Stereophile October 2020

Mikey Bats 302 Issue 54 of The Absolute Sound, cover-dated July/August 1988, had arrived in my mailbox. I had been warned that this issue contained a report from Stereophile’s third hi-fi show, which had been held in Santa Monica the previous April. Although it wasn’t listed in the issue’s table of contents, I found the show report on page 186, written by Michael Fremer, who was listed on the magazine’s masthead as “Senior Editor: Pop Mix.” I met Michael at the January 1987 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. We were both new then—he to TAS and I to Stereophile. At our meeting, he had argued cogently that for our two magazines to conduct a war of words in print would be detrimental to both. I was receptive to what he said,…

TAKE HEED! Unless marked otherwise, all letters to the magazine and its writers are assumed to be for possible publication. Please include your name and physical address. We reserve the right to edit for length and content. The old ways … Some call it blind luck or even happy accident, but I would rather call it record-collecting. I have on high rotation a beautifully recorded and pressed copy of Vivaldi that I bought at a local tip shop for $2. This recording has spellbinding musical passages and dynamic range unheard of in some digital versions. I wonder why this record was at the dump. Maybe the children or grandchildren cleaning out grandma or pa’s home didn’t have a playback mechanism? I can only guess, but my family have been the beneficiaries of these…

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.) Please note that 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 Saturday, September 12, 1–3pm: The San Francisco Audiophile Society is excited to be hosting Mat Weisfeld, president of VPI. Sign up to hear what Mat has to say about all things VPI and the new directions he is taking the company. We’ll be meeting with Mat virtually via Zoom. Please contact the San Francisco Audiophile Society at query@sfaudiophilesociety.com or consult our website, sanfranciscoaudiophilesociety.com, for more information. Saturday,…

SUBMISSIONS: Those promoting audio-related seminars, shows, and meetings should email the when, where, and who to stletters@stereophile.com at least eight weeks before the month of the event. The deadline for the January 2021 issue is October 20, 2020. US: FLEETWOOD, PENNSYLVANIA Julie Mullins Jonathan Weiss doesn’t do things the ordinary way. Nor does he follow the usual audio industry processes. In 2006, Weiss founded Oswalds Mill Audio (OMA), manufacturer of a range of high-end loudspeakers and other products with exotic, vintage-inspired approaches and designs. Serious handcraft and bespoke materials, from solid hardwood enclosures to leather from luxury makers Hermès and Jean Rousseau, are behind OMA’s upperechelon pricing. Stereophile readers might not be familiar with his speakers, for a couple of reasons. Weiss doesn’t do audio shows (at least he hasn’t for the last several years),…

25 years and counting I was planning to ignore the big three oh oh—my 300th Analog Corner column—and go about my normal business of covering an assortment of new analog gear and accessories. There’s an abundance of those today, 25 years after the publication of my first column.1 Back then, there was far less to write about: Vinyl was on life support and headed for the obsolete-music-format trash heap atop a pile of Elcasets and 8-track tapes. As I commenced writing that more conventional column, second thoughts took hold. Three hundred is just a number, but it’s a big one: one column per month for a quarter-century. This is, I decided, an opportune time to pause, look back, reflect, and consider the way forward. If you find this self-indulgent, I promise to do…

Communing with immortals “Future generations will be able to condense into the brief space of twenty minutes the tone pictures of a lifetime—five minutes of childish prattle, five moments embalming the last feeble utterances from the death-bed. Will this not seem like holding veritable communion with immortality?” —BERLINER GRAMOPHONE COMPANY CA. 18771 Patented by German-American inventor Emile Berliner in 1887, the Gramophone,2 which later became, generically, the small-g gramophone, is a device for making permanent, direct-to-flat-disc3 recordings—of the human voice, musical instruments, or other sounds, and for playing back those stylus-inscribed discs, enjoyably, with sounds that resemble those of the original event. Today, more than 120 years after that invention, people around the world still listen to voices and musical instruments reproduced via radially inscribed flat discs. The vividness of their effect still…