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Triad Speakers has been designing and manufacturing three-piece (woofer and two satellites) loudspeaker systems since 1982. The company was formed that year by designer Larry Pexton and has enjoyed steady growth in their market niche. Their original three-piece loudspeaker was a collaboration with Edward M. Long, of "Time-Align" fame, and Ron Wickersham. It was felt that the ideal loudspeaker would have the least cabinet interference, thus the design decision to keep the woofer separate and the midrange/tweeter enclosure small. Triad speakers were selected for inclusion in the Consumer Electronics Show's Innovations 1990 Design and Engineering Showcase, the sixth time the company's products have been selected for this award.

You'd think I would have learned to trust Matthew Polk by now, but I attended an NYC demonstration for his new SurroundBar 360 with relatively low expectations. That's because there's a current vogue for low profile, multichannel "bars" that give flatscreen monitor viewers a low profile, single-mount solution to the "problem" of all those extra speakers a multichannel A/V system requires.

Reader "craig" writes: "Okay, let's get right to it. What is the age of <I>Stereophile</I>'s readers? The reason I ask is the choice of 'favorite music' in a recent Vote question." So how old are you?

Oh crap. I just received an e-mail from the Princeton Record Exchange. Turns out they've added thousands of titles to their already overwhelming collection of tantalizing vinyl.

Recently, I got an e-mail from a colleague at another audio magazine complaining about the paucity of new SACD hardware. We've been hearing about the slowing pace of new SACD releases, and about Sony's neglect of a format they themselves developed, but I now realize that, apart from the High End (footnote 1), machines that can play SACDs have been fast disappearing from the middle of the market. When the battle of SACD <I>vs</I> DVD-Audio was <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/305awsi">raging</A&gt;, universal players that could play both formats were available from almost every major manufacturer. Even John Atkinson jumped on the bandwagon, acquiring a Pioneer DV-578A universal player for $150 to use as a reference. The exceptions were the very companies that had developed the new formats: Sony offered only SACD players, and Panasonic, at least at first, only DVD-A players. No matter&#151;you could buy a universal player at any national electronics chain store, even if that store didn't stock recordings in either format and their staff had never heard of DVD-As or SACDs. Some things never change.

It was just a few months ago that I was <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/040808immediately/">moaning and groaning</a> about Sonic Youth's latest release being made available <i>only</i> on vinyl. I wrote:

My phone rang and it was Dick Diamond, sales manager for YG Acoustics. "We'd like you to visit our factory and see what we're all about," Diamond said.