In a 2014 profile in the New Yorker, Paul Elie, author of the book Reinventing Bach, wrote, "There it was again: the stinging treble, the spooky overtones, the strings snapping and booming under his hands—the sound of a Tele being played as skillfully and exuberantly as it can be played."

The musician in question was Jim Campilongo . . .

One of the joys of reviewing audio reproduction equipment is discovering a little-known product that provides an extraordinary level of performance and musical satisfaction at an affordable price. These components, sometimes made in a garage, reflect the designer's single-minded zeal for musical accuracy, not the sometime corporate mentality of meeting a price point or catering to the latest fad.

Classé Audio's DR-3 once again brings to the fore the issues of class-A vs class-AB, weighty vs small and efficient, and brute-force expensive vs clever and inexpensive.

A well-worn, if unproven, audiophile rule of thumb says that a small, quick amplifier will sound better than a very powerful one. Among low-powered amps, those that operate in "pure" class-A are thought to be sonically superior. Pure class-A means the amplifier must run a constant high bias (more than one ampere), so the output devices never turn off.

Specific Live Streams (Scroll down for ongoing series):

• Thursday, May 7 10pm EDT: The Noe Music Listening Club features composer Jake Heggie discussing and performing his music and that of his music heroes. Sign up here.

• The Metropolitan Opera streams live performances for 25 hours. This week’s schedule is:

  May 6 Saariaho’s L’Amour de Loin
  May 7 Strauss’s Capriccio
  May 8 Puccini’s La Bohème
  May 9 The Opera House
  May 10 Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana / Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci.

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