LATEST ADDITIONS

In <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/hirezplayers/marantz_sa-11s2_reference_sacdc… review</A> in the February 2009 issue of Marantz's SA-11S2 SACD/CD player ($3599.99), I said that "buying [an SACD] player in 2009 necessitates an act of faith similar to the one turntable buyers faced back in 1992." The negative reaction to this from the besieged SACD community was as intense as it was irrational. If they're angry with <I>me</I>, I can only imagine how they feel about Stanley Lipshitz and John Vanderkooy, who presented a white paper at a 2001 Audio Engineering Society convention that claimed to prove that SACD doesn't qualify as a high-fidelity format (footnote 1). How many figurative bags of flaming poop did they leave at <I>their</I> front doors?

Over the years that I've been reviewing hi-fi, I've had my share of loudspeakers that drew comments from everyone who visited during the audition period. Some of those comments were about the speakers' appearance&#151;most often about their size&#151;and some were about how good they sounded. Vivid's G1Giya loudspeaker ($65,000/pair), its narrow-baffled, swirling cochlear shape molded from fiber-reinforced composite, elicited more comments of both types than has any other speaker I've reviewed.

Reader Lisa T. Marv notices that there are very few women audiophiles among her friends or the companies she buys from. She wants to know: Why aren't there more women in high-end audio?

<B>Sinatra Jobim: <I>The Complete Reprise Recordings</I></B><BR>
Concord CRE-32026 (CD). 2010. Sonny Burke, orig. prod.; Lee Herschberg, orig eng.; Hal Gaba, reissue exec. prod.; Charles Pignone, reissue prod.; Larry Walsh, reissue eng.; Dan Hersch, 24-bit remastering. AAD. TT: 58:23<BR>
Performance ****<BR>
Sonics ****

Extremes of cost and performance continue to impress. But plenty of high-performance products can be had for very little money as well. With all of this, is high-end audio moving in the right direction?

<A HREF="http://www.arkivmusic.com">Arkivmusic.com</A&gt; is an Internet retailer of classical media (CDs, SACDs, and DVDs), including its own licensed CD reissues of out-of-print classical titles from labels major, minor, and micro. ArkivCDs are bit-for-bit copies of the original masters, burned on demand to CD-R and shipped to the customer with on-demand printed booklets and liner notes, as Wes Phillips <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/120406heaven">wrote</A&gt; in December 2006.

Speaking of upgrades, this just arrived in the mail. Rega’s drive belt upgrade ($59) is supposed to do something good for my P3. It has something to do with tolerances and stuff.