News

One of the challenges facing audio equipment manufacturers as we enter the Internet age is how to handle online retailing of products to consumers. A manufacturer that has so far shunned mail-order in favor of bricks-and-mortar retailing runs the risk of alienating its established distribution base by jumping online ("mail order with a web address"), where traditional territorial sales boundaries are often rendered meaningless.

The annual CEDIA show is mostly about home theater and whole-house entertainment systems, but high-performance audio often gets a share of the limelight, too.

Metronome’s CD8 S, which adds digital inputs to the French company’s well-regarded CD player, graces our March issue’s cover. As is often the case these days, we loved the sound but hated the measured performance—madness indeed! Melco’s affordable server and Merging’s expensive network-connected NADAC multichannel D/A processor get our nod of approval, as do class-D amplifiers from Theta, NAD, and Spec, while Herb Reichert finds much to enjoy with Simaudio’s Moon Neo 340i integrated amp. And on the music side of things, Robert Baird praises Acoustic Sounds’ new stereo releases of classic Beach Boys albums and John Atkinson reacts to a recent report that classical music recordings will soon disappear. That would be madness!

"48 pages of Audio Component Reviews" proudly proclaims the skyline on the cover of the March Stereophile, hitting newsstands, mailboxes, and tablets this week. DeVore Fidelity's Gibbon X graces the cover and is reviewed in depth inside by Jim Austin. DeVore's flagship speaker heads an impressive list of gear evaluated inside, from Shure, Spendor, Q Acoustics, KEF, Musical Fidelity, Rogue, Chord, Hegel, EMM Labs, Grandinote, Grado, Ortofon, Miyajima, Mutech, and Roon.

Forgive us for the French but our March issue is about to hit newsstands, tablets, and mailboxes. With Naim's Uniti Nova amplifier and media player on its cover and reviewed inside by Ken Micallef, this issue will provide hours of reading pleasure. It has reviews of speakers ranging from the affordable to the high-priced, from KEF, Monitor Audio, Sonus Faber, Stenheim, and TAD. John Atkinson reviews closed-back headphones from MrSpeakers; Art Dudley reviews Ayre's KX-5 Twenty preamplifier; Michael Fremer auditions moving-coil cartridges from Kuzma and Koetsu; and Jim Austin offers further thoughts on that most controversial of topics, MQA.

High-end audio legend Mark Levinson has departed Cello Film and Music Systems, the company he founded 15 years ago, and has formed a new business, Red Rose Music. The new company will break all performance barriers with both affordable and cost-no-object audio equipment, Levinson stated last week, and is already registered as a new business with the state of New York.

For all of the audiophiles who lament that the industry is simply preaching to the converted, Harman International's Mark Levinson® brand has a response: Wait'll you get a load of this.