Last spring, when I was listening to Bowers & Wilkins's 802 D3 Diamond loudspeakers, Classé Audio offered a pair of their new Sigma Mono amps for the review. They claimed a synergy—B&W's D3 series had been developed using Classé amps. I declined, only because using unfamiliar amplifiers would add to my assessment an uncontrolled variable. Now that the B&Ws have settled in—three 802 D3 Diamonds across the front, two 804 D3s at the back—it seemed time to hear what they could do when driven by the Classés.

The Muraudio PX2 ($US79,500/pair) was introduced at TAVES 2016, and sounded very impressive indeed…

When Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2016 (RMAF)—the hot hi-fi rager of the Wild West—came to its close, I had one more official stop to make: YG Acoustics.

Located just 30 minutes from Denver in the city of Arvada, is the YG Acoustics facility—including the factory, showroom, and offices. Much like most factories, the exterior is an unassuming vanilla casing, with no evidence of the flavorful, no-compromise, high-tech, high-end speakers living (and being brought to life) inside.

Now in its fifth year, the UK-based Chester Group's New York Audio Show opens to the public this Friday, November 4, at 1pm in the Park Lane Hotel overlooking Central Park. (Friday hours are until 7pm.) The three-day show, a smaller version of what has come before, promises 30 exhibit rooms, half of which are "oversized," two ballroom-sized exhibits, and two more ballrooms filled with exhibits and vendors selling merchandise. All-in-all, the event, whose one-day visitor pass costs $30 ($26 in advance, with significant savings for multi-day passes) promises almost 110 brands.

Does marketing work? You betcha!

In honor of the 225th anniversary of Mozart's death at the age of 35, Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, and the Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation have together issued a whopping 24-lb box of recordings and commentary called Mozart 225. Billed as the most complete and authoritative edition of Mozart recordings ever assembled, the $480 box, in an edition limited to 15,000 copies worldwide, includes 200 CDs with 240 hours of music.