LATEST ADDITIONS

Beautiful sound was the order of the day at Tone of Music Audio (1303 Castro Street, Suite D, San Francisco, CA 94114), as the small retailer, headquartered in the heart of San Francisco's Noe Valley, held the first of two spring open houses. Judging from what the 30 or so visitors heard at the first open house, on March 18, those who show up for the second listening session on Saturday, April 1, between noon and 5 pm (RSVP to info@toneofmusic.com), are in for a treat.

"If you tried to give rock'n'roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry.'"—John Lennon

Space Soul Rock in Austin. . .

Women are bringing much-needed new energies to music of all kinds

On March 17, Japanese label Ottava will release the first MQA recording on compact disc, A. Piazzolla by Strings and Oboe. Recorded by the UNAMAS Piazzolla Septet, whose videos you can view online, the short disc was mastered by the Tokyo-based label's CEO, Mick Sawaguchi. The recording is also available for download.

The ratings given components included in this listing are based entirely on performance—ie, accuracy of reproduction—and are biased to an extent by our feeling that things added to reproduced sound (eg, jitter, distortion, colorations of various kinds) are of more concern to the musically oriented listener than are things subtracted from the sound (eg, deep bass or extreme treble). On the other hand, components markedly deficient in one or more respects are downrated to the extent that their deficiencies interfere with the full realization of the program material.