Friday, November 22–Sunday, November 24: The Hi-Fi Expo Sofia will be held at the Grand Hotel (1 Gurko Street, Sofia, Bulgaria). Over 250 high-end brands are expected to exhibit. Show manager Gergana Boeva reports that attendance has grown steadily over the show's first three years, attracting visitors from all throughout Bulgaria, as well as neighboring countries Serbia, Macedonia, Greece, and Romania. For more info, including a complete list of exhibitors, visit the show’s official website.

Tel Aviv’s Vaadat Charigim debut album The World is Well Lost is understated. Simple guitar strums emerge from a low-lying cloud of noise. Drums are pushed to the background while singer/guitarist Juval Haring’s steady stream of baritone strides then tumbles. His syllables topple across the band’s constant pulse. Haring sounds tired, but the never-ending push of The World is Well Lost won’t let him give up.

These are some of the most lusciously transparent-sounding headphones we've ever put on our ears, but we doubt that they will every enjoy much commercial success, for a couple of reasons.

The match between amplifier and speaker for single-ended operation is critical, which is why John Atkinson suggested I let Wavelength's Gordon Rankin lead when it came to choosing a speaker to partner his special-edition Cardinal amplifiers. If you're not talking roughly 92dB sensitivity and a fairly benign load, say no lower than 6 ohms, you're just not talking single-ended. That precluded running the Cardinals on the big Avalon Ascents with their lowish 86dB sensitivity (in spite of the relatively benign impedance curve).

After more discussion it became evident that the best speakers to use were the very ones Gordon employed in his own reference system—the Swiss-made Reference 3A Royal Master Control loudspeakers.