[The show report is coming along - we are at about halfway through the 3rd day. Check it out and let us know what you think so far, if you get a chance: CES 2008 Show Report ]

We get emails like this all the time.

“Hello,

I searching through search engine and found your website that sell some
products that i need. So I decide to purchase that product from you.
Before i place some order, i have several question below:
1. Your company able sent the goods to outside your country?
2. Shipment by UPS or FedEx?
3. Are you accepting Visa and Mastercard as payment?
4. How can i get some discount for this purchase?

Please let me know your further information for my inquiry soon.

Best Regards,
Joseph”

Translated this means:

“Hello,”

Hi,

“I searching through search engine and found your website that sell some
products that i need. So I decide to purchase that product from you.”

The software I downloaded that searches for small businesses on the web found your site and then sent this badly written email I copied and modified a little in case you already are wary of the amazingly similar original.

“Before i place some order, i have several question below:”

Before I actually spend any time trying to steal from you, I need you to indicate just how stupid you are.

“1. Your company able sent the goods to outside your country?”

Do you send products to places where you can be easily ripped off because of lack of enforcement of certain credit card laws?

“2. Shipment by UPS or FedEx?”

I will mention a few reputable companies to make me look reputable.

“3. Are you accepting Visa and Mastercard as payment?”

Are you extraordinarily ignorant of credit card scams?

“4. How can i get some discount for this purchase?”

A real customer would ask for a discount, so I am asking for a discount so I look like a real customer [this is actually more advanced than 90% of all of these emails]

“Please let me know your further information for my inquiry soon.”

Please respond if you are an easy mark. I want more money now.

“Best Regards,
Joseph”

Please send me your free products,
Automated Ripoffs Incorporated

Christmas season is almost upon us, and as we make out our Christmas lists, there is one question that many people must face.

That question is whether to ask for a popular Lamborghini automobile or the much more exclusive, much more useful loudspeakers from Marten, the Coltrane Supreme.

Of course, many of you might ask, why not both? Good question. But not everybody can afford both and we are trying, in the spirit of the several recent issues of Stereophile and TAS, to address the needs of the readers with more modest incomes.

On the one hand we have last year’s Murcielago…

2006 Lamborghini Murcielago at $288,000 - $319,100

or Gallardo

2006 Lamborghini Gallardo at $175,000 - $195,000

versus the Marten Coltrane Supremes:

Marten Coltrane Supreme Loudspeakers at $250,000

In the interests of choosing the right choice the first time, we offer the following comparisons:

Problems with the Lamborghini:

1) Paying for gas at $3 a gallon [subtract 10]
2) Expensive periodic repair costs [subtract 5]
3) It pollutes [subtract 1]
4) Can’t use it during Winter in many places [subtract 15]
5) Stupid laws prevent driving it faster than prevailing traffic conditions allow [subtract 50]
6) Attracts cute people with dubious morals and motivations [subtract 5. If married, add 10.^H^H subtract 10].
7) Lots of people have them [subtract 20]
8) Conspicuous consumption is often frowned upon outside L.A. [subtract 5 if outside L.A., add 20 if in L.A.]
9) Traffic tickets [subtract 5]
10) You have to get it washed a lot [subtract 10]

Problems with the Coltrane Supreme speakers:

None.

So, the choice is really easy this year. Cool.

Next: The Lamm ML3 versus a Porsche 911 Turbo [hint: the analysis goes much the same way as that for the Lamborghini]

Here is a 6C33C-B vacuum tube, a tube which is found in, say, Lamm ML1.1 and ML2.1 amplifiers.

In trying to accurately identify this tube, one might reasonably try and describe all information printed on it to somebody, say, over the phone.

This particular tube then, is the “6C33C-B ‘phallic symbol’ 81 with an OTX 7 in a diamond” tube.

At least, that is what I overheard people talking and laughing and wondering about as I was, as usual, hard at work in my office.

[OK, Neli wants me to remind everybody that there is something on both sides of the phallic symbol….

On the left is the month and on the right is the year of manufacture.

Me? I’m calling it a ‘rocket ship’].

[or butler, we are a equal opportunity exploiter]

Sung to the tune of ‘If I only had a brain’ from the Wizard of OZ - one of my mostest favorite songs

If we only had a maid,
We’d wile away the hours,
Relaxin’ with our feet up,
As they carried the [4 speaker, 150-250lb] Supremes.

Up and down the stairs,
They’d move the equipment,
And, why not, cable it up too,
While we laid around and snoozed.

And when the FedEx arrives,
and heavy packages do appear,
We can sigh and pop in a CD,
As they 45 steps do the lugging,
And we open another beer.

If we only had a maid,
cabling would be such a cinch,
this way, that way, and back again,
and changing the equipment,
would be no a sweating,
If we only had a maid.

A dusting and a vacuuming,
Around the delicate equipment,
would be no problem for our maid,
So no sneezing and no fingerprints,
will distract us from our music,
If we only had a maid.

And the CDs and LPs,
would all be so clean,
So organized and alphabetical,
If we only had a maid.

And when a lightning comes a striking,
They assure equipment is unplugged,
And when the storm leaves just five minutes later,
The equipment they would quickly power back up,
If we only had a maid.

————————-

Needs work…

And we do have a maid. For the husband they are often called a ‘wife’. And for the wife’ they are a ‘husband’. ?

We’ve been having this … discussion [funny how more and more discussions include phrases like ‘nuts’ (this is a family blog), ‘I married you why?’, and ‘OK, ask people on the Blog what THEY think’] about whether CDS *SHOULD* be priced at the same price as DVDs, [and with pre-viewed DVDs being so plentiful, more like two to four times the price I pay].

*I* say [and I write the blog so I get the first word in ] that DVDs are twice as long, have extras, and have video as well as sound. This should make DVDs four times MORE expensive than CDS, and that it is only our beloved recording industry whose monopoly has driven the price of CDs up to ridiculous levels.

*They* say [and Neli is among these sorely misguided people, poor girl] that we listen to CDs over and over again, whereas we only watch movies once or twice. So CDs are worth more because they provide more entertainment in the end. [funny, using this metric, ‘Kind of Blue’ and ‘Star Wars’ should go for $Millions. They are WORTH millions, but that value is spread out amongst the millions of copies people ‘own’ of them].

Anyway, on this blog I may lose this argument But I think in the marketplace, people feel that $19 for a new CD is too much and are voting with their wallets by Not Buying Them. Almost all of us now have bought and made a data CD for ten cents - the rip-off factor is kind of in-our-face.

That said, I heard clips from the newest Steven Stills CD yesterday with cuts from the original CSN tapes. I think I will get ripped off at least one more time

Being an active audiohpile can be both great exercise, and at the same time requires one to be very fit.

We are talking specifically about ‘active’ audiophiles who mix things up a lot. You know, audiophiles who are on a first name basis with the FedEx guys and gals.

In order to compete against other audiophiles for the title bout in the Audiophile Strongman Competition, the following are recommended exercises:

1. Carry a 120 lb amp up and down 45 steps.[builds strong legs and biceps].

2. Now carry the 120lb amp up and down the 45 steps while it is in its crate. [builds character]

Extra bonus points: Do it while it is snowing and icy.

Extra extra points: Do it while it is very hot and humid while it is snowing and icy

3. Lean over and plug in a power cord into a hospital-grade outlet. At an ackward angle such that one cannot use your body weight to help get it in. Now un-plug it, again without using the body’s weight, and plug it back in. Do it 10 times. Do not electrocute yourself. [builds finger strength and popeye forearms].

4. Practice routing a very stiff and large power cord under a rack and up and over into a power strip. Now do it for a transport, DAC, preamp, and 2 monoblock amplifiers. [develops analytical skills and legendary patience, along with an abilty to ignore situations of disturbingly low aesthetics].

Extra points if the lightweight power strip is made to remain in its correct horizontal orientation.

5. Bend the legs and lean precariously on tip toe over $50K+ worth of delicate and very hot equipment, putting one arm around the front of a equipment rack to stablilze a component while using the other arm around the back to plug in a cable. [develops the core muscles and a nerves of steel].

Extra points if the cable has a WBT NextGen connector which requires two hands - or in this case, one hand using precisely controlled fingers that hold, stabilize, push and twist the connector, over and over again, until it is in place.

Subtract points if the component ends up cock-eyed because of imperfect stabilization technique.

Subtract more points if the WBT did not go on all the way precipitating an embarrassingly loud ground loop. Take two Advil.

6. As quickly as you can [grasshopper], Take a CD out of a top loader CD player / transport in a single movement [builds precise motor control of the finger tips] and put it into a front loader so that it sits perfectly center in the tray [develops a precise feeling for the weight and aerodynamic capabilities of a silver disc].

7. Queue up an LP while straddling a half-dozen power cords, two SET tube monoblocks, a preamplifer’s power supply and without leaving any finger prints on the equipment rack.[Develops a care-free yet zen-like appreciation of the workings of the world].

Extra points if all of the beginning of the first track on the record is prefectly audible and at the correct volume.

Subtract points if the cartridge falls off the outside of the record.

8. Route 100 cables, power cords and interconnects, of various sizes, of various robustnesses, of ridiculously high but damn well worth it cost, in and around components without scratching either the components or the equipment rack. The wiiiiide equipment rack. Witn one side of the rack blocked off by a piece of furniture that appears to allow enough room to get behind the rack but in fact does not. With minimal room lighting. While playing Led Zepelin REALLY really loud. [Develops an ability to curse with the best of them].

