Having lingered so long with the music, let me briefly offer some nods and winks to the most memorable gear I've had conjugal visits with this past year. For more salient details though, you dear readers may reference to my past reviews on 6moons and Positive Feedback and by keeping an eye out for upcoming evaluations, therein and on my own web site on that blessed day when I finally give birth to that massive and unruly child.


Over the past year I've been privileged to spend beaucoup quality time employing the legendary audio designer Steve McCormack's McCormack DNA-500 as the reference power source in my audio system. Having thus explored its highways and byways at length, I can say with some conviction that it represents a thoughtful and practical design; that it is built like a tank; reproduces all manner of music with compelling emotional heat and dynamic immediacy; yet runs in such a quiet, coolly efficient manner that you hardly know it is there at all - save for when you find yourself getting a lap dance from the bass drummer on Mahler's Third.



With 500wpc of no-nonsense 8-ohm power, it has run a variety of speakers to perfection without dynamic compression or distortion. There are a number of solid reasons why 6moons has bestowed an award on this specific solid-state amplifier, not the least of which are the DNA-500's compelling price-performance ratio. Audiophiles who are used to tarrying in those latitudes and longitudes where immense five-figure high-priced Bessemer Furnace muscle amps feed and procreate... well, they would be advised to audition a McCormack DNA-500 and judge for themselves how it stacks up sonically against solid-state amps costing anywhere from two to three times as much. At present, the DNA-500 is hanging out through Christmas and New Year in my upper Manhattan crib as I cross-reference its sonic refinements with those of two hybrid tube/solid-state power amp designs: my old standby, the Musical Fidelity NuVista300 and the Butler TDB-2250 Srajan was so enthused about a fortnight ago. I'm in the midst of articulating my impressions of the Butler both as a stereo amp and as dedicated monoblocks. At which point, alas, I must wish it a fond farewell.


Speaking of which, I just recently had the pleasure of getting in a McCormack UDP-1 both for evaluation purposes and as a no-compromise long-term digital reference against which to judge other digital front-end pieces. In brother Potis' footsteps, allow me to confer an award on this high-value/high-performance $3,495 universal digital front-end. It stands heads and shoulders above the competition in its class for digital players under $5000. Utilizing the latest Burr-Brown 192K/24bit DACs to handle both linear PCM and DSD data, it conferred a high degree of resolution on a wide variety of disc formats when outfitted with a JPS Labs Digital AC power cord, with a spacious luminous soundstage, tight focused bass, a fulsome midrange and a more relaxed top end. Compared to the Denon 2900 Underwood mod I recently reported on, it conveyed a more full-bodied involving depiction of midrange detail and was far more compelling in terms of dynamics and transient response. The Denon tended more towards the drier, more analytical style of resolution. In addition, the McCormack offers a good deal more depth and clarity to the video reproduction (which was one of the most basic strengths of the Denon, but then the UDP-1 is just about double the suggested retail of the Underwood mod). All in all, the UDP-1, like most of the McCormack gear I've had a chance to play with, offers straightforward practical musical precision with lifelike dynamics, a smooth natural frequency response and a minimum of muss and fuss. It delivers the experience of the music with honest immediacy and a minimum of colorations or complications of any kind.


Then there is the Linn 1.1 Universal Disc Player. Ahhhh. What was that old Chock Full O' Nuts ad? "Chock Full O' Nuts is the heavenly coffee, better coffee a millionaire's money can't buy." Don't want to blow the lid on my Positive Feedback review so let's just say that if the purpose of this exercise is for individual reviewers to offer a shout out to those pieces of gear which strike them as the crème de la crème of what has passed over their aural portals, then the Linn 1.1 is without question the best piece of audio gear I have ever had in my signal chain - bar none. The sound is so effortlessly realistic; so spacious, uncolored, holographic and natural in its depiction of instrumental frequencies and space; so incredibly fulsome, relaxed and revealing that I often had to remove it from the signal chain to ascertain which twin has the Toni.


