LATEST ADDITIONS

It's not every Consumer Electronics Show that someone introduces a $29,000 solid-state phono preamplifier&mdash;and I miss it. The 2002 CES was one. My show report in the April issue made it <I>seem</I> as if I'd found out about it there, but the fact is, someone clued me in after I'd returned home. I needed to come clean on that.

Of the small number of times I have been totally swept away by listening to recorded music, a significant proportion have involved loudspeakers from Wilson Audio Specialties. It was my experience of their X-1/Grand SLAMM in the listening rooms of reviewer Martin Colloms, then-retailer Peter McGrath, designer Dan D'Agostino of Krell, and manufacturer Madrigal Audio Labs, that led me to name it my "Editor's Choice" for 1995 and join my vote with those of the <I>Stereophile</I> scribes to make it the magazine's "Loudspeaker of the Year." I wrote in <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//asweseeit/470/">my December 2001 "As We See It"</A> about how a cross-country road trip had begun with a listen to the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//features/465/">Cantus CD</A> on the Wilson WAMMs in <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//interviews/478/">their designer's</A> Utah listening room. And, as I wrote in <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//asweseeit/557/">my April column</A>, auditioning Peter McGrath's 24-bit <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//digitalsourcereviews/461/">Nagra-D</A&gt; master tapes on Wilson MAXXes in the Halcro room was, for me, the highlight of the 2002 CES.

Although I was trying to earn a living playing in rock bands in the early 1970s, I occasionally used to drag my Fender bass over to a school canteen in the next town for an after-hours session with what used to be called a "rehearsal band." (I have no idea what the derivation of that name is, except that, with the exception of a couple of veterans of the Ted Heath Orchestra, we were certainly in need of all the rehearsal we could get.) I would set up my Marshall stack the other side of the drummer from the pianist and sit behind a set of trumpet players, a brace of trombonists, and a scrum of players of the common saxophone flavors&mdash;a couple of altos, three or four tenors, and a baritone wielded by a gentleman with the magnificent moniker of Albert Bags. We played Glenn Miller and Woody Herman charts, and, on one memorable night, a Stan Kenton arrangement. Our technical chops didn't match our musical ambitions, but the feeling that welled up inside us when we all reached the final measure at the same time couldn't be beat.

Roger A. Modjeski's RAM Labs and Music Reference electronics now have a home on the Internet.

The music industry is reportedly preparing to open a new front in its war on piracy.

<A HREF="http://www.sirius.com">Sirius Satellite Radio</A> is now available nationally.

As almost any <I>Stereophile</I> reader could <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/showvote.cgi?105">tell you</A>, if the record labels want to stem the rushing tide of big-time music piracy, they should consider starting with lower CD prices at retail. In other words, lessen the incentives that drive the illicit music market, and eliminate a sizable percentage of the problem overnight.