LATEST ADDITIONS

Dear colleagues:<br>
The year is almost over. The air has grown cold. Our rivers are stuck in deep, deep thought. Outside my 6th-floor window, countless, swirling bits of snow are decorating this gray city like little answers blowing in the wind, like so many true loves: A sure sign that the annual <a href="http://www.cesweb.org/">Consumer Electronics Show</a> in glittery Las Vegas is right around the bend. It opens on Thursday, January 8th and runs right on through Sunday, the 11th.

Dear Frida,<br>
It is official: I have a crush on you, and it feels good. I woke up this morning with your words circling through my foggy mind. <i>Don't you worry, love. Let me help you love. There you go, love. Oh that's brilliant love.</i>

In "Pony," Frida sings:

Here’s my list of the 10 best jazz albums of 2008. An elaboration, with 30-second sound clips illustrating my points, will appear tomorrow in my column in <I>Slate</I>. (Some of you may notice that I’ve mentioned most of these CDs in this blog through this year.)

I didn't know what this was when I picked it up. The jacket offers no band name or album title. Kind of like the Park Tavern on West Side Avenue in Jersey City; there's no way of knowing it's the Park Tavern unless you walk in, and once you're in, you never really want to leave.

I was flipping through the current issue of <i>Rolling Stone</i> (RS 1068/1069, with a mustachioed Brad Pitt on the cover) and stopped at their "Rock & Roll Gift Guide."

Though it seemed to have been fairly well-scavenged by the time we arrived on Saturday afternoon, the ARChive of Contemporary Music's <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/926_new_stock/">Winter Record and CD Sale</a> held many great treasures.

Musical Fidelity's "Supercharger" concept is simple, which is perhaps why no one had thought of it before: If you love the sound of your low-powered amplifier but your speakers are insensitive, or you just need more loudness, you insert the high-power Supercharger amplifier between your low-powered amp and speakers. The Supercharger loads the small amplifier with an easy-to-drive 50 ohms, and, in theory, has so little sonic signature itself that it passes on the sonic signature of the small amp unchanged, but louder.

One might argue that Thiel Audio's 3-series loudspeakers are the audio equivalents of BMW's 3-series sports cars: relatively affordable, but 100% about performance. Thiel has made bigger, more expensive loudspeakers than the 3s, as well as smaller, less expensive models&#151;but the iconic Thiels are the 3s.

It's been a tumultuous year for many around the world, but the audiophile keeps listening to music and searching for better sound. What is your pick for the most important audio development this year, be it a technology, trend, or component?