Do the concepts of high end hi-fi give you a headache? Take 20 minutes for the UHF Hi-Fi Course.
Trying to reach UHF? Our contact page tells you how to find us.
February 15th: Blog archive goes on crash diet |
On February 7th we asked you what we should do with the older material on this blog? This main page has a limited number of entries, with the rest pushed off into an archive page. But that page was getting a little large. Make that a lot large. So do we dump the older stuff, or what? Well, you were unanimous: dump it. And so we have, and rather ruthlessly too. There's now nothing older than November 9th on the archive, and that will keep shrinking.Besides, if you really want to see what was in our blog (and its Newsletter predecessor, you can always use the Wayback Machine. We've actually used it to check on what we were doing back in 1997, the second year of our site's existence. Great fun. By the way, we spent yesterday in listening sessions, and got a couple of big surprises, which we'll tell you about shortly. |
February 13th: More bad news for HD DVD |
| Toshiba and its partners promoting HD DVD (that would include Microsoft) didn't have a terrific time at CES in January. It cancelled its big press party after Warner announced it was dumping HD DVD and going all Blu-ray. Company execs were still in meetings when the Financial Times announced that Paramount -- which had moved into the HD DVD camp mere months before -- was about to follow Warner. Was the war over? Probably. Netflix, which rents out movies by mail in the US, has announced its hi-def shelves will be "Blu" from now on. And the huge (and influential) Best Buy chain announced that it will henceforth steer customers away from HD DVD and toward Blu-ray. Are people still buying HD DVD anyway? Sure, and why not? Some US outlets now have HD DVD players for as little as $130, with a bunch of free  movies besides. But that doesn't sound like a business plan.Over at the DVD Forum, the industry group that promotes the DVD format and also HD DVD, they're still working on their FAQ, which should appear real soon, now. Coming soon to a cemetery near you. |
February 7th: Killing off old blog entries? |
| Ever since our long-running newsletter became a blog, we have been using images (this entry is no exception), and so the loading time for the page got longer and longer, especially for visitors still using dial-up access. To speed things up, we added a news archive page, so we could push off older entries onto it. Only now that page is getting pretty fat too. Our software predicts that someone using a 56K modem would need to wait 1:36 for the page to load. We now have three options. One is to leave things as they are, and see the archive page get bigger and bigger. Another is to move to a series of archive pages, as some blogs do, so that each page is fairly quick to load, but visitors can dig back if they wish. That will create extra work for us, and frankly we're not enthusiastic about this option. A third option is to kill off matter that is over a year old, on the assumption that no one will much care after all that time. What say you? Do you care if we kill off the old stuff? Write us and let us know. |
February 6th: Reviews coming up |
We expect to begin the review sessions for the next issue of UHF tomorrow. And we have several interesting products in store. We're sometimes accused of putting emphasis on products that real people can't afford, so allow us to go to the other extreme. This image shows part of the front panel of a DVD (and of course CD) player we will be reviewing, whose name we are not yet revealing. As you can see, it has on-board HDCD decoding, which is what grabbed our attention. Also grabbing our attention was the price...under $80!Well, not everything slated for review will be quite that inexpensive, but there could be potentially be another bargain as well. Later today we should be receiving the latest version of the Castle Richmond speaker. Remember Castle, the speaker company that built cabinets for other British speaker companies? After the bank moved in over a year ago, its designs and name became Chinese. The Richmond looks just like the old one, only it costs a lot less. We'll be eager to hear how it sounds. We'll be listening to a rather spectacular-looking tube CD player from Raysonic (see the January 31st blog entry for its picture). We'll be listening to an upscale phono preamp, this one from Simaudio...ostensibly built to give our Moon P-8 preamplifier access to vinyl. We'll be pursuing our investigation of the Audioprism Power Foundation III line filter...and this time we have an alternative power cord for it. And we have some new wires, both interconnects and speaker cables, from Atlas, which is going way upscale this time. Elsewhere in the issue, Paul Bergman will pursue his series on acoustics with a discussion of what happens when you change the placement of your speakers, we will have an in-depth article on the subject of contrast in video images (it may not mean what you think), Reine Lessard will continue her article on the great tenors (in the current issue) with a profile of Placido Domingo, and there will be plenty of interesting stuff from the two shows in Las Vegas. It's headed for press at the end of the month, for delivery in early March. UPDATE: Albert Simon lost his mother last night, and the review session is off to next week. The funeral will be held tomorrow in Montreal. |
