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When I discovered Blondie's breakthrough album, Parallel Lines, those lines filled my teenage mind with jealous fantasies. Whoever the object of Deborah Harry's desire was—I knew it was probably Chris Stein, her bandmate and romantic partner—was too lucky to walk the earth. Possibly, Stein wrote the lines for her, and she willingly sung them to him. In a…

AcousTech The Big Record Brush: $36.95 With grounding wire: $52.99
This large-handled brush has soft bristles of both natural hairs and conductive synthetic fibers, and makes dusting LPs nearly foolproof. The 5.5"-wide bristle area easily spans the width of any LP's grooved area. Version with ground wire ($52.99) does "a pretty effective job of dissipating static electricity," Mikey said. (Vol.31 No.9)

Acoustical Systems Arche 5D headshell, Regular: $695
Acoustical Systems Arche 5D headshell, Lite: $795
Acoustical Systems Arche 5D headshell,…

Editor's Note: SACD and DVD-A player ratings are based on how they sound with their respective hi-rez media, not CD.

A+

Antipodes K50: $17,500
The made-in-New Zealand K50 works with Roon as both server and player, Roon as a server with Squeezelite or HQ Player as the player, or Squeeze as a server and Squeezelite as the player. It offers Ethernet, USB, I2S, AES3, and S/PDIF outputs, though the manufacturer doesn't recommend using USB. JVS found that the Squeeze server and Squeezelite apps were not as user-friendly as Roon, but using them to…

Editor's Note: The sound of any particular CD transport/digital processor combination will be dependent on the datalink used-see "Bits is Bits?" by Christopher Dunn and Malcolm Omar Hawksford, Stereophile, March 1996, Vol.19 No.3 (WWW). Unless mentioned, processors are limited to 32/44.1/48kHz sample rates. To be included in Class A+, a digital processor must be capable of handling DSD or 24/96 LPCM data.

A+

Benchmark Media Systems DAC3 HGC: $2199 ★
Benchmark's DAC3 HGC—the last three letters designate this as the audiophile version, with a…

A

Devialet Phantom I 108 dB: $3200 each (available in 2 finishes) ★
In a setting as idyllic as it was ideal, at least in a commercial sense—the samples were auditioned in an apartment on the rue des Ursulines in Paris, the city of their manufacture—Devialet's top-of-the-line Phantom powered speaker whetted JCA's appetite, and on returning home to his superior-sounding NYC apartment he requested review loaners. There, auditioned with Devialet's Tree stands ($375 each), Dialog dedicated router ($329), and Remote remote volume control ($149), a stereo…

A+

exaSound s88: $7599
See "Digital Processors."

A

exaSound Sigma Streamer: $750
To those who already own an exaSound DAC, the exaSound Sigma Streamer offers an affordable and tidy alternative to the company's PlayPoint digital-source components. The simple Sigma, which streams via wired or wireless LAN, is a Roon-ready endpoint, can function as an HQPlayer network audio adapter, and is compatible with UPnP, OpenHome, and AirPlay protocols. It supports PCM to 32/384, DSD to DSD256, and MQA (full unfold). KR found the Sigma to be "…

Editor's Note: Apart from the Bespoke, CAT, and Shindo, all the Class A preamplifiers offer balanced inputs and outputs. And unless noted, the preamplifiers listed do not have phono stages.

A

Audio Research Reference 6SE: $18,000
An updated version of the discontinued Ref 6, with changes in capacitors and wiring, the fully balanced, tubed '6SE impressed JVS, who noted that when he installed the Ref 6SE in his system, his speakers "poured forth some of the most polished, transparent, and arresting sound" he'd heard from his system. Longer-…

Editor's Note: Because of the disparity between typical tube and solid-state "sounds," we have split Class A for separate power amplifiers into two subclasses. Nevertheless, even within each subclass, Class A amplifiers differ sufficiently in character that each will shine in an appropriate system. Careful auditioning with your own loudspeakers is therefore essential. Except where stated, output powers are not the specified powers but rather those we measured into an 8 ohm resistive load. All amplifiers are stereo models, except where designated.

A…

A

ampsandsound Bigger Ben: $5600
This single-input, single-ended, triode-wired, no-negative-feedback tube amplifier drives both loudspeakers and headphones. It offers approximately 8Wpc into 8 ohms and 5Wpc into 32 ohms (when equipped with a solid state rectifier and KT88 output tubes). With 6L6GC output tubes, when it maxes out at 3Wpc, the Bigger Ben powered Zu Soul Supreme speakers "to greater levels of transient and timbral exactitude … than most any other amp I've tried," wrote HR. With DeVore Orangutan O/93s, HR found the Ben every…

Editor's Note: Class A "Loudspeakers" are sufficiently idiosyncratic and differ enough from one another that prospective customers should read Stereophile's original reviews in their entirety for descriptions of the sounds. We have therefore just listed every system or combination that at least one of Stereophile's reviewers feels, as a result of his or her experience, approaches the current state of the art in loudspeaker design. (Note that, to be eligible for inclusion in Class A, the system must be full-range—ie, feature bass extension to 20Hz. It must also be…