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This past May, I stormed the halls of the international audio orgy High End Munich. My scorched-earth tour covered countless rooms, in pursuit of the holy grail of music playback. Among the finalists, a clear pattern emerged: With a few exceptions, my favorite rooms used horn-loaded speakers.

This review started with a gentle handoff. My ol' pal Walter Swanbon of Fidelis Distribution stopped by Brooklyn to take away the $10,000 Limited Edition Falcon LS3/5a loudspeakers and drop off the $10,000 eos DAC by Ideon. As he was getting in his car, I yelled, "Walter! I'm warning you! If that thing's not plug'n'play, I'll put it right there on that curb."

Forty years ago, when I was a much younger man, I was a strong dude. I recall one day in 1986, soon after I started working at Sound by Singer, when Krell cofounder Dan D'Agostino drove down from his factory in Connecticut to deliver a load of amplifiers and preamps for us to sell. As the new guy, I was expected to do the grunt work.

In ancient times, when I first ventured beyond playing files stored on a USB stick or NAS to streaming from Tidal and Qobuz, I ran a USB cable between a MacBook Pro and my DAC. For playback software, I alternated between Amarra, Audirvana, and—sometimes with a dCS DAC—dCS Mosaic.

EISA, or the Expert Imaging and Sound Association, is an organization representing 53 of the most respected special interest publications and websites from 26 countries that cover Hi-Fi, Home Theater, Photography, Mobile Devices, and In-Car Electronics. Every year EISA's Expert Group members, including editors from this publication, test a very wide range of new products from their field of expertise before comparing results and voting to decide on the cream of every product category.

Various Artists: A Tribute to the King Of Zydeco
Valcour Records. VAL-LP 0058 (LP). 2025. Steve Berlin, Joel Savoy, prods.; Justin Tockett, Tony Daigle, Mike Napolitano, Matt Clifford, many others, engs.
Performance ****½
Sonics ****