February 5th: iPod Touch moves into audiophile territory |
| You may know that UHF owns a 60 Gb iPod, which has played a role in some of our articles. It's now three years old (if you multiply by seven for dog years, then for iPod years it must be...), and newer models do get our interest. You can actually get an iPod Classic with 160 Gb now, though even audiophiles may not need quite that capacity. However the product that grabbed our attention last year was the iPod Touch, shown here. It's slim and light, yet it has a huge touch screen, it plays movies as well as music, and it has a (nearly) full-featured Web browser built in. It is essentially an iPhone without the phone part. Only problem: its memory topped out at 16 Gb. As of this morning, you can get one with 32 Gb.  Why does this matter? Though many (most?) iPod owners load music onto their players in lossy compressed form (MP3, AAC, WMV, etc.), audiophiles prefer to get higher quality. Apple Lossless is available for the iPod, but the files shrink to about half their original size, and small iPods are not the thing.We confess to thinking of music in terms of albums rather than the "songs" touted in Apple ads. A typical album in Apple Lossless will occupy about 300 Mb. It seems obvious that the older 16 Gb iPod Touch (still available) could therefore hold about 53 albums. That assumes, however, that all the memory is available for music. But since the device also holds e-mail and other files, and it's also a movie player, that 16 Gb doesn't look so roomy anymore. The new iPod Touch should be able to accommodate some 106 albums, and even if you also carry two or three movies (about 700 Mb each, with lossy compression this time), and some of the new third-party applications that are expected soon, we now have elbow room. By the way, the iPhone can now be had with 16 Gb, though of course in very few countries. The bigger iPod Touch costs US$500. In Canada, though the Canadian dollar is worth ever so slightly more than the greenback, it's |
February 4th: New Eichmann products at The Audiophile Store |
 Eichmann is the Australian company that first figured out that minimizing the amount of metal in a connector will make it sound better. We like its banana connectors, but some people prefer spades. Here, then, is Eichmann's take on the (usually junky) spade. No brass here...these are pure copper, protected with gold plating, or optionally pure silver. There's even a model for the barrier strips on McIntosh and Vandersteen products (the one on the left). They're available now at the connector page of our Audiophile Store.Also new, over on our cable page: a balanced version of the Atlas Quadstar cable that did so well on our recent blind test, with Neutrik XLR connectors, available as a kit under $100, or assembled. |
January 31st: Next issue shaping up |
We are now less than a month away from sending UHF No. 83 into production, and we are pretty much figuring out what will be in it. Reviews include the Raysonic CD128 tube player shown here (Canadian-designed, Chinese built). There will be a couple of other products from China, including another player, this one with HDCD-decoding aboard, and a price tag under $100 (not a misprint!), plus a loudspeaker with a famous name. We will follow up our initial test of the Audioprism Foundation III power filter. This time we got our hands on a proper power cord to fit the Audioprism's 20A IEC connector, and we'll see whether the company was right to ship with a ho-hum cord. We'll have some interesting new cables, which we'll put into the usual blind test.More on all of this shortly. |
January 30th: Lots more at the UHF garage sale |
Our Audiophile Store often has special prices on one-off or demo products, including hardware, CDs and LPs. Just added: a Copland CTA-305 tube preamplifier, just like the one in our Alpha reference system, and a veritable cornucopia of classical CDs, mostly from Analekta, but from Dorian and other labels too. Click here to check it out. |
January 30th: CES was bigger, but... |
Each year, the Consumer Electronics Association predicts that its latest edition of the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas will be the biggest yet. And it has been getting bigger, but with some reverses. One reverse came in 2002 -- less than two months after the World Trade Centre came down. Another came this year. It's not that the show itself wasn't big. CEA says it occupied 1.85 million square feet (that's 172 thousand square metres, or -- to use the semi-official North American area measure -- 32 football fields). There were more than 2,700 companies, and 20,000 new products. But attendence fell off.CEA had predicted growth over last year's 143,695 professional attendees (that doesn't count press and exhibitors). The final figures will be available only next Spring (do you suppose they count by hand?), but it will be closer to 130,000. Was it the downtick in the economy? Rumors of the R-word? Or is it because the big casino companies in Vegas are knocking down the cheaper digs in favor of expensive luxury palaces, making attendence more of a big-budget item? Rumor has it CEA might be looking at alternative cities. Then again there are more and more trade shows in the world. No one has time or money to be at all of them. To tour this year's show, mouse over to our on-line coverage. |
