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November 2008 Audio Files By Gary Altunian
Look, Listen, Learn: Must-Have Gadgets Abound at 2008 CEDIA Expo
Imagine a fantastic, outsized home-entertainment toy store, although nothing is for sale—that’s the CEDIA Expo, the Custom Electronics Design & Installation Association tradeshow, where manufacturers exhibit their newest, most cutting-edge audio, video...
October 2008 Audio Files By Thomas Conrad
Jon Faddis: Searching for Sonic Truth
Faddis' audio equipment has evolved alongside his music
September 2008 Audio Files By Mike Quinn
Gearing Up, Getting Down: New Toys for the Changing Seasons
Fall is the time for regrouping, for preparing to hunker down during the more sedate winter season. It’s a good time to see what’s on the market that may be new to us, maybe something worth stashing in our nests for the winter. So, with fall on the way soon...
August 2008 Audio Files By Mike Quinn
How Great Speakers Work: Why We Hear What We Hear
Speakers are boxes or panels, among other things, designed to transmit music to our ears. They are never amusing or funny, always serious and straight to the point, or should be—effectively neutral, like a good news story. Via whatever technology they employ...
June 2008 Audio Files By Mike Quinn
Perfect Sound for the Time Being: Behind the Compact Disc’s Sonic Ascent
Sony and Philips painted themselves into a digital corner when, back in the early ’80s, upon the introduction of the compact disc, they declared that their shiny silver invention was capable of “perfect sound forever.” Shame on them: the dismal sound produced...
May 2008 Audio Files By Mike Quinn
Watch the Changes
Big-screen television sets were once almost exclusively the property of the very affluent or the bad guys in apocalyptic sci-fi thrillers; now everyone has to have one of these bigger-is-better screens. But not all flat panels are created equal, at least...
April 2008 Audio Files By Mike Quinn
Viva Las Vegas
Among the 1.85 million square feet of exhibit space at the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show, held in Las Vegas, Nev., Jan. 7-10, hundreds of audio equipment manufacturers proffered thousands of different solutions for extracting music from a...
March 2008 Audio Files By Mike Quinn
All Systems Go
Bird and Diz. Metheny and Mehldau. Bix and Tram. Miles and his million partners. What do these teams connote? Well, at least on the stand, they connote synergy: a magical musical melding that always produces more energy, more excitement than the sum of the...
January/February 2008 Audio Files By Mike Quinn
Rocky Mountain High: (Low and Midrange, too!)
One of the recurring questions we get from readers of this column is, “Where can I hear speaker X? Or amplifier Y? Turntable Z?” I was surprised when one such reader living in Chicago was having trouble finding a number of products we’ve recently discussed...
January/February 2008 Audio Files By Mike Quinn
DeVore Fidelity: The Nines Loudspeaker
Remember those old TV ads for Remington electric razors, the ones where the guy proclaimed he liked the razor so much, he bought the company? Well, I heard some speakers a few years ago I liked so much that I shelled out my own money—no, not for the whole...
