LATEST ADDITIONS

After a gap of far too many years, Northern California again has a high-end audio show. Sponsored by Constantine Soo's DaGoGo.com, the fledgling <A HREF="http://www.caaudioshow.com/">California Audio Show</A> will take place July 30 &#150;August 1 at the Hilton Garden Inn in Emeryville. That location &#151;next to Interstate 80, just across the bridge from San Francisco, midway between Oakland and Berkeley, and a free (albeit time-sensitive) <A HREF="http://emerygoround.com/schedule.php">shuttle ride</A> from the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) MacArthur line&#151;is expected to draw a good cross-section of audiophiles from throughout the Bay Area.

Phiaton, maker of sexy headphones for sexy people, has <a href="http://www.phiaton.com/">a nice new website</a> filled with pictures of attractive young adults, set in clean, chic surroundings, looking very deeply engaged with what they’re doing, whether at work or at play or getting ready for a big date, while wearing Phiaton headphones. Check it out.

The August 2010 issue of <i>Stereophile</i> is now on newsstands. The cover, with its mellow tones, is one of my favorites. To a greater degree than any other cover we’ve released, this one got a buzz going around the office. People would walk by and say nice things. I hope the cover works the same magic for people browsing the newsstands.

Considering that the crates they're shipped in are each as large as a Manhattan studio apartment, once they'd been set up in my listening room, Focal's Maestro Utopia III speakers weren't as visually overpowering as I'd anticipated. The elegant dark-gloss front baffles, the gloss-gray side panels, and the fact that the speaker's three subenclosures are vertically arrayed so that the top, midrange section is angled down, significantly reduced their apparent size.

Klyne Audio Arts is such a low-profile outfit that I marvel at its continued existence. It is reliably absent from the <I>Audio</I> and <I>Stereo Review</I> annual equipment directories, and if Stan Klyne has ever run an advertisement for any of his products anywhere, I haven't seen it, Yet Klyne Audio Arts always manages to have an exhibit at CES, where they display some of the most beautiful preamps and head-amps we see there, only to go underground again for another six months.

Before last year, I had no more than a professional interest in the products of Wilson Audio Specialties. But before last year I hadn't experienced <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/artdudleylistening/listening_86">Wilson's Sophia Series 2</A> loudspeaker ($16,700/pair)&#151;which, like the wines I tend to order when my wife and I go out to dinner, is the second-cheapest item on their menu. Within weeks of the Sophias' arrival, respect had turned to rapture, like to love, and an entirely new appreciation for Wilson Audio was mine (footnote 1).

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