Jason Victor Serinus

I began my Sunday in the Nordost room on the Tower mezzanine. Familiar with the sound of the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/cables/1101nordost/">Nordost Valhalla</A> interconnects, speaker cables, and power cables in my reference system, as well as the benefits of the Nordost Thor power distribution center that I have for review in another publication (and will not be returning), I was wondering how they would sound powering completely different components.

Logitech International, the Swiss computer'n'communications peripherals manufacturer, announced on October 19 that it had acquired Slim Devices, Inc., the home-network-music-systems pioneer that manufactures the <A HREF="http://stereophile.com/digitalprocessors/906slim/">Squeezebox</A&gt; and <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/073106transporter/">Transporter</A&gt;.

On October 19, 2006, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) honored the latest 12 members of the CEA Hall of Fame at its awards dinner at the San Francisco CEA Industry Forum.

Having read and heard copious praise of the two-chassis Metronome T2i-Signature CD player ($20,600), at times accompanied by claims that it can make CDs sound as good as SACDs reproduced in two-channel mode, I was eager to hear the new one-piece Metronome CD5-Signature player, distributed in the US by Jim Ricketts of tmh audio (above). The CD5-Signature, whose somewhat plain Jane appearance conceals both a tube output stage and variable volume control that can obviate the need for a preamp, retails for a "mere" $18,000. Introduced at the RMAF, it was powered by borrowed-at-the-last-minute Boulder monoblocks feeding Zerobox 109 loudspeakers (40Hz&ndash;35kHz response for $7500/pair) via Xindak cabling.

Last summer, John Atkinson and I were playing a jazz gig poolside at my local club, and during a break we began discussing equipment. As JA adjusted his microphones and I became increasingly nervous about the running, jumping kids splashing chlorinated water on his <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/hirezplayers/461">Nagra digital recorder</A>, he asked me if I'd like to review the Z1 loudspeaker from BG Corp. "It's an interesting little bookshelf speaker featuring a ribbon tweeter." Hmm&mdash;an affordable bookshelf speaker matching a ribbon tweeter to a dynamic woofer? <I>Very</I> interesting. "Sounds good," said I, and resumed my ivory duties.

The good news: Domestic audio has survived its first half century and continues to live above ground. The bad news: At an age when most hobbies can enjoy the luxury of splintering into smaller factions that hate each other with impunity, ours isn't big enough. There are too few audiophiles on Earth to indulge that kind of specialization, let alone support the very different magazines that would ensue&mdash;so we'll never get to enjoy such promising titles as <I>Liberal Tube Lover</I> (not that I didn't try), <I>The Elderly Skeptic</I>, or, of particular interest, <I>Cable Hating for People Who are Barely Audiophiles in the First Place</I>.

All of a sudden, it seems there's a renaissance in in-ear monitors. Used to be there was just <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/headphones/805">Etymotic</A&gt;, but now Etymotic, <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/headphones/504shure">Shure</A&gt;, and <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/headphones/1204ultimate">Ultimate Ears</A> are all producing high-performance in-ear headphones. It's almost enough to make me suspect we audiophiles have become a marketing juggernaut.