Ramblings.

Welcome to Issue 97, which features an in-depth review of a fascinating new piece of equipment from the old master himself, James Bongiorno. Just when you were debating whether to go from two channels to 5.1, 7.1, or beyond, our technical guru David Rich looks at Bongiorno's new baby and lays out the case for the original stereophonic setup--yep, three channels, just like Harvey Fletcher first set it up in his pioneering efforts. In his later years, Dr. Fletcher married my wife's grandmother, and when we lived in Utah in the mid-70s, we spent many a Sunday afternoon visiting with Uncle Harvey, who was still fascinated by acoustics and showed us many pictures of his early work at Bell Labs, including his work with Leopold Stokowski in trying to capture the sound of the magnificent Philadelphia Orchestra to replay it through loudspeakers--three of them. Everything old is new again ...

In that same vein, in both this and our next issue, we will feature reviews of equipment with ties to the LP era, as Kevin East, our resident carouselier, gives us his spin on phono preamps, cartridges, and the like--plus some thoughts on using some of the newest digital technology to try and preserve those fading records of the past (bringing to mind the recent application of the latest digital technologies to both preserve and illuminate ancient texts such as the Dead Sea scrolls). And to complete the theme of the old becoming new again, we present an addendum to one of Howard Ferstler's ...