LATEST ADDITIONS

Wiz stores in bankruptcy: Only a week after being acquired from Cablevision by GBO Electronics Acquisition LLC, The Wiz stores initiated a bankruptcy petition in the District of Delaware to "maximize company assets," according to a March 14 press release from TW Inc., as The Wiz is now known. The 17-store electronics chain is seeking protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of US bankruptcy law and approval to conduct going-out-of-business sales at its stores in the New York metro area.

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 Although it has since been replaced by the RT27i, with slightly modified cosmetics and a different tweeter, the RT25i remains my favorite loudspeaker costing less than $500/pair.

<B>RY COODER & MANUEL GALB&#193;N: <I>Mambo Sinuendo</I></B><BR> Perro Verde/Nonesuch 79691-2 (CD). 2003. Ry Cooder, prod.; Jerry Boys, eng. AAD? TT: 50:31<BR> Performance <B>****?</B><BR> Sonics <B>****</B>

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.

Dick Olsher and various other writers take a spin with the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/789/">Apogee Stage loudspeaker</A>, whose "resemblance to the rest of the Apogee family is unmistakable" in spite of its small size. But the real story is that, "surprisingly, the sound quality does not take a back seat to its more expensive relatives."

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.