LATEST ADDITIONS

<B>Foreword by Sam Tellig: </B>I wanted to like the Sci Fi Teslas. I originally heard these speakers at Dave Wolf's store in New Canaan, Connecticut&mdash;no longer in business, alas.

During the time of the Native-American Comanches, a young brave had to undergo many trials by fire before he earned the respect of the tribe's adults. He was violently beaten by the men, humiliated by the women, and forced to endure physical torture such as the slow flaying of the foreskin with smoldering pine saplings drawn from the fire. Alienated from the tribe, exiled until he proved his manhood, he had to survive on wriggling cream-colored larvae and infrequent rainwater. Legend speaks of these Indian youths, dehydrated and disoriented, crawling around on their hands and knees and baying like wolves at the moon.

There are certain manufacturers for whom every new product implies the promise of countless modifications, Usually a month or so apart, culminating inevitably in a version so far removed from the original that it must be assigned a new model designation&mdash;usually a letter suffix ranging from A, to D. By the time E is envisioned, another CE Show is approaching, so the decision is made to give the unit an exterior facelift and a brand-new model number. Presto! A new product for CES.

In my e-mail inbox, I saw a new item: "FedEx Shipment Notification."<br>
Spam? I wondered.

One clich&#233; that never loses its aptness is "end of an era." And it certainly applies to the passing on October 29 of SME’s founder, Alastair Robertson-Aikman. While there remain a handful of survivors from the original "golden age" of audio, few of them were still active in 2006. AR-A, as he was known to friends and staff, wasn’t simply still active: he was still tweaking his sound system and planning new products.

Huckleberry serenaded me for my birthday. Figures that a showboat like him would play a Les Paul.

Bagheera, in basic black, always looks ready for a party, but for my birthday, she got <I>all</I> dolled up.