Every month Stereophile magazine offers authoritative reviews, informed recommendations, helpful advice, and controversial opinions, all stemming from the revolutionary idea that audio components should be judged on how they reproduce music.
THIS ISSUE: Reports of highperformance audio’s death have been exaggerated. It’s one of audiophiledom’s eternal questions: What can we do to draw more music lovers into the audiophile fold? Of the proposals bandied about on audio forums, two seem predominant: a) sell stuff more people can afford, and b) sit your neighbor or the cable guy in front of your stereo, cross your fingers, and let ’er rip—the theory behind b) being that the experience will be so epic as to transform the reluctant participant into an audiophile butterfly. As if. These ideas aren’t wrong, but their aim is all over the map. Actual human beings have a ton of other things—and not just fun things— they’d rather do. Things that don’t involve sitting in front of music while doing…
FEEDBACK TO THE EDITOR TAKE HEED! Unless marked otherwise, all letters to the magazine and its writers are assumed to be for possible publication. In the spirit of vigorous debate implied by the First Amendment, and unless we are requested not to, we publish correspondents’ e-mail addresses. Are we hobbyists? Editor, In the February issue, (“Letters,” p.11) Dale M. Lanzone bridled at the use of the term hobbyist to describe an audiophile. Are we hobbyists? Yes and no. A few years ago, I asked my 40-year-old son what he would call my nearly 60-year penchant for the audio/stereo experience. “It’s a hobby, Dad.” Yes, I thought, that’s what it is. But that’s the equipment part—the part of the brain that clicks in when listening to what the gear does to…
AUDIO NEWS & VIEWS SUBMISSIONS: Those promoting audio-related seminars, shows, and meetings should e-mail the when, where, and who to JAtkinson@enthusiastnetwork.com at least eight weeks before the month of the event. The deadline for the June 2016 issue is March 20, 2016. UK: SOUTHEND-ON-SEA Paul Messenger In complete contrast to its own wellestablished tradition of offering highperformance products at relatively affordable prices, Rega Research is about to introduce a new turntable that costs around £30,000. The exact price and launch date have yet to be set, but the name and some of the ingredients are fixed. The new Rega ’table (below) will be called the Naiad, after a solo-piano work by Harry Farjeon that Rega’s founder, Roy Gandy, remembers his mother playing. Farjeon (1878–1948) was born in New Jersey but…
ATTENTION ALL AUDIO SOCIETIES: We have a page on the Stereophile website dedicated solely to you: www.stereophile.com/audiophilesocieties. If you’d like to have your audio-society information posted on the site, e-mail Chris Vogel at info@XLinkAudio.com. Please note that it is inappropriate for a retailer to promote a new product line in “Calendar” unless this is associated with a seminar or similar event. CALIFORNIA ❚ Sunday, March 20, 2–5pm: The Los Angeles & Orange County Audio Society will hold its monthly meeting at Upscale Audio, in Upland (2504 Spring Terrace). The event will be hosted by the “Tube King” himself, Upscale Audio’s own Kevin Deal, who will present his latest personal tube-search adventures, and give tours of his workshop and warehouse full of exotic tubes! Listen to and learn about PrimaLuna electronics,…
In order to fabricate copper or silver into a strand or conductor, it is first cast and then drawn through a die— a process that creates a directional pattern in the conductor’s internal grain structure, and most importantly, a non-symmetrical overlay of grains at the conductor’s surface. This asymmetrical surface structure causes a slight directional difference in impedance at high noise and interference frequencies. Due to skin-effect, such high-frequency energy travels almost exclusively on the surface of a conductor, giving significance to the directional difference in impedance at these frequencies. Because all energy will always take the path of least resistance, when a cable is oriented so that the highfrequency noise—whether from a computer, radio station, cell tower, etc.—is “directed” to ground, or to the end of the cable attached…
THIS ISSUE: First listens to two high-end tonearms and a second listen to a cost-no-object turntable. The 3P’s unique bearing system consists of three pivot points. “HOW MEASUREMENT FAILS DOCTORS AND TEACHERS” was the headline of a story1 in a recent issue of the New York Times’s “Sunday Review” section (formerly called “News of the Week in Review,” now rendered obsolete by the 24/7 news cycle created by and for the terminally self-absorbed). The writer, Robert M. Wachter, a professor and interim chairman of UC San Francisco’s department of medicine and author of the book The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age, said that healthcare and education “have become increasingly subjected to metrics and measurements,” and that the focus on them has “gone…
