LATEST ADDITIONS

As I wrote in our first video report from the 2018 CES, held January 9-12 in Las Vegas, NV, for our video coverage we purchased Sennheiser's "Ambeo" binaural system, which mounts microphones on the outer surfaces of a pair of earbuds. In this report, John Atkinson listens to some of his recordings in the DeVore Fidelity and dCS/D'Agostino rooms and offers his thoughts on what he had just heard. He also talks to exhibitors about their thoughts on the show and offers some final comments before heading to a bar for a well-earned beer. But first, John Quick of dCS and Rob Darling of Roon Labs find themselves in a bar featuring a mechanical bull. Will they try to ride it?

Given that David Chesky has just followed the digital release of his Second and Third Piano Concertos with a January 13 performance of his Violin Concerto No.3 by Rachel Barton Pine and the Lancaster Symphony Orchestra, some might say he's on a roll. Others, listening to the pace of two new piano concertos inspired what liner notes writer Harold Lester calls "the chaos of [Chesky's] adopted New York City," might instead think "roller coaster."

MBL's Corona C15 monoblock has been one of my amplification references since I reviewed it in 2014, and as I've been reviewing DACs the past year or so, it was high time I spent time with one of the German company's digital products.

"Black shiny products are tough to photograph at shows, so trust me when I say the new N31 is dripping with gorgeousness not reflected in this photo," wrote Jon Iverson in his report from the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show. And when I unpacked my review sample of the Noble Line N31 ($15,400), I was indeed taken with its looks.