LATEST ADDITIONS

The Gini Systems "LS3/5a" is an unlicensed and inexact replica of the celebrated LS3/5a outside (remote location) broadcast monitoring loudspeaker originally developed by the BBC in the early 1970s. (For a pr&#233;cis of the LS3/5a's history, click <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/thefifthelement/690">here</A&gt;.)

Dear colleagues:<br>
The year is almost over. The air has grown cold. Our rivers are stuck in deep, deep thought. Outside my 6th-floor window, countless, swirling bits of snow are decorating this gray city like little answers blowing in the wind, like so many true loves: A sure sign that the annual <a href="http://www.cesweb.org/">Consumer Electronics Show</a> in glittery Las Vegas is right around the bend. It opens on Thursday, January 8th and runs right on through Sunday, the 11th.

Dear Frida,<br>
It is official: I have a crush on you, and it feels good. I woke up this morning with your words circling through my foggy mind. <i>Don't you worry, love. Let me help you love. There you go, love. Oh that's brilliant love.</i>

Here’s my list of the 10 best jazz albums of 2008. An elaboration, with 30-second sound clips illustrating my points, will appear tomorrow in my column in <I>Slate</I>. (Some of you may notice that I’ve mentioned most of these CDs in this blog through this year.)

I didn't know what this was when I picked it up. The jacket offers no band name or album title. Kind of like the Park Tavern on West Side Avenue in Jersey City; there's no way of knowing it's the Park Tavern unless you walk in, and once you're in, you never really want to leave.

Though it seemed to have been fairly well-scavenged by the time we arrived on Saturday afternoon, the ARChive of Contemporary Music's <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/926_new_stock/">Winter Record and CD Sale</a> held many great treasures.

Musical Fidelity's "Supercharger" concept is simple, which is perhaps why no one had thought of it before: If you love the sound of your low-powered amplifier but your speakers are insensitive, or you just need more loudness, you insert the high-power Supercharger amplifier between your low-powered amp and speakers. The Supercharger loads the small amplifier with an easy-to-drive 50 ohms, and, in theory, has so little sonic signature itself that it passes on the sonic signature of the small amp unchanged, but louder.