LATEST ADDITIONS

Powering the KEF Muon, electronics from Musical Fidelity. These, incidentally, are quite reasonably priced, especially compared to the KEF Muon.

I've seen installers take weeks to put in systems and fine tune them. Sony offers a turn-key, yet still flexible system that, not counting wiring, could take as little as a day to install. With the capability for a 7.1 home theater and six other rooms featuring everything from 2-channel audio all the way up to high def audio and video (via cat5e), the Sony WHS is very advanced. The system also lets you insert up to three components of your choice, such as a Pioneer BD player, your favorite Theta Digital CD player / DAC and even your crappy VCR. Sony and Control4 touchpads also give you access to your comfort systems (heating/cooling), security systems and lighting. Typical dealer installs start at $35,000 and go up from there.

I can’t tell you much more than the placard says, other than the price, $1,500, and availability, “the fall.” Balanced outputs will thrill the 2-channel crowd. The rest of us will use HDMI.

Pioneer debuted their new flagship Blu-ray player, the BDP-09FD. This new from the ground up design is built like a tank and features an impressive analog audio section featuring the latest Wolfenson DACs. Pioneer Elite is looking at this as a best in class solution that allows customers to toss out those standalone CD and DVD players sitting on their racks.