LATEST ADDITIONS

The April Issue features an extensively revised "Recommended Components" feature—often copied, never equaled—while April Music's stylin' Aura Note V2 CD receiver gets the full review treatment from Art Dudley. In addition, we have:
• Great analog playback gear from Abis, Jasmine, Mørch, Reed, SME, and TechDAS
• A US-premier review of the AR-M2 hi-rez portable player from one of the great names in hi-fi, Acoustic Research, now under new ownership
• A high-end server from Aurender is put through its paces
• An interview with that most blues-ish singer/guitarist, Bonnie Raitt
• And kicking off this bumper 188-page issue, a report that "The Kids Are Alright!"

Two weeks shy of the Ides of March, Cary Audio has announced its transition from an all-dealer sales model to a direct-to-consumer web store in the U.S. it calls "CaryDirect." But rather than leaving its brick'n'mortar US dealers in the dust, the North Carolina-based company says it has assimilated them into a rather novel hybrid business model.

In an announcement made yesterday on their corporate website, UK-based Chester Group—which, in recent years, has sponsored consumer-audio shows in Vancouver, Brooklyn, and Brighton, UK, among other locales—revealed that they are "deferring" this year's Salon Son et Image, which had been scheduled to take place March 18 through 20 at the Bonaventure Hotel in Montreal.

With the atomization of the playback of digital files into storage, servers, streamers, format converters, and DACs, I find that I've accumulated many miniature power supplies: small pods and wall warts. Most of these are generic switching devices made by companies other than the manufacturers of the components they power, and even those not designed for audio systems are, of necessity, at least adequate for the task. Because many of these supplies are indistinguishable from each other, I've taken to labeling them with sticky notes to remind me which goes with which component. Nonetheless, I'm concerned that they're no more than the commodity power modules available for a few bucks each on eBay. Whenever I think of the four or five of them clustered behind my equipment rack, I begin to suspect them of plotting revolt against the fancy gear they serve.

In Lost Highway, published soon after he was introduced to Sam Phillips, in 1979, Peter Guralnick said he had long dreamed of meeting the Sun Records founder, who produced the hits that introduced Elvis Presley and other pioneering rock'n'roll performers. He dedicated Lost Highway to Phillips and the blues singer Howlin' Wolf, calling them "the real heroes" of the musical genre, and a quarter-century relationship between Guralnick and Phillips followed. This long, densely detailed biography is its affectionate culmination.

As part of his preparation for reviewing Merging Technologies' NADAC Multichannel-8 networked D/A processor in the March 2016 issue of Stereophile, Kal Rubinson talked with the Swiss company's Dominique Brulhart.