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Founded in 1984, Boulder Amplifiers is a conservative audio company that goes quietly about its business, choosing not to call attention to itself with marketing flash or acronym-laden features. Change comes slowly to such companies, which is why the just-retired 2010 preamplifier enjoyed a 17-year run.

"Smash and grab thieves," as Bay Area media are wont to call them, have hit Music Lovers Audio in San Francisco for the second time in a month. This time, at 4am on Wednesday, March 4, three thieves wearing bandanas or ski masks over their faces and either long hoodies or overcoats drove up in a red truck, smashed one of the store's windows, and tried to make off with as much they could.

Hi-fi is serious business—at least, for the people whose business is hi-fi. For listeners, among whom I count myself at least some of the time, I'd say that the serious-business aspect of hi-fi is less so. Our sole job, after all, is to enjoy music. The deeper our enjoyment, the richer our experience—and the richer the experience, the deeper our enjoyment. Therein lies the quest: to deepen our enjoyment of music.

Nearly 500 audiophiles descended upon Definitive Audio's Seattle location on Thursday, February 26 for the 10th Music Matters event in the Pacific Northwest. The "mother" of all Music Matters, and inspiration for all the other similarly named events that happen around the country, Definitive Audio's definitive four-hour gathering was so large in scope that it qualified as a mini-audio show. With major industry presenters including Stereophile's Michael Fremer (above) and John Atkinson, the evening also offered sufficient food and drink to satiate the most ravenous, and enough interesting music to ensure that even an inveterate show attender named Serinus never once experienced that "if I hear this cut one more time" feeling.

Within a 24-hour time span this past weekend, two important audiophile establishments in CA suffered major burglaries. On the morning of February 28, headphone manufacturer Audeze in Costa Mesa lost perhaps $250,000 in headphones, plus an undetermined amount of raw material from its operating and manufacture headquarters. At around 4am on February 27, and approximately 425 miles north, retailer AudioVision San Francisco experienced $100,000 worth of damage to their new headquarters plus the loss of much expensive gear when a truck rammed through their storefront (above).

Looking back at our September 2014 issue, I think my review of the Triangle Signature Delta loudspeaker marked something of a watershed in the evolution of my taste in loudspeaker sound quality. For decades I have been a devotee of what might be called "British" sound: low coloration and, overall, a rather polite presentation, coupled with low sensitivity. The Triangle speaker opened my ears to what could be achieved with a very different approach: still-low coloration but high sensitivity, impressive clarity, and a hefty dose of what the late J. Gordon Holt called "jump factor," in which the leading edges of transients are neither smeared nor tamed. So when, last September, on a visit to Dallas and The Sound Organisation, the US distributor of Danish Audiophile Loudspeaker Industries (DALI), I encountered DALI's Rubicon 8 speaker (footnote 1), which had benefited from a low-loss design philosophy similar to the Triangle's, I asked for a pair for review.