News

Saturday November 26, Canadian high-end store Audio Excellence (661 Chrislea Road. Unit 1, Vaughan, Ontario, Canada L4L 8A3) is holding an all-day event featuring Bill McKiegan, president of Dan D'Agostino Master Audio Systems. Bill will be presenting the new Progression Mono amplifiers (above).

May 21, 2–6pm, Bill McKiegan, President of Sales at Dan D'Agostino Master Audio Systems, will be presenting a day of listening at Audio Concepts (11661 Preston Rd #280, Dallas, TX 75230) in Dallas, Texas. The featured system will include the new Momentum M400 mono amplifiers, Momentum Preamplifier, and Momentum Phonostage (above), driving Wilson Alexx loudspeaker and using the AMG Viella 12 turntable.

Wednesday December 14, starting at 4pm, Utah Audio (77 East 10600 South, Sandy, UT) will be demonstrating a complete Dan D'Agostino system. And Saturday December 17, from 1pm–4pm, at Esoteric Audio (111 West Monroe Street, Suite 100, Phoenix, AZ), Dan D'Agostino and Bill McKiegan will be on hand for listening and discussion of the company's latest products.

Recent open house events at Innovative Audio Video Showrooms have been outstanding: well-attended by curious and passionate audiophiles; featuring beautiful, high-quality gear; showcasing excellent music played back on vinyl, disc, and via computer; and with several industry leaders on hand to provide demonstrations and feed interesting discussion.

(The last time I visited Innovative for one of these events, I stayed far too long and walked out into a man-eating ice storm that nearly shattered my soul, but, even then, it was still worth attending the event.)

So, I’m definitely looking forward to next Wednesday’s event, in honor of Dan D’Agostino and his new Momentum monoblock power amplifiers. Guests will have the opportunity to learn more about D’Agostino and his latest product, while enjoying music in a special environment. Members of Innovative’s staff are friendly, intelligent, knowledgeable, and eager to share their eclectic tastes in music and gear.

Refreshments will be provided, the weather should be decent, it should be a good time. Space is limited, so be sure to reserve your place: (212) 634-4444 or info@iavny.com.

Innovative Audio Video is located at 150 East 58th Street, New York, NY. I hope to see you there.

The June issue of Stereophile, which hits newsstands this week, spills some ink on the 30th-anniversary reissue of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon as a two-layer Super Audio CD (Capitol CDP 582136 2). Jon Iverson nominated the disc as June's "Recording of the Month," while I mentioned it in my "As We See It" column. This "fully loaded" SACD includes both multichannel and two-channel mixes encoded with the DSD system on a high-rez SACD layer and a two-channel "Red Book" transfer (16-bit word length, 44.1kHz sampling) on its CD layer.

Got plans for Saturday afternoon? How 'bout a visit to the dark side of the moon—or, rather, the Dark Side of the Moon?

When spying this press release a couple of days ago, I had to read it twice—this was too good to be true. A couple of years back in the September 1997 (or as JA likes to put it: Vol.20 No.9) Stereophile "Industry Update," I had reported on the then-discovered "synchronicities" phenomena: playing certain classic rock albums, when sync'ed up with certain classic films yielded several uncanny coincidences twixt music and screen. Watching and listening this way could lead one to almost believe that the albums were created as soundtracks to the films.

The darTZeel NHB-108 power amplifier garnered effusive praise from Stereophile's John Marks in his September">http://www.stereophile.com/amplificationreviews/932/index.html">Septemb… 2003 Fifth Element column, including the comment "the sweetest-sounding solid-state power amplifier I have ever heard." There was only one problem: the amp was hard to find in the US.

Is the world ready for another portable music format? DataPlay">http://www.dataplay.com/">DataPlay Incorporated thinks so. On March 12, the Boulder, CO–based company announced an agreement with Bertelsmann">http://www.bmg.com/">Bertelsmann Music Group to release new titles later this year on miniature pre-recorded discs, which are about the size of a quarter.

In a move that could save exhibitors a considerable amount of money, the 2001 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is being rescheduled for a day earlier than previously announced. Originally planned to run from Sunday, January 7 through Wednesday, January 10, 2001, the show will now begin on Saturday, January 6 and run through Tuesday, January 9.