LATEST ADDITIONS

Thursday–Friday, November 19–20, 4–8pm; Saturday, November 21, 10am–3pm: Signature Audio Video (126 Iber Road, Stittsville, ON) will hold their 2015 Technology Expo.

Friday–Saturday, November 20–21, 10am–8pm: Electronic Concepts (174 Route 17 North, Rochelle Park) will host a special event to celebrate the launch of the new Bowers & Wilkins 800 D3 Series loudspeakers. Also on display will be B&W's legendary Nautilus loudspeakers. Other featured gear will include Classé electronics and AudioQuest cables.

Oscar Pettiford is one of the least-remembered great jazz musicians, a pioneer of bebop who played bass with the top bands of the 1940s, switched to cello after an arm injury at the end of the decade, then plowed on at the top of his game till he died in 1960. The cello never ascended to the mantle of standard jazz instruments (which may account for Pettiford's unjust obscurity), but Erik Friedlander stands as its greatest champion, so no wonder that, for his 18th album as a leader, at the age of 55, he's finally recorded a tribute to the master.

YG's cute Carmel 2 speaker is featured on the new issue's cover and is exhaustively reviewed by John Atkinson inside. But the meat in our December issue is our annual "Products of the Year," where the magazine's writers and editors vote for the products that impressed them the most in the past year. There are some surprises, not the least of which is the great showing made by some very affordable components.

But wait, there's more...

At some point within the last few years of his life, the late Ken Shindo designed an outboard phono preamplifier—a decision perhaps made inevitable by his earlier decision to answer popular demand with line-only versions of the Aurieges and the more upmarket Vosne-Romanee preamps...

The EAD DSP-1000 III is housed in a 2.5" high, U-shaped chassis with a brushed-aluminum front panel. The cover is made of solid, 1/10"-thick steel with a nice "powder" finish, giving the unit an expensive feel. A pushbutton standby switch sitting below a green LED indicator sits at the panel's left. Even when set to Off, power is maintained for the decoder's circuits, but the digital inputs and analog outputs are muted. To the right, three pushbuttons allow selection of one of the three digital input sources (TosLink, 750 ohm coaxial, or glass optical interface). Like the EAD DSP-7000 unit reviewed by J. Gordon Holt and Steven Stone (Vol.18 Nos.1 & 5), the DSP-1000 accepts any of the three sampling rates: 32kHz, 44.1kHz, or 48kHz. Toward panel center is a lock light that illuminates when a digital data link is established. HDCD decoding occurs automatically whenever an HDCD disc is played, causing the front-panel HDCD indicator to light. No remote is available for this decoder.

Tricker tweets? I know, Halloween has already come and gone, but I just had to use that because this little speaker has a trick about its tweeter. The Spectrum Audio 108cd is constructed of ¾" MDF for the baffle and ½" MDF for the sides, with a very–high-quality black ash vinyl covering all the way around. (A brown ash finish is also available.) Rapping on the cabinet results in a hollow bonk, rather than a solid thud.