LATEST ADDITIONS

Much has been made of the influence that Linn, Naim, and Rega have had on our ideas about music-system hierarchies: Before they and a handful of other British audio manufacturers kicked off the debate in the 1970s, the conventional wisdom worldwide was that the loudspeaker was more important than the record player, amplifier, or any other link in the domestic audio chain, and thus deserved to be the object of significantly greater care and attention, not to mention investment of cash. But the Brit-fi approach was different, and ostensibly better reasoned: Because musical information that's distorted or dropped entirely by a record player, a CD player, or any other source can't be made right by any other component in the system, it is the source that must be considered the most important component of all, and to which the majority of funds should be allocated.

<B>MOGWAI: <I>The Hawk Is Howling</I></B><BR>
Rock Action/Matador OLE 832-1 (LP), -2 (CD). Gareth Jones, James Aparicio, prods.; Andy Miller, Tony Doogan, Andi Whitelock, engs. AAA/AAD. TT: 63:29<BR>
Performance *****<BR>
Sonics ****&#189;

Another Consumer Electronics Show has come and gone with thousands of new audio products announced. What stood out for you at the 2009 CES?

Tenor's promised Tenor Pre preamplifier ($40,000) is a hybrid, using tubes for the input stage and MOSFETs for the output. It should be available in two months. As a whole, the Tenor system (fleshed out with Hansen Emperors and Kubala-Sosna cables) was outstanding.

This is what the Lamm ML3 <I>Signature</i> looks like under the hood. Clean layout and P2P wiring throughout.

Chord demonstrated the absolutely stunning Indigo Advanced D to A ($15,000). Yes, that's an iPod dock on top, but the Indigo isn't just another iPod dock. For one thing, you can only dock Chord modified iPods directly into it, allowing Chord to access the digital data in the iPod. The Indigo also has a A2DP radio "dongle" that can seamlessly stream digital radio ir music from anywhere in the room. Another dongle is supplied to stream analog output from unmodified iPods.

As <i>Stereophile</i>'s senior editor, Jonathan Scull wrote a popular column called "<a href="http://www.stereophile.com/finetunes/">Fine Tunes</a>." He now handles <a href="http://www.scullcommunications.com/">marketing and press relations</a> for Bel Canto, Furutech, Loiminchay, and Ultralink/XLO. And does a pretty decent impersonation of me.