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Even more recently, I dipped my toe into Dolby Atmos, which made it necessary to lash up at least four more channels. That was a big problem, since neither JRiver nor Roon can support and sync more than one output device at a time, and the multichannel DACs I already owned tap out at eight channels.

I turned to the Arvus H2-4D Renderer, which offers 16 channels of digital output over AES3 and 16 channels of balanced-analog output. This worked, but piping everything through the Arvus meant forswearing DSP, including DiracLive. I really needed a DAC with at least 12 channels.

The Merging+Hapi has been around for years...

In my house, I have a little stack of CDs that I bring out once a year—for Christmas Eve and Christmas day. I then put them away on the shelf until the following year. This annual Festival of Christmas Albums is met with varying degrees of pleasure and resignation by the family members present; listening is non-negotiable, though we may not make it through all of them. Once in a while a new Christmas album will make the cut and be added to the stack, but not every year.

At the risk of writing hyperbole, I will state that Audio Video 2023, held October 27–29, 2023, was unlike any other audio show I've attended. At no other audio show have I encountered so many young people, so many women, and so many brands unknown in the United States. Not even in Munich have I encountered crowds as dense as those that mobbed the show's biggest site, the National Stadium of Poland, PGE Narodowy, on Saturday. A press badge counts for nothing when you're 11" short of 6'3", attempting to see far enough into a huge room to spy a seat. Any seat.

Happily, the majority of attendees at the Warsaw Show did not come to yap away about the stock market or the speaker they built three decades ago. People came to listen, and they respected others who came to listen. Even in the largest rooms, with crowds of some 150 people, it was possible to hear music and learn from presenters' unamplified raps.

"In a recent Stereophile review, the MoFi Electronics SourcePoint 8 Loudspeakers, masterfully designed by Andrew Jones, have captured the attention of audiophiles with their exceptional sound quality. Hailed as 'a revelation in audio fidelity,' these speakers showcase Jones' expertise in a compact yet powerful design. A reviewer observed, 'The SourcePoint 8 doesn't just play music; it breathes life into every track.'"

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Auditioned with the bloody conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East as a backdrop, these riveting, superbly recorded performances confront listeners with the inescapable ravages of war. They also open a window on the shifting political convictions of one of the greatest composers to emerge during the early years of the Soviet Republic, Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich.