Stereophile Staff

Primedia, the leading targeted media company, announced March 30 the newsstand arrival of its recently launched <I><A HREF="http://www.connectedguide.com">Connected Guide To The Digital Home</A></I>. Part of Primedia's Home Technology & Photography (HT&P) Group, <I>Connected</I> is the first consumer magazine dedicated entirely to adopting and integrating audio, video, information, telecommunications, security and other personal and home technologies.

Jan Berry, of '60s surf music duo Jan and Dean, died Friday, March 26 at UCLA Medical Center, after suffering a seizure at his home in Brentwood. He was 62.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is continuing its legal campaign against file sharing. In late March, the trade organization launched a new salvo of lawsuits against 532 individuals and 21 university computer networks across the country&mdash;89 of the accused violators used school networks for downloading or sharing large numbers of copyrighted recordings. The RIAA claimed that the alleged violators shared an average of 837 songs.

The darTZeel NHB-108 power amplifier garnered effusive praise from <I>Stereophile</I>'s John Marks in his <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/amplificationreviews/932/index.html">Septemb… 2003 Fifth Element</A> column, including the comment "the sweetest-sounding solid-state power amplifier I have ever heard." There was only one problem: the amp was hard to find in the US.

For audiophiles who love multichannel music, the center-channel speaker is a problem second only, perhaps, to that of bass management. In many ways, the rerouting of bass to a subwoofer or to the front left and right main speakers is dictated by room acoustics or the bass limitations of the other speakers. On the other hand, most of us had no real need for a discrete center-channel to fill in the middles of our traditional stereo systems. In fact, one of the glories of really good stereo is the simulation of a convincing central image, such that there's a seamless soundstage from beyond one speaker, across the room, to beyond the other speaker.

We've all got our pet peeves, and one of mine is stiff, unwieldy audio cables that simply refuse to bend to my will&mdash;or to bend at all. Instructions like "carefully bend to final configuration, ensuring that no bend is sharper than a 36" radius" make my blood boil. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Audience's willowy Au24 cable and wonderfully flexible powerChord positively warmed my heart when I encountered them at the 2002 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

For me, the iconic Adcom power amplifier was the GFA-555. As an aspiring audiophile, I was deeply impressed with <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/amplificationreviews/678">Tony Cordesman's review</A> in <I>Stereophile</I> in 1985 (Vol.8 No.4). That did it! After years of kit-building and doing it myself, the '555 was the first factory-built amp that I wanted and could afford. Over the years, I changed speakers several times, and even added a fully regulated power supply to the '555, but it never balked. At the end of its tenure at my house, it had been demoted to my third-string backup; today it's making someone else tap his toes.