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In the crush of new products and technologies scrambling for attention at every Consumer Electronics Show, some intriguing announcements can get buried in the noise and require a closer look than is afforded by a quick listen and chat in a demo room. One such technology on display at the 2002 CES was <A HREF="http://www.gibsonmagic.com">MaGIC</A&gt;, a new high-resolution audio connectivity standard.

The major record labels may put out most of the world's music, but they're doing so on a format first created by Philips and then further developed by Sony: the Compact Disc. In addition to the underlying technology, Philips and Sony established a strict standard for the format, insuring compatibility with all players around the world, which came to be known as the Red Book standard.

Klein Technology Group and <A HREF="http://www.adcom.com">Adcom</A&gt; have announced an agreement for the sale of Adcom's consumer electronics business to Klein, according to a press release issued January 8, during the Consumer Electronics Show. The effective date of the merger will be February 15.

Thousands upon thousands of new discs are released each year, yet only a select few made it to the top of the heap for <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//records2die4/496/">Records to Die For, 2001</A>, number 11 of the annual rite of passage for the <I>Stereophile</I> staff. Find out what music made the cut and why.

We saw quite a few new multichannel analog preamps (intended for use with multichannel SACD and DVD-Audio) from several high-end manufacturers at the recent CES. These preamps do not decode DVD-Video multichannel and are strictly for audio use. Does this type of product interest you?

"Della, it's considerably past five o'clock. Please pour me a glass of wine. Pour one for yourself, while you're at it. Don't we have some 1954 Inglenook Cabernet in one of those credenzas out there?"

Loudspeaker lore has it that a "good big'un will always beat a good small'un." But my experience has been that the traditional wisdom is often wrong. Price for price, large speakers often have larger errors compared with minimonitors, the smaller speakers offering more rigid cabinets, better-defined stereo imaging, and, because the owner can experiment with stand height, a better chance of being optimally sited in a room. So while I was as impressed as <I>Stereophile</I> reviewer Kalman Rubinson with what I heard from the floorstanding, $3500/pair Revel Performa F30 (footnote 1) when we visited the Revel facility in California's San Fernando Valley in spring 2000 (footnote 2), it was the big speaker's smaller sibling, the $2000/pair Performa M20, that caught my eye&mdash;and ear.