please. I don't care if it's a little gimmicky. It's also sensual in the original meaning of the word, an aural pleasure.
The Raidho TD3.8 speakers that, after three months, just departed my home, do the trick of conjuring points in space with great acuity.
There's a good case to be made that the world's greatestand strangestaudiophile culture resides in Japan. Probably the most important notion the Japanese have introduced to our hobby is that home audio isn't merely a way of heightening the musical art of others but can be an art in itself. This idea's most flamboyant embodiment was the poet, journalist, chef, and amplifier builder Susumu Sakuma, better known as Sakuma-san.
In the articles on hi-fi that he contributed to the Japanese magazine MJ, Sakuma-san also wrote about film, fishing, karaoke, and pachinko machines, and he usually began and ended his contributions with a poem. He considered himself an evangelist for emotional sound and demonstrated his audio systems in homes, at conferences, and on concert stages around the world. Though he passed in 2018, his fan club, called Direct Heating, remains a happening concern. Sakuma-san was fond of coining mottosone was "farewell to theory"but what has stuck with me most is his description of an ideal sound: "endless energy with sorrow."
This phrase came to mind often during the months I spent living with the Klipsch La Scala speakers, which imbued my musical life with unprecedented amounts of sound and emotion, and which I believe Sakuma-san would have enjoyed.
Last year, on the hunt for high-quality espresso beans, I visited some specialty coffee websites. On one forum, I came across this description of a particular roast: "I tasted mild acidity and bitters with hazelnut, bourbon, and a hint of dark cherry. As it began to cool, there was a hint of black raspberry syrup or cordial. Then a dominant note emerged of nuts with mild distillates, walnut bitters, cacao nib and something between 82% dark chocolate and baker's chocolate. ... Further cooling offered the surprise of dark piecrust and a bitter cherry liqueur. The piecrust then rounded to a slightly sweet dark rye. There was a lingering aftertaste of single malt scotch that eventually faded to baker's chocolate with a hint of ashiness."
I had enough self-awareness to realize that in the hi-fi world we sometimes prattle on about hi-fi in ways that, to outsiders at least, must seem just as fustian and florid.
Planned for KEF's 60th anniversary, much as the LS50 was planned for the company's 50th, the LS60 Wireless is a statement product that encompasses the premise of company founder Raymond Cooke that loudspeaker performance could be improved through the application of new materials and new technologies. Improvements in recent KEF designs include the refinement of the Uni-Q coaxial driver, Metamaterial Absorption Technology (MAT), force-canceling Uni-Core woofers with P-Flex surrounds, cabinets shaped to reduce diffraction, and the configuration and arrangement of drivers to create what KEF calls a Single Apparent Source.
In the very first copy of Stereophile I encountered, back when issues were digest size, one review infuriated me. The writer went on at inordinate length about the fine wines he'd consumed during the review period. On and on he went, gushing about the costly drinks, until I exclaimed (in a sentence laced with expletives), "What in the world does any of this have to do with audio?!"
As a native European, I don't particularly love bubbly people: Too much sugar makes my teeth hurt. I'm sympathetic to my friend Nick, a Brit who reliably bristles when he hears Americans use the word "awesome" for the most mundane things. A slight drop in gas prices? Awesome! How was the meatloaf? Awesome!
It irks him that the words awe and awesome are now nearly divorced. But I like to remind Nick that this hyperpleasant, optimistic American attitude is surely preferable to the alternative.
I remember, at High End Munich 2019, setting eyes on one of the most attractive loudspeakers I'd ever seen, in the color that, as I now know, Estelon calls Ocean Mystery. I remember it as a passive demo, no music playing, seen through glass; whether that memory is strictly accurate I don't know. Memories are funny things.
The Snell Type B is the culmination of three years' research and development effort by designer Kevin Voecks. Along the way, various iterations of the B have been shown at Consumer Electronics Shows. Like other Snell models, the facilities of Canada's National Research Council were used extensively during the B's development, both their anechoic chamber and their double-blind listening techniques.
Founded in 1926 by Guy R. Fountain in London as the Tulsemere Manufacturing Company, Tannoya portmanteau (footnote 1) of "tantalum" and "alloy," after a tantalum-lead alloy used in rectifierstook on its current commercial identity in 1928. Through the war years and beyond, the company specialized in public-address (PA) systems. Indeed, today, "tannoy" is a widely recognized generic term for a PA system in the UK; there's an entry for "tannoy" in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Has it ever crossed your mind that the reason you like your system more than your friend's or the store's is not because yours is better, even if you think it is, but because you're used to the sound of yours and not of theirs? Welcome to product habituation.
Some people, including some audiophiles, believe that product habituation is what's really behind what some people refer to as product break-in. It's not a mechanical or electronic phenomenon, they contend, but a mental one. Assuming the sound of the new gear is of adequate quality, it's the listener that breaks in to the product, as the product's sound, which was initially strange, grows more familiar and, so, right.
Although Danish company Audiovector was founded in 1979, I had very little experience of its loudspeakers, other than at audio shows (footnote 1), until I measured the Audiovector R 8 Arreté that Jim Austin reviewed in May 2021. Jim nominated the R 8 as his "Editor's Choice" for 2021, writing that "The gorgeous-looking Audiovector took me by surprise, doing things with imaging that I've never heard another loudspeaker do (like hearing a bass note directly behind another bass note)." Jim concluded that the R 8 "is a complicated speaker that sounds simple, sweet, and coherent."
It seems as if I have been waiting for these all my life. Not in any existential sense, but in a literal, practical way: The arrival of the Blade Two Meta is the culmination of a lifelong fascination with KEF. As a teenager, I was introduced to founder Raymond Cooke and his innovative "race-track" woofer, Mylar tweeter dome, and Bextrene cones in Bud Fried's IMF Newsletter.
Given how crowded the loudspeaker manufacturing space has always been, I am always surprised when a new brand not only springs into being but does so with new speakers that sound and measure well. Take the UK's Q Acoustics, for example. The company didn't exist before 2006 and didn't have a presence in the US until 2018.
A review of the Monitor Audio Studio 20 loudspeaker is a study in contrasts. Compared with most other loudspeakers in the $4500/pair range, this 6.5" two-way from England is a mere pup. Perhaps this observation was sparked by the fact that I'd just finished reviewing the similarly priced Snell Type B, a huge, six-driver, four-way system. The two loudspeakers couldn't be more different, both in physical characteristics and sound.