Stereophile February 2016

THIS ISSUE: High-end audio is thriving in Japan in the shape of headphones and personal listening. THERE ARE AS MANY OPINIONS AS THERE ARE EXPERTS How many advertisements for hi-fi or head-fi hardware do you see on your morning commute? Two? Three? If you live in Los Angeles, Sydney, or Paris, most likely it’ll be zero. Not so in Tokyo, where commuters, tourists, and shoppers moving through the Shinjuku or Shibuya subway stations will find it almost impossible to ignore Sony’s latest advertising campaign, which colorfully announces a new range of affordable portable audio players (né Walkmans). Inside, banners suspended from the cars’ ceilings promote Panasonic’s latest headphones and shoebox-sized stereo system. Many of the bigger Japanese manufacturers treat audio gear as a mainstream concern. Further evidence of Japan’s wider embrace of all things…

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. Changes Editor: Global warming, children disobedient to parents, writers leaving Stereophile (“Letters” and “Industry Update,” November 2015)—what is the world coming to? Will this madness ever end? (It was John Marks’s April 2010 column on the Gurrelieder—see www.stereophile.com/thefifthelement/the_fifth_element_59/index.html—that first attracted me to Stereophile.) —Andrei Sharko andreisharko@xtra.co.nz Standards Editor: Thank you, Stereophile, for continuing to do what you do. In particular, thank you for putting the reader first. It has not escaped my attention that one can publish a larger, glossier magazine— chock-full of ads—by never ranking equipment (except by price) and never measuring…

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 April 2016 issue is January 20, 2016. UK: WORTHING, WEST SUSSEX Paul Messenger In 1979, when Bowers & Wilkins launched their first 800-series loudspeaker, the 801, the idea of mounting the midrange and high-frequency drive-units in a separate “head” unit was so outrageous that B&W disguised it under a squared-off foam cover. Seven iterations of the 800s later, in late 2015, B&W released the D3 versions of the line, which demonstrate all sorts of improvements over their immediate predecessors, the 800 Diamonds, which were launched a decade ago. B&W claims that, of the 896 parts that comprised each Diamond model, 868 are…

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, January 31, 2–5pm: The Los Angeles & Orange County Audio Society will hold its monthly meeting at The Source Audio/Video Design Group, in Torrance (3035 Kashiwa Street). Our hosts, Steven and Jason Lord, will demonstrate top-of-the-line equipment in spaces custom-designed to maximize your musical and visual enjoyment. Listen to Boulder, Dan D’Agostino, Denon, Linn, Marantz, MBL, McIntosh, Pearl Evolution, Simaudio Moon, Sonus Faber, Totem Acoustic, Wadia, and other fine examples…

THIS ISSUE: Mikey cleans up his act. INSIDER VIEWS ON EVERYTHING VINYL Are you old enough to remember when the wires connecting speakers to even the most expensive and sophisticated electronics were 16-gauge, multistrand lamp cord, and the terminals on speakers and amplifiers were just little screws? Sometimes those screws wouldn’t even secure all of the wires’ strands, but as long as loose strands from one screw didn’t touch loose strands from the other, it was good enough . . . and back against the wall went your bookshelf speakers. And do you remember plugging the plugs of lamp-cordlike AC leads into any old wall sockets, themselves connected to any old household circuits? I remember all of that. No doubt the first high-quality stereo system I ever heard, back in the mid-1960s, was hooked…

THIS ISSUE: Art listens to the Master & Dynamic MH40 headphone and struggles with his headphone apathy. IN SEARCH OF THE EXCEPTIONAL In my sophomore year of high school, one of the greatest challenges my friends and I faced was the search for the perfect afterschool hangout, perfect being defined as “having the least amount of adult supervision.” Some of us lived in singleparent homes, but only one had a single parent for whom weekday surprise inspections were impossible, and that was Scott. So Scott’s place—a downstairs apartment in a nice older house not far from school—got the nod. Scott’s place was also where I learned to distinguish the differences between monophonic and stereophonic playback. Most of us had our own mono record players at home, but the centerpiece of Scott’s living room…