Paul Bolin, Michael Fremer

The Manley Steelhead tube MM/MC phono preamplifier was first demonstrated at the 2001 Consumer Electronics Show. Nine months later, my long-promised review sample of Eveanna Manley's new baby was delivered. While Ms. Manley may have given birth to the audacious product, it was conceived by the company's chief hi-fi designer, Mitch Margolis.

<I>What's a pro audio company doing at CES?</I>

What's next for you? Your last CD player? Your first SACD player? DVD-Audio? Looking forward to multichannel music? Still satisfied with two-channel stereo? Maybe you're waiting for an affordable combination SACD/DVD-A multichannel player, or for the format feud to shake out and leave a clear winner. So many options, so much excitement, so little software.

Success can be a two-edged sword. With the Virgo (<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/147/">reviewed in September 1995</A>), Audio Physic created a $5000/pair benchmark product at the midpoint of the company's speaker lineup. While an upgraded, $5800 Virgo is due out soon, the original version will remain in production, its price dropping to $4495/pair&mdash;less than it cost six years ago.

You can bet Infinity plans on selling a respectable number of $8000/pair <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/295/">Prelude MTS</A> speakers (reviewed in the May 2000 <I>Stereophile</I>) over this ambitious, full-range design's anticipated lifespan. But will the company make enough money to recoup the megabucks spent on researching, designing, and developing the all-new CMMD (Ceramic Metal Matrix Diaphragm) drivers, BASH (Bridge Amplifier Switching Hybrid) powered subwoofer, and RABOS (Room Adaptive Bass Optimization System) bass-equalization system? NOWAY (Never Over-Estimate What Acronyms Yield).

Give an engineering team a blank page and a blank check and there's no telling what they'll come up with. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, for example, one company showed a <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//digitalsourcereviews/430/">$25,000 CD transport</A> with laser-pickup mechanism that was separate from its disc drive&mdash;almost the cosmic equivalent of having the sun revolve around the earth.

Keith Herron plopped himself down in my listening chair and smiled, clearly pleased with the sound of my system now that his M150 monoblock power amplifiers had been substituted for my <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//amplificationreviews/205/">Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista 300</A>. He began to tell me why.