LATEST ADDITIONS

<I>T+A adds tubes and analog to SACD:</I> German high-end manufacturer T+A has announced its new, tubed, $9500 D10 SACD/CD player. The D10 incorporates many of the same components found in the company's SACD 1245R, including the disc mechanism and DAC However, the D10 contains two more powerful power supply sections, a toroidal transformer with a secondary switching section for its digital parts, and a high-voltage mains section with 100,000&#181;F of reservoir capacity for its analog tube stage.

On Tuesday, March 29, 2005, the US Supreme Court heard the oral arguments for the case of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd. This was widely covered in the mainstream news media, as well as all over the Web, but none of the synopses of the case did true justice to the give-and-take of the arguments, as I discovered this week when I stumbled upon a .pdf transcription of the complete oral arguments.

As Jon Iverson points out in <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/041105serving">another posting this week</A>, a surprising number of readers expect downloads to be a viable music acquisition option in the very near future. Perhaps it's closer than we think.

The <A HREF="http://www.he2005.com">Home Entertainment Show</A>, scheduled to take place in NYC April 28&ndash;May 1, is only weeks away! Throughout the Show, ticket holders can experience the finest consumer electronics and convergence products on the planet&mdash;PLUS enjoy a variety of live music performances by popular jazz, folk, rap, blues, and classical music recording artists.

As technology marches on, some of the old audiophile ways become lost arts. Do you still have the skills needed to set up and align a cartridge on a tonearm and turntable?

You can read all about an automobile, check its gear ratios, and ponder the engine's horsepower all you want—but until you put yourself in the driver's seat and take that baby out for a spin, you have no idea whether or not it's going to be fun to drive.

All the action in digital playback for the past seven years has taken place in separate transports and digital processors. Nearly all high-end manufacturers have focused their skills on perfecting the individual elements of the digital playback chain&mdash;transports and processors&mdash;rather than on designing integrated CD players.