LATEST ADDITIONS

New York–based dealer New Life Audio teamed up with California distributor Hear This—representing WestminsterLab and Von Schweikert Audio—to build a system around those two brands. On a Bach Violin Concerto, played with characteristic sweetness—if not period authenticity—by Belgian violinist Arthur Grumiaux, both tone and texture came through with striking fidelity.

Once again, my time in the Vandersteen room provided copious pleasure. Plus, it came in two installments: listening time in the inner sanctum, and chat time with Richard Vandersteen and Brad O’Toole in the entrance chamber. If that sounds rather exotic for a two-room hotel suite, you needed to be there.

Some years ago, I visited the home of a well-known American author who happened to be an audiophile. His cramped, dimly lit listening room contained a tube amp, a DAC, and a pair of inexpensive floorstanding speakers surrounded by what looked like a museum of audio tweaks. I recall a scarecrow-like contraption with swiveling wood-and-metal arms that rearranged magnetic fields, assorted boxes and panels that promoted "quantum proton alignment," mysterious dots covering the walls like a rash, and nearly a dozen things dangling from the speakers' binding posts that were supposed to do something I can't remember. The author had an almost mystical belief in the power of these objects to bend the laws of physics and told me that he'd spent more on them than on the rest of the system, because in his opinion they were more important to the overall sound.

The thing that surprised me most is that despite the tweaks—or maybe because of them—his hi-fi sounded pretty terrific.