Subtract points if a red cable goes into a black connector.

Subtract more points if an input is connected to another input, or an output to an output, and for any cables only attached at one end.

Extra points if the lengths are such that only some cables will only reach to some components, requiring a super-computer-like capacity planning algorithm to be running in one’s head to figure out what goes where.

Extra extra points if the final arrangement of all these cables was actually the optimal one for this system.

——

Those are just a few of the exercises that many audiophiles do, every day, as they prepare for the Audiophile Strongman Competitions. I.E. modifying a typcial system on a typical day.

Yes. That’s right. Your socks.

This Winter seems to be worse, for some reason known only to the Sock High Command.

Maybe they have been pushed too far, in and out of shoes with which they are at odds, each accusing the other of theatening to break the latest Stink Armistance.

I don’t know.

But I can report that they are on another serial killing spree that may extend into our listening rooms, so be on the lookout!

They come in all sizes and colors and smell quotients.

Do not be fooled by softness and humorous anecdotes on their exteriors!

When they strike it can be both painfull and costly.

If you are unable to get away and are cornered by a pair of what seem to be tube-like material made out of cotton or wool, Be Extremely Cautious. Do not interpret their soft and gentle demeaner as being friendly. They are not!

Carefully, every several steps, touch something metal that is NOT connected to anything electrical. This renders their weapons of mass destruction impotent, but only temporarily.

While we have contacted the Defense Department and Homeland Security, as well as both the NRA and anti-NRA people, it is unlikely they will be able to stop their infiltration before they get to YOUR listeningroom.

This is the only warning you will receive. Our feet are freezing and the computer is the only thing left that hasn’t been taken ou

1. We will see people cryo’ing entire amplifiers, cd players, and pre-amplifiers.

2. TAS will finally match Stereophile in number of subscribers and number of copies printed.

3. Somebody will make a blu-ray high-end audio cd player which will not sell well.

4. Somebody will make a blu-ray high-end video player that sounds almost as good as the best high-end audio SACD players which will open the market for true high-end Audio+Video systems and the dredging up of all sorts of video to go with the large, currently video-less, music catalogs from the last 100 years. This will stave off the recording industries demise until broadband is capable of downloading the equivalent of a 70GB blu-ray disc in finite time.

5. The official CES High-end ‘High Performance’ Audio Show and the Stereophile Home Entertainment Show continue to dwindle.

Wishes for the New Year

1. We see larger and larger diamond drivers culminating in six-foot tall diamond drivers for a high-resolution single-driver speaker.

2. The current bear market for high-end audio turns into a bull market (i.e. it becomes popular) and drives down costs by a factor of two every six to eigthteen months (like the digital video market today) and today’s $150K speaker costs $5K in 5 years.

3. The recording industry goes bankrupt (fiscally this time) and the resulting Laissez Faire environment which allows actual talent to rise to the top results in a new revolution in music similar to that which occured in the 60s.

4. Someone will make a component that has built-in vibration mitigation from, say, HRS, a custom designed power cord and internal wiring that was tuned for the component from, say, Nordost, the best capacitors and resistors and silver transformers from, say, Audio Note, and…etc…. so that there is no need for aftermarket tweaks or modders to do any work on the piece. Oh! And it comes broken in already. REALLY broken in. So it sounds good as soon as you take it home.

5. Mike will learn how to spell, or at least get a spell-checker for the blog.

Humor for the New Year

1. Every single home audio company will now offer a $2oK turntable…. no matter if they are a cable company, an equipment rack company, a speaker company or an amplifier company.

Including Bose.

……………………… And Rockport.

All of which will receive rave reviews.

2. The Stereophile Show collapses and gets split up into 50 shows per year, one per state capital, and once per week. This ends up putting many overly exuberant show attendees out of work and overly exuberant exhibitors into bancruptcy court, and the court creates a new ‘Chapter 50′ for these poor souls.

I peaked at some of the other forums today…

I know, I know, I should know better.

Somebody pokes their head up to ask people to recommend tube amplifiers… I just imagine this person, afterwards, head fogging up, eyes going in circles…

I always wonder, should I post something? Like…

Buying an amp like this is like buying wine by what is the cheapest with the highest alcohol content.

OK, admit it, most of us HAVE bought wine this way (Mad Dog 2020 anyone?) , but we were young and stupid, or rather, young and desperate

But this is no way to buy an amp.

This approach gets people to the ASL Hurricane at $5K for 200 watts. It diesn’t help that HP says wacko things like “once in a decade an amplifier comes around that redefines state-of-the-art - this is such an amp”. He just forgot to mention ‘in the $5K price category’. Kind of missleading otherwise… Perhaps not a bad amp for $5K.