January 25th: No extra tax on iPods |
This story almost got by us while we were off in Vegas to do our usual show coverage. Canadians won't have to pay extra for their iPods. It wasn't going to be a tax, exactly, but a "levy" that the Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC) would have collected on portable audio players, including the iPod (and the Zune, which is finally coming to Canada). The rationale: these devices are used to copy music (actually they're not, but the CPCC is not strong on technological nuances), and copyright holders deserve to be compensated.There has long been a levy on blank cassettes (remember them?), and on blank CDs. Some five years ago the CPCC hit iPods with a levy too, but the court intervened, and consumers got their money back. Now the CPCC was trying again. Only it was trying a lot harder. This time the tax...sorry, levy, on the top iPod would have been as much as $75. Talk about a boon to cross-border shopping! Well, what happened while we were away was that the court once again told the Board it had no power to do this. By the way, the tariff on blank CDs (but not DVDs, curiously) is currently at $0.21. But since even mainstream stores sell blank media for about that price, we have a hunch the levies aren't working out. |
January 23rd: Hi-def video: the final chapter? |
 It was, said one newspaper, like a big victory party for Blu-ray. That was a reference to CES, where the wheels began falling off HD DVD. First, Warner, which had been releasing films in both high-def formats, joined the Blu-ray exclusive club. Then there was a report (unsubstantiated, but denied only lukewarmly) that Paramount, which had gone exclusively HD DVD mere months ago, was getting ready to move the other way. That would have left only Universal to release HD DVD films, and it wasn't long before there were rumors it too would switch, probably in February.It's not that we wished Toshiba and HD DVD ill, but it was obvious to everyone that the ongoing format war had to end for the good of all. Either would be fine, but please let there be one format. It now looks, barring dramatic last-moment events, as though "the one" will be Sony's Blu-ray, but wait a minute. All of the action was not at CES. Over in San Francisco, on January 15th, Apple's Steve Jobs took the stage at Macworld to do his annual launch of new products. The biggie was of course the ultra-slim MacBook Air, but another product appeared to be a shot across the bow of the eventual hi-def disc winner.  It was last year that Apple introduced the lacklusterApple TV, shown at left. It is not, of course, a TV, but a quasi-computer, which attaches to an HDTV monitor and streams films and music that are on a networked computer. It didn't then make much of a splash, because it was unable to work without the help of a computer, even though it had most of a full-blown computer's attributes. Nor could it stream 5.1-channel surround sound. Who needs this?But now there's a new Apple TV, and with a downloaded software upgrade, old ones are new too. The Apple TV can now download movies right from iTunes via the Internet, and they're streamed, which means you can begin watching before the download is done. Not only can you buy movies this way, but you can also rent them (you have 30 days to begin watching, 24 hours to finish or watch it again once you start). And now there is surround sound. Jobs says Apple will be renting a thousand titles by next month, and for an extra dollar you can get a high-definition version of some films. Who needs Blu-ray? Hum...we do. Aside from the fact that the iTunes scheme is US-only, we've looked at the size of the downloads, and the news isn't good. A "hi-def" film is the size of a normal DVD, and a "DVD-quality" film is well under that. There's compression going on, and our money says it's plenty lossy. So come on, Blu-ray! Or HD DVD, if a miracle is still possible! UPDATE: Want to add your voice for one or the other format? You can sign a petition available here urging Warner to change its mind and return to HD DVD. Or there's a petition in favoring of letting HD DVD die. Your choice, if you think it will make a difference.. |
January 22nd: The CES hangover |
 Yes, CES was loaded with open bars, especially after hours, but what's not what we're referring to.The reason for organizing a Consumer Electronics Show in January? This is a trade show, remember, aimed not at buyers but at those who will be selling those buyers new products. So why now? We can assume the products shown could be available for perhaps April. But unless you're selling cameras, that's about when your dead period begins. In fact January is the time for a morale boost. Auto shows are held about now too, and for the same reason. So here's the hangover. We're out of CES and into what seems like a stock market meltdown. What is that going to do for consumer sales? And in truth it's hard to know, because the stock market has only a tangential correspondence to economic reality. If you have a retirement fund you are in the stock market, whether you know it or not. With any luck the people running your plan think long term, not panicking or celebrating too fast if stocks go down or