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With a slightly worried look, he asked, "How much did you say those silver cables cost?"

Thirty years later
Changing audio cables always changes the sound of my system, sometimes a lot but usually just a little. Typically, the sonic effects of cable changes are modest shifts in focus, tone, or transparency. But sometimes during blue moons I've seen a new set of cables turn a blah, dull, fuzzy system into a macrodynamic, microdetailed one. Or turn a cool, mechanical-sounding system into something fierce and mammalian.

Phono playback EQ is one of those audiophile topics that stokes some people's passions, with plenty of disagreements about how important it is. I have seen grown men get into heated discussions about the history of record EQ curves, but in truth, the subject is only likely to matter if you listen to a lot of 78s or original mono LPs pressed between the late 1940s and the mid-1950s.

Just Audio's Lenny Florentine presented two rooms at the show, one jammed with components at all price points (including Luxman, inspiring that company's VP of Sales John Pravel and myself to reminisce about 1970s hi-fi sales), the second with more affordable but no less listenable alternatives. Room 806 offered two systems in one.

Another heavy hitter, showing in five rooms with multiple product lines, was Rob Standley’s Playback Distribution, featuring equipment from TEAC, the new-to-me company Advance Paris, PMC, Amphion, Vienna Acoustics, and a heaping helping of Esoteric.

In the usual preshow rush to coax product lists out of exhibitors, I asked Jeff for his list, and make it fast! One day passed, then another. Finally, Jeff acquiesced, writing "Ken, we just got the room!"

There's a fear out there, even among jazz cognoscenti, that the music's best years and true geniuses are all part of the past. Even in New York City, the richest magnet for live jazz on earth, it sometimes seems that experiencing generational talent, the kind that once drove the music forward, is now confined to gazing at the famous photos on the walls of the music's most revered shrine, the Village Vanguard. Yet, seeing pianist Sullivan Fortner at the Vanguard, as part of Cécile McLorin Salvant's band, convinced me that there's still jazz magic in the world. By turns playful, blindingly brilliant, and at times puppy dog goofy, Fortner was spectacular. He is clearly a star in the music's future.

When some folks think of Audio Note, they picture of low fog over English lakes, Earl Grey tea, The House of Commons, and Big Ben. Tubes for sure. Likely, Classical music. Well hold on to your remote control, 'cause this latest sighting of Audio Note, at the Florida Audio Expo, was more drum'n'bass than Dvorák, more techno wampum than Die Walkure.