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The highlights from, and the lowdown on, the weekend’s Australian Hi-Fi Show in Sydney...

Can an audio brand maintain a "house sound" if the original creator of that sound is no longer among the living? If the brand in question is Ayre Acoustics, the answer is a resounding Yes.

In 1990, when Stereophile was still headquartered in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I was reviewing the Eclipse loudspeaker from a new Coloradan company, Avalon. The company's principals, Neil Patel and Charley Hansen, visited to set up the speakers in my listening room, and during that visit Charley and I talked speakers. And more speakers. And even more speakers. I was enormously impressed by his grasp not only of the engineering involved, but also of the larger issues of audio reproduction.

Colorado's Ayre Acoustics jammed a big system into a small room at APXONA, wall-to-wall attendees barely leaving space for Ayre's president, designer, and Chief Ayre-Head Ariel Brown to press the flesh and discuss the gear.

Although NAD was founded in England in 1972 as New Acoustic Dimension, my introduction to the brand was in 1980. I bought an NAD 3020 integrated amplifier after hearing it successfully drive Acoustic Research's current-hungry AR9 loudspeakers. Designed in England by Bjørn-Erik Edvardsen (footnote 1) and manufactured in Taiwan, the ridiculously inexpensive 3020—it cost just $135 back then—showed that an amplifier didn't need machined faceplates, intimidating heatsinks, or technically glamorous components to be able to drive real-world speakers.