LATEST ADDITIONS

I didn't know what this was when I picked it up. The jacket offers no band name or album title. Kind of like the Park Tavern on West Side Avenue in Jersey City; there's no way of knowing it's the Park Tavern unless you walk in, and once you're in, you never really want to leave.

I was flipping through the current issue of <i>Rolling Stone</i> (RS 1068/1069, with a mustachioed Brad Pitt on the cover) and stopped at their "Rock & Roll Gift Guide."

Though it seemed to have been fairly well-scavenged by the time we arrived on Saturday afternoon, the ARChive of Contemporary Music's <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/926_new_stock/">Winter Record and CD Sale</a> held many great treasures.

One might argue that Thiel Audio's 3-series loudspeakers are the audio equivalents of BMW's 3-series sports cars: relatively affordable, but 100% about performance. Thiel has made bigger, more expensive loudspeakers than the 3s, as well as smaller, less expensive models&#151;but the iconic Thiels are the 3s.

It's been a tumultuous year for many around the world, but the audiophile keeps listening to music and searching for better sound. What is your pick for the most important audio development this year, be it a technology, trend, or component?

One night last week, a bout of channel surfing brought me to the Grammy nomination concert. Not the Grammys mind you, that’s in February, but a televised special to announce the nominations. And only the nominations of the celebrity&#151;driven stuff like Best New Artist which is when LL Cool J, who was hosting, walked across the front of the auditorium and ask the Jonas Brothers how it felt to be nominated. As the bile rose in my throat I changed the channel. I found it to be very strange that this was proceeded by a showing of the venerable 1964 stop motion animation special, <I>Rudolph, The Red&#151;Nosed Reindeer</I> which is narrated by Burl Ives and contains a couple of indelible toon icons in the prospector Yukon Cornelius and a Yeti called a “bumble.”

Naim Audio's Naim Classics label has begun releasing recordings in Dual Pack format that contains both a Red-Book CD and 24-bit/88.2kHz audio DVD for $24.95. The exclusive US distributor of Naim's high resolution titles will be <A HREF="http://www.premieremusic.net">www.premieremusic.net</A&gt;.