LATEST ADDITIONS

On Saturday, April 12, John Atkinson and I fought our way through toll plazas, endless New Jersey traffic (is there any other kind?) and one really annoying traffic jam (but hey, it was only one!...)

Meridian Audio's co-founder Bob Stuart (above) journeyed to Audio High in Mountain View, CA on April 8 for the US unveiling of Meridian's new Special Edition DSP Digital Active Loudspeaker. The tantalizing time I spent listening to the top-of-the-line DSP8000SE ($80,000/pair) convinced me that Meridian's slogan, "Redefine the Possible," is anything but hype.

The vinyl reissue wave gets smarter by the day...

In the tornado of music and gear better known as, let’s say, audiophilisma, there are a lot of guilty pleasures.

OK, this isn't jazz, but it's such a crazy bargain, I couldn't resist shouting it from my rooftop: Decca Sound, The Analogue Years 54 albums (and bits of several more) from the Decca label's heyday of classical recording (the mid-'50s to late-'70s), pressed in a boxed set of 50 CDs, selling for $129.

In case you're too stunned to do the math, that's $2.58 per disc!

Were it my place to hand out awards for "The Most Forthright People in Audio," Michael Grace of Grace Design would be at the top of the list. Years ago, after I'd given stellar recommendations of Grace's 901 and m902 headphone-amplifier-DAC-line-stage models, I asked Grace if I could audition his full-rack–size, more fully featured m904 Stereo Monitor Controller. He told me that he didn't think that was necessary, because the m904's sound was extremely similar to the sound of the smaller m902—it just had a different feature set, and he believed that the additional features were not things that Stereophile readers were likely to need. That is the only case I can recall of a manufacturer's declining an offer of additional coverage in Stereophile.

Very few products exude opulence as do the Rowland amplifiers: the massive chassis, the gold finish, those sculpted handles on the front plate. For some strange reason the amp reminds me of Brutus Beefcake, the golden boy of professional wrestling, upon whom I stumbled one night while flipping through the myriad channels of our cable TV. The visual impact is the same: beefy. And then there's the price: also beefy.