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We kick off our anniversary collection with 40">http://www.stereophile.com//features/708/">40 Years of Stereophile: What Happened When. Editor John Atkinson recounts the complete history of Stereophile, starting in 1930 when J. Gordon Holt heard his first sound in North Carolina.

"No doubt about it—Linn's top-of-the-line Komri">http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/555/">Komri loudspeaker is a queer-lookin' duck," says Jonathan Scull as he set up a pair in his listening lair. The claimed frequency response for the Komri extends out to 40kHz. "Why even bother going out that high, where even the most beautiful of women cannot hear?" J-10 explains why.

In his review of the Music">http://www.stereophile.com//amplificationreviews/560/">Music Reference RM-200 power amplifier, Michael Fremer claims, "Reviewing a vacuum-tube power amplifier is like having your pants pulled down in front of a large crowd of people." MF explains why he reviewed the RM-200 despite the inevitable public humiliation.

At the start of his review of the Balanced">http://www.stereophile.com//digitalsourcereviews/570/">Balanced Audio Technology VK-D5 CD player, Jonathan Scull observes, "Man, has Balanced Audio Technology come a long way in a short time." Scull goes in-depth with the VK-D5 to explain just what he's found.

John Atkinson heads across America's great plains toward Kansas to engineer a brand-new recording that he and Les Berkley document in A">http://www.stereophile.com//features/575/">A Mosaic of Music: Stereophile's Clarinet Quintet CD. For the new CD, JA returns again to Chad Kassem's audio Mecca, noting that "105 takes of the Mozart and 102 takes of the Brahms later, we had gotten everything down on tape in two days of intense music-making."

Back in 1987, J. Gordon Holt & Martin Colloms set their sights on the Audio">http://www.stereophile.com//amplificationreviews/585/">Audio Research M300 monoblock power amplifier. "After having proven that vacuum tubes could do some sonic things better than transistors, Audio Research is now endeavoring to show that transistors can do most things better than tubes," says JGH, adding that the then-new M300 is a "hybrid amplifier . . . it's half tube, half solid-state."

In his review of the Meridian">http://www.stereophile.com//digitalsourcereviews/590/">Meridian 508.24 CD player, Wes Phillips finds the machine "a beautiful design with impeccable technical credentials—a CD player that belongs, with only a few others, at the very sharpest portion of the leading edge, and that joins them in producing sound that is highly musical and hard to criticize."