A beyond-cool look at the world of high-end audio design for passionate collectors, obsessive audiophiles, and design fans At a time when sales of vinyl records have hit a 25-year high, and analog technologies are providing the kind of extraordinary audio experiences that our increasingly digital world has started to remove, Hi-Fi is essential reading. This unique book explores just how, when, and why the world fell in love with the look, feel, and sound of top-of-the-line audio equipment. Hi-Fi traces this fascinating evolution from the 1950s to today (and tomorrow), taking readers right up to the current renaissance of all things analog and the emergence of cutting-edge designs for die-hard audiophiles.

An aspiring filmmaker. The dizzying heights of Bollywood. And a strained father-son relationship. Rayhan Arora’s long cherished dream is to be a filmmaker in the Hindi Film Industry but his formidable father has other plans… a successful financial career in Corporate America, and a marriage of convenience with Vanita, a medical student in the US. In a final act of desperation, Rayhan abandons his promising life in California and secretly returns to Mumbai to work as an Assistant Director in Bollywood. The characters he encounters along the way become part of his journey of self-discovery - a self-proclaimed local goon with a penchant for acting; a powerful local politician who wants to marry Rayhan’s part-time domestic help, who in turn covets stardom; an angst-ridden, homosexual film director; ego-ridden film stars with twisted agendas; and the mysterious Viola who captures his heart. HiFi in Bollywood takes the reader from the streets of Berkeley to the film studios of Mumbai; from red-light areas to police stations, and from reality to dreams and back to reality again! Rishi Vohra relocated back to Mumbai after completing a Green MBA from San Francisco State University and a Masters Diploma in Environmental Law, prior to which he had an extensive career in the Indian Entertainment Industry. His debut novel Once Upon the Tracks of Mumbai was a bestseller and awarded a special mention at the Hollywood Book Festival. He writes for delWine and is a Certified Specialist of Wine (CSW). Visit him at www.rishivohra.com

“Autistic. Schizophrenic. Psychotic...” ‘They’ use these words to describe Babloo – the doctors, his family, his teachers... everyone... except Vandana. She treats him the way he wants the world to see him. Mumbai... the city that defines his ultimate desires. Will it allow him the love and ‘normalcy’ he so craves? Vandana... yearns for a soul mate to rescue her from the confines of the Railway Colony they all live in. Is she looking in the right place? Rail Man... a fearless, real-life hero who succeeds in doing all that Babloo secretly wishes to do... is Babloo his inspiration or... is it the other way around? A random twist of fate on Mumbai’s endless, serpent-like, jangling local train tracks ties all these characters together in a complex weave of love, heartbreak, and courage. Babloo draws the reader into his fascinating, heart-rending journey through the twisted, choked lanes of Mumbai, into an open space where he can finally exhale, be born again.

Robert Harley, Editor-in-Chief of The Absolute Sound and The Perfect Vision magazines, tells you everything you need to know to become a better listener and better buyer of quality high-fidelity components. With this book you will discover how to get the best sound for your money; how to identify the weak links in your system and upgrade where it will do the most good; how to setup and tweak your system to get maximum performance from equipment you already own; and, most of all, how to become a more perceptive and appreciative listener. This book makes hi-fi more fun! Widely acknowledged as the reference on high-quality music reproduction with more than 100,000 copies sold in four languages, The Complete Guide to High-End Audio has been newly expanded, revised, and updated to cover the latest developments in high-end audio. New sections include: high-resolution digital audio; SACD and DVD-Audio; multichannel audio; how to integrate home theater into a high-performance music system; more system setup secrets; the latest developments in audio technology -- and more! Book jacket.

How record albums and their covers delivered mood music, lifestyle advice, global sounds, and travel tips to midcentury Americans who longed to be modern. The sleek hi-fi console in a well-appointed midcentury American living room might have had a stack of albums by musicians like Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, or Patti Page. It was just as likely to have had a selection of LPs from slightly different genres, with such titles as Cocktail Time, Music for a Chinese Dinner at Home, The Perfect Background Music for Your Home Movies, Honeymoon in Hawaii, Strings for a Space Age, or Cairo! The Music of Modern Egypt. The brilliantly hued, full-color cover art might show an ideal listener, an ideal living room, an ideal tourist in an exotic landscape—or even an ideal space traveler. In Designed for Hi-Fi Living, Janet Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder listen to and look at these vinyl LPs, scouring the cover art and the liner notes, and find that these albums offered a guide for aspirational Americans who yearned to be modern in postwar consumer culture. Borgerson and Schroeder examine the representations of modern life in a selection of midcentury record albums, discussing nearly 150 vintage album covers, reproduced in color—some featuring modern art or the work of famous designers and photographers. Offering a fascinating glimpse into the postwar imagination, the first part, “Home,” explores how the American home entered the frontlines of cold war debates and became an entertainment zone—a place to play music, mix drinks, and impress guests with displays of good taste. The second part, “Away,” considers albums featuring music, pictures, and tourist information that prepared Americans for the jet age as well as the space race.