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Clearaudio's house sound, whether from the affordable to the mortgage-busting, is one of refinement, lucidity, clarity, precision, and quietness. Which brings us to the Clearaudio Signature turntable, a joint offering from Clearaudio GmbH and its US distributor, Musical Surroundings.

That made me curious about how business is going for "traditional" distribution companies. That is, companies whose services typically include handling importation, warehousing, shipping, and working with retailer partners and dealers in other capacities. They support retail dealers with the inventory they need.

There's no accounting for taste, or so the truism goes. But arguing over preferences is exactly what many audiophiles do. Similarly, Stereophile reviewers are all about parsing and evaluating sound, and how a product looks isn't usually a big part of the equation. But I'll buck that convention and say that the radically shaped Estelon X Diamond Mk IIs aren't just the most visually sublime speakers I've laid eyes on; they ought to be part of the Cooper Hewitt Museum's permanent collection. Or MOMA's.

As Jim Austin wrote in this space in the December 2024 issue, following a medical procedure that he had in mid-October, he needed to take several weeks' leave to recuperate. He delegated the magazine's production to Managing Editor Mark Henninger, AVTech Editorial Director Paul Miller, and myself. The three of us worked with copy editor Linda Felaco and longtime art director Jeremy Moyler to produce the issue you hold in your hands.

As readers probably know, I was Stereophile's editor for 33 years until my retirement at the end of March 2019. However, they probably don't know that for the 10 years prior to my joining this magazine in 1986, I was first an editorial assistant, then Deputy Editor, then, in 1982, Editor of British magazine Hi-Fi News. (In a twist of fate, Paul Miller is now Hi-Fi News's Editor.)