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Michael Fremer gets a chorus of oohs and ahhs as he sets up the Hovland Sapphire power amplifier in his listening lair. While the Hovland is certainly a sweet-looking amp, MF rightly points out that "looks alone don't sell hi-fi equipment in the specialty audio market—especially when you're asking $7800 for a 40Wpc two-channel amplifier."

Jonathan Scull hangs with the Balanced Audio Technology VK-150SE monoblock power amplifier. He recounts, "The BAT's well-formed, fast, big, and luxurious tube-driven bass fundamentals got my attention and kept it!" J-10 then reports on how the BAT handles the rest of the music.

Donning his leisure togs next, Jonathan Scull delves into "Fine Tunes #45," where he offers surprisingly simple tweaks for electrostatic and moving-coil speakers. There's even an added bonus tweak from Victor Tiscareno of AudioPrism/Red Rose Music!

For his "The Fifth Element #7," John Marks says be careful what you wish for, especially when it concerns high-resolution audio. "My initial impressions of the SACD remastering of the Goldberg Variations were paradoxical, to say the least."

Finally, the next installment in our "Recording of the Month" series for the online archives, the Recording of the Month for March 2002, Bucky Pizzarelli: Swing Live. Thomas Conrad tells the world about Chesky's recent hybrid multichannel SACD/CD release—it's also available on DVD-A—which brings both musical and sonic satisfaction.