March 2013

In This Issue....
News Flash! Magazine Editor Has An Epiphany!
Oh, and i hung out with mom n' dad, got married and some thoughts on audio / music.
Article By Steven R. Rochlin

  So, where to begin? It has literally been a whirlwind of events this past month. All truly amazing mind you, other than breaking my cell phone for the first time in a decade. So let me get that nightmare out of the way first. My friend Mark Fisher of The Absolute Sound fame had a Facebook posting with a cartoon about people in the future being literally leashed to their mobile devices. Now before you ask what this has to do with audio, of course all my cloud music and other things work in concert with my phone. Thus no phone, no portable 4G LTE cloud to pull from. And yeah, so am on holiday in Florida at my parent's home and so lucky me found a local guy who could fix my beloved Samsung Galaxy Note II phablet. Mr. Fix-It said to me “It'll be about two days, need to order the front glass assembly as we don't stock it". Two days without my mobile device. No problem I thought. Easy peasie Louisee.

Uh huh, suuuuure! Ok, it's not like our family beach home on enchanting Longboat Key with spectacular sunsets did not take my mind away from the emptiness inside from having no mobile device. And yes I usually take a backup mobile phone with me, but since I have never broken a phone and was on holiday to get married... Lost one in a cab in Milan, Italy, about ten years ago. Anyway, so me without access to the extensive music library in a portable fashion. Hmmm, this could get ugly. Very ugly! Deep inside was a gnawing building up. Like a splinter in my mind. And of course two days to fix the phone turned into three days. You can imagine this personal nightmarish scenario playing out. Think quitting cigarettes was easier. No, seriously. Ok, maybe not, but a close second!

Mom n' Dad's
Ok, so back to mom and dad's. As you loyal readers know, dad is a Leica, Tannoy, tube audio lover. Hey, he owned a Fairchild turntable so you know he got the audio bug early in life! So of course we all were enjoying music through his 1970 Tannoy 12" Gold monitors. One evening we were sitting outside with the home's doors wide open enjoy basking in another outstanding sunset and dad decides to put on Queen “Bohemian Rhapsody". So close your eyes and imagine a great sunset while singing along with your family to Queen. Don't close your eyes now, then you can't read what else I'm about to say LOL!

Imagine about 1/3^rd way through the song mom is saying turn it up! Well, not like it was on the quiet side to begin with mind you. The music is cranking, we're all singing, the sun is setting… and then the neighbor bangs on the door complaining about loud music. Ok, let us all step back for a second and look at this from another angle shall we? Here are my 70-ish year young parents, bride to be and I all singing to a great song, dad has the stereo cranked, mom wants it louder and dad gets a complaint from the neighbors. How cool is that! For those of you who know where I stash video streaming files, you can watch the sunset video and hear off-camera us singing, and then sudden lowering of the stereo due to neighbor's complaint... It is hilarious and fun all rolled up into one. And to be fair to the neighbor, dad did have the music cranked up. It is remarkable how loud those Tannoy 12-inchers get with a few watts. Do I have a cool set of parents or what?!?!? :)

Not Much Else Happening…
Unless you count getting married in Jamaica and
hearing over 7 live bands... and stuff like that.
Oh yeah, and I had an epiphany too! A few of them actually, but this article is probably already boring you so we can skip that. What, we can't? (Shrug) Well, fine then, and here we go…

One word, jaded. Another way of saying it in a more descriptive way, "Have all the years of hearing great high-end audio served to better my life or would a sudden burst into the scene have been healthier?" What I mean is that many of us longtime high-end audio reviewers get bored. They may not write about it, yet many of us do burn out. Call it a ‘career speed bump' of sorts. Would our lives have been better if we all simply had been thrust into a great sound system and be done with it? Less bitching and moaning; thus living with more music enjoyment.

This epiphany came up when, upon seeing... Let me backup for a second here. You know I travel the world quite a bit. Many times a year in fact. Yet my lovely bride has always lived in the same small town. What shocked me is not just how stunning she is, or how lucky a man I am, yet in how upon her looking up at the night sky she was in awe. You see, she has never seen another set of stars in the sky. The sky has always been the same, so our first night in Jamaica was the first time in her life seeing an incredible set of ‘new' constellations. The Jamaican night sky can only be described as enchanting. This got my thinking how, to me, sure the night sky in Venice has this amazing royal blue tint, and the sky over Bali was pretty darn good too, yet due to all these experiences I have somehow diminished how beautiful the variety of night sky truly is. Are my life's experiences in high-end audio somehow actually working against me? Hope this makes sense, or else I really just wasted about 5 minutes of your time you'll never get back. My bad.

As for the marriage, some pics below. Long story short, we both fall deeply in love and so i humbly make a special plan and rent an entire 1.5-mile stretch of privately owned West coast beachfront on Valentine's Day during sunset (thanks Braco Stables). Then you add in two horses and of course the picturesque bride to be.

Oh, did I mention my Samsung Galaxy Note II phablet is fixed? i love you 4G LTE and my cloud servers filled with a wide variety of music! Everything in life is now all neatly back in place. And on that note, of course in the end what really matters is that you...

Enjoy the Music (And then she asks me "Do I look alright?" i say "Yes, you look wonderful tonight... Oh my darling, you were wonderful tonight."),

Steven R. Rochlin