For 15 years, lovers of low-power amplifiers have clamored for more and better high-efficiency loudspeakers (footnote 1). For 15 years, their choices have remained limited to products with varying combinations of colored sound, poor spatial performance, basslessness, high cost, and cosmetics that range from the weak to the repulsive.

It’s that kind of place. Despite it’s economic distress, the empty streets, the half–assed Bourbon Street mess that Beale Street has become (goddamned is it bad!), and what seems to be a full on crime wave in certain parts of town, in Memphis you cannot keep the music out of your head. It may be the wash over that comes from being so close to the Delta, but I couldn’t keep, “Walking in Memphis” by Marc Cohen or the words to one of John Hiatt’s greatest songs, (and that my friends is truly saying something because John Hiatt has written a shitload, okay, like 25 genuinely great songs) “Memphis in the Meantime” out of my head.

<I>“If we could just get off a that beat little girl
Maybe we could find the groove
At least we can get a decent meal
Down at the rendez&#150;vous”</I>

Needless to say, I wasn’t in town half an hour and I was at the Rendezvous (www.hogsfly.com), down in the basement as it were, wolfing down chopped chicken, pickles, big hunks of cheddar cheese, cole slaw with vinegar and cumin, sweet tea, fries, red beans and rice (laced with sliced mushrooms?) and the best ribs I have ever tasted. The best. All covered in that secret shake mixture of spices that makes this place world famous. My God it was good. It’s so damned nice to find a “legendary” restaurant that actually lives up, or in this case exceeds its billing.

Right from the start&#151from the very first musical moment&#151it’s the gorgeous, spacious sound we’ve grown to love from Espers’ Greg Weeks and his <a href="http://www.myspace.com/hexhamhead">Hexham Head Studio</a> in Philadelphia. While <i>III</i>’s rather straightforward instrumentation (churning, scintillating acoustic guitars, appropriately warm, round bass, and steady, impactful drums) marks a subtle departure from the doumbek and dholak of <i><a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/musicroom/facethemusic/042706espers/">II</a…;, the quality of sound is no less complex or stirring. We hear the sounds of wood and brass meeting with flesh and skin, of bow hair as it courses along cello strings, of cello moan and sigh, of the most delicious fuzzed-out guitar placed in realistic, three-dimensional space&#151all with such <i>truth</i>, such <i>blood</i>, such respect of momentum and flow, that we are fooled into thinking that the very space around us is, in fact, growing, exhaling, beating.

Espers (from left): Meg Baird, Helena Espvall, Greg Weeks, Brooke Sietinsons. Photo: Daniel Coston.

These days, it seems you can't shake a stick without hitting a USB DAC, but Ayre's QB-9 ($2500) is something a little different. Ayre's marketing manager, Steve Silberman, was adamant: "The QB-9 <I>isn't</I> a computer peripheral. It makes computers real high-end music sources."