John Atkinson

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/cdcantus3.jpg" WIDTH=170 HEIGHT=152 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>When <A HREF="http://www.cantusonline.org">Cantus</A>'s artistic coordinator (and <I>Stereophile</I> reader) Erick Lichte phoned me in the summer of 2000 about my recording this Minnesotan male-voice choir, it didn't occur to me that I was entering a long-term relationship. But just as sure as 16-bit digital is not sufficient for long-term musical satisfaction, my first Cantus CD led to a second, and now a third. (All available from <A HREF="https://secure.stereophile.com/stereophile/recordings.shtml">this website</A>). For <I>Deep River</I>, I traveled to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, 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.

Reader Sam K. says he is tired of all the talk about computers and music, and wants to know when was the last time you upgraded your turntable and how did you do it?

Audiophiles may bemoan the convergence of computers and high-fidelity equipment, but it's a trend apparently as unstoppable as the earth's progression around the sun.

What's in a name?

Two new companies have formed in recent weeks to bring audiophile cable and connector products to market.

I've been in a nostalgic funk of late. What started it was visiting Golden, Colorado, where I spent my graduate-school days, and seeing all of the changes, not to mention the lecture halls full of kids who couldn't be a day over 12. When I commented on how young the freshmen looked, our host&mdash;a colleague of mine from grad school, now a professor&mdash;responded, "Those are seniors, Brian." I felt a little old.

We audiophiles are ever hopeful that, however satisfying our present equipment and setup, we can achieve even greater enjoyment with a tweak or an upgrade. And we never stop: It was only 16 years (and three turntables) ago that I bought what I declared would be my last turntable, and there's no doubt that this "dead" format has improved substantially since then. Now, even as we make another (but less paradigm-shifting) format transition, from CD to SACD and DVD-Audio, new two-channel DACs continue to appear that show us how far we still are from wresting all the music from the original "Red Book" 16-bit CD format. I reviewed the wonderful <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/digitalsourcereviews/781">Weiss Medea DAC</A> in February 2003, and there are still on my auditioning rack are two more Swiss DACs that might redefine the category: the Orpheus 1 and the Nagra DAP.