LATEST ADDITIONS

On May 8, Harvey Electronics, with 9 stores in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, announced that it would acquire the Myer-Emco chain's 10 stores in Washington and Maryland. Both companies are consistently ranked among the top "hybrid" retail operations, meaning they have retail locations and emphasize custom A/V installation services. The new company will be called Harvey Electronics, but tri-state area stores will continue to be called Harvey and DC area stores will continue to be identified as Myer-Emco.

My interest in wireless network music players began during David Hyman's <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/11662">keynote speech</A> at Home Entertainment 2003. Then CEO of Gracenote, Inc. (footnote 1), Hyman stunned me with his opinion that CDs and DVDs were already obsolete. Rather than pursue discs with greater storage capacity, Hyman urged industry designers to design music-server units with large hard drives to allow instantaneous access to any digital music track. With all of your music stored on a central hard drive, you could, within seconds, locate a specific track among thousands just by knowing the name of the artist, song, group, composer, year of recording, or even recording venue. Music mixes could be instantly grouped into playlists by the owner.

Audiophiles are frequently accused of being more in love with gizmos than with music. There may be a kernel of truth in that, but a scant few companies actually exploit the giz factor to give you <I>mo'</I>&mdash;a <I>lot</I> mo'.

<B>Michael Brecker <I>Pilgrimage</I></B><BR>
Michael Brecker, tenor sax, EWI; Pat Metheny, guitars; Herbie Hancock, Brad Mehldau, keyboards; John Patitucci, bass; Jack DeJohnette, drums<BR>
Heads Up International HUCD 3095 (CD). 2007. Michael Brecker, Gil Goldstein, Steve Rodby, Pat Metheny, prods.; Darryl Pitt, exec. prod.; Joe Ferla, eng. DDD. TT: 77:57<BR>
Performance ****&#189;<BR>
Sonics ****&#189;

That's pronounced sheeYEUfn (like <I>that</I> helps) and it's from Norse mythology&mdash;Sj&#246;fn inspired passion through her singing. Guru Pro Audio head of R & D, Ingvar &#214;hman is clearly passionate about his loudspeaker, which he likened to "VWs that perform like Ferraris." The Gurus($1800/pair) are small, designed to be placed near the room boundaries, and were pretty impressive.

I'd seen the Bolzano Villetri TorreBV HF 3005 ($11,400/pair) at last year's CEDIA Expo, but I was felled by bugs in the spinach and BV was hobbled by a display area in the corridor in <I>front</I> of the convention center's main space.

George Kaye was showing not one, but two new products: the Moscode 402P!