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Exhibitors at Home Entertainment 2003 (HE2003), the premier home theater & specialty audio show, are gearing up for one of the most important international events of the year. HE2003 will take place June 5–8, 2003 at The Westin–St. Francis Hotel in the heart of downtown San Francisco. This historic location will provide the perfect setting to showcase the latest in home audio/video and home theater entertainment. This will be the show's fourth visit to San Francisco—previous events were held in 1989, 1993, and 1997.

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.

"Where can you go in the world anymore where you can be in any kind of atmosphere other than the post-media, post-consumer world that we live in now&mdash;one that's available and that's musically rich? So it's very attractive in that way."

<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>

One of the age-old audio battles is whether or not a component needs to be "broken-in" first to sound its best. Does it help to break in a component and, if so, what is the most dramatic example you've experienced?

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."