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It is often thought that first impressions can have a lasting effect. Can you recall your first audio impression?

Making good on a promise <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10923/">reported</A&gt; back in December of last year, <A HREF="http://www.threshold-audio.com">Threshold Audio</A> has returned the Threshold brand to the market with a new stereo power amplifier.

Last week, <A HREF="http://www.asahi-kasei.co.jp/akm/index.htm">Asahi Kasei Microsystems Semiconductor</A> (AKM), which supplies audio ICs for professional and consumer products, announced its line of Direct Stream Digital (DSD) Digital-to-Analog converters capable of supporting both Super Audio CD (SACD) Direct-Stream Bigital and 24-bit/192kHz LPCM DVD-Audio formats.

As John Atkinson puts it, Meridian usually does things "their way," putting amps and DACs inside of speakers in an all-out attempt at "re-creating the original soundfield, no matter how many speakers and channels it takes to do it right." But as Atkinson finds, the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//digitalsourcereviews/367/">Meridian 518 Digital Audio Processor</A> might be the company's most perverse product: "The $1650 518 offers digital inputs and outputs only. It can digitally perform gain and source selection; it can change data with one digital word length to data with another; and it does all these things with 72-bit internal precision." So JA asks, "How does the 518 fit within a conventional high-end audio system?" Read along as he figures it all out.

In 1991, British loudspeaker manufacturer <A HREF="http://www.bwspeakers.com">B&W</A&gt; celebrated its 25th birthday with the introduction of the John Bowers Silver Signature loudspeaker (see <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/272/">review</A&gt;). Not the largest or most expensive speaker on the company chart, the John Bowers Silver Signature, named after the company's late founder, still prompted John Atkinson to write that its performance was the best he'd heard for its modest size in his listening room.

<B>TONY BENNETT/BILL EVANS: <I>The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album</I></B><BR><FONT SIZE="2">Tony Bennett, vocals; Bill Evans, piano<BR>JVC JVCXR-0208-2 (CD). 1975/2001. Helen Keane, prod.; Don Cody, eng.; Akira Taguchi, XRCD2 prod., Alan Yoshida, XRCD2 mastering eng. AAD?. TT: 35:09<BR>Performance <B>*****</B><BR>Sonics <B>****</B></FONT>

Listening to multichannel music with the new SACD and DVD-Audio players has produced equal parts contentment and consternation. The contentment is easy to understand: Here are media that can reproduce music with better-than-CD resolution and, for the first time, re-create a believable illusion of the entire acoustic space in which the performance was recorded. The consternation is related to those same two issues: 1) maintaining the resolution and tonal balance relished with high-quality stereo, and 2) making the psychological transition from two-channel to multichannel listening. Both of these are barriers to audiophile acceptance of multichannel music.