LATEST ADDITIONS

In the YG Acoustics-Audionet suite, the sound on playback of Jake Shimabukuro's ukulele wizardry came closer to matching his live performance than in most rooms, perhaps as a result of the excellent match between the Audionet Max monoblock amplifiers and YG Acoustics Sonja XV loudspeakers.

The Heisenberg—Audionet's largest and most powerful monoblock amplifier—was on display in a portion of the suite shared with YG Acoustics…

In the D'Agostino exhibit, pure AC power was fed to the Progressive monoblocks by a Stromtank independent power source ($30,000): a 276-lb enclosure in which a 16-cell Lithium phosphate battery pack stores up to 4000W, ultimately to be converted to pure-sinewave AC.

Mark Levinson's engineers partnered with VPI's Mat Weisfeld (seen above) to develop the Mark Levinson No.515 turntable. The platter is belt-driven and the speed-control electronics are housed in a metal case under the 'table…

Rated at 500W into 8 ohms, the Progressions function as a voltage source, doubling the power with each decrease in load impedance, resulting in 1000W RMS into 4 ohms and 2000W RMS into 2 ohms…

Amplification is usually just a green circuit board in a metal box. (Yawn, snooze.) Even at the highest prices, you still get green boards—but now those green boards are hiding their greenness in very expensive boxes…

The NAD room was populated by a lot of tall men in suits—all of whom seemed dedicated to preserving and enhancing NAD's tradition of offering exceptionally high-value amplification, à la the legendary NAD 3020 integrated amp…