up (and, we hope, not staking your future on the Nortels or Enrons). But overlaid on the investment industry are the speculators. And the speculators are much like the players at the green felt tables we saw in Vegas earlier this month. They play irrational hunches, they use methods that seem not unlike numerology, they buy high and sell low instead of the other way around, and a few of them even figure they can jigger the table. Sometimes they win, and sometimes they lose, but either way everyone else pays. It's the speculators who are causing much of the current meltdown. They are harvesting what they sowed, but when it's over the value of stocks will return to values based on economic reality. That, you'll recall, is what happened after the bursting of the dot-com bubble. But back to CES. If your company spent a fortune exhibiting at CES, you didn't need the stock market hangover, and that's for sure. But if you concentrate on the fundamentals of your products -- that is to say, whether they're any good -- you can pretty much ignore the gnashing of teeth. Oh...unless you're in charge of promoting HD DVD. More on that shortly, and on the Macworld development that could complicate matters more than a little. |
January 14th: CES over, we're back soon |
 Ah, Las Vegas! Unlike last year, when our breath froze in the air, we're able to get a drink on terrasses. When you're from Montreal, that's appreciated this time of year.But all good things must come to an end. We've been resting up after our daily on-line coverage of CES, and also getting over the colds both of us brought with us. We fly back on the 16th, and our offices reopen on the 17th. We will begin shipping orders on that day. We've been following the big video story of CES, namely the apparent defeat of HD DVD at the hands of Blu-ray (see our earlier blog entries for the details). Toshiba and its shrinking group of partners are holding a half-price sale on movies and hardware, something that should have happened a year ago. So is this just selling off the broken pieces of the dream? Our sources say that the last studio still backing HD DVD will be gone by February. Of course a month is a long time, but the fat lady appears not only to be singing but to be starting the last verse of her aria. See you Thursday! |
January 9th: The non-denial denial |
 After yesterday's bombshell report that Paramount was jumping ship and dumping HD DVD in favor of Blu-ray, a move which would end the format war, Paramount denied the Financial Times report.Well, sort of. The company put out a terse statement that its "current plan" is to stay with HD DVD. We don't know how much that will cheer up Toshiba and the DVD Forum. If your spouse announced that his or her "current plan" was to stay married to you, you'd need to be a few kilos short of brain cell stock not to get the message. |
January 8th: All over for HD DVD? |
It was a big blow for HD DVD when Warner announced that it was going exclusively Blu-ray. Of course the HD DVD camp still has Paramount on its side...or does it? The Financial Times this morning reports that Paramount is changing its mind about HD DVD, and moving to Blu-ray exclusively. If that should be confirmed, the format war is over. |
January 7th: HD DVD regroups |
| It was a big blow two days ago when, just before CES, Warner announced that from now on it was Blu-ray all the way. No more HD DVD. The HD DVD group got caught flatfooted, and declined interviews. It did ultimately put out a cheerful press release, with the emphasis on (predictably) last year, and the word "Warner" not appearing.. The high-definition news was the talk of journalists at CES, though the concensus seems to be that HD DVD ain't dead yet. At the same time, everyone is aware of the mistakes that were made. HD DVD, a simpler system than Blu-ray, could get to market first...so why didn't it? The HD DVD discs could be made on the same assembly lines as conventional DVDs, and so could be sold for less...so why are they the same price as Blu-Ray, or as much as $8 more? Jodi Sally of Toshiba (HD DVD's developer) is quoted in the press release: Our focus from day one has been to deliver the highest quality hardware and the best, most immersive home entertainment experiences for consumers at affordable prices. With nearly one million dedicated players in the market in North America, and a leading position in the PC market worldwide, we're seeing software growth follow suit. But where are the movies? Toshiba says it has 400 titles in the US. So few? Might as well pack it in now. More CES coverage starting here. |
January 6th: Blu-Ray or HD DVD? Depends on the movies you want |
For those of us who thought the battle between Sony and Philips' Blu-ray might be decided on which was one was better...well, we were wrong. The battle hinges on what movies you want to see. You'll recall that Paramount and Dreamworks had opted to release on HD DVD from now on, avoiding Blu-ray. The conspiracy fans noised it about that they had received money to announce that...one report said it was $100 million, from an unknown company whose initials are MS. Believe that?Now Warner has made the opposite announcement: Blu-ray all the way. No reports of money changing hands yet, but they'll surely soon be out. So...who makes the movies you really want to see? |
