Stop #4: In Living Stereo. Located on 13 East 4th Street in Manhattan between Broadway and Lafayette and directly across the street from Tower Records, the store's two Steves -- Mishoe and Cohen -- were responsible for having me completely forget about the reportedly stellar WorldMusic selection at Tower's to leave the Big Apple without a single new CD in my backpack. A bunch of good old and new friends more than made up for this oversight though.
This store's three rooms aren't huge but filled to the rafters with quality gear and, more importantly, a sales staff who still cares and won't pitch you something outside your clearly stated budget. No Big-A upsell antics here.
This boutique comes with its own resident canine, an older German shephard, and the realistic rather than grandiose rooms add a second meaning to the name to turn Living Stereo into Liveable Stereo.
Home to the country's first pair of DeVore Fidelity Silverbacks who have since started shipping, with designer John DeVore on hand [above] to explain its inner workings, I learned that the composite enclosure contains six individual chambers, with a 1/3-depth box for the custom tweeter, a triangular midrange trap and four tuned subenclosures for the opposed side-firing woofers. Since its debut at the CES, many subsequent refinements have delayed production until now but the big ape's showing here on the floor suggested that the $14,000/pr wait was well worth being patient and as of today, Jules has taken delivery of a review pair to spread the good news.
Salesman Jonathan Halpern has a standing arrangement with In Living Stereo's owners to showcase his Shindo electronics -- his loft space is available by appointment only and through the store -- and the shelves proved that already $6,000 will buy you an esoteric hand-made pre/power tube combo from Japan that mimics the sonics of its costlier brethren simply in down-scaled form.