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Analog Corner
Analog Corner #3
Michael Fremer  |  Sep 12, 1995  |  First Published: Dec 31, 1969  |  4 comments
"Why, there are more trees in the United States today then when the Pilgrims landed!" Rush Limbaugh proclaimed on his radio show a while back, launching an attack on the "environmental wackos" trying to scale back the clear-cutting of the last stands of virgin old-growth forest in the United States.

Limbaugh wasn't lying. There are more trees in the United States today than when the Pilgrims landed— if you count the tall, skinny timber growing crop-like on commercially managed tree farms: all the same species, all in a row.

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Analog Corner
Analog Corner #2 The Analog Experience
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 12, 1995  |  First Published: Dec 31, 1969  |  0 comments
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Analog Corner
Analog Corner #2
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 12, 1995  |  First Published: Dec 31, 1969  |  1 comments
I figure two categories of non–analog-owning audiophiles are reading this column (footnote 1)—younger ones who've never heard good or any pure analog; and older audiophiles who may have been pushed out by the bad advice regularly spewing from the pages of "mainstream" stereo magazines in the days just before CD.

Their prescription for playback perfection? Track lightly on a PLL direct-drive turntable (and since all turntables sound the same, any one will do). I swallowed a large dose of that myself during the early ‘70s, marginalizing my listening enjoyment and ruining many of my favorite records in the process.

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Analog Corner
Analog Corner #1
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 12, 1995  |  First Published: Dec 31, 1969  |  2 comments
It was big. It was ugly. It looked unfinished. It resembled some kind of industrial mistake, which is pretty much what it was: a prototype CD player rolled out by Sony at the 1982 AES Convention in Los Angeles. The inventors didn't care what it looked like, they just wanted you to hear it. Why, I don't know; it sounded awful.

I'd just spent a week's worth of tweak time optimizing my turntable using a Japanese pressing of Roxy Music's Avalon, squeezing every last cymbal rivet of musical detail from my Dynavector Ruby/Lustre GST-1 combo, and they're trying to pass off this flaccid noodle as Avalon? Oh, headless chickens!

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