Onkyo held a press conference that really made us smile. It was all about stereo.

The $699.99 A-9555 employs Onkyo's vector linear technology to correct the high distortion that plagues most PWM designs. VL technology modulates the signal with an integration circuit rather than a comparator, which, Onkyo says,"cancels" the positive and negative pulses of transient distortion. Onkyo claims this effectively smoothes the analog modulation and "removes" the error.

The A-9555 puts out 100Wpc into an 8 ohm load and 200Wpc into 4 ohms.

And did we mention that it has a phono input with discrete phono equalization? Onkyo says this gives the A-9555's RIAA section excellect S/N performance and dynamic range without sacrificing transient response.

The matching DX-7555 CD player ($699.99) also employs vector Linear technology, this time in a shaping circuit that "smooths out" the jagged edges left between the sampling point of D-to-A conversion.

The DX-7555 uses a 192kHz/24-bit Wolfson Microelectronics DAC and features controllable settings for digital filter, polarity, and clock frequency.

Did we mention that the A-9555 and DX-7555 look like a million bucks?