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Vikingur Olafsson

How Did He Make It As A Professional Classical Pianist? Vikingur Olafsson is a professional classical pianist. He’s 37 and at the top of his game. It took him a while to get there. It’s an interesting path. If you’re a great pro athlete, stats usually make it clear that you’re a stand out. At 18 Bryce Harper hit 22 homeruns and…

478 Listings With Some Mistakes

You know I love to chide the rags. Stereophile’s Oct 2021 issue lists 478 recommended products. Yowza! Most of these are indeed fine products. Here’s a word of warning though. Please be sure you read this while lying down in bed. If not, you’ll likely fall over and sustain a concussion as you read some of the ridiculous pricing and foolish rankings/omissions….

How Much Sub Do I Need?

Only I can answer this question. Because the question is “How much sub do I need?” I’m a music lover. I listen to music in 2.1, stereo with a subwoofer. I don’t want the sub to intrude into the rest of the music and muddy it up. My system is in the second floor loft of my house, which is a wooden…

Bi-Amping

What about bi-amping? When does it make sense to run two amps instead of one? Let’s massage the topic! The theory behind bi-amping is, it is better to run one amp for the mid & tweeter array and another for the woofers- as opposed to having one amp drive the whole tower and have to fight its way through a bigger crossover…

Sub $2k Stand Mount Speakers

Bryston Mini A ($1665 per pair) vs Kef LS50 Meta ($1500 per pair) I hear you have roughly $2k to spend on some stand mount speakers. Of course they will sound better on stands than they will on a bookshelf. You want to hear the music the speaker is intended to deliver, not the extra ringing and rumble of your etergere. Let’s…

Are You An Audiophile?

What exactly is an audiophile? When we read about this topic, the term is typically skewed negative. The implication is that audio hobbyists who spend foolishly- are audiophiles. Nope. That isn’t an accurate definition. Target missed. An audiophile is someone who loves music, first and foremost. When he listens to his system, he pays 100% of his attention to how it sounds….

Hi-Fi In NYC

Lyric Hi-Fi in NYC has closed. Perhaps you read the article written on p.122 of the May 2021 Stereophile? The writer was a former employee. He comments on the store selling MIT speaker cable for $12k in 1998. A month later they brought in NBS which sold for $22k. The writer says he learned to sell hi-fi by saying, “this is good,…