Individual instruments and images were portrayed with incredible stability; highs with an unnerving lack of zizziness or coloration, unearthly transparency, spaciousness and dimensional detail; and bass with such unforced dynamic immediacy and timbral veracity that I felt as though I could not only hear deeper into the music, but see the fully formed shapes and positions of instruments all across the soundstage, both front to back and in the lateral domain. The Linn 1.1 has proven to be an absolutely flawless ground-zero reference point against which all my other components can be judged. It's a versatile digital playback system that can hold its own against the finest separates in the world and to start hearing significant improvement, you would have to venture into galactic realms of audiophile tweakdom (see Srajan's Zanden evaluations). I bestow my first annual Epicenter of [c]Hip Absolute Mojo Award for Meritorious Service in the Reproduction of Musical Truth to the Linn 1.1 Universal Disc Player. For sonic and video resolution, to these ears & eyes it just doesn't get any better.

On the other end of the price/performance seesaw are a pair of speakers I got in for a future think piece on my web site, with an ear towards showing people that high-end audio values are not simply a matter of money-money-money. I certainly believe that we should take notice of them in a cameo herein because over the course of a fall-winter selling season in which retailers can do little but utter the mantra of PLASMA TV... PLASMA TV... PLASMA TV over and over and over again, here are two companies that talk the talk and walk the walk and deliver authentic high-end audio verity at something approaching real world entry-level prices. At $299/pr, the Epos ELS-3 are exceptionally involving, smooth, full-bodied and realistic in their portrayal of midrange frequencies. The manner in which they are voiced delivers a compelling dynamic presence, pleasing bass performance and realistic resolution of harmonic details for such a tiny
loudspeaker. Obviously you can only push them so hard, but they are effortlessly musical, revealing and easy to listen to. At $899, the Meadowlark Swallows are the bookshelf version of the company's acclaimed two-way floor-standing model, the Swifts, and as such, they bring you several notches closer to high-end audio nirvana. The Swallows are stylishly attired in light ash, with [what appears to be] a solid hardwood baffle, yet in the end handsome is as handsome does and these Swallows represent a true no-compromise loudspeaker in a diminutive, frequency-extended time-coherent package. More impressive than the Swallows' natural tonality, dynamic veracity and superb rhythm and pacing is their exceptional transparency and clarity. It adds up to the kind of midrange layering, depth of field and image stability one associates with larger, more expensive speakers. Not to mention taut, clean, punchy bass that is blissfully free of colorations.



Finally a nod in passing to two exceptional full-range loudspeaker designs that grow more impressive with each encounter and are certainly worthy of the most significant award of them all - a serious audition by you, the devout music lover. Having enjoyed extended conjugal visits with most of the Joseph Audio loudspeaker line over the past eight years (save for the top of the line Pearls), it took me until 2004 to finally take the full measure of the Joseph RM25siMkII. They continue to represent a benchmark of resolution, clarity and musicality to these ears, an exceptional value to this listener at any price point, let alone for under five thousand dollars - an American classic. And in conclusion, it seems that at least a couple of times every year, be it at an audio show or an audio showroom, I get to spend a couple of hours with the Vandersteen 5A, much as I reported on them at the end of my piece on the Best Sounding Rooms at the 2003 Home Entertainment Show in San Francisco. Just about a month or so ago I got to listen to a pair with a high-powered Bryston amp and some fine analog source materials, courtesy of Michael Gruber and Neal Brill of American Audiophile in Lynbrook/Long Island. I came away as I always do, with a sense of genuine musical satisfaction, that is to say, this is the way I experience music, this is the way it is supposed to sound.


And as I originally stated in my show report, at a suggested retail price of $14,5000, the Vandersteen 5A have retroactively become a high-end audio bargain, especially when compared to the big, big bucks some companies are asking for a lot less pleasure and performance - speakers that are far too prissy and analytical to convey the emotional content and immediacy of a live performance. The upgrades that Richard Vandersteen has incorporated into the 5A have really pushed its already imposing performance parameters over the top in terms of high frequency extension, transparency, depth of field, midrange detail and low frequency impact.


What sort of award might we then confer upon the Joseph Audio RM25siMkII and the Vandersteen 5A?


Perhaps just to retire their numbers and hang them in the rafters of the High End Audio Hall of Fame, in anticipation -- perhaps -- of some future audition of the Joseph Rm33LE and the Vandersteen Quatro .