Stereophile has discussed the pandemic occasionally because of its relevance to our industry and our listening lives. But for the most part, I've steered the magazine away from politics and current events, and I will continue to do so. In this essay, though, I will engage, glancingly, not with politics or current events but with an idea that's drawn from them. I'm doing it to make a point about audio.
The High End 2020 show, scheduled to take place in Munich in mid-May, was canceled due to concerns about the coronavirus. The California Audio Show, which usually takes place in late July, is also off, although the reason for its cancelation isn't clear. And as we've just learned, AXPONA, the biggest show in the Western Hemisphere, has been postponed from its original dates (around the time this issue hits mailboxes and newsstands) to the second weekend of August.
The reason, of course, is concern about the spread of COVID-19.
There has been much discussion lately about ChatGPT, the machine-learning based chatbot from OpenAI. Some experts say it will soon make human writers obsolete. Will that include human hi-fi reviewers?
I decided to engage ChatGPT in an exploratory conversation; think of it as a sort of job interview.
January's Industry Update included a report on a scientific article presented at last year's AES meeting, in which the authors used test tones and a modest audio system (albeit in an anechoic chamber) to prove that listeners can discriminate between high-rez and CD-rez audio. This is important because scientific evidence of an audible difference between high-rez and CD-rez music is considered weak by some, even as anecdotal evidence grows stronger by the day.
As I pondered this, I recalled a recent paper I'd seen in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society but hadn't yet read. "High Resolution Audio: A History and Perspective," which the AES has made available free online, does precisely what the title says: reviews the history of digital audio beyond CD-rez and frames the issue of high-rez audio's audible superiority on the basis of the available evidence.
This gig has many perksbut the best one without a doubt is the cool, interesting people I get to "meet."
I should explain the quotation marks. Since starting this job, in April 2019, I haven't gotten out much. Even before the pandemic, I was too busy to do much of anything except edit the magazine. So, many of the interesting people I've "met," I've still never seen in person.
In the March 2018 issue, Art Dudley admired the sound quality of Ayre Acoustics' KX-5 Twenty preamplifier, but didn't love some of its operational aspects. I've staged this Follow-Up as a putative face-off between the Ayre and my current reference preamplifier, the PS Audio BHK Signature, which I reviewed in the June 2017 issue.
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania–based hi-fi dealer Now Listen Here is holding a real, live, non-Zoom event this coming weekend, September 26 and 27, 2020, at the Hyatt House in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, next to the King of Prussia mall.
I wandered in to the room shared by, among other companies, Accustic Arts and Fischer & Fischer. The news from this room is two new high-value products—by which I mean that they're cheaper than the company's main lines, so there's a good probability that they offer good value. High-end companies trickling down appears to be a Munich High End trend—note, for instance, the Mark Levinson No.5101 SACD player/streaming DAC I wrote about earlier today.