LATEST ADDITIONS

To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, it is the "unknown unknowns" in audio that scare the pants off me at times. Synergistic's Ted Denney pulled me into his room. "Sit down. Listen to this."

I went into the Esoteric room to take a listen to the digital components that build on the performance of the excellent SA-60 universal player that graced our October cover. But my attention was drawn to a pair of elegant loudspeakers sporting the Esoteric name. The Mg20 floorstander ($8410/pair) and bookshelf Mg10 ($5500/pair plus stands) feature tweeters and woofers fabricated from the very light metal magnesium, which is said to have an optimal combination of stiffness and self-damping. It has not been previously used in speakers (other than in alloys) because it degrades with exposure to the air. However, Esoteric collaborated with a British company to develop an effective protective coating.

Well, not really. But the Thiel CS3.7 speakers set-up in the Denver Audio Designs room could be driven either by an all-Bryston system&mdash;the new BCD-1 CD player ($2395), BP26 preamp, and a pair 7B-SST monoblocks&mdash;or an all-Simaudio Moon system: SuperNova CD player P7 preamp, and W7 power amp. I listened to "Comfortably Numb" from Pink Floyd's <I>The Wall</I> with both set-ups and the differences were both audible and surprising. The Moon system favored David Gilmour's paradigmatic guitar solo; the Bryston the contribution of David Mason's drums and Roger Waters' bass. I could have lived with either.

I really enjoyed the mellow sound created by the USB-input Benchmark DAC 1 and the Studio Electric T3 loudspeakers. The speaker, with its 87dB sensitivity and 4 ohm impedance, is distinguished by the 6.5" broad-band drive-unit, encased in a stainless-steel sphere, that handles frequencies from 50Hz to 4kHz. Although you can see the diminutive silk-dome tweeter in the photo, the side-firing 8" woofer, which handles the single octave from 25&ndash;50Hz, is missing from view. Very, very nice.

Barrows Wurm urged me to "take a picture because it’s beautiful." This is PS Audio's as-yet-unnamed, forthcoming transport. A replacement for the aged PS Audio Lambda used in their RMAF rack display, it should cost under $2000. Other components included the Power Plant Premiere ($2195), GCC250 class-D Control Amplifier ($3495), and DL3 DAC ($995).

Ayre and Vandersteen are two companies whose products have achieved an enviable reputation for excellence. I was, in fact, blown away by my listening experience in the Ayre room at RMAF 2006, and looked forward to an equally enveloping experience this year.

I was impressed by the extremely full-range presentation of the VMPS RMD-60 loudspeaker ($9950/pair) paired with the VMPS Very Solid Subwoofer ($1850)&mdash;especially with the system's admirable bass control. Part of the credit goes to Bybee special-effect Golden Goddess AC cables and speaker bullets, Bolder Cable interconnects and cables, the rest to the Eastern Electric M156 monoblocks (160W into 8 ohms, $7000/pair, based on the EL 156 pentode tube), and Bolder's Statement Level Modded Squeezebox 3 ($1300). If The Bolder Cable Company’s display sounded this good with brand-new amps that were not yet broken in, I look forward to hearing it again once everything is fully ready to strut its stuff.