Ken Micallef

It’s easy to get lost at this hi-fi party.

Austrian loudspeaker manufacturer Trenner & Friedl has a thing for coaxial drivers. They're used in at least three of the company's eight loudspeaker models, including the diminutive Sun bookshelf speaker and the large floorstanding Taliesin. In these models, T&F eschew more conventional stacked drivers for a putatively time-aligned, wide-frequency range coaxial design.

New York City is forever being born. Lately, transnational capitalists are turning Manhattan into both an investment vehicle and playground for their platinum-level appetites. As real estate developments blot the city's skyline with competing glass-and-metal towers, mom-and-pop businesses collapse under rising rents and a lack of protection from predatory landlords—all the while such New York institutions as the White Horse Tavern, Cafe Edison, Bleecker Bob's, the Plaza Hotel, the Paris Theatre, and the Chelsea Hotel undergo massive change or disappear altogether. (Thank God for Katz's Delicatessen!)

I'm fortunate to have reviewed in recent years not one but three different pairs of horn-loaded loudspeakers. My jaw dropped when I reviewed what would prove the finest loudspeaker to ever grace my home, the Volti Audio Rival. Second came a pricey but pleasing pair from handlebar-mustache king Gordon Burwell, the Burwell & Sons Homage. Then, at the urging of occasional Stereophile contributor Steve Guttenberg, I took on the fat-boy Klipsch Heresy III. As the Beatles used to say, I was dead-chuffed.