January 5th: End of the line for CES in Vegas? |
Or perhaps not. At one time CES ran twice a year, in Chicago and Las Vegas. When the economics no longer justified two huge shows a year, the survivor was Las Vegas. Vegas is, after all, a cheap town. Or was. This is from today's Las Vegas Sun:
Organizers of the International Consumer Electronics Show are scouting for a less expensive city to stage their convention, one of Las Vegas' largest. Show exhibitors have complained the rising cost of hotel rooms and food and beverage guarantees are threatening to price show attendees out of the market. The four-day Consumer Electronics Show opens Monday at the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Sands Expo & Convention Center and the Las Vegas Hilton. Show organizers say 140,000 people will attend the event, which has been staged in Las Vegas since 1978 and is usually where the latest innovations are introduced. Hotel rooms and dining options on the Strip have become increasingly expensive in recent years, and the trend seems likely to accelerate as luxury properties such as Palazzo, Encore, CityCenter, Fontainebleau and Echelon open and tourism continues to climb. Executives with the Consumer Electronics Association, the owner of the show, have asked the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority to lean on resort hotels to keep prices in check. Karen Chupka, senior vice president of events and conferences for the association, said exhibitors are sending fewer delegates to the show because of the cost. "It's crazy," Chupka said. "The rates have become astronomical. Some of the resorts are requiring a food and beverage guarantee on top of the hotel rooms and that has gone up by 365 percent in the past two years. Las Vegas is no longer the cost-effective destination it once was." Glenda Brungardt, trade show and event manager for HP Imaging & Printing Marketing, a division of Hewlett-Packard, said her company has had to cut 12 percent to 15 percent of its show personnel this year because of rising costs According to the Sun, Orlando or (again) Chicago are possibles. Or even Singapore! |
January 4th: New year, new rates for the US |
| With the readjustment of currency rates, we have been taking a beating on subsciptions to the US. Why? Because mailing rates are much higher, and we no longer have the differential on the US dollar to shield us, we needed to increase the US price once again. The result? A 13-issue subscription in the US is now $75, and individual issues are $7.69. Rates in Canada remain the same...except that they are paid with a much stronger Canadian dollar. |
January 3rd: Free Advice updated, leaving for Vegas |
Our (still) famous Free Advice section was updated last night. Of course you can write in for advice as well. Just be sure to include your name and home city. We'll be busy all day preparing last-moment orders of magazines, books, recordings and accessories. Then, early tomorrow, two of us are bound for Las Vegas to cover CES and T.H.E.Show. You can already visit our Vegas preview, and there will be daily reports on line, with text and pictures, as usual.So our offices are closed from the 4th through the 16th. During that time there will be a skeleton staff, but no shipments. However you can order what you need, and we will begin shipping on the 17th. This blog will have occasional updates, but less frequent than usual. |
January 2nd: New copyright law coming? |
 Will this be the year that Canada gets a new copyright law? The record and film industry has been lobbying hard for a new law that will mirror the extremely rigid US law, the DMCA (too hard in fact...a couple of years ago it was revealed that lobbyists were paying for the lunches of the relevant federal minister). The project got shelved once a new Conservative government took office, partly because Conservatives are not big on government intervention, and partly because a minority government can't afford to make consumers angry.Of course Canada did sign an international treaty committing it to toughen up copyright. But then it also signed the Kyoto accord, and that hasn't even embarassed the government, so why would this? In early December Industry Minister Jim Prentice was preparing a draft bill, and then he cancelled the press con. But that doesn't mean the bill won't come back in 2008, and in the meantime the RIAA (the US recording industry watchdog, whose lawyers get sicked on students and grandmothers) has been reinterpreting the US law to seem even more restrictive. This is a quote from Sony/BMG's chief litigator, Jennifer Pariser (reported by the Washington Post and picked up widely elsewhere): when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song. Copying a song you bought is a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy.' Say what? So putting music you paid for onto an iPod is theft? Another industry spokesman referred to the iPod as "a repository for stolen music." By the way, the RIAA logo above is slightly altered, and is from the Web site boingboing.com, which we warmly recommend. And before the RIAA decides to write us about using its logo without permission, we would point out that satire is a recognized part of free speech. Unless, of course, that new law is as tough as some people fear. |
December 27th: Farewell to a giant |
