LATEST ADDITIONS

We audiophiles are ever hopeful that, however satisfying our present equipment and setup, we can achieve even greater enjoyment with a tweak or an upgrade. And we never stop: It was only 16 years (and three turntables) ago that I bought what I declared would be my last turntable, and there's no doubt that this "dead" format has improved substantially since then. Now, even as we make another (but less paradigm-shifting) format transition, from CD to SACD and DVD-Audio, new two-channel DACs continue to appear that show us how far we still are from wresting all the music from the original "Red Book" 16-bit CD format. I reviewed the wonderful <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/digitalsourcereviews/781">Weiss Medea DAC</A> in February 2003, and there are still on my auditioning rack are two more Swiss DACs that might redefine the category: the Orpheus 1 and the Nagra DAP.

According to Cary Audio designer <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/399">Dennis Had</A> in this amplifier's documentation, "Countless hours were spent designing and voicing the CAD-280SA V12 stereo amplifier...It delivers high performance in a combination of class-A single-ended triode and true balanced push-pull technology."

I had it all wrong. I assumed that the "SLP" in SLP-98P stood for <I>stereo line preamplifier</I>. But <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/399">Dennis Had</A>, Cary Audio's founder and chief designer, told me that it actually stands for <I>sweet little preamplifier</I>. In a day and age when <I>acme</I> is a word without meaning and the fighting Irish are neither, this strikes me as a risky marketing gambit&mdash;but one that may be effective if the name proves true.

Now is clearly crunch time for satellite radio. In the last year alone, over one million new subscribers have been added to front-runner <A HREF="http://www.xmradio.com">XM Satellite Radio</A>'s service, bringing its total to approximately 1.4 million. The company projects that it will reach a total of 2.4 million subscribers by the end of 2004, thus ensuring its survival.

This week we have two John Atkinson speaker reviews from the February 2004 issue. First, JA gets his hands on the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/loudspeakerreviews/204bw">B&W 705 loudspeaker</A>, commenting, "When I heard about the company's new 700 series of speakers, based on the technology featured in their cost-no-object Nautilus series but priced to sell in the real world, I asked to review the $1500/pair 705."

Pure technology developments don't often have an audiophile angle, but a February 9 announcement from <A HREF="http://www.inphase-tech.com">InPhase Technologies</A> caught our attention.

Quad: The Closest Approach
by Ken Kessler. Cambridge, England, UK: International Audio Group Ltd., 2003. Hardcover, 12" square, 215 pp. ISBN 0 954 57420 6.
Available from: Quad dealers or IAG America, 15 Walpole Park South, Walpole, MA 02801. Tel: (508) 850-3950.