LATEST ADDITIONS

Even as Robert Harley was writing his <I>Stereophile</I> <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/solidpreamps/mark_levinson_no38_preamplifier…; of the $3995 Mark Levinson No.38 remote-controlled line preamplifier (it appeared in August '94, Vol.17 No.8, p.98), Madrigal Audio Laboratories announced an upgraded, cost-no-object version, the No.38S (footnote 1). At $6495, the 'S is significantly more expensive than the junior version; although it uses the same chassis, power supply, and circuit topology, it's in all other ways a different preamplifier.

At around this time last week, John Atkinson and I left the office and headed out to Bay Ridge to pack up the large and lovely <a href="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/608revel/index.html">Revel Ultima Salon2</a>, voted our "<a href="http://www.stereophile.com/features/1208poty/index1.html">Joint Loudspeaker of the Year</a>" for 2008 and a speaker that JA absolutely <i>adores</i>. He selected it as his overall product of the year:

I really don't know anything about the Flying Burrito Bros. I know that Gram Parsons was in the band, and that makes them cool. Michelle, the first girl I ever loved, wore a Flying Burrito Brothers t-shirt (baby blue with a metallic gold logo, purchased from some old train station thrift shop in Hackensack-ack-ack-ack-ack), but she was from San Francisco and talked about Haight-Ashbury and rearranged her furniture twice a week and received phone calls from Pauline Oliveros and Marian Zazeela (in her dorm room!), and I figured the t-shirt was just another one of her crazy things. It was only much later, after she had shaved her head and had her name legally changed to Maya Moksha, that I realized Michelle was way cooler (and crazier) than I'd ever understand.

Under the soft blue light: Grails' most awesome <i>Interpretations of Three Psychedelic Rock Songs from around the World</i> goes for the ride of its life on the massive SME 20/12 turntable.

Grails' <i>Interpretations of Three Psychedelic Rock Songs from around the World</i>, part of Southern Records' incredibly dope, limited-edition <a href="http://www.southern.com/southern/label/LTT/">Latitudes</a&gt; series, was a gift from Michael Lavorgna. Note the radical etching of the white vinyl. Only 700 copies are/were available.

It was a glorious day. The Good Lord smiled upon our little blue world with clear skies, warm sunshine, and limited edition 7" singles. I strolled into Tunes at 11:30am, just a half-hour after the store had opened. A large crowd of happy shoppers was already huddled round the main display shelves. Radiohead singles from every era of the band's brilliant career and so many colorful 7" discs and samplers and posters and platter mats and they have already run out of the Sonic Youth/Beck splits. What? Figures! Oh well. I am not disappointed&#151not too terribly. Instead, I am happy for those who came before me, happy for the bands and happy for the labels and happy for the world.

I've been listening with great pleasure to Verity Audio's Parsifal Ovation loudspeakers the past few years, so I was intrigued to hear the company's step-up model, the Sarastro II. At 150 lbs each and $39,995/pair, the Sarastro II weighs and costs nearly twice as much as the Ovation. Would it <I>sound</I> twice as good?