The apotheosis—some would say the nadir—of country music suffering was reached in the Western Electric Sound System room put together by Déjà Vu Audio South. There, Vu Hoang (above) took the perilous step beyond Steely Dan's "Black Cow" (as in black sheep?) to Tennessee Ernie Ford's "Please Release Me" and The Carpenter's "This Masquerade." The superb sound got me through a succession of despair-laden tracks from Western Electric Sound's The Perfect Vocals CD that were titled—I kid you not—"These Days I Barely Get By" (Daryle Singletary), the aforementioned "This Masquerade," "The Man That Got Away" (Rosemary Clooney), "The Party's Over" (Nat King Cole), "Cry Me a River" (Jack McDuff), and the final track, "Only the Lonely" (Shirley Horn).

With this year's Consumer Electronics Show behind us, readers of our on-line show reports know the sad truth: that the largest industry-only technology show in North America attracted even fewer "high-performance" audio exhibits in 2019 than it did in 2018. The phrase "CES is dead" is now a mantra, and no one should be surprised if this year's poor showing proves to be the final nail in CES's coffin as far as high-end audio is concerned.

"48 pages of Audio Component Reviews" proudly proclaims the skyline on the cover of the March Stereophile, hitting newsstands, mailboxes, and tablets this week. DeVore Fidelity's Gibbon X graces the cover and is reviewed in depth inside by Jim Austin. DeVore's flagship speaker heads an impressive list of gear evaluated inside, from Shure, Spendor, Q Acoustics, KEF, Musical Fidelity, Rogue, Chord, Hegel, EMM Labs, Grandinote, Grado, Ortofon, Miyajima, Mutech, and Roon.

My first room, sponsored by House of Stereo, showcased Bob Carver's attractive Crimson 350 monoblock amplifiers ($9500/pair), a Bel Canto Black EX preamplifier/DAC ($18,000), Wolf Audio Systems' Alpha 3 music server with Flux Capacitor Clock ($6750), the striking KEF Blade Two speakers ($25,000/pair), new Audience Front Row cabling, and Stillpoints Aperture room-treatment panels.