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There's no accounting for taste, or so the truism goes. But arguing over preferences is exactly what many audiophiles do. Similarly, Stereophile reviewers are all about parsing and evaluating sound, and how a product looks isn't usually a big part of the equation. But I'll buck that convention and say that the radically shaped Estelon X Diamond Mk IIs aren't just the most visually sublime speakers I've laid eyes on; they ought to be part of the Cooper Hewitt Museum's permanent collection. Or MOMA's.

Music history, like all human history, is filled with nooks and crannies—digressions from the main course of events. Take Anton Bruckner for example. The global concert hall calendars are filled with performances of his symphonies and some of his choral works. New recordings of these pieces are frequently released. How many of you have ever heard a performance, or recording, of any piece for solo piano by Bruckner?

As Jim Austin wrote in this space in the December 2024 issue, following a medical procedure that he had in mid-October, he needed to take several weeks' leave to recuperate. He delegated the magazine's production to Managing Editor Mark Henninger, AVTech Editorial Director Paul Miller, and myself. The three of us worked with copy editor Linda Felaco and longtime art director Jeremy Moyler to produce the issue you hold in your hands.

As readers probably know, I was Stereophile's editor for 33 years until my retirement at the end of March 2019. However, they probably don't know that for the 10 years prior to my joining this magazine in 1986, I was first an editorial assistant, then Deputy Editor, then, in 1982, Editor of British magazine Hi-Fi News. (In a twist of fate, Paul Miller is now Hi-Fi News's Editor.)

According to Sierra Sound, this distribution agreement marks the arrival of a design the manufacturer characterizes as entirely original. Connected Fidelity—as stated on its website and in related materials—focuses its engineering on addressing various elements of resonance control and isolation in audio playback.