No fewer than eight boxes, powered by six after-market power cables, comprise my current reference front-end. As much as separate boxes can afford superior isolation and provide far more room for visionary engineers to work their magic, the advantages of a single box, which requires a single power cable and far fewer after-market interconnects, are obvious.

Enter Simaudio's Moon 891 network player/preamplifier ($25,000; footnote 2). Also called a "streaming preamplifier,"it includes a DAC that converts PCM and MQA files up to 32/384 (with 24-bit files upconverted to 32-bit) and DSD files up to 256. It also includes what Simaudio company co-owner Costa Koulisakis describes as "a fully configurable" MC/MM phono stage. Both theoretically and practically, it's an ideal solution for someone with space and/or budget constraints.

I was fascinated by Herb Reichert's adventures with the KEF KC62 subwoofer, so I borrowed one. Beautifully engineered, contoured, and finished and chock-full of cutting-edge technology, it would be welcome in any room and easily integrated into any system. However, it struck me as not just small but miniaturized, like the meticulously functional samples made for the traveling salesmen of a century past. Since its two force-canceling 6.5" radiators were the same size as or smaller than the midrange drivers in my main speakers at the time, I had low expectations and returned it without comment. That was in 2021.

I asked for a pair of KEF KC92s in early 2024 in the hope that these two relatively small subs would improve my system. Like the KC62, the gloss white cube with radiused edges and white diaphragms is an aesthetic match to our redesigned room, and the KC92 ($1999.99) is chock-full of the same cutting-edge technology.