Who's the next 007?

Walking through any big art museum, even at a brisk pace, it's impossible not to notice how boldly each object wears the unique stamp of its time and place of manufacture.

- BY HERB REICHERT

It doesn't matter whether the artist worked in Paris or Polynesia, in the 15th or 20th century. The force of the creator's persona, united with the constraints of the cultural system that supported the making of that type of art, determines the vibe the object emits. That vibe is what I'm hoping to grasp.

Whether I'm examining a Zulu beer pot or a John Cage drawing (both of which I've lived with), my first step toward entering the mind of an artwork's creator(s) is to penetrate the cultural force field that surrounds the object. That invisible shield prevents the uninitiated from grasping the object's more esoteric intents.

If my knowledge and imagination are too limited to grasp the object's original purpose, the object will remain foreign and other—a mysterious curio from another place and time made and used by people I shall never mingle with.

In my tribal hut, playing old recordings with exotic new and vintage audio gear is exactly this type of anthropology, though applied to audio recordings not objet d'art. It's a branch of the audio hobby that doesn't mingle much with the mainstream. The technical, sonic, and aesthetic differences between a Jules Futterman OTL amplifier, a chrome-bumper Naim NAIT, Hiroyasu Kondo's Ongaku, and a Bruno Putzeys amplifier module are such that these tribes tend to ignore each other.

Similarly, audiophiles who came of age with wood boxes on the living room floor don't mingle much with today's young head-fi crowd.

This month's Gramophone Dream will describe the new, "Advanced & Reimagined" Stax SR-007S Earspeakers ($2390). I hope this Dream will inspire readers of all ages and levels of experience to learn the 007's long backstory by reading Stereophile's previous Stax SR-007 reports: Jonathan Scull's 2001 exposé of the SR-007 Omega II electrostatic headphone1 and Tom Norton's milestone 1995 report on Stax's original SR-Omega.2