Music Direct has been busy since the start of the year amassing new music and product while also ramping up for AXPONA, now scheduled to happen this summer during August 7-9. Among the highlights:

You might hear some familiar voices on the phones when you call in to place an order, but none as familiar as our newest Audio Consultant, Brian Lickel. Coming to us from the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, Brian joins our sales team after a successful stint at Needle Doctor. Another recent hire is Tom Trippodo, whose career spans decades in high-end audio, including a stretch at Soundsmith. Congrats to Tom and Brian on joining the Music Direct family!

AudioQuest continues to dominate the review circuit with raves continuing to pour in for the DragonFly Cobalt DAC. A top seller since its introduction, it recently won the admiration of Alan Taffel of The Absolute Sound. He says: "The DragonFly Cobalt succeeds in not one but two ways. First, it represents a worthy, evolutionary upgrade to the Red version. And second, it's also, quite simply, one of the best headphone amp/DACs money can buy. At $299, the DragonFly Cobalt remains perhaps the greatest bargain in all of audio. Let's hope AudioQuest never runs out of colors."

Quad and Wharfedale make for a happy marriage of products, especially when they're affordably priced. The Absolute Sound's Drew Kalbach is blunt in a recent assessment where he states, "The perfect system doesn't exist." In the same review, in the case of the pairing of the Quad Vena II integrated amplifier and Wharfedale Linton 85th Anniversary speakers, he glowingly suggests, "As individual components, I'd happily recommend both the Wharfedale Linton Heritage speakers with their optional stands and the Quad Vena II integrated amplifier separately. However, it's when you put these two together that they really shine. Their sound is on point, and it would be hard to find a living space that they wouldn't fit into or elevate. I'd be more than happy to have these front and center in my living room. Highly recommended, alone or (especially) together."

MartinLogan and Revel also shine brightly in recent reviews. In the case of the former company's Motion 15i, the little wonders continue to give us goosebumps when it comes to full-on detail and imaging. Paul Rigby of The Audiophile Man concurs. "The ability of the 15i speakers to remain naturally open, spacious and airy in the midrange without the designers having to resort to hardware tricks, such as pinching and brightening to retain a focus and enhance detail, meant that the Motion 15i speakers sounded more expensive than they really were." As for Revel's floorstanding F226Be? It is "an all-around excellent speaker at a competitive price point. Its speed and cohesiveness provide a realistic image into which the speakers can disappear," according to Brian Kahn of Home Theater Review.

IsoAcoustics' new Delos Isolation Platform for components and turntables extends the brand's reach in the area of effective isolation. We'll turn the microphone over to Paul Rigby of The Audiophile Man, who writes: "Do the Delos platforms work? Definitely. The smallest and slightest of these shelves worked extremely well indeed, lowering noise and opening up the midrange to tremendous effect... What surprised me, though, was just how much better was the larger unit's performance. The larger wood surface and the extra isolation feet pushed the beneficial effects to a level that really made me sit up and take note... Whatever you choose, though, the Delos support system is a valuable addition to an anti-noise toolkit."

Stereophile's John Atkinson takes a scalpel-like approach in praising the Chord Electronics Hugo M Scaler. "As David Rich, then with The Audio Critic, wrote in the 1990s, ‘in the next century, all audiophiles will be listening to will be different digital filters.' Chord's Hugo M Scaler illustrates Dr. Rich's point: It replaces the various reconstruction filters used in other manufacturers' DACs with Rob Watts's enormously long WTA filter. That filter does sound superb, and, as a bonus – in addition to upgrading the sounds of older DACs – the M Scaler adds a USB input with Roon compatibility to DACs that don't have one..."

Rega's new Planar 10 turntable got Michael Fremer's seal of approval in a recent posting. He calls the combo (with the Apheta 3 cartridge) "the company's most sophisticated, refined, quiet, and subtle-sounding turntable yet. It combines the immediacy, grip, and rhythm'n'pacing excitement Regas have always produced, with the subtlety and delicacy typically found on far more costly analog front ends. The same is true of the Apheta 3 cartridge. If there's a better $6695 plug'n'play turntable out there – or, for that matter, a better or at least competitive one for $10,000 – I don't know what it is."

Finally, we were the first dealer in the U.S.A. to carry Nordost's QPoint harmonizers and QSource power supply. Alan Sircom of Hi-Fi+ decided to have a critical listen and concludes: "There is a sense of drilling deeper into system performance with QPoint, and deeper still with QSource. Equipment that is already singing sings a lot better with QPoint and QSource in place. The acid test here is removing them; in a well put together system, taking them out of the system is an immediate and undeniable step in the wrong direction. If the audio components are the cake, proper cabling and physical and electrical grounding are the icing, then QPoint and QSource is the cherry on top. Ultimately, that means tastier cake!" For more on the QPoint and QSource, check out the video with Nordost's Mike Marko: