Gramophone Dreams #84: dCS Lina D/A processor and Lina Master Clock stereophile.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from stereophile.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Decades ago, when I was peddling million-dollar sound systems, an astute potential customer asked me: "If I buy your very expensive system, what will I get that I'm not getting with my less expensive system?" Smiling my best fatherly smile, I whispered to his ear, "Goosebumps, tears, and laughter." With a slightly worried look, he asked, "How much did you say those silver cables cost?" Thirty years later
I view poetry as more than a literary genre. It's a worldview and a state of being that frames my daily experience in the supernal. I've consumed a lifetime keeping my senses peeled for authentic, manmade mysteries, especially in art and music. Music is my favorite hunting ground, and nowhere have I found mysteries as DNA-deep as the 59 takes of 29 songs recorded in only five days by Delta blues legend Robert Johnson (19111938).
"Roberta Flack has Lou Gehrig's disease and can no longer sing," Béla, my visiting friend, yelled from the guest bedroom. The news rekindled in me the same mixture of sadness and foreboding I get every time I read about the decline or death of an iconic musician who rose to fame during my aeonian youth.