Fred Manteghian

Murphy's got this law, see? When you only have one working prototype of your new product, but you go ahead and set yourself to be the first press event for a room full of just fed journalists who are eager to hear or see something exciting, well then, you can rest assured knowing your prototype will crap out. That's what happened at 10 AM when the ZVOX 450 ZBIT the ZDUST just before the press arrived. Someone said it was a Bill Gates moment.

I remember my first audio / video trade show. Chicago, June 1995, the last official summer CES. I arrived at O'Hare mid-afternoon and made my way to the Palmer House, a grand old hotel where the show would take place. The lobby was huge, enormous and, as I would come to find, the place where journalists, manufacturers and their PR firms would come together each evening to conspire over cigars and cognac, with the manufacturers or their agents, naturally, picking up the tab.

"Okay boys, I want a clean fight. No bitin', no spittin', and definitely no hittin' below the belt. Now shake hands, go back to yer corners and come out when you hear the bell. Ya understands?"

I've always had a thing for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's recordings. Their long standing relationship with Telarc is probably why. I've had a long standing relationship with Telarc too. Well before I was a reviewer, I was just a rabid stereophile (the avocation, not the magazine) and I read every issue of Stereophile (the magazine, not the avocation), cover to cover. Telarc and Delos recordings were always spinning on their reviewers' CD players. I bought a few, like <a href= "http://www.amazon.com/Respighi-Pines-Rome-Birds-Fountains/dp/B000003CT0/... target="new">Respighi's Pines of Rome </a>, Louis Lane conducting the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and <a href=" http://www.amazon.com/Copland-Appalachian-Spring-Fanfare-Common/dp/B0000... target="new">Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring, Rodeo and Fanfare for the Common Man</a>, with Lane at the helm of the ASO once again. The recordings were excellent, No excellent is too tame a word. They were – they still are – exquisite. Expansive as the universe, as civilized as infinity, and punctuated with their trademark Tympani kicks that separated the boys from the men when it came to seeing whose audiophile tweaked system was better than whose.