Although the Tweeter Home Entertainment Group's rate of expansion has slowed, it shows no sign of stopping. The Canton, MA electronics retailer will open six new stores during the month of November.
Robert Deutsch says, "There is something special about SETs: a kind of midrange magic, a harmonic rightness that tends to elude other amplifier designs." But how to get more power from a single-ended triode design? In his review of the Air Tight ATM-211 monoblock power amplifier RD discovers one answer.
The release of our 2001 Recommended Components online last month was such a success, we now offer readers the opportunity to buy the 2002 "Recommended Components" from both the April and October issues as .pdf files.
Amplifier of the year? We'll have to wait until the votes are tallied in the December issue, but Paul Bolin reviews the Halcro dm58 monoblock power amplifier and reveals what the fuss is all about. As Bolin notes, "the sheer audacity of Halcro's claims generated much curiosity and interest."
The Adcom GFA-555 power amplifier has long been regarded as a classic design and still commands decent prices on the used market. Anthony H. Cordesman and various other Stereophile writers check in with their opinions.
Everybody's favorite writer (according to the latest Stereophile poll), Sam Tellig, reviews the Conrad-Johnson MV60 power amplifier and explains "hanging beef." "For $2795, I loved the Conrad-Johnson MV60," says Tellig.
The combination of accessible world music and transparent sound featured on Let Your Voice Be Heard, the CD released in 2001 by male-voice choir Cantus, made it an audiophile favorite. Stereophile editor John Atkinson returned to Minnesota earlier this year to record Cantus for a second time. This time, however, the program was very different: an ambitious sequence of choral works illustrating a musical and poetic progression from grief and sorrow to consolation and joy, following the tragic events of September 2001.
Hard as it is to believe, next year will be the 40th anniversary of Stereophile's famed "Recommended Components" feature. J. Gordon Holt first set the list to paper when the Beatles were first breaking big in the US, and its April and October appearances have stood as biannual audiophile institutions ever since.
In his recent review of the Thiel CS1.6 loudspeaker, John Atkinson pointed out that while expensive speakers "do indeed provide great sound for the tens of thousands of dollars they demand from their owners, they are out of reach of the majority of audiophiles." Ever the populist, JA tackles this reasonably priced Thiel to see how it measures up to the big boys.