LATEST ADDITIONS

This is a somewhat different twist on other "Recommended Recordings" lists you may have read. Rather than a selection of all-time (or year's) best recorded performances---which are common enough---or a list of audiophile reference recordings---common enough in the audiophile press, at any rate, and a good thing, too---this is a list of stereo recordings that are both musically and sonically impeccable---in other words, the best, the tops, to die for---each item briefly described in a hundred or so words (except for JA, LA, and JGH, whose couplets runneth over).

Got a garage, a router, and a band saw? Poof! You're a speaker designer. How many audiophiles dream of buying some raw drivers, some MDF and veneer, building a baffle, soldering up a computer-designed crossover, and assembling the Shmendrick Audio 2001? Plenty.

In a press conference held January 9 at the 1998 Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Classic Records announced the debut of the Classic 24/96 digital audio disc "DAD" series of audio-only DVD-Videos. (Video information is included on the disc but represents only a tiny fraction of the data space.)

NAD has announced what they claim is the world's first true digital audio power amplifier directly linking a CD player to a loudspeaker. As explained by Peter Lyngdorf, chairman of NAD Electronics and TACT Audio, the Millennium "is not a conventional combination of D/A converter and analog amplification.