"We want the Beatles! We want the Beatles!" the packs of teenage girls screamed as they chased Herb Reichert down the halls of the Park Lane Hotel, grabbing for his still-ample hair. Stereophile's Fab Four—Ken Micallef, Jim Austin, Herb Reichert, and myself—hit the halls early for the first day of the New York Audio Show.

A fun fixture of every audio show is the hanging badge-on-a-lanyard we all acquire at the registration table. I'm glad for these things—at least the large-print editions—because they help me overcome the steady embarrassment I feel because I can't remember any names. If you know me, I am sure you have talked to me while I've stared at your belly trying hopelessly to memorize your name.

I could ride my bike there from Brooklyn. What's not to like?

This review and its companion that will follow next week spotlight two very different and equally recommendable recordings of contemporary music with a common theme: the quest for freedom and justice in perilous times. This week's special, Lament/Witches' Sabbath (New Focus Recordings), due out today (November 9), contains four works by Mathew Rosenblum, an East Coast composer who occasionally ventures into forbidden territory as he blends percussion, acoustic instruments, electronics, voice and microtonal elements in extremely visceral, moving, and sometimes gut-wrenching ways.

By far the most complicated of the three preamps i review in this issue in terms of facilities offered, NAD's "Monitor Series" 1300 ($398) provides two buffered tape loops, an external processor loop (which can also be used as a third tape-recorder loop), a headphone output, a "null" switch, switchable bass equalization to extend the low-frequency range of small loudspeakers, and treble and bass controls, each with a choice of three turnover frequencies: 3kHz, 6kHz, 12kHz, and 50Hz, 125Hz, 250Hz, respectively.