LATEST ADDITIONS

"Business, and art, went on like this for years, fleecing the rich.

If you're an audiophile, that probably means you have tons of music that needs proper storage. So how do you do it? Do you have racks, shelves, boxes, drawers, or do you put it all on a hard disk and stick the original discs in the garage?

<I>Meet the new boss:</I> Harman Specialty Group, the division of Harman Consumer Group responsible for the Mark Levinson, Revel, and Lexicon brands, has a new president. John Batliner is a 12-year veteran of the company, and, most recently, executive vice-president of HSG. Wayne Morris, current president of the company, will remain active until the end of April.

The German Canton line of speakers has a new flagship: the Vento Reference 1 DC ($30,000). Looking closely at these beautifully finished speakers, I noticed that in the back panel of each the speaker there were about a dozen signatures. Could it be that some FSI visitors have been engaging in some audiophile graffiti? No. These are the signatures of the speaker's designers, including Canton's chief engineer Frank G&#246;bl, and the people who built these specific speakers. I really like that.

Linn Products has moved in a major way into multichannel and multi-room systems, but some new products demo'd at FSI showed that they haven't abandoned the part of their customer base that just wants to listen to music in high-quality two-channel, in one room. For these folks, Linn had the Majik line: CD player ($4250), preamp with MM/MC phono stage ($3800), and 100Wpc amplifier ($3100). Very nice, well-balanced sound through Espek speakers ($5800), with an LP12 phono source.

Fidelio Records, based in Montreal, has an impeccable&mdash;um&mdash;record of producing CDs and SACDs of the highest technical and artistic quality. Their latest SACD of the Nemesis percussion ensemble, played back on Verity Parsifal Ovation speakers ($24,000), with a gaggle of Nagra electronics and Esoteric SACD player, made one of the best sounds I heard at the show. Fidelio recording engineer Ren&#233; Laflamme did a comparison for me of the SACD and the backup analog master (Nagra open-reel), and I have to admit I preferred the clarity of the SACD.

John Meyer's Newform Research's ribbon/cone hybrids have been around for a while, and, like Bruce Edgar's Edgarhorns, every revision I've heard sounded better than the previous one. The latest R645v3 has undergone some very significant changes: the midbass/bass box is now sealed rather than ported, with additional bracing and damping (Corian top), and the result is much-improved blending with the ribbon and greater transparency throughout the lower midrange. Sold factory direct, $3484 delivered makes the R645v3 an astonishing bargain in today's marketplace. The partnering electronics undoubtedly made a major contribution to the fine sound of the Newforms, and are interesting in their own right: they signal the return to the business of Richard Dolan, whose PM1 preamp was highly regarded in the 1990s. The Newforms were driven by Dolan Audio SMM-120 monoblocks (US$11,500/pair), with a prototype line stage (about US$7500), Shanling CD player source.