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Dense, compact, and built to run <B>O</B>-rings around the competition, SME's flagship turntable makes every other design I've encountered&mdash;with the possible exception of <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//analogsourcereviews/258/">Rockport's System III Sirius</A>&mdash;look almost homemade. I don't mean to insult the many fine, well-engineered designs out there, but I've seen nothing else to compare with SME's tank-like approach to spinning a record. Comparing the Model 30/2 to a tank isn't exactly fair: the machining is done to higher than mil-spec tolerances. I don't think anyone else building turntables today is <I>capable</I> of this level of construction quality, never mind design ingenuity and fit'n'finish.

In my review of <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/417/">Polk Audio's RT25i loudspeaker</A> (September 2001, Vol.24 No.9), I was mightily impressed with Matthew Polk's execution of this $320/pair design. Although it has since been replaced by the RT27i, with slightly modified cosmetics and a different tweeter, the RT25i remains my favorite loudspeaker costing less than $500/pair.

"Where can you go in the world anymore where you can be in any kind of atmosphere other than the post-media, post-consumer world that we live in now&mdash;one that's available and that's musically rich? So it's very attractive in that way."

Judging absolute sound quality under the unfamiliar circumstances of an audio show is always fraught with difficulty. If a system sounds bad, there are so many possible reasons for it to do so that pointing a finger of blame at the components is possibly unfair. Conversely, when a room sounds good at a show, it is probable that the components being used deserve some recognition. Such was the case at Home Entertainment 2002 in New York last May, when Dynaudio's Confidence C4 made its debut.

One of the age-old audio battles is whether or not a component needs to be "broken-in" first to sound its best. Does it help to break in a component and, if so, what is the most dramatic example you've experienced?

Universal Music Group (UMG) may go on the auction block to help bail out debt-ridden Vivendi Universal. On March 6, Vivendi announced a record loss of $25.4 billion (&euro;23.3 billion) for the 2002 fiscal year. The biggest loss in French corporate history followed a staggering $14.9 billion (&euro;13.6 billion) loss for 2001.

Audiophiles constantly seek the next level in musical realism, as any reader of this website would acknowledge. The world at large, however, can't get enough of low-fidelity audio, as evidenced by the continuing popularity of the MP3 format.