LATEST ADDITIONS

It's once again time for holiday-gift recommendations. These 12 go roughly in order of ascending price, from the very affordable to the rather unaffordable. To be included, a gift had to strike me as being exceptional in quality while also representing excellent value for money. But by "excellent value for money" I don't necessarily mean low-cost; I mean a high return on investment.

In order to get in the right mindset for the Dallas Wind Symphony's first ever Christmas CD, Horns for the Holidays, from Reference Recordings and recording engineer Keith O. Johnson, you have to understand something about Dallas.

Editor's Note: We were saddened earlier this month to learn of the death on December 7 of loudspeaker manufacturer Brian Cheney of VMPS, from prostate cancer. He contributed this review to Stereophile almost a quarter-century ago.—John Atkinson

The single-brand, self-contained music system has been popular at both ends of the price spectrum. A few hundred dollars at Macy's gets you a rack chock-full of offshore electronics, big speaker boxes, one plug (for the AC outlet), and—bingo!—instant music. Or, call your local Cello specialist and spend 60 times that amount, to roughly the same effect. Now Yamaha, a heavyweight in things from three-wheelers to VCRs, offers this imposing piece of satin-black furniture to the audio enthusiast willing to invest more than the usual amount of effort in order to hear his favorite tunes.

Mark Levinson founded Mark Levinson Audio Systems in 1972, but sold it, and the right to market audio gear under his own name, to Madrigal Audio Laboratories, then owned by the late Sandy Berlin, in 1984. Harman International bought Madrigal in 1995. As well as Mark Levinson, Harman's Luxury Audio Group now also includes digital processing pioneer Lexicon, speaker manufacturer Revel, and JBL Synthesis. The Mark Levinson brand is now headquartered in Elkhart, Indiana, at the Crown Audio facility, another Harman-owned brand. The No.53 ($25,000 each; $50,000/pair) is Mark Levinson's first new Reference series monoblock since the No.33, way back in 1993, when Madrigal owned the company. Like other Mark Levinson products, it is manufactured at an independent facility in Massachusetts.

When I first saw Anthem Statement's M1 at the 2011 CEDIA Expo, it was a bolt from the blue. Happening on this flat, black slab of an amplifier lying on a display table or bolted to a wall, reminded me of the appearance of the iconic monolith in Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey. The M1's dimensional ratios are not 1²:2²:3², and there are many other one-rack-unit amps—yet, like the monolith on the moon, the M1 was in such striking contrast to everything else in its environment that it demanded attention and reflection.

There are two things that don't have to mean anything; one is music and the other is laughter.—Immanuel Kant

We can dance until we die.—Katy Perry

I'd always figured I'd wind up with a girl who loved the Mets, hated cats, and had grown up on Sonic Youth and the Pixies—a female version of me, more or less. What could be better?

Was my vision misguided? Maybe. Narcissistic? Probably. A symptom of low self-esteem?

Hmm . . .

With all the affordable loudspeakers I've written about in recent years, I couldn't remember the last time I reviewed one from the revered British firm Bowers & Wilkins. When I searched www.stereophile.com, I learned that the last time a B&W speaker had graced my listening room's carpet was more than seven years ago: the DM603 S3, reviewed in the August 2005 issue. I thought it was time to revisit the brand, and as the DM603 S3 was a floorstanding speaker, this time a bookshelf model seemed in order.