| On a visit to Montreal, the great jazz bassist Ray Brown recalled the very first time he had been in Montreal, in 1948. "After our gig we went to a jazz club to hear some music," he recounted, "and there was a young pianist who I thought sounded terrific. After his set I told him we were going on a world tour, and would he like to join us." "Why not?" said the young pianist. "Great. By the way, my name's Ray." "My name's Oscar, Oscar Peterson.”  The story comes to mind, because Oscar became one of the greatest pianists the jazz world has ever known. When he passed away this week, at the age of 82, the event made headlines around the world. No one had ever played like him before, with such speed, agility, clarity, rhythm. Perhaps no one ever would.Oscar Peterson was a force of nature. His career seemed forever compromised in 1993 when a stroke took away the use of his left hand. He did have to work hard to relearn the use of the hand, and to adapt his playing to his now more powerful right hand. He did. Oscar didn't have it easy in the years before he met Ray Brown. Born in a slum area of Montreal, he was brought up in povery and suffered from tuberculosis. Even once he was recognized as the wizard he was, touring brought him face to face with the endemic and institutional racism that all Black musicians, no matter how talented, had to fight against. His weapons were his mighty hands and his uncanny musical sense, and when he was just 24 he found himself seated at the piano in Carnegie Hall. Oscar Peterson leaves us a huge recorded legacy. He made more than 200 albums during his long career. They're worth searching out. |
December 24th: UHF's holiday schedule |
| As we wish you the best of the season, filled with joy, sugar plum fairies and the like, we need to let you know what we're up to in the next while. Our office is now closed for the two-day Christmas holiday. We reopen Thursday morning (the 27th) to get caught up with the orders that are already coming in.  We're open on the 27th and 28th, and until 1 pm New Year's Eve.Next year we're open on January 2nd and 3rd, and we'll be getting orders out right till closing time. Then, as every year, we move operations to Las Vegas, for wall-to-wall coverage of CES and T.H.E.Show. So we'll be closed from the 4th through the 15th inclusively. During that time, there will be only a skeleton staff (left over from Hallowe'en!), but no shipments. You'll be able to follow what we're up to on our Vegas coverage, as well as (of course) on this blog. Much love and music in what is left of this year. As Pete Seegerused to say, take it easy but take it. |
December 19th: Our Vegas preview is on line |
 Yes, it's about that time again...the biggest show on earth, or at least the biggest in Las Vegas. The Consumer Electronics Show runs from January 7th to 10th, with an extra press day on the 6th, and two of us will be covering it wall to wall. You can already read our preview of the show.Of course, the rebel hi-fi expo, T.H.E.Show, is on at the same time, and we'll be reporting from it as well. Sleep? Haven't you heard? Vegas never sleeps! The picture here, by the way, is the outdoor portion of the Grand Canal at The Venetian, which is the major hi-fi venue for the show. |
December 18th: London cartridge at The Audiophile Store |
 It was in issue No. 81 that we reviewed the London Reference phono cartridge...and as you may know it so astonished us that it became our main reference. We've never heard a cartridge sound like this one...and we've heard some good ones.We were offered it for The Audiophile Store's analog page, and we jumped on it. We can say good things about the London Reference without trying! IN OTHER NEWS: A good proportion of our readers in North America now have issue No. 82 in hand, but dependint on the vagaries of Christmas mail, you mileage may vary. If you haven't yet seen it, you should soon. And of course you can get a look at the free PDF (which is about half complete) over at The Reading Room. |
December 13th: New interconnect at The Audiophile Store |
In the current issue of UHF we feature another of our blind tests of cables. Can we actually distinguish differences among cables in a blind test? Sure thing! We were especially amazed by the Atlas Quadstar. Interestingly enough, we tried Quadstar with two different connectors, and one version was way better. Surprised? We've added that cable to our Audiophile Store's cable page, as an easy-to-build kit. It includes 2 metres of the cable, a package of Bullet Plugs, and a small length of Wako's wonderful silver solder, plus of course illustrated instructions. It starts at $95.95.We have also adjusted prices on Eichmann products (downward!) and we have added a new one: a Bullet Plug with a (shielded) aluminum shell. More Eichmann products will be added in the next day. |
December 12th: UHF 82 published, electronic edition out tonight |
 As promised, and despite snowstorms in the Beauce region (which kept key personnel home watching the flakes fall), Interglobe delivered the new issue of UHF Monday morning. Copies to subscribers were deposited at the central post office last night. Delivery times vary depending on where you are, needless to say, but we would expect some readers to begin receiving the issue by next Monday.For even faster service, you can of course order the electronic edition from MagZee...it should be available as of tonight. Subscribers to the electronic edition will get an e-mailed notification once the copy is on line. But lest we forget, you can already dash over to The Reading Room and download the free PDF version. A surprising number of the articles in that issue are complete. That may be why we score more than 30 thousand downloads a month on these free issue. If we had a dime... UPDATE: The electronic edition is now on line. |
