Jason Victor Serinus

Nearly 500 audiophiles descended upon Definitive Audio's Seattle location on Thursday, February 26 for the 10th Music Matters event in the Pacific Northwest. The "mother" of all Music Matters, and inspiration for all the other similarly named events that happen around the country, Definitive Audio's definitive four-hour gathering was so large in scope that it qualified as a mini-audio show. With major industry presenters including Stereophile's Michael Fremer (above) and John Atkinson, the evening also offered sufficient food and drink to satiate the most ravenous, and enough interesting music to ensure that even an inveterate show attender named Serinus never once experienced that "if I hear this cut one more time" feeling.

Within a 24-hour time span this past weekend, two important audiophile establishments in CA suffered major burglaries. On the morning of February 28, headphone manufacturer Audeze in Costa Mesa lost perhaps $250,000 in headphones, plus an undetermined amount of raw material from its operating and manufacture headquarters. At around 4am on February 27, and approximately 425 miles north, retailer AudioVision San Francisco experienced $100,000 worth of damage to their new headquarters plus the loss of much expensive gear when a truck rammed through their storefront (above).

To put it mildly, Jack Vad (second row in photo, orange shirt) was dismayed. The Grammy Award–winning media producer and chief engineer for the San Francisco Symphony had just returned from the 2014 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, and was trying to make sense of his experiences there. When he'd carried his latest recordings, which I think are superbly recorded, into rooms at the show and asked if he could play them, exhibitors were anything but enthusiastic.

With its forthcoming BHK Signature 250 amplifier ($7500), PS Audio's Paul McGowan (above) has stepped outside his own self-imposed price point box. By inviting his longtime friend and colleague, Bascom H. King (Constellation, Infinity, Infinity class-A, Conrad-Johnson, and Marantz), to create his magnum opus without regard to price, his goal was to make, in his own words, "one of the top five amplifiers in the world."

In the first system to which I took a serious listen at CES, Alon Wolf could have made no more major a statement than by pairing his Magico Q7 loudspeakers ($185,000/pair) and new active QSub-18 ($36,000) with Soulution 701 monoblock amplifiers ($150,000/pair), Soulution 720 preamp (discontinued—the current 725 line stage is $50,000), Berkeley Audio Design Reference DAC ($16,000), Baetis Audio music server, Vovox cabling from Switzerland, Magico MRack ($50,000), and superb Magico QPOD equipment supports.

"What kills me is that in my own showroom I have the same Wilson Alexia loudspeakers that Nagra is using, but they sound better in their set-up, and they aren't even using room treatment," lamented a retailer whose identity shall forever remain unspoken. What better compliment can one pay to Nagra's forthcoming HD amplifiers?