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I kind of feel that I am way off in my familiarity about what is going on with new audio products. My horizon is very restricted with my own needs and with my own interests. I am irregularly read audio publications and irregularly visit some audio sites and although I do monitor what is going on out there but not as carefully as I use to in past. It is not that I am sweepingly against any commercial audio products as a concept as many idiots-DIYers are. It is juts the most of the audio products that I have seen out there in their performance are way beyond the level where I would found them worth attentions. Therefore, I’m not wasting my time to monitor the new crap that keep coming to the market monthly.

Still, even with my very limited attention I would like to note some new audio products that I would welcome and would have interest to see.

In analog I do not see any interesting tendencies in turntables or in tonearms. The new expensive turntables and tonearms do not impress me and I do not particularly like their design approaches. I would like to see some light TTs that would be not-ported bass able but I do not see anyone talk about it….

In phonocorrectors I feel there is a large unfulfilled gap in the high level performers. I very much, to my big surprise, loved the expensive Boulder 2008 when I played with it a few years back but I never had it in my own listening room. It would be interested to try it… A few years back a Swaziland company DaVinci Audio made their MM LCR corrector. It had a number of very appealing solutions and I found that it was a very interesting product. I think since then the DaVinci Audio becaume more or less “for profit” company and the corrector that I was talking about got converted in a simplified commercial version. How good is it ?  I do not know but it might be fun to try it… The British’s Thorsten use to make interesting low impedance LCR phono filter and he promised to make then in it’s 10K version. If he did and someone put them between gain stages then I would be very interesting product to try as well….

In digital the general tendencies are way out of my interest. The SACD is a fraudulent crap and it looks like the industry is got consumed with SACD back hole. The commercially available DVD-A are not good as well. The same Thorsten made up a new company, I think the Abington Something and they make a new 16/44 CD player. I did not hear it and I look forward to it, I will have a local guy to have one soon, – it might be interesting. The Ayre Acoustics I heard have a new CD player – I always like what they do and it might be worth to see in which direction the Ayre’s played gone. There are a lot of new exciting DACs out there. I anticipate that it is the time for very good sounding DACs for sub $500 pop up here and there - I did not many any evaluations in this direction but I would not be surprised…  BTW, the Australian’s Kostas ADC sounds very promising... Perhaps he has an equally interning performing DAC….

In electronics my needs are very limited – I need an absolutely transparent preamp (and I have one) and a low powered DSET. The stupid industry does not even look at the DSET direction, so I do not see anything worthy. In the full range amps I also see no interning low power contenders - I understand why – there are no capable high sensitivity loudspeakers. With all Advantage imperfections the Trios were sensitive and they were the only one commercially successful product. If more products like this were available then the marker would birth some interesting low power solutions. However, with Jim smith dropped the operation the Advantage in a deep shit and they went to a bogus shadow of stupid products and marketing nothingness. I do not see that any powerful amps out there worth anything as I do not see any commendable loudspeakers to use with powerful amps.  Also, my personal visiosn about amplification are severally corrupted by Melquiades that in my personal way “out there” in relation to any other amps that I heard. In the preamps I found that Lamm long-promising new line-level amp (I think it will be called Lamm L3) will be extremely interesting to watch. If Lamm would be able to make it absolutely transparent and at the same time to preserve some of the amassing and unique sonic qualities of his L1/L2 had then it might be a phenomenally exciting preamp.

In loudspeakers I hardly see a lot of excitement. The British’s Mike threatens to reintroduce Vitavox – it might be fan but it should be seen how good it might be. The Cogent boys might found some civilized horn-maker and improve their installation to a “demonstrable level”. I do not know how about the “excitement” but they do might be worth to watch in future, primary because no one is trying to make compression drivers but they do try.  I hope the Cessaro Acoustics Company from Germany gets this US representation and their “Gamma” model will be available for auditioning. It might be very interesting and would not mind to pay some price for the auditioning admission…

One of the greatest area where a lot of done but with zero success is the power treatment – the electricity still is the main bitch of audio in my world. Well, I should not say that what among what is done everything has zero success but whatever I have seen was not what I would like to have. The power line devices come to the market like the mushrooms after rain but I still do not see anything radical (like a dynamic decoupling of anything like this). The power devises is the area where I would like to see something drastically improved…

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