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Pack up all your dishes.
Make note of all good wishes.
Say goodbye to the landlord for me.
That son of a bitch has always bored me.
Throw out them L.A. papers
And that moldy box of vanilla wafers.
Adi¢s to all this concrete.
Gonna get me some dirt road back street
—from "L.A. Freeway"

As songwriters go, Guy Clark has been touched by the muse more than most. Unfortunately, in recent years he's also been visited by illness and heartache. In June 2012, his wife of 40 years, Susanna Clark, who was both a songwriter ("Easy…

You can go out to eat & that's for sure
But it's nothin' a homegrown tomato won't cure
Put 'em in a salad, put 'em in a stew
You can make your very own tomato juice
Eat 'em with eggs, eat 'em with gravy
Eat 'em with beans, pinto or navy
Put 'em on the side, put 'em in the middle
Put a homegrown tomato on a hotcake griddle.

Homegrown tomatoes, homegrown tomatoes
What'd life be without…

Among the gems of…

On the mainland across from these isles, in Port Hueneme, is Channel Islands Audio (aka CIAudio), a company of modest size that's been around for 17 years and makes compact power amps…

Transient Mk.II Asynchronous USB Converter: Digital outputs: S/PDIF via 75 ohm BNC (galvanic isolated), I2S via mini-DIN (Audio Alchemy, Perpetual Technology, Camelot), Differential I2S via HDMI (PS Audio, Wyred4Sound). Sample rates supported: 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 176.4, 192kHz, up to 24 bits. Master-clock jitter: <1.0ps. Analog output level: 2V RMS maximum (single-ended RCA). Frequency response: 20Hz–96kHz. THD+noise: –89dB at –1dBFS.
Serial number of unit reviewed: TR3010.
Price: $699.

VDC•5 Mk.II High Current Power Supply: AC Input Voltage:…

Digital Sources: Apple MacBook Pro computer (2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD) running OS 10.6.7, iTunes 11.1.3, Sonic Studios Amarra 2.5, Songbird 1.9.3, or XLD; Western Digital NAS Device (2TB); Oppo BDP-103 universal Blu-ray player; Meridian Digital Media System (formerly Sooloos) (one Control 15, three TwinStores); Apple iPad Air, Mini; Apple iPod Touch 1G; Apple iPhone 4S; Benchmark DAC2 HGC, AudioQuest DragonFly 1.2 USB DACs.
Preamplifier: Marantz AV7005 in Pure Direct Mode.
Power Amplifier: Classé CAM 350 monoblocks (2).
…

I used Stereophile's loan sample of the top-of-the-line Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see www.ap.com and the January 2008 "As We See It") to examine the Channel Islands Audio Transient Mk.II's measured behavior. I used my 2012 Apple MacBook Pro running on battery power to examine the processor's performance via its USB port. For all tests, the Transient was powered from its VDC•5 Mk.II supply.

Apple's USB prober utility identified the Transient as the "CIAudio USB Audio 2.0" and confirmed that it operated in the optimal isochronous asynchronous mode with…

Editor: First, I'd like to thank the gang at Stereophile for reviewing our unique product.

As mentioned in Jon Iverson's review, we wanted this product to be completely portable, and to provide the industry-standard 2V analog output while running from USB power. There are only a small number of DAC integrated circuits with this capability that have the digital filtering and output stage built in. Being that there isn't much surrounding circuitry to work our "magic," we chose the IC that we felt offered the best musicality (not specs). In the end, I feel we…