Anyone else bored by after surfing around trying to find something interesting on the Net?

Me. Too.

Things might appear kind of slow here too, the way we have been having to stage the introduction of new equipment into the systems in order to facilitate a number of shootouts we really, really wanted to hold – so that we can really, really understand what the advantages and disadvantages are of one thing compared to another.

But between shootouts… we are largely just playing music and holding auditions.

So… we will try something new. I wanted to do this for awhile – it is kind of like reviewing the reviewer’s reviews – but wider in scope.

And that is to post news items about what is happening on the Net. Not ‘Musical Fidelity releases version 124.1 of their 206 watt amp’, but rather ‘Fremer reports on failings of Grand Prix Monaco Equipment Racks at Audiogon’ kind of news [I messed this thread myself – but I *heard* all about it.].

And it would help if some of you helped out by posting comments to these News Posts about threads and news about the goin’s on out there.

To start… we will have a little catching up to do.

At CES, Positive Feedback’s Danny Kaey teamed up with Josh to help restart and grow the SonicFlare online magazine. Lately he has been popping out reviews left and right, which, interestingly, are simulcast on Postive Feedback as well.

Audio Circle continues to have an impact, at least on some of our local audiophiles here, larger than their modest membership would indicate. Mostly this means people cycling through Red Wine, Omega, some lower-end PC audio gear, etc. Some ModWright-modded equipment too, but not so much the ModWright-branded equipment. Similarly equipment like Odyssey is left out – seemingly in response to the ever-hopeful search for champagne on a beer budget…. thereby leaving some damn good beer on the shelves while drinking some champagne that might be mislabeled.

SixMoons continues to hang in there – though it is mostly Srajan doing reviews these days. I have no idea why more people aren’t doing reviews for 6moons – and why the number of advertisers keeps fluctuating so much. For those of you who don’t know, Sixmoons has the best online news stream, although to appears to be published only once a month, about the releases of new high-end audio products.

Otherwise, flame wars on Audio Asylum, threads disappearing on Audiogon, Stereophile getting smaller, TAS and HiFi+ slowly losing their edge, the 20,000+ AVSForum is the only high-end forum but still, somehow, largely content free… [except for outing the rumor that there is a new super-Meitner player due to arrive in the 2009 time frame :-)].

… yada yada yada… same ole same ole.

Let’s see, Globe Audio Marketing and Brinkmann North America have announced that they are bring back Avantgarde Acoustic to the North American continent. This line was previously so mismanaged that it kind of killed the line here for several years. It is of my opinion that European manufacturers just do not understand that some American distributors are just out for a ‘quick buck’. The concept seems to escape them.

Well, it looks like Avantgarde is now going with some reputable organizations and, as much as we think there are problems with their speakers, they are starting to look awfully good compared to the … stuff… that has been flooding the market these last few years. This was something I was going to talk about in the show report as well – that there is a natural percolation up towards the Best of Breed for some brands who just hang in there as every Tom, Dick and Harry puts out yet another new under-performing $40K speaker.

Anyone who knows of anything else, anything else at all, please post about it in the comments section.