Dear Steve: This might seem a little weird, but I think my stereo has the summertime blues. On hot and humid days it sounds lifeless, dull, dynamically flat and boring. What can an audiophile to do to resuscitate his simmering stereo?

Steve: The dog days of summer can be cruel to audiophiles. What you describe is a fairly common malady, but there's no surefire cure. As I see it the problem is multi-dimensional. First, the extra humidity seems to have a dulling affect on sound. Your speakers, midrange and woofers can absorb the moisture, so they weigh more in periods of high humidity, it's the same deal with the internal damping material. Electrostatic speakers don't suffer those pitfalls, but they wilt in high humidity. Air conditioning can help of course, but it can play havoc with the quality of your AC, er, electricity feeding your amplifiers. Some of the better powerline conditioners, like PS Audio's Power Plants, can help by eliminating the hash that creeps into your electricity. Power amps (and power conditioners) tend to generate more heat when your home's ambient temperatures are high, so they only make matters worse, and you have to further crank up your AC, air conditioning to compensate. It's a vicious circle. Even headphones can be uncomfortable on hot days; the big pads enclose your ears, which makes them sweat. So I can't really do much more than commiserate about the weather, and recommend late night listening sessions when it's cooler, and the powerlines are a little less stressed. We'll get through this in another month or so, and in the dark winter months we'll face the hassles associated with low humidity. Life ain't fair.


Dear Steve: I'm what you'd call a die-hard audiophile, and I'm ready to make the leap to SACD and DVD-Audio, but I don't want a glorified DVD-Video player. I not even remotely interested in multichannel, does anybody make a high-end, two channel SACD/DVD-A player?

Steve: Up until recently the answer to your question was no, so-called "universal" SACD/DVD-A players were all multichannel/video players. Coming from Boulder, Colorado, Ayre Acoustics has introduced the world's first "U2," stereo, video-free SACD/DVD-A player. Wes Phillips raved about it in Stereophile (July, 2005 issue), and I gave it a thumbs up review in Robb Report's Home Entertainment magazine (July/August 2005 issue). This machine delivers on the promise of high resolution audio in ways the previous generations of universal plays have not. It sounds substantially better, and less "digital" than the others,while presenting gobs of detail. As something of a side benefit, it can also play the audio tracks on DVD-Videos, and it's a treat to play concert DVDs from Led Zeppelin and Elvis Costello over my high-end system. Yes, priced at $5950 it's far from cheap, but it sounds better than any other player than I've had at home. It's my new reference.