Five Clones: The Ultimate High End Conspiracy (March 1986)

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Stereophoole is deeply concerned by some aspects of the Synthesis advertising campaign. The individual pictured in the Synthesis ads is supposed to be a Louis Lipn(st)ick, reputed to be a musician in the Biwash Russian Music Club, although he is pictured with what is obviously a Soviet RPG-7 rocket launcher.

He's almost certainly a terrorist.

More importantly, this individual bears a striking, if not incredible, resemblance to four other personalities in audio: Bill Conrad, David Fletcher, Harry Pearson, and Peter Moncrieff.

Careful research using Face Feature Transformations (FFT) analysis has proved there is an undeniable probability that all five of these "personalities" are exactly the same person. This is a mathematical fact, in spite of the apparent public feuding between some members of this group. For example, while Peter Moncrieff and Harry Pear son sometimes seem different in prose content, it is striking that they have exactly the same weight, height, girth, writing style, voice, listening attitudes, analytic methodology, and sense of humor-within normal interspecies tolerances.

It is not for us to speculate on the conspiratorial implications of these unbelievable points of similarity. However, no one closely informed about the high end and their audio industry can deny that the probability that Lipnick, Fletcher, Conrad, Pearson and Moncrieff are either cloned or in fact the same individual.

There are further, equally valid, indicators. It is a well-known fact that Fletcher conspicuously avoids flying to the East Coast, where it is possible that he might be recognized as Harry Pear son. Peter Moncreiff and Harry Pearson have never been seen together in their separate personas at a CES. Conrad and Pearson share a suspicious mutual in ability to properly use capital letters, and none of the other four have ever appeared on the same concert stage with Lipnick.

We know not what conclusions to draw from this weight of evidence, but advise you not to panic A /B double blind tests are being worked out so that we can evaluate whether these five "clones" exhibit statistically significant differences. Some experts have already suggested blind AB testing by various wives and lovers to determine whether meaningful behavioral differences emerge in the dark. Others have suggested an open hearing at the next CES. Watch for future reports, including re sults of our studies on the increasingly suspect relationship between this "gang of five" and Ken Kessler, Julian Hirsch, and Bert Whyte.

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[based on a March 1986, Stereophile review article]

Also see:

THE NEC CD-705E COMPACT DISC PLAYER