Carmen, About fertilizers-labels such as 'Orchid food' 'Tomato food' 'African Violet food' are manufacturers ploys to get you to buy more fertilizer. I raise both orchids and violets and I use the same fertilizer on both as well as on my outdoor flowering plants. All fertilizers will have three numbers on the bag, such as 10-10-10 or 0-10-0. The first number stands for nitrogen which is important for leaf growth. The second is phosphorous which is mainly for flower production and root health. The third is potassium which is used by the plant for disease control and, to a lesser extent, root health. When you buy fertilizer, do not look at the label; look at the numbers. For flowering plants, get a fertilizer with a higher middle number. (I use a 10-10-10 for rooting leaves as there is no need for high potassium in a non-flowering leaf). That said, for violets, stay away from anything with urea in it as it will burn the roots. It will be stated in the analysis chart on the bag. After you have some practice growing, you can start experimenting with different number combos to see which works best for your growing conditions. Linda

Some good speakers at the RI show this year - Ken Druse is on at 1:00 pm Saturday, February 21. I really like his books and, unless I'm mistaken, he's a good speaker. Karl Gercens is at noon on both Friday & Saturday - I haven't seen him before, but he's from Longwood Gardens (PA). Paul Miskovsky, an expert in xeriscaping from Falmouth, is doing 3 different talks; he's very involved in MassHort, and did the main display garden with Allen Haskell for several years at the NE show. Then there's the Designer Forum - I've been meaning to get to that for years but ... maybe this year!

Infinity and Polk have had good reputations and bad reputations. I still remember the first pair of Infinity speakers I ever heard -- in a good way. My take on them is that they are impressive but not necessarily the most neutral speakers. I happen to value "neutral" over "impressive", but that's just me. They are much better speakers, IMHO, than many more popular brands. Polk is back on track after a few years of mediocrity brought on by rapid expansion. I had a pair of Polks maybe 20 years ago. They were very easy to listen to; I gave them up to get smaller speakers and found that speaker science had improved in 10-15 years. The bigger speakers I loved no longer sounded as precise as I wanted them to be. But Polks have improved, too, and now often end up on high-quality short lists of speakers to audition. I'd give both a listen. As for sensitivity, it's a measure of efficiency. A speaker with greater sensitivity will play louder with a given amount of wattage from the receiver. That does not mean a highly-sensitive speaker is necessarily more accurate or more pleasing to listen to -- only that it can make better use of the power your receiver puts out. IMHO, it's a consideration only if there is a large difference in sensitivity between the speakers you're considering and if your amplifier/receiver is on the low-powered side (say, 15-25 watts per channel).

The sound quality of a particular source is not something that's subjective in any way. There's nothing about a digital copy of a recording that compromises the sound source. In fact, it's the opposite, a high percentage of today's recorded music is done (at the studio level) ultimately in digital form. Though it may pass through analog equipment, thought to give warmth to the sound, along the way. The problem is with CDs and other formats. A CD has a limited amount of memory space. When the CD standard was set back at the dawn of time, it was decided to fix the bit and sampling rates at a point that would allow about 70 minutes of content. To get there requires "mastering" and down-sampling of that leaves more than half of the sound content behind. The bit rate standard is about 1400 bits per second, that's what's needed to fit within the capacity of the memory to reach 70 minutes. MP3s and MP4s (the Apple equivalent) take that already compromised sample and reduce it further with compression and further down-sampling - the top MP3 or equiv rate is about 320bps. Streaming music is usually at 128bps or less. Less than 25% of the original source content, if made from a CD, which itself is already a compromised source. . Analog sources have more capacity and so more of the master is present in a vinyl record. There a comparison with digital photography. A commercial photographer, or indeed even a photographer hired to take pictures at a wedding or other social function, will use one of several RAW formats for images. A typical image might be 50 million bits - 50 Mbs for each picture, or larger. For a family event, some of the RAWs I got approached 100Mb. Someone standing next to the photographer taking the same scene with a point and shoot camera or smartphone is going to have a file of 5-10Mbs, max. How could that be? Because the common jpg or gif formats sample, compress and downsize the image to produce a smaller file. Does it matter? Sure. You can produce large images/large print sizes with a RAW file. Any image from a RAW within a relevant range will be quite clear and sharp. With a jpg or gif, as images get much above a compact size, the image will become blurry because of the missing "data" from the image.