FYI OBITUARY Hans Fantel, writer on classical music and sound recordings In Tuesday's (5/23) New York Times, Daniel J. Wakin reports: "Hans Fantel, a pioneering writer on high fidelity who produced a column on home electronics for The New York Times for 17 years," died Sunday of "injuries suffered in a car accident on May 5." Wakin writes that Fantel wrote "on a broad range of subjects ... But his focus was classical music and sound recordings. Mr. Fantel was a founding editor of Stereo Review, which for years was a touchstone for stereophiles. His byline first appeared in The Times in 1963. From 1977 to 1994, he turned out columns for the newspaper under the rubrics 'Sound' and 'Video,' and later 'Home Entertainment,' transforming the technical jargon of the day into clear prose. He often summoned up his boyhood in Vienna in the 1920's and 30's." Wakin quotes one of Fantel's columns: "the perennial rebirth of music through recordings, something of life itself steps over the normal limits of time." Karl