Stereophile Sep-13

THIS ISSUE: With music streaming becoming ubiquitous, will the day come when music lovers no longer buy albums and musicians no longer get paid? No one ever had to pay for recorded music—it was always “free” on the radio—and the home taping of LPs, the copying of cassettes, and, later, burning CDs made buying music optional. Then Napster and other file-sharing sites kicked it up a notch and made it very easy to assemble a 10,000-song collection without spending a dime. Now, Spotify, BitTorrent, SoundCloud, MOG, and YouTube make music instantly accessible on demand. It raises the question: Will music lovers continue to buy music? Paying for recorded music is now, more than ever, a voluntary act. A generation gap is part of this story: Today’s music fans of high…

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. A right Eliot Ness Editor: I love Sam Tellig, but tell Sam that Alfred Brendel’s not yet brown bread (“Sam’s Space,” July, p.25). —Marshall Arbitman limehouse.chappy@gmail.com Brendel’s alive and well Editor: Have just finished reading “Sam’s Space” in the July 2013 Stereophile (pp.21–25), which was, as always, very enjoyable. One thing shocked me somewhat: the news of the passing (along with Colin Davis and Wolfgang Sawallisch) of Alfred Brendel (p.25). I was especially shocked considering that, two months ago, I was eating dinner…

AUDIO NEWS & VIEWS SUBMISSIONS: Submissions: Those promoting audio-related seminars, shows, and meetings should e-mail the when, where, and who to stephen.mejias@sorc.com at least eight weeks before the month of the event. The deadline for the November 2013 issue is August 30, 2013. USA NEW YORK John Atkinson Fans of Sam Tellig’s “Sam’s Space” column—and I know that’s a sufficiently large group of audiophiles to populate a small town!—will have noticed his current absence from our pages. The avuncular if irascible Sam is taking a short furlough but will return in the fall. UK NORTH LONDON Paul Messenger The resurgence of vinyl continues to gather momentum. Existing turntable manufacturers are smiling, and newcomers regularly emerge. More and more new releases are appearing on vinyl, sometimes accompanied by CDs and/or download…

THIS ISSUE: Mikey spends the month of May on the road. In the old days, this column would have covered last May’s High End show in Munich and T.H.E. Show Newport Beach. Today, live online blogging renders obsolete magazine reports that arrive in your mailbox months after the events. It also makes life difficult for a monthly magazine columnist. I wasn’t home a good part of the month, so how much serious listening do you think I managed? But what a month! Colleen Murphy’s Bowie Fest On May 5, I attended Colleen Murphy’s Classic Album Sundays event at the New Museum, in the Bowery. Part of the Red Bull Music Academy festivities, Murphy’s event featured the playing of three David Bowie LPs, and was co-hosted by the albums’ original producers.…

Volti Audio’s Vittora, a borrowed pair of which now sit at the far end of my listening room, is a great loudspeaker and, at $17,500/pair, a seriously great value. After a few weeks with the Vittora, I find myself convinced by the naturalness, momentum, and force that it found in every record I played: This is surely one of the finest horn-loaded speakers made in the US. The Vittora is designed and built by Greg Roberts, a longtime audio enthusiast who bought his first pair of Klipsch La Scala loudspeakers when he was 14. (He has owned a number of pairs of Klipschorns in the years since, having settled on an especially nice-looking set from 1967.) A woodworker by training and a homebuilder by trade, Roberts began, in 2001, to…

Two of the five loudspeakers reviewed in our July issue were designed by Andrew Jones: the $29,800/pair TAD Evolution One and the $129.99/pair Pioneer SP-BS22-LR. I did the math. You can buy 229 pairs of the Pioneer for the price of a single pair of the TAD. Which is the better deal? Which would result in more happiness? Imagine keeping one pair of the Pioneers, and delivering the other 228 pairs to friends and family. Or donating them to schools. The possibilities are great. How much fun can you have with just a single pair of speakers, anyway? It’s true that the TAD bears the more mellifluous model name, but only the Pioneer comes with Jones’s signature on the rear panel—a significant selling point, I would think, and perhaps an…