Those of you who have been reading me for the past 30 years already know that I am a huge fan of Magnepan loudspeakers. Indeed, as I’ve noted in these pages many times before, it was the Maggie 1U/D that set me on the road to the absolute sound. Before I heard that first Magneplanar, I relied on published specs and magazine test results to narrow down the speakers and electronics I was interested in. After listening to it (in 1973) and being momentarily fooled into thinking I was hearing someone playing a real concert grand (there happened to be a piano in the room, hidden behind what I thought were decorative screens, which turned out to be Magnepan 1Us), I realized there was a better way to judge high-fidelity components — the HP way, the TAS way, the way that puts the closest approximation of the sound of the real thing first and specs last.