LATEST ADDITIONS

In the November 2018 issue of Stereophile, Jim Austin reviewed PS Audio's DirectStream Power Plant P20 AC regenerator ($9999). PS Audio had sent me the less expensive DirectStream Power Plant 12 ($4999), hence this review.

Why use an AC regenerator rather than plugging components straight into the wall?

The first and only time I heard a live performance of Mahler's five-movement Symphony No.7, from Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony, I left Davies Symphony Hall confused. The bad press that the 70+ minute work has received for over a century, mainly for its innate ambiguity, convinced me that it was, at best, a problematic work—one that Mahler might have eventually revised had he lived long enough. But after listening to DSD128 files of Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra's new recording of the symphony for Channel Classics, released March 29 in SACD format, I've come to consider it a somewhat shy flower that puts on a brave face and remains in the shadows until a strong conductor coaxes it into the light and convinces it to share all of its bloom and fragrance.

Magico's three-way A3 speakers ($CD13,000) were the first things I spotted when I entered Sonor-Filtronique's third room. I fondly remembered them from last year—in my 2018 report, I gushed over the sound of the A3s, then driven by Ayre electronics. Magico's most affordable model, the A3 has an enclosure made of 6061 T6 aircraft-grade aluminum, while their drivers boast diaphragms made of beryllium and graphene.