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.
A solo audio show in Raleigh For years, Audio Advice Live has been an annual event, drawing enthusiastic audiophiles to the dealership’s showrooms on Raleigh’s Glenwood Avenue, next to Virgin Cigars. This year, Audio Advice Live was different. It was a fully fledged audio show, held like most such events at a conference hotel: the Sheraton Raleigh Hotel in that North Carolina city, with rooms sponsored and presented by a wide range of hi-fi and home-theater manufacturers and distributors. What differentiated this show from any other is that it was put together by a single dealer (Audio Advice, which also has a store in Charlotte), with assistance from a logistics company. Another distinction: The show was arranged in just four months. It was a good show, small but entertaining, with…
Off the deep end To me, audio gear has gone off the deep end. How do you expect to get new readers or purchasers of said equipment when the prices are out of this solar system? I make a pretty good living, but I wouldn’t buy this stupidity if I had the money. It also is extremely boring, and why is this ancient technology so blooming expensive? You lost me way back when I read about a Koetsu cart for $15,000—WTF? From that absurd article by MF. Just not that interesting any more guys: yawn. Oh well, it’s just my humble opinion, but you know I’m right. Tim Emons Corrales, New Mexico Mr. Emons, What’s cool is, we all get to decide for ourselves what things are worth.—Jim Austin Qable…
CABLE SPECIALIST CHRIS SOMMOVIGO PASSES Julie Mullins Entrepreneurial audio designer and cable specialist Chris Sommovigo passed away on August 16, 2022, at his home in Atlanta, Georgia. Doug White of dealership The Voice That Is announced the news in a statement on Facebook, which read in part: “Chris was highly respected in the audio industry for his talents and high character—always looking to enhance the joy of music in everything he did. Chris leaves behind his wife Mayu and two children.” Sommovigo’s initial inspiration was having “a weird experience with a ‘digital’ cable that shouldn’t have made a difference,” according to a 2020 interview on Enjoy the Music.com, 1 so he sought out RF and millimeter wave specialists as mentors. He first became known for his early digital cables, such…
ATTENTION ALL AUDIO SOCIETIES: We have a page on the Stereophile website devoted to you: stereophile.com/audiophile-societies. If you’d like to have your audio-society information posted on the site, email Chris Vogel at vgl@cfl.rr.com. (Note the new email address.) It is inappropriate for a retailer to promote a new product line in “Calendar” unless it is associated with a seminar or similar event. CALIFORNIA ❚ Sunday, October 16, 2–5pm: The Los Angeles & Orange County Audio Society will hold its monthly meeting at Common Wave Hi-Fi in Los Angeles (1451 East 4th St., Unit 6, Los Angeles). Representatives of Jadis, SME, and other manufacturers will be in attendance along with host Wesley Katzir and staff to present SET-based amplification from Jadis. Analog playback will be on the latest SME turntables. Parking…
The sound of sound Whenever I install a new, in-for-review DAC, after some amount of spaced-out not-listening listening I find myself just sitting there, being happy I got the damn thing working. Once I recover from the stress of installation, my brain begins, without prompting, to examine the character of sound coming out of my speakers. Half-consciously I wonder: How does this sound sound? Has changing DACs altered the contrast, viscosity, or timbre? Does the energy of recordings feel more or less intense with the new DAC? I make these observations lazily but empirically, with a fair amount of detachment. In an effort to prolong my detached listening, I’ve been starting my new-DAC listening sessions playing recordings with no voices, melodies, or attention-grabbing compositional development. I have an “ambient-electronic” playlist…
One Step(-up) Beyond! The first audiophile I met lived near a sewage treatment plant on the outskirts of Moscow. It was a few months after the Soviet Union collapsed, in 1992, when I was a college senior, and I recall walking with my father to his home past block after block of the identical dingy white tenements that encircle most Eastern European cities. Pasha (that’s what I’ll call him) lived in one of them. A friend of my father’s, he turned out to be a wiry character in his early 40s with a toothy smile and the darting eyes of a collector. He led us through his sparsely furnished, rundown one-bedroom apartment; in the kitchen, his wife Marina (that’s what I’ll call her) sat with their toddler in her lap,…
