No show report can be considered complete without at least one picture of an esoteric tube amplifier, and I wouldn't want to break with this tradition. The Wavac HE 833Ver 1.3 is the stripped-down version of the $350,000/pair SH-833 that was <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/tubepoweramps/704wavac">reviewed by Michael Fremer</A> and caused some readers apoplexy. This one is a mere $140,000/pair, the lower price reflecting less elaborate power supplies. A bargain, I'm telling you! I have no reason to believe that this would measure any better than the one reviewed by Mikey, but I must say that the sound of the Verity Lohengrins driven by these amps, using a dCS digital source, was&mdash;apart from some bass softness, which could even have been room-related-absolutely terrific, certainly one of the best sounds at the show. Go figure.

The most expensive system at the show, costing about US$200,000, was this all-McIntosh system, based on two of the company's three-chassis monoblock amplifiers, their four-chassis preamplifier, and their speakers with too many drive-units to count. (Okay, there are 110 per channel&mdash;40 tweeters, 64 midrange units, and six woofers!)

Imagine that, Michael Fremer send me a link that isn't political&mdash;and it's about records.

"Business, and art, went on like this for years, fleecing the rich.

<I>Meet the new boss:</I> Harman Specialty Group, the division of Harman Consumer Group responsible for the Mark Levinson, Revel, and Lexicon brands, has a new president. John Batliner is a 12-year veteran of the company, and, most recently, executive vice-president of HSG. Wayne Morris, current president of the company, will remain active until the end of April.

Last week, www.stereophile.com posted an article concerning Pollara, Inc.'s Canadian Recording Industry Association&ndash;commissioned <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/032006cria/">144-page report</A> on the downloading habits of Canadian music consumers. We reported that the University of Ottawa's Dr. Michael Geist interpreted the Pollara data <A HREF="http://michaelgeist.ca/component/option,com_content/task,view/id,1168/I…; than the polling group did, in particular noting his conclusion that people who had downloaded music had legally purchased more music than their counterparts who had never done so.