——

Then there is the ‘get the wine with the most alcohol, no matter the price’ folks.

OK, this what we looked for after we got our first job, … we wanted that EXPENSIVE rot-gut, right? Hmmmmm… hope I am not the only one who went through all these fazes of alcohol abuse …. And I can’t remember if Everclear goes into this category or the one previous…

This gets us the massive VTL, ARC, and BAT amps.

——

Next, a significant other may have stepped into the picture. Now we wanted something that was impressive, it no longer was REQUIRED to have the kick of a mule, and it needed a nice label and some nice flavor.

We may have tried orange schnaps, for example. Quickly to be replaced by Amaretto and Kahluha.Or great Port.

This might correspond to say, Cary, Joule Electra or Jadis amps.

Our significant others have to like THIS, right?

And they do, for the most part.

But it may grow old, after awhile, like eating ice cream for supper every night. [Of course, some of us LIKE eating ice cream every night… or pie ]

——

Next, we start looking at the GOOD stuff. Stuff that has enough character, but not too much character, to both entertain and astonish, but with subtlety, and in measured doses, containing enough mystery to not bore us right away yet enough truth to norish us.

The stuff that is considered good now, and will be considered good in 10 years, and, hopefully, in 50 years.

I wonder how many used-to-be audiophiles no longer count themselves among us, OD’ing on the bad stuff before they can find the good stuff?

I hope at least some of them get to the pie.

Do your friends and neighbors shy away from you when they see your system?

Do you loose track of CDs, and, dare we say it, LPs, only to find them months later hidden underneath the pile of power cords, speaker cable, and interconnects that your system needs to work?

Does your system sound wonderful, better than Carnegie Hall, but give you headaches when you look at it for more than 5 minutes?

Then YOU may be a victom of *Unsightly* *Cable* *Mess*!

Do you look at photographs of all those awesome systems in the glossy magazines wondering why YOUR system doesn’t look like theirs?

Have you tried dealing with your stereo system’s mess by bending and shoving, using your foot to push the cables into place, holding them there for minutes, and longer, hoping they will just stay in place darnit?

Then you may be ready for Cable Chameleon(tm).

An example of the cable undergrowth threatening to encroach on the listening area and do bodily harm to friendly and not-so-friendly listeners alike.

Cable Chameleon

Cable Chameleon takes care of this problem for you for a fee of $200 / cable.

How this works:

Here we see an exaggerated example of just what can go wrong when a system has a bad cable day.

These cables were then sent to the Cable Chameleon Laboratories, a division of the U.S. Defense Dept., along with a full color photograph.

The Labs then use recent patented technological discoveries to apply special pigmented substances to the cables.

The cables are then allowed to dry in a hermetically sealed storage room, and then returned to the distressed customer.

Here is what the results are {small print: these results do not necessarily represent what your system will look like after purchasing Cable Chameleon. All cables must be restored to their original position. Improvments in appearance are guaranteed from only one perspective}

This system looks clean and presentable. Any audiophile would be proud to show this to their significant other’s parents. No longer will you have to throw a towel over your system when the in-laws visit.

System Chameleon

If you think this will not work for you, a subsiderary of Cable Chameleon, called System Chameleon, will take your photograph, photoshop out the cables [a lot better than I did] and then print a poster that contains a life-sized image of your system, without any unsightly cable mess. The poster is then installed between you and the system so that your system looks wonderfully cable-free. NOTE: posters are 85% transparent to all frequencies and can be put in front of the speakers with only a slight performance degradation.

For an additional fee, you can ‘rent’ other people’s system posters…

Would you like to look at a $100K system? a $500K system? while you listen to your somewhat more reasonably priced system? Now you can!

As long as you keep your friends far away from your system - and which of us let our friends get close to our amps while they are drinking a brew? - they will never know that what they are hearing isn’t what they are seeing (especially if they still think Bose is the best speaker ever, or read a lot of posts on high-end audio forums )

Speaker Chameleon

Now you too can own a Wilson Alexandria X2, a Marten Design Coltrane Supreme, and Audio Note Sogon… and for the low, microscopic price of $599.99.

For this measily pittance you get two life-size cutouts of the speakers of your choice. Yes, your cable mess remains, but it will be a higher quality of mess and a headache with improved micro-dynamics, imaging, and slam. Just slide one of these 3D likenesses of any one of several of the most sought after speakers over the top of your speaker and BAMM you’ve just performed a massive visual system upgrade.

And, because so much of our brains works off the visual cortex, this upgrade will also improve the sound of what you hear - unbelieveable but true!

[Speaking of which, Cable Chameleon and System Chameleon corporations are headquarted on Triskelian and can only be reached by yours and my imaginations].