December 6th: Have a peek at our new cover |
| The new issue is due next week, possibly as early as Monday. We are working on the two PDF issues (the paid one via MagZee, and the free but not quite complete edition). In the meantime, have a look at our cover (in 70% size) and the table of contents. They're available at The Reading Room. |
December 4th: UHF 82 all done, coming soon |
| Yes, we did get the magazine done, and it went into production at the end of the week. The cover is shown here, and the preview (with the larger cover and the full table of contents) will be posted by tomorrow morning. We'll let you know the delivery date as soon as we can. Somehow it seems we had more product reviews than usual this time, and if you've followed this blog you'll know that we cut it pretty close, actually finishing up the technical tests the day before press day. That technical test, by the way, was of the BC Acoustique A3, the very one that's on the cover. It's a large three-way speaker that has, among its (several assets) a finish that hides all the screws. Why can't everyone do that? Now excuse us, there are workmen coming shortly to do heavy duty work where our storage and workshop are located. If they can get through the snow…but let's not go there! |
November 26th: Review sessions winding up |
Today is the last day of listening sessions for the next issue of UHF, which is only days away from going into production. On Thursday we spent time with the amplifier shown here, the Sugden A21a. It's hot...in the literal sense, since it runs in pure class A, but in the figurative sense too. We put Bryston's new BCD-1 player through its paces (pretty good as well). And we did another of our blind tests of interconnect cables. Interesting results!!!To wind up, we have a small subwoofer, a couple of phono cartridges, and a thing...well it's difficult to sum up, but it's known as the Thingee. We'll let you know if we find a good use for it. In the meantime, we've added a new Christmas record to our Audiophile Store, A Sheffield Christmas. It's just $10.50, and the lineup includes Margie Gibson, who contributed two songs. We have limited quantities, though. |
November 22nd: More listening sessions today...or not |
We had some interesting gear scheduled for listening today, but the weather is not cooperating. Power breaks (not at Château Hi-Fi, touch wood), icy roads, sleet, hellfire. Well, perhaps not hellfire, no, but we may have to schedule a session for Saturday. In the meantime, we spent some quality time with the BC Acoustique A-3 speakers, shown here. They'll be featured on our next cover, and they deserve the space, because they're quality. That compression tweeter, which you can see in the image, is particularly refined. Nice, but there's much, much more to the story.We also spent time with the Audio Space Reference 3.1 integrated amplifier, a monster it takes two strong people to pick up, with a surprisingly light price tag. Despite its KT-88 tubes it has modest power, because it's designed that way, but we asked it to drive our Suprema reference speakers, and it ran into no problems. We're just a little late with the magazine, which is now scheduled for production (comme hell or high water, and even sleet storms) for the end of next week. We have the new cover tentatively done, and we'll post it as soon as it's final. |
November 19th: Photos done for the next issue |
| Taking all of the products photographs for an issue of UHF requires a long day of work by our in-house photographer, Albert Simon, and this was a particularly long one...some 10 hours under the hot lights. But they're done. Tomorrow the listening sessions continue, with a large integrated tube amplifier from Audio Space, and an impressive pair of speakers from France's BC Acoustique. Last week we spent time shaking down our Sony Blu-Ray player, and doing pointed comparisons with what we still consider to be perhaps the best DVD player ever made. We also spent time with two AC line filters, one from AudioPrism (it's the return of the long famous Power Foundation), and the PowerBIS from (who else?) BIS Audio. The results turned out to be more than a little interesting, as you will soon see. If we get time this week, we may be able to complete the cover of the next issue, and if we do we'll give you first look. |
November 14th: Can a monster show still be green? |
