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.
It’s an error commonly made in evaluating hi-fi–system performance: the failure to listen differentially. Differential as in compared to something else. “Something else” could be a different recording on the same system or (especially this) the same recording on a different system. The question is, what are you comparing it to? The point is: Do you really know what that recording sounds like? When it comes to evaluating equipment, audio engineers—especially those who specialize in naturalistic recordings—have an advantage. Someone like John Atkinson—I wrote “someone like,” though really he’s a category of one—knows better than anyone what his own recordings sound like. John was there at the beginning, in the same room, or monitoring nearby via well-known components. He decided what’s on the recording. Even so, even for him, all…
Gawking vs shopping Unlike Mr. van Bakel, I have attended many car shows. And yes, I “gawk” at the Benzes, Bentleys and Bugattis along with the Lamborghinis, Porches, etc. But I spend most of my time looking at what I can afford, the Toyotas, Chevys, Subarus on the floor. I would do the same at an audio show. So if there are way too many products out of my price range as compared to what I can afford, why go? Lawrence MurrinLacombe, Alberta, Canada Feedback about feedback Over the years of reading Stereophile, I have been witness to the increasing number of “no negative feedback” amplifiers. I want to know why. Surely an electronic principle like feedback, which helps reduce distortion and adds stability to the output signal, should be…
JONATHAN TINN, REST IN PEACE Jason Victor Serinus Jonathan Tinn, 63, US distributor of darTZeel and current/former business partner or associate in Evolution Acoustics, Playback Designs, Wave Kinetics, and Blue Light Audio, passed away from intestinal cancer on April 27. He left behind two beloved sons, Charlie and Gabriel, siblings Liz and Eric, and scores of devastated colleagues and associates. Tinn’s death came as a shock to all who knew and worked with him. On April 11, he informed his business partner of 17 years, Kevin Malmgren of Evolution Acoustics, that he had, at most, a couple of weeks to live. His announcement came after intense rounds of chemotherapy and shortly before he entered hospice care. “I first met Jonathan by email in the fall of 2002,” darTZeel’s Hervé Delétraz…
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. (Please 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 ■ Friday evenings, 5–7pm PST: The San Francisco Audiophile Society hosts a virtual happy hour via Zoom. This is open to anyone who’d like to join us to talk about hi-fi and whatever else is on your mind. For more information and registration, visit bit.ly/3RyaqX9. FLORIDA ■ February 16–18, 2024: The Florida International Audio Expo will take place at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Tampa Westshore,…
Last weekend, I visited an old friend who lives near Walden Pond of Henry Thoreau fame. I hadn’t visited him since before the pandemic. He had just finished adding a wing to his house that included a dedicated hi-fi listening room the size and shape of a small church. Below a cathedral ceiling, the sweet spot featured seating for no fewer than 30 guests. Besides serving as his main listening room—he has another one that’s smaller—it serves as a large residential parlor with a baby grand piano for use in chamber music performances, which feature prominently in his and his wife’s social calendar. It was a high-SPL thrill to experience his towering, field-coiled RCA theater horns (see photo) powered by RCA 845 amplifiers. We listened to highlights from his collection…
Writing a regular column can be a funny thing; the repetition it requires brings up questions that grow increasingly urgent. Chief among them: What are we doing here, and what is this for? For all the handwringing about story-telling and prose style, what we’re up to in the equipment-review section of this magazine is writing about metal boxes filled with wire, capacitors, circuit boards, and other bits of hardware. Life is difficult and goes by in a flash, love and satisfaction are fleeting at best—so why should we care? Well, because some of these boxes manage to connect us to beauty and meaning in a way that can enhance and gradually change our lives. (And yes, both have to be in the mix: Beauty without meaning is anodyne and lacks…
