Industry Gossip and Eating Your Own Dog Food
Article by Steven R. Rochlin
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  Sometimes i sit here hoping the phone doesn't ring with yet another piece of gossip. Such and so reviewer did this to you-know-who all-around-good-guy manufacture or this high profile high-end store owner got busted cheating on his wife and will lose the business due to a divorce settlement. Of course there is humor to all this as sometimes you see the Guy Y who lost his business due to divorce now works for Company X while the guy who he replaced at Company X now runs Guy Y's business with Guy Y's ex-wife. Kinda like "wife swapping"... so to speak. To me the really bad news is when a great company suffers a real set back.

Just a few days ago there was a call here from a well respected company out of California. Seems their entire inventory was stolen by professional thieves over Memorial Day weekend! Fortunately they had insurance so this is really nothing more than a momentary set back to regroup and make more gear while pending customer orders will be delayed a bit. Of course many of us have heard of flood damage, earthquakes and the occasional tornado too. If you are in the industry and have gossip, here's a "virtual quarter" to call someone else... please!

Spring Cleaning Redux!

The phrase "eating your own dog food" came about as computer software companies would use their own Beta releases to find the bugs and dreaded Blue Screen Of Death issues (shhh, i hear all you MAC and Linux/Unix guys proclaiming a sense of superiority). What is meant here is that i, too, have been eating my own dog food by having a full Spring Fling Cleaning here. Is a reviewer's job even done? Of course not! After carefully selecting the right Caig and other cleaning products off i went. First up was completely shutting off the power to my gear. This is actually quite easy as dedicated power means that a simple visit to the fuse box in the basement was all that is needed. Once all power is off it was time to unplug all power cords, all signal cables plus loudspeaker wires.

Once all is laid bare in the middle of the listening room floor, i began to wonder... Where did all this stuff come from? It is amazing the plethora of cords n' cables n' stuff that slowly find their way into my humble abode. Years of big tweaks here and smaller tweaks there... Balls, rollers, pods, fluids... You get the idea.

One thing that should not be ignored is in insuring the tightness of your components various mounting screws. This is especially paramount with loudspeakers as the vibrations from the driver seems to slowly, but surely loosen the screws that secure the driver to the enclosure. Be sure to check the bottom of the loudspeaker for screws too! Did i mention that this is also a good time to dust everything off? Ok, enough already! You get the idea about Spring Cleaning.

More Shiny New Faces...

If it seems that every month we are announcing more writers, it is because we are. Nope, no one has left as seen in other magazines. We here at Enjoy the Music.com™ are ever expanding and would like to welcome Bill Roberts, Chris Boylan and also Rufus Smith.

Longstanding recording and mastering studio guru Bill Roberts has been around the block more times than Madonna. Bill has been a music nut since before some of you were a twinkle in your dad's eye. We are very proud to have a true recording engineer within our resident staff.

Please also give a warm welcome to professional drummer/percussionist Chris Boylan. Chris heralds to us just after a long stint with a groovy rock band who has toured parts of the United States and he has a few CDs within his portfolio. Add to that the accomplishment of being so talented as to be not just recognized, but also sponsored by none other than industry leader Pro*Mark drum sticks! Being a drummer/percussionist myself, i have a few pair of the Chris "The Animal" Boylan signature drum sticks here. Drummers unite! So welcome aboard Chris and please be sure to check out his Secret Agent Man Emap (Stereophile) Home Entertainment Show Report by clicking here. Expect more great stuff from Chris in the upcoming months.

Next on the Who's New roster is Rufus Smith who has penned reviews for a few audiophile magazines and whose wonderful writings can also be seen within the pages of Ultimate Audio magazine. Rufus, like myself, has a deep love for things music, automobiles and exotic mechanical timepieces. Please see Rufus' Emap (Stereophile) Home Entertainment Show Report by clicking here. Like Chris, you can also look forward to more great articles by Rufus.

To top it all off, we also have an article by guest writer Guido Henkel, who pens articles for MediaLine and has his own little place on the Internet called DVD Review. Guido's article titled "DVD Audio: Where Do We Go From Here?" gives a quite well-balanced view on the state of the high-definition DVD music format. If you feel the DVD-Audio versus SACD debates have come to a boil, just wait until the real decision to surround sound or not comes to a boil. The plot thickens yet again!

And before i forget... Forza Ferrari! Of course in the end what really matters is that you...

Enjoy the music (don't ask me why, but Brenda Lee Merry Christmas album is playing on the turntable right now. Highly enjoyable!),

Steven R. Rochlin