Stereophile June 2022

THIS ISSUE: Recorded music’s bright future. I wrote about the music industry’s impressive recovery in the February 2022 AWSI.1 Robust LP sales were a headline item of that report, but they’re a sideshow: Paid-subscription streaming is what is bringing the industry back. When I wrote that, 2021 wasn’t quite over, so year-end financials weren’t available. They’re available now. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, in 2021 recorded-music revenue reached $15 billion, an astonishing $2.9 billion—19.3%—increase over 2020. That increase is probably exaggerated by COVID-suppressed 2020 revenue—physical media sales were certainly down—but 2020 revenue was still $1 billion higher than 2019’s. Numerically, 2021 recorded-music revenue set a new record: $400 million higher than the previous record high, in 1999—the year before the start of the great decline, when illegal file sharing nearly broke…

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. R2LaD4 If Brian Damkroger likes the vinyl version (“Death-defying discs,” February 20221) of Bob Dylan’s “My Back Pages,” from The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration, he’ll love the video version. Clapton is so cool and relaxed, he makes everyone else look like they’re working hard. Neil Young was working hard to just stand still. Al Peña Redondo Beach, California I read with great interest Mr. Tourtelot’s comment (complaint?) in the April issue questioning the need to continue his subscription, given that he has no need for the high-end (high-priced) equipment reviewed in Stereophile, while lauding Tom Fine’s review of…

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. Note: Due to the ongoing pandemic, Stereophile recommends confirming that events are still taking place. CALIFORNIA ◼ Saturday, May 14, 2022, 2–5pm: The Los Angeles & Orange County Audio Society will hold its monthly meeting at Sunny’s Audio Video in Covina (1370 E. Cypress St.). Industry representatives on-hand will include Vinnie Rossi, who will be introducing his new Brama electronics line; John Woo of Bluebird Music; and John…

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 September 2022 issue is June 20, 2022. US: BROOKLYN, NEW YORK Jim Austin On March 28, longtime Stereophile contributor (and one of my favorite music writers) John Swenson died from cancer. John’s death came about a year after we published, in the My Back Pages space, John’s essay “Death Row Discs.” For me, his essay is an eloquent goodbye, one without a trace of self-pity. It starts with the sentence, “My music is keeping me alive.” If you missed it the first time ’round, give it a read.1 In the same issue’s As We See It, I wrote my own tribute to John.2…

THIS ISSUE: Mikey conducts a zenith-error test and auditions Channel D’s latest Lino C phono preamplifier. Plus, a pretty and pretty effective record weight. The stylus that cuts the grooves in your favorite records is best described, in simple terms, as “chisel-shaped.” The most accurate playback styli—the “extreme” ones that extract the maximum amount of information from the grooves—have a similar shape, with sharper and more severe contact edges than a standard elliptical stylus, itself an advance over spherical styli. These extreme shapes, with names like Line Contact, Fine Line, Gyger, Replicant, Shibata, and van den Hul, have complex geometries with long, narrow vertical contact patches that sit deep within the groove, can better trace the deepest lateral modulation crevices, and beat the fastest, most efficient path up and down those modulation…

THIS ISSUE: Herb expounds on the importance of good cabling in high-quality audio systems, tries the AudioQuest ThunderBird interconnect, and auditions a preamplifier from HoloAudio. I have this friend, a smart, good-looking young physicist from Argentina. Naturally, I call him “Gaucho.” He lives in a glistening-white steel-and-glass apartment overlooking lower Manhattan. I visit him regularly, usually with a group of audio friends, mainly to compare recordings, drink wine, and talk hi-fi. One day, unexpectedly, Gaucho invited me over to listen to his system—just me—so that I could tell him what I “really think” of his system’s sound. His digital source is Roon into a dCS Rossini DAC and Master Clock. His record player is the latest SME 20/3 turntable with an SME V arm and a Dynavector XV-1s moving coil cartridge, which feeds…