Brent Butterworth

The review I just wrote of the Sonos Play:3 streaming music system, and another I recently finished of several small Bluetooth speaker systems (you’ll see the full results soon in the print edition of Sound+Vision) reminded me of just how important listening is in audio produ

Last year, an audio dealer named Gordon Sauck called to get my permission to use a 1997 article of mine on his website. As I chatted with him, I realized there was a huge emerging trend to which I and most of the other guys who write about audio have been largely oblivious.

There are times when prejudice is forgivable. One can hardly be blamed for assuming that store-brand whiskey, truck-stop coffee, or music by a lite-jazz artist who goes by a single-letter surname is going to suck. Likewise, one might reasonably presuppose that a little cube-shaped speaker isn’t going to please serious listeners.

An audio reviewer hears two lines over and over: “That never happened with any of the other samples” and “We created this [fill in the blank] because the products that are out there now are inadequate.” I heard the second line last week in a ramshackle Van Nuys, California industrial space bordered by a security gate and half-filled with piles of decades-old test gear. Unlikely as the setting seemed, its tenant actually delivered on his claims.