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Whenever I think of cone speaker systems, I think of three brand names: Snell, Thiel, and Vandersteen. There are many good loudspeakers and many good designers and manufacturers, but it is these three who, in my opinion, consistently produce the best cone loudspeaker systems. All three companies produce full-range systems, transparent systems, and systems which mate well with a wide range of equipment. Their systems can be owned and enjoyed for years. Long after some fad or special feature has given a competing designer brief notoriety, these are the products you turn back to for music.

One of the characteristic traits, I have found, that defines the loudspeaker designer is that they are loners—they seem to avoid one another's company as if on purpose. But if ever you sit down with a designer, all you need to do to open him up is to ask him what he feels to be important in loudspeaker performance.

"Why no review of the Ayre V-3?" queried Stephen Slaughter in July's "Letters" column, echoing several urgent posts to my e-mail address. Word of mouth on this remarkable 100Wpc amplifier was reaching fever pitch. Show reports over the last several years had sounded a consistent note—rooms that demoed with V-3s kept getting mentioned in "Best of Show" overviews. Naturally, this also meant that the pendulum had started its backward swing. "It's not really as good as people are saying," one WCES attendee confided in me. "That's why they won't give it to critics."

The Vandersteen 3A is a higher-end variation on the theme established by the company's first loudspeaker, the 2C. The latter is still available, though much updated into the current, highly popular 2Ce. A four-way design, the 3A has separate sub-enclosures for each drive unit; the whole affair is covered with a knit grille-cloth "sock" with wood trim end pieces. A rear-mounted metal brace allows the user to vary the tiltback—an important consideration for best performance with this loudspeaker.

Let's say you play a CD on a poor-quality CD transport and store the digital audio data in a massive computer memory. You then repeat the process, but this time play the CD into the memory from the finest CD transport extant (say, the Mark Levinson No.31). A week later you feed the two sets of data from the massive memory into a digital processor and listen to the music. Would the CD transports' sonic signatures be removed from the signal? Could you hear a difference between the transports a week later?

Is Krell risking its reputation? With the KAV-300i, an integrated amplifier that was originally envisaged as an export model, but for which home demand is clearly increasing, the Connecticut-based amplifier manufacturer is dabbling in low-cost territory. Previous Krell amplifiers have been known for their prodigious drive capability. Time and time again, it is found that the true measure of the bass performance of a big speaker isn't realized until a Krell power amplifier is brought into service. But how could an amplifier with a meaty 150Wpc specification and full remote control be built to sell for just $2350.

<B>CASSANDRA WILSON: <I>New Moon Daughter</I></B><BR> Cassandra Wilson, vocals; Brandon Ross, guitars; Kevin Breit, guitars, banjo, Irish bazouki; Charlie Burnham, violin; Lonnie Plaxico, bass; Dougie Bowne, drums; others.<BR> Blue Note CDP 8 32861 2 (CD only). Craig Street, prod.; Danny Kopelson, eng. TT: 61:59