Wes Phillips slips into his well-worn flame-proof underwear as he bravely introduces audiophiles to the musical merits of the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//digitalsourcereviews/934/">Apple iPod</A>. WP finds he likes living at the edge of audio trendiness, exclaiming, "Holy cow! I'm running with the fashionistas! Can I still be an audiophile, too?"
Kalman Rubinson looks past the odd knobs to discover what's at the heart of the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//amplificationreviews/929/">Blue Circle BC21 preamplifier & BC22 power amplifier</A>. KR reveals, "In the past, I've found components with small drawbacks that made them unacceptable, but the Blue Circle BC21 and BC22 triumphed over their flaws."
Sirius Satellite Radio is concerned about The Bottom Line. Not the company's profitability, but the venerable Greenwich Village music cabaret, which has suffered since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
For <I>Deep River</I>, his third recording of Minnesotan male-voice choir <A HREF="http://www.cantusonline.org">Cantus</A>, <I>Stereophile</I> editor John Atkinson traveled to Sioux Falls, SD, where the city has spent millions of dollars to transform the downtown high school into a gloriously warm-sounding, state-of-the-art performing arts center.
With two new high-rez audio formats on deck, is a CD-only player still relevant? John Atkinson listens to, and then measures, the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//digitalsourcereviews/924/">Classé CDP-10 CD player</A> to discover why it sometimes takes 20 years to perfect a format.
We kick off three speaker reviews from the September issue with Brian Damkroger's assessment of the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/919/">Audio Physic Virgo III loudspeaker</A>. A perfect meld of minimonitor <I>and</I> full-range bass extension? BD reveals all.
Graham Nash and Frank Zappa will be <A HREF="http://www.dts.com">DTS Entertainment's</A> first artists to debut in Europe on DVD-Audio, thanks to an agreement between DTSE and Cadiz Music, Ltd., a distributor in Greenwich, England. DTS Entertainment is the entertainment division of Digital Theater Systems, Inc., based in Agoura Hills, CA.
Anthony H. Cordesman and John Atkinson tackle the classic <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/914/">Vandersteen 2C loudspeaker</A> in a review from 1986. "Whenever I think of cone speaker systems, I think of three brand names: Snell, Thiel, and Vandersteen," says Cordesman, prompting JA to add, "I must say that I just don't understand how Richard Vandersteen can sell the 2Ci at a hair under $1200/pair and expect to make any money."
If the new satellite radio products are any indication, the format has a bright future. During the first week of September, Kenwood and Antex Electronics announced new <A HREF="http://www.sirius.com">Sirius</A> satellite receivers, and XM Radio has already dropped the price on its recently introduced "XM PCR," a controller that lets you listen to XM via your computer.
Late summer isn't typically a time when new audio products appear, but on August 29 we received two noteworthy announcements.