LATEST ADDITIONS

Way back in the age when Stereophile's print magazine was the size of a theater playbill, common wisdom declared that the tube preamp was the ideal complement to solid state amplification.

Costing just $899, Shanling's top-loading ET3 CD transport appears to have been designed by people who recognize the multitude of big and small fails (or lost opportunities) of previous CD transports. In use, the ET3 felt like a distillation of what I've always wanted in a transport: strong, solid, compact, cool-looking, and feels good to use.

Way back in my ignorant youth I thought that Pablo Records, the label of jazz producer/promoter legend Norman Granz, was where jazz artists went to fade away, where they were put out to pasture. I thought the black discs inside Pablo's black-and-white jackets, which depicted jazz greats tracking sessions in their twilight years, couldn't compete with the music of younger jazz guns.