Art Dudley

It isn't enough to say that engineer Denis N. Morecroft is one of contemporary audio's few visionaries: He's one of a very few mature designers whose passion for doing things a certain way hasn't abandoned him in the least, and whose well-argued convictions seem stronger than ever. Thus, as others cave in to commerce—the tube-amp designer who offers a solid-state product just to help his dealers fill a price niche, the source-component manufacturer who rails against digital audio one day and starts cranking out CD players the next—DNM Design remains the likeliest of all modern companies to stay its course.

Don Garber, founder and sole proprietor of the influential electronics company Fi as well as a noted artist, passed away on June 4th, following a brief illness. He was 81.

Glimpsed at SSI's Canadian Pavilion (see earlier stories): The 88dB, 6 ohm Dulcet loudspeaker ($1695/pair) from Reference 3A, a brand that began life in Europe, moved to Canada, and always specialized in SET-friendly speakers.

When we last heard from Englishman Tim de Paravicini, whose EAR 890 amp I reviewed in Stereophile's April 2004 issue, the veteran audio designer suggested that he could make a transistor amplifier equal in performance to any of his successful tube designs. Whatever else it may be, the new EAR 324 is my first chance to test that claim: a stereo phono preamplifier without a single tube in sight. It isn't TdP's first all-solid-state product: That would be the line-plus-phono EAR 312 preamplifier, introduced to no small fanfare a little over three years ago. For all intents and purposes, the 324 is a standalone version of the phono section of that $18,000 flagship: The designs are virtually identical—excepting, of course, their casework and power supplies.