Stereophile October 2015

THERE ARE AS MANY OPINIONS AS THERE ARE EXPERTS THIS ISSUE: A new generation of music lovers is discovering high-end audio. I began working as a salesman of high-end audio gear in 1978. I was 29, and, as I recall, a healthy percentage of my customers were about my age. Most of the top high-end designers and entrepreneurs, too, were young: John Curl, Dan D’Agostino, Jon Dahlquist, Ray Kimber, Mark Levinson, Bill Low, Mike Moffat, Nelson Pass, Peter Snell, Bob Stuart, Jim Thiel, Ivor Tiefenbrun, A.J. van den Hul, Richard Vandersteen, Harry Weisfeld, David Wilson. The fact is, high-end audio’s Golden Age—the late 1970s to the mid-1980s—was largely fueled by the under-40 set, and most high-end journalists were fellow baby boomers. Now we’re all oldsters, with just a smattering of underfortysomethings. That’s…

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. Stan Ricker has passed away Editor: Truly sad news, as Stan was a beloved friend and former work colleague at Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab. According to his wife, Moni, Stan passed away on July 14, 2015, at 2:30am due to an infarct stroke. —Bob Henry highendaudiophile@gmail.com I, too, was saddened to hear of the death of Stan Ricker, who was just shy of his 80th birthday. I first interviewed Stan for Hi-Fi News magazine in 1980, when Stan was cutting Mobile Fidelity’s half-speed–mastered LPs and had engineered my favorite recording of the…

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, September 27, 2–5pm: For the first time, the Los Angeles & Orange County Audio Society will hold its monthly meeting at Shelley’s Stereo & Video’s new showroom, in Woodland Hills (22102 Clarendon Street). Our hosts, Alon Moscovitch and Wesley Katzir, will demonstrate the latest speakers and electronics for this showcase of planar-magnetic technology. Representatives from Audeze, Magnepan, Shunyata Research, and Simaudio Moon will address the Society. Eastwind Import will be on…

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 December 2015 issue is September 20, 2015. THE NETHERLANDS: EINDHOVEN Paul Messenger Marantz may be perceived in the US as a purveyor of multichannel home-theater components, but in Europe, the company is very much seen as a maker of stereo hi-fi components, especially in the form of the Special Editions (SE) and Limited Editions (LE) tweaked by brand ambassador Ken Ishiwata over the past 30 years. The main reason for a recent overnight trip to Eindhoven and the European headquarters of Marantz’s parent company, D&M Holdings, was the introduction of SE versions of Marantz’s SA-14S1 SACD/CD player and PM-14S1 integrated amplifier. Beefed-up top…

INSIDER VIEWS ON EVERYTHING VINYL THIS ISSUE: Mikey considers vinyl-resurgence deniers and two expensive cartridges. Add to the deniers of the Holocaust and Climate Change those who say that the vinyl resurgence isn’t happening. Seriously, the pushback was bound to happen, and the bigger this so-called “hipster fad” gets, the more the scoffers sweat. In 2014, according to my sources—representatives of the world’s largest pressing plants—more than 73,985,000 LPs were pressed.1 That’s correct: almost 74 million LPs. Taking into consideration such things as multi-LP boxed sets like The Beatles in Mono (which might be counted as a single record in terms of sales), defective discs rejected by consumers or retailers, and unsold records, of which there surely are many in the pipeline, we could cut the number in half—and still have around 35…

IN SEARCH OF THE EXCEPTIONAL THIS ISSUE: The Bespoke Audio Company’s preamp is said to be passive. To paraphrase the playwright Alan Bennett: When I started Listener magazine, my idea was to create a small, anarchist journal. But people wouldn’t obey the rules. In 2003, when I began writing for Stereophile, I felt very much at home. John Atkinson had one set of rules1 to ring us in, us being the codependent communities of audio reviewers and audio manufacturers. Martinet that I am, I layered atop those policies a few rules of my own, to govern interactions with members of the industry. More recently, I began to observe an additional practice—I wouldn’t quite call it a policy—meant to prevent mismatches, missteps, misunderstandings, and hard feelings all around: When someone offers me a product…