I first heard about British high-end manufacturer dCS many years ago when I read a white paper from the company extolling the audible virtue of PCM digital audio recorded and played back at 192kHz with 24-bit resolution. Since then, it seems that dCS has embraced DSD—the digital-audio format used by SACD—in its CD/SACD playback systems, including the all-in-one Puccini.

I've always loved Tannoy speakers—in fact, I've used a pair of NFM-8 near-field monitors in my home recording studio for many years. And I'm not alone—many pro studios, especially in England, use Tannoys as reference monitors. But the company also makes exceptional consumer speakers, including the new Definition line.

John Bowers founded British speaker giant Bowers & Wilkins in 1965, hand assembling speakers in the back of an electronics shop he ran with Roy Wilkins in Worthing, England. Nearly 45 years later, B&W has become one of the world's pre-eminent speaker companies, thanks in part to the spirit of innovation embodied in its flagship 800 series.

So-called digital or Class D power amps are often maligned as incapable of matching the performance of high-end analog amps. This has certainly been true of many designs, but NAD is out to change that perception with its new M2, a 2-channel digital power amp in the company's flagship Masters Series.