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KEF LS50 50th Anniversary Model loudspeaker ($1499.99/pair; reviewed by John Atkinson, December 2012, Vol.35 No.12 Review)

Jeez, man! This year, perhaps more than any other in the history of our competition, the Budget category was positively stacked with awesome contenders. Selecting only from our Runners-up, I could easily put together a totally badass little system that even Tinwoman's ex-husband couldn't dismiss (see this issue's "As We See It"). Imagine having either the Peachtree decco65 or the Croft Phono Integrated drive Pioneer's SP-BS22-LR…

KEF LS50 50th Anniversary Model loudspeaker ($1499.99/pair; reviewed by John Atkinson, December 2012, Vol.35 No.12 review)

This is the first time since . . . um . . . Hold on a sec. I have to consult the archives . . .

Well. Yes. This is the first time ever that our Budget Component of the Year has also been our Overall Component of the Year.

Have we mentioned that the components in our Budget category are awesome? Have we mentioned that the KEF LS50 is especially awesome?

The rave reviews began with the speaker's official debut…

Pioneer SP-BS22-LR loudspeaker ($129.99/pair; reviewed by Robert J. Reina and Stephen Mejias, July & September 2013, Vol.36 Nos. 7 & 9 Review)

In almost any other year, the Pioneer SP-BS22-LR loudspeaker would have easily walked away with the award for Budget Component of the Year. Despite an unusually strong group of contenders, it did well in the category, winning three first-place votes, including my own. That the Pioneer also stole four total votes, including one first-place vote (from [ahem] Bob Reina) in our Loudspeaker category, is further…

John Marks wrote about Parasound's Halo CD 1 player last month. The CD 1 is far less retrograde than it first appears. Yes, it looks to the past, and 30 years of perfect sound forever. Billions of CDs sold worldwide. The most successful audio format in history.

For $4500, the CD 1 plays CDs. Period. This includes recordable discs, CD-R and CD-RW. It also includes the CD layer of SACDs. It does not play MP3 files burned to CD-R. (It did play MP3s that I converted to AAC and burned to CD-R on my Mac mini.)

The…

Description: Single-box CD player with remote control.
Dimensions: 17.25" (437mm) W by 4.125" (105mm) H by 13.75" (350mm) D. Weight: 18 lbs (8.2kg).
Serial number of review sample: 01049.
Price: $4500.
Manufacturer: Parasound Products Inc., 2250 McKinnon Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94124. Tel: (415) 397-7100. Tel: (415) 397-0144. Web: www.parasound.com.

At a time when CD players have morphed into all-purpose digital source/preamplifiers, it seemed anachronistic for San Francisco–based Parasound to introduce a CD player in 2013 that was nothing but a CD player (footnote 3) However, the Halo CD 1 ($4500) is more than it seems. Its CD-ROM drive spins CDs at four times the usual speed, controlled by software from Holm Acoustics, so that every bit is read at least twice before being sent to a large RAM buffer. Playback is thus from memory, not directly from the spinning disc.

John Marks reviewed the Halo CD 1…

Pity the aging perfectionist, the happy diversions of whose younger days—washing records, oiling turntables, leveling equipment racks, cleaning tube pins—have now become hated chores. And this from a man who used to redo his Roksan Xerxes setup every few months, just for "fun."

Sad irony, then, that an interest in mono LPs and shellacs came upon me so late in life, for it is a field in which the experts, among whose number I count God, would have me use different stylus profiles, different tonearm setups, different…

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