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March 27: No Montreal show, but...For a long time it looked as though the Montreal Audio Fest

might be the last show standing. Munich cancelled. AXPONAdelayed, and that seemed a little optimistic. But Quebec ordered atemporary end to all gatherings, and that would include pretty muchany public event.

We were caught a little flat-footed, for our part. We are pullingtogether issue 101 of UHF. It’s coming along well, but we were leftwith one more review to do, and as you know we have always doneour reviewing in a group of three, sometimes four. We’re nowwaiting until it’s safe.

In the meantime, though, our existing issues remain available,and our Audiophile Store is still running.

March 2: Audio and the virusThe news is dominated by the COVID-19 virus.

Also known as the coronavirus. Can you believethat sales of the Corona Mexican beer havedropped sharply because undereducated beerdrinkers think you can get the virus from the beer?

Well, you shouldn’t believe it, because Snopes,our favorite fake news debunker, says it’s not true.It is true, however, that a lot of the panic aroundthe coronavirus has no basic in fact, as panicseldom does. Nonetheless, the epidemic is real,and it’s dangerous. It’s hitting the tourist industryhard, and it is also hitting audio shows. TheMunich high-end show has been cancelled, and it’seasy to see why. Exhibitors want to see lots ofvisitors, and the viral panic is bound to keep some visitors away.

AXPONA, scheduled for mid-April near Chicago, says it is notcancelling has been put off, tentatively until August, but that’ssubject to change. And the Montreal Audio Fest, scheduled for March27th to 29th, today put out a press release, reassuring visitors thatMontreal is safe, and the show will go on. But public events are nowcancelled, and that include the show. Sarah and Michel, theorganizers, are in talks with the Hotel Bonaventure to negotiate alater date. Hotels are hurting right now, and they can scarcely affordnot to listen.We’ll be there. We wish we could be.

February 10: UHF No. 101 coming.

Sorry about the long delay. Our editor, Gerard, was recoveringfrom major surgery, an operation scheduled since last summer.Recovery time has been longer than hoped, but it was complete. Soonward.

We had hoped to launch issue No. 101 before the hospital called,and we had in fact done all but one of the review sessions. Thespeaker on the cover of the issue is from Tri-Art. Like the company’sother products, it is made from bamboo, a favorite with pandas theworld over. It is, as you can see, an open-back speaker.

We still need to do one more session, this one involving aturntable.

The issue will be full of basic courses on setting up andmaintaining...well, an ultra-high fidelity music system. We’recovering speakers, amplifiers, sources, etc.

October 17: Off to the Toronto AudiofestAs you probably know, the Toronto show is now run by the same

people behind the hugely successful Montreal show, Sarah Tremblayand Michel Plante.

It opens Friday, and we’ll be touring Saturday and Sunday. It’snear the airport once again, at the Westin. That’s too bad, butdowntown hotels in Toronto are hideously expensive.

September 18: HD streaming, not from Apple

We’ve been waiting for Apple to offer access to its impressivelylarge music collection in high definition. Its AAC coding, used forboth the iTunes store and the Apple Music streaming service isadequate for music research purposes (which is what we use it for),and it’s also good enough for some material whose original soundquality was none too good. But we longed for something better, suchas the Compact Disc’s 16/44.1 resolution, or even (dared we hope?)real HD.Well, it’s here, in some countries at least, but it’s not fromApple.

Amazon Music HD is now available in the US, Germany and Japan.For $13 to $15 a month (in US dollars) you can get 50 million “songs”in HD, meaning CD-quality. And, if you have the bandwidth, youcan get lots more music in “Ultra-HD,” meaning 24/192.But how much music? When we compared streaming services in

UHF No. 98, we found that Apple had a lot more real music thanSpotify. How good is Amazon? The free trial may answer thatquestion.

August 30: Neil Young wants to savemusic

singer-songwriter Neil Young has neverhidden his feelings about digital. Even the CD,which many people today think of as “fullresolution,” was considered by Young anabomination, essentially making musiccreation pointless.

An exaggeration? No doubt, but we were happy someone likehim was still fighting the good fight.

And he’s still at it. The New York Times in August published aninterview with him by David Samuels, titled Neil Young’s LonelyQuest to Save Music. He didn’t hold back.

He hates Spotify. He hates Facebook. He hates Apple. He hates Steve Jobs.He hates what digital technology is doing to music. “I’m only one personstanding there going, ‘Hey, this is [expletive] up!’ ” he shouted, rantingaway on the porch of his longtime manager Elliot Roberts’s houseoverlooking Malibu Canyon. “When you hear real music, you get lost in it,”he added, “because it sounds like God.” Spotify doesn’t sound like God. Noone thinks that. It sounds like a rotating electric fan that someone bought ata hardware store.

Well, it could still happen if Apple senses a market. As for Tidal, itsfiles are encoded in MQA. Unless you have a hardware decoder,you’re still hearing compressed music.

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