Let's first diffuse the price outrage. This reissue of Leonid Kogan's epic performance of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto and Meditation by The Electric Recording Company, limited to 300 copies, costs £300 or about $504.

Acoustical Systems, manufacturer of the SMARTractor alignment gauge, AXIOM Tonearms and other analog products introduced a liquid damped reflex-type clamp with integral strobe scale.

This massive arm of a special carbon fiber laminate from Swedish Analog Technologies appears to take its general inspiration from SME’s Model V but uses brass and composite materials as well as a more traditional mounting system.

Norway-based Electrocompaniet, in business since 1973 introduced the ECG-1 turntable and tonearm priced at 3650 Euro or about $5000. Also new was the ECP-2 MM/MC fully balanced phono preamplifier.

Phasemation is a “pet” project of a Japanese industrialist-audiophile who uses his company’s manufacturing prowess (Kyodo Denshi Engineering Co., Ltd) to design and build high performance audio products including a three chassis phono preamp currently under review by me for Stereophile. The company’s specialty is precision measurement equipment for the IT industry.

Thanks to an analogplanet.com reader's excellent suggestion, the blind mat test will include the original 96/24 file from which the Chasing the Dragon LP was cut. Recording engineer and label owner Mike Valentine was kind enough to send the original file of the Vivaldi "Concerto For Two Mandolins" that was used for the mat recordings.

There's still a great deal of news to post from both the Munich High End and T.H.E. Show Newport Beach and that will be coming shortly. Meanwhile, are you ready for a mat test?

This 1957 Norman Granz-produced jazz version of the George and Ira Gershwin opera (with libretto and key lyrical contributions by DuBose Heyward) starring Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong backed by a string enriched orchestra is a treat for so many reasons.

With most artists, by the time you get to the third greatest hits album you're scraping the bottom of the barrel but not with Elvis Presley. In fact, it could easily be argued that Volume 3 was the "sweet spot" among the original RCA Elvis's greatest hits releases. It's also the first from Elvis's stereo era.

North Conway, New Hampshire-based LKV Research introduced at T.H.E. Show Newport 2014 the Veros One, a brand new "upscale" phono preamplifier that uses premium parts, greater user friendliness and improved power supply regulation and filtering among a host of upgrades to the already excellent Phono 2-SB.