Ever since <I>Stereophile</I> took up the cudgels for subjectivity, and had the temerity to insist that even the best products have certain colorations, we have stressed compatibility in choosing components. By compatibility we do not mean merely matching impedances and signal levels, but mating components whose sonic peculiarities tended to offset one another.
In my reviewing career, except for fleeting listening sessions at the occasional audio show, I've had little contact with products from the Italian loudspeaker maker Chario. When asked if I'd be interested in reviewing an affordable bookshelf speaker from them, I did some research and discovered that Chario is distributed in the US by Koetsu USA. Well, with that kind of pedigree—I'm a loyal owner of two <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/phonocartridges/1098koetsu">Koetsu Urushi</A> cartridges—I thought I'd better give the Premium 1000 ($1015/pair) a careful listen. A few months later, I was tucking in to a pair of review samples.
One of the great divides in high-end audio concerns the question of how much bass is <I>enough</I> bass? The decision facing a speaker designer about how much low-frequency extension is appropriate is a fundamental one, so to speak: every extra 5Hz of bass will dramatically increase the retail price, as the speaker must be correspondingly bigger. Furthermore, the larger the speaker, the larger its problems, which in turn requires throwing more money at the design to solve those problems.
In last week's responses, many of you wished for ubiquitous high-resolution downloads. If this were to happen, what is the <I>most</I> you are willing to pay for, say, a 96kHz/24-bit download of a full album?
It's a <I>guy</I> thing, dating from those sandbox days when such declarations were not only socially acceptable but expected of us: Mickey Mantle could run the bases faster than Whitey Ford, the Chevrolet Corvette was cooler than the Ford Mustang, Jimmy Page played faster than Jeff Beck, Superman was stronger than Batman. (Women, those devious serpent-hearkeners of Old Testament fame, are for once blameless: They <I>never</I> argue that Charlotte Bronte wrote better tea-drinking scenes than Jane Austen, or that Hugh Grant looks better in a powdered wig than Daniel Day Lewis.)
There have been lots of great, and even some fabulous books of music criticism or reportage, and I've recommended several in these pages. So far, however, only one has made me chuckle, chortle, or laugh out loud, time and time again.
Even better than the STAX museum in Memphis however, is the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. I had friends in Nashville give me the whole rap about… “You don’t have to even know the music to love the museum”…to which I rolled my eyes, but it’s actually true. The CMH integrates music so beautifully in the museum. It could be an utter disaster in there musically, with listening stations bleeding into each other until it’s just a cacophony of noise. But through the intelligent uses of curled Nautilus shell shaped listening booths that control the sound yet still allow the listener to hear what they’ve chosen, the CMH is a model of keeping the music nearby yet allowing folks to look at cases of artifacts and talk among themselves without being blown out by music playing.
Look at this and wonder: "Why doesn't Brother Stephen own this beautiful piece of art? It obviously has his name written all over it. What gives?"
Now look at this and drool. You want it, you need it, you gotta have it: Sub Pop's deluxe edition of Nirvana's <i>Bleach</i>, available <a href="http://www.subpop.com/releases/nirvana/full_lengths/bleach_deluxe_editi… 3</a>.
Hey. If you like Cold Cave, I think you'll like Bal Pare. It's pretty safe to judge a 7" by its cover, which is what I did when I saw this one winking at me from the racks at Other Music. How could it not be good, all masked and silvery and naked like that?