Copper

I am responding to the recent article on DACs and the quick brush-off of ladder DACs. (Richard Murison’s “My Kingdom for a DAC”, Richard didn’t brush off ladder DACs so... Read more...

Caribbean Shutter

Canon 5D Read more...

John Hartford

One day about twenty-five years from now,When we’ve all grown old from a-wondering how,Oh we’ll all sit down at the city dump,And talk about the Goodle Days.Well you’ll pass the... Read more...

Stan White: Visionary? Or…?

This column is different from previous installments of Vintage Whine, in two ways: 1. Previous subjects were pretty well known—for anyone familiar with the history of the American audio industry,... Read more...

Fully Armed

Once we have established a firm base for our turntable, and have it revolving flutter- and wow-free, we need to add an arm and cartridge to decode all those tiny, tiny, grooves filled with musical information. They are in essence dynamic explosions, as pointed out previously: some 30 tons per square inch of energy. The name ‘tone arm’ is interesting, and in the current form of record replay, the last thing we actually want are ‘tones’ to be added by the arm! Of course the phrase developed in the acoustic... Read more...

What Is a Song?

Warning: more Beatles content. Of course, they’re many people’s favorite band (including, obviously, mine), so it’s not a surprise, but there happen to be a number of Beatle-related events around... Read more...

The Boganyi Piano

Born into a musical family in 1974, Gergely Boganyi was raised to be a concert pianist, and began amassing awards at an early age. At 19, he won Chopin and Mozart competitions in Budapest; at 20, the piano competition at Indiana University-Bloomington; at 22, he won the International Franz Liszt competition in Budapest, and was named a “Citizen of Honor” in his hometown of Vac, Hungary. Having played many of the best instruments in the world, Boganyi concluded that development of the piano had stalled. Working with the Mono Group,... Read more...

Issue 12

The Shock of the Old

What’s Old? In classical music, everything and nothing. Steve Reich is 80. Bach is dead; so are Cage and Satie, Ives and Varèse, Morton (Feldman) and Milton (Babbitt). So what?... Read more...

Is It Worth It To You?

During election season, we hear a lot of talk about “values”. We are not (thank goodness!) going to pursue the subject of personal values, the much-abused term that is at... Read more...

Cocktail Party

You will all know the old chestnut where, if you focus clearly, it is often possible to pick out one individual conversation from among the hubbub of a noisy cocktail... Read more...

The ACK Attack and Un-common Knowledge

In English-speaking circles, the term “common knowledge” refers to a thing that everyone knows, or at least, should have known when searching for the cause of some wretched decision. As in, “I cannot imagine why she ran away with that poor excuse for a man. It’s common knowledge that he is a drunken lout!” In audiophile-speaking circles, it’s a different thing altogether. I’ve always called the phenomenon “Audiophile Common Knowledge.” It’s the same stuff we’ve heard for years and years. Although they may be without any basis, or the basis... Read more...

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