SIGNALS

I'm on record (ha!) stating my opinion that the vinyl resurgence is socially and morally significant. Interest in vinyl is up, vinyl sales are up. Are downloads and streaming in trouble? Well, of course not. Still....

When's the last time that Circuit City crossed your mind? It's probably been so long that you can't even remember the last time you thought about it. And yet, the name Circuit City is instantly familiar to you. That's called name recognition. And clearly, rather than starting from scratch to build name recognition, you'd prefer to start with something well known. That is why Circuit City is being resurrected.

What do Hunter S. Thomson, Philip K. Dick, and L. Ron Hubbard all have in common? For starters, they all use an initial in their names, and anyone who does that is obviously trying hard to appear to be intellectual. More important, I think they would all have enjoyed attending this year's CES.

ARCHT Audio (pronounced “ark” as in “architecture”) arrived on the audio scene last year with its ARCHT One wireless speaker, following its Kickstarter campaign in 2014 that raised $242,000 from over 500 backers. Following on that success, ARCHT is debuting the Mini speaker.

The XDP-100R is already available in some overseas markets (most notably in Japan, where enthusiasm for hi-res audio is very healthy) but now the player is available for us nephews and nieces of Uncle Sam.

Audiophile or sport? MEE Audio has two new headphone offerings that lets you choose one or the other (but not both).

Sennheiser advises that the new and improved version of its HD 800 is “one step closer to perfection.” It’s dangerous for marketing people to throw around the “p-word” but in the case of the HD 800, the claim isn’t entirely specious. The HD 800 is very highly regarded and the new HD 800 S is said to be even better.