Though a wild goose chase on the hottest day of Munich High End led me to AVM's across-the-street press conference just in time to discover that my only option was to stand in the doorway and sweat buckets or visit their MOC display later in the day, I eventually managed to photograph the innards of the new high-performance AVM CS 8.3 All-in-One (above). This baby offers Wi-Fi and network streaming with a CD player, DAC, class-A headphone amp, and a 250Wpc stereo amplifier.

CH Precision made a move equally smart and enlightening. Rather than devote endless minutes to introducing the new CH Precision C1.2 DAC/Controller, they harnessed many of their finest components together for a demo, which Jim Austin attended at a different time, in which Kevin Wolff compared the sound of various silver disc formats. Thanks to the wise music choices of Kevin Wolff and Roy Gregory, it was time well-spent.

Two years ago, Dan Roemer founded Perlisten loudspeakers. Just one year later, when the company went public, their inventory already included 25 different speaker models. I don't know about you, but I find that an astounding achievement.

Although I retired as Stereophile's editor-in-chief at the end of March 2019, I still have an ongoing connection with the magazine. As well as contributing reviews and measuring the audio products that are being reviewed, I prepare the magazine's content for republishing on its website. So when JansZen Audio's David Janszen contacted me about reviewing his Valentina P8 loudspeaker, I looked through my back issues to find reviews of JansZen speakers that could be posted.