LATEST ADDITIONS

For the fourth year in a row, the Home Entertainment Show was the venue for a raffle organized by analog specialty distributor Musical Surroundings. Shown here with the grand prize, a Pathos Classic One integrated amplifier is winner Stanley Moore (center), with Musical Surroundings' Garth Leerer (left) and <I>Stereophile</I>'s Michael Fremer, who pulled the winning entries from a box in the time-honored, double-blind manner. Our congratulations to all the winners.

I walked into Music Direct's room and asked Bes Nievera, "What's new?"

Just got back from the John Atkinson/Bob Reina/Allen Perkins jazz trio concert and it was great! Especially when you consider that these guys only play together once a year at the HE shows.

The beautiful Ascendo loudspeaker, imported by airline pilot and audio enthusiast Darren Censullo of Avatar Acoustics

Can a show report have too many pictures of oil-cooled tube amplifiers? I don't
think so.

Canadian Totem Acoustic specializes in manufacturing loudspeakers that are small is size and price but big in sound. Perhaps no speaker of theirs exemplifies this better than the cheapest model in the line: the $450/pair Dreamcatcher. Here’s designer Vince Bruzzese with the Dreamcatcher.

Flying Mole Electronics is the whimsical name of a company that makes some compact, relatively inexpensive, and, from what I heard in their room, very good-sounding audio electronics. How compact? Well, just look at the picture of their CA-S3 integrated amp, with a CD box next to it for scale. The amplifier is described as "proprietary bi-phase PWM," with an output of 20Wpc, and sells for $850. The larger&mdash;but still compact&mdash;CA-S10 ($1500) puts out 100Wpc. Both are claimed to have a tube-like sound. The little CA-S3 did a good job driving both a custom system based on JBL components and a more conventional bookshelf-sized speaker from Von Schweikert.