“High end audio gets away with murder. By the standards of the non-audiophile, most of the stuff we buy, and what we pay for it, can be explained only by a form of selective dementia affecting us in all areas having to do with reproduced sound. How many other industries cater to a demographic as fanatical, as restlessly compulsive, and as willing to suspend its collective disbelief? The answer may lie in another question: How many businesses are charged with selling something as slippery and unquantifiable as the aesthetics of sound?”
“Power conditioners are one of those products which teeter on the edge of mainstream audio acceptability these days. While they probably have a better reputation than carbon fiber shelves or ebony pucks many audiophiles would lump them in the same shady category, labeling them as the foolish toys of misguided, obsessive compulsive and moderately paranoid audio freaks….”
“Andrew Marshall’s original Imager design was quite straightforward: a circular neoprene ring that surrounded the tweeter and absorbed energy that would otherwise have been radiated along the speaker baffle and re-radiated milliseconds later at the listener when it reached the edge. The design was sound, and 5000 pairs were sold with not one consumer complaint or return, and a plethora of praise for the improvements wrought with normal direct radiating box speaker designs…”
“I reviewed and ultimately acquired the Grado SR125 headphone almost two years ago (Smr 95), and have since used it in concert and session recordings for monitoring. The thing I’ve always liked about this phone is that it sounds more like speakers than any other I’ve heard in its timbral balance; other headphones tend to be rather bright and spitty by comparison…”
I first discovered these acoustic absorbers at the Montreal Festival du Son more than a year ago, as demonstrated by genial Yves Boudreau, about whom I have a brief anecdote: at this year’s show I ran into Yves for the third show in a row, his display in the main ballroom just over the way from ours for AIG Imagers, recordings, etc. He greeted me warmly, saying, “Ah, Mr. Marshall, how are you?” My reply was, “Fine, but please call me Andrew…”