Actually the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas is not the world's biggest trade show, but you could be excused for thinking so as you wander two days looking for an exit. What's the carbon footprint for a show like that? Well, CEA, which organizes the show, says it will be carbon-neutral, apparently meaning it won't add a gram of greenhouse gas to our already overflowing total. True? It doesn't sound as though it can be even close to true. Just the lineup of cars creeping for hours to finally get out of the Venetian parking garage should be enough to knock off a polar bear or two.So what's this about? Well, here's what CEA says it will do. All CES flyers will be printed on recycled paper using soy inks, attendee food containers and utensils will be biodegradable, made from hemp, corn byproduct or other organic material, and environmentally-friendly chemicals will be used in maintaining restrooms, replacing more than 15,000 gallons of non-sustainable products. What's more, the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) has switched to recycled paper products including toilet paper, facial tissue and paper towels, light bulbs and batteries used by the show will be recycled and diverted from landfills (what, no fluorescents?), hazardous waste disposal programs will be in effect for waste oil, paints and solvents, and recycled carpet will be used in some convention spaces. An improvement? For sure. Carbon neutral? Anyone got an abacus? |
November 13th: Test sessions beginning, Free Advice updated |
| Thursday has been set aside for some serious listening, to prepare for the next issue. Oh...and viewing as well, since we've scheduled a shootout between our reference DVD player and a new generation Sony Blu-Ray player. We'll let you know what happens. In the meantime, our famous Free Advice section has been updated. Keep the questions coming! |
November 12th: Another one bites the dust |
| We've talked recently about the disappearance of record stores. For instance, in Las Vegas, home of CES every January, there is not a single real record store left. The main record retailer, therefore, is Wal-Mart, which not coincidentally is the number one record retailer across the US. We noted at the time that things were not quite as grim in Canada. Not yet.  But this weekend word came that the last Canadian-owned chain, Music World, is packing it in. The hard way...by claiming bankruptcy protection. It may have been inevitable, with the shift from physical recordings (at least for popular music) to on-line sales, not to mention file sharing. We predicted this in our pages back in 1992, and the only surprise is that it took so long.The demise of Music World leaves one chain, HMV, which is of course a multinational, and which says it may pick up a few of Music World's 72 locations.Many of the stores are small, however, and unable to stock enough products to compete even with the local Wal-Mart, to say nothing of Amazon. There is, however, an oddity in this bankruptcy. Music World was a family firm, and it was acquired by another company only last week. Who buys a company one week and closes it the next? It's worth mentioning that the new owners will not close Music World's CD and DVD wholesale division, which will continue to sell products to... Well, to whom? To HMV? To Wal-Mart? The stores remain open until January, and they will feature a blowout of products just in time for Christmas. Should do great things for HMV's business! |
November 9th: The coming mess in broadcast TV |
| It's not news to anyone who follows the world of telecommunications: broadcast television is switching from analog to digital, and the full switchover is scheduled for...real soon now. But do a street interview on the subject, and be prepared for blank looks. Then ask this: are you aware that, once the switchover is complete, your ordinary TV set won't work unless you pay for cable or satellite service? Watch for panicky looks. Fact: nearly all television sets in service in North America are designed to get signals from channels 2 through 69. They also (mostly) have line inputs for cable or satellite boxes. But the broadcast TV we know so well is coming to an end, and for a significant number of people that will mean snowy screens.  When? Well, it depends on where you live. In the Netherlands, Finland and the principality of Andorra, it's a done deal, and several European countries have begun switching off analog transmitters regionally. In the United States, the big switchoff is coming soon, February 17, 2010. But here's an interesting twist: in Canada, the switchoff is scheduled for August 31, 2011. This is going to get interesting.Here's why. What the US is planning is to take the bandwidth vacated by TV stations and auction it off. Mobile phones? Ship-to-shore? The CIA? Who knows? But Canadian transmitters just over the border will still be running. Anyone see a problem here? There was a reverse problem with radio. Canada had planned to switch off AM and FM transmitters, to be replaced by the failed digital system, and auction off the space. But the US, just over the border, will continue to use that bandwidth indefinitely. Oops! The CEA (Consumer Electronics Association) ran an informal poll on what will happen with the TV switchoff. Nearly half of respondants put their faith in "consumer education," but nearly a third voted for "it will be a mess, people will be without TV." That was how we voted, by the way, though we were tempted by the final choice: "What transisition, long live rabbit ears." Some 8.4% of visitors picked that one. UPDATE: Well, well. In the US, John Kneuer, the guy who has been in charge of letting Americans know their TV sets will soon show only snow has resigned "to pursue new opportunities." The White House will be naming someone else...possibly before February 17, 2009. |