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At the Munich show, I ran into familiar faces: Mark Sossa of Well Pleased AV and Vinnie Rossi of Vinnie Rossi Audio, both far from their usual American stomping grounds. Seeing them overseas gave me a flicker of homesickness, but a journalist's job is to focus on the gear, not the friendships.

Stereophile has favorably reviewed three loudspeakers from Swiss manufacturer Stenheim. Art Dudley reviewed the Alumine standmount in April 2012 and the Alumine Five floorstander in March 2018. More recently, Herb Reichert reviewed Stenheim's three-and-a-half-way Alumine Three tower in October 2021. My assignment for this month's issue was to review the company's Alumine Two. Five floorstander, which, at $23,500/pair, fits neatly between the Alumine Two ($13,500/pair) and Three ($36,500/pair).

For several decades—from well before I toured the Boulder factory in 2016—I've wanted to get a handle on the best sound the now–41-year-old company can offer. Multiple listening sessions at shows had more than hinted at excellence. But neither my time in Boulder's large, dedicated music room, which was intentionally dry, nor exposure at various hi-fi shows left me convinced that I'd heard Boulder's full potential.

My first opportunity for an in-home audition came in 2021, when I reviewed the 866 stereo integrated amplifier ($17,500 with DAC, $16,000 without). But that entry-level (by Boulder standards) product, which Senior Engineer Jameson Ludlam said was released to build brand awareness and expand the company's reach by offering "a more accessible product that provides the features we think many people are looking for with the performance they have come to expect from Boulder," only provided a peek at the excellence I expected Boulder to achieve.

So when a last-minute review cancellation opened space to review the just-released Boulder 1151 mono power amplifier ($47,000/pair), I thought, "At last!"

Meet audio legend Richard Vandersteen at three exclusive events on the West Coast. As the founder and head engineer of Vandersteen Audio he is renowned for groundbreaking speaker designs that have helped define high-end audio for decades. He's offering audio enthusiasts a unique chance to hear from him firsthand at these special events.

I began the test series I discussed in Colloms on Cables with the first company to respond to our request for review samples: AudioQuest. Their loom comprised a pair of Robin Hood Zero loudspeaker cables; Pegasus I/C interconnects, both unbalanced RCA and balanced XLR; Blizzard AC power cables; and Vodka Ethernet cables. AudioQuest has decades of experience with audio cables, supplying a huge range from high-quality "industrial" cables—some available in bulk for custom-install applications and manufacturing—to more familiar audiophile constructions. Their designs are highly finessed and exquisitely terminated, some executed in exotic materials, particularly solid silver. An established bedrock of engineering underlies AudioQuest's cables. They're based on high-quality, nontwisted conductors, low-loss insulation materials, well-known construction geometries, and a nuanced approach to subtler aspects including conductor purity and cable-draw finish.

Steve Jain, cofounder and managing director of Fidelity Imports, has been busy since launching the company six years ago in the Philadelphia area. In recent months, Fidelity has added two brands to their roster; they now represent 16 high-performance audio companies. Maintaining his early passions helped fuel his drive to start a business and continue its expansion and innovation—aspects Jain believes differentiate Fidelity Imports from the competition. "I constantly want to keep trying to innovate and keep us ahead," Jain told me in a recent conversation over Zoom.

Most of what I know about audio I learned from drag racing. That's where I first recognized the relationship between force, geometry, and sound. When I was barely out of high school, I began consciously picturing sounds as a symphony of forces operating in a Cartesian space. In retrospect, this "Cartesian picturing" was probably inspired by the descriptive geometry class I was taking at Wright junior college in Chicago, but I didn't think of that at the time.