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I was heading back home to New York in my old Mercedes diesel on a Sunday evening, having just attended the annual Capital Audiofest near Washington, DC. Riding shotgun was fellow Stereophile scribbler Ken Micallef, and as we puttered along the straight, featureless lower half of the New Jersey Turnpike, we started to reminisce about our audio show experiences.

When this feature premiered in 1991, it was intended as a list of recordings that were, in the words of Richard Lehnert, the music editor at the time, "both musically and sonically impeccable—in other words, the best, the tops, to die for."

Stereophile strives to distribute the wealth equally. Did that get your attention? What the statement refers to, in terminology devoid of dollar signs, is that Stereophile attempts to review products from different companies rather than repeatedly focus on products from a single company.

"You should come to CAF," Ken Micallef said. He has been saying this for what seems like decades. "It's cool, smaller and more manageable than AXPONA. You'll like it."

Sometimes speakers talk to me. Usually when they do, they ask me to move them, or to move myself—the listening position—to suit them.

Erin Morley & Lawrence Brownlee: Golden Age; Elena Firsova & Dmitri Smirnov: Love And Loss; Ben-Haim: Symphony No.2, Israel Philharmonic/Lahav Shani; Mahler: Symphony No.7, National Symphony Orchestra/Gianandrea Noseda.

Roy Brooks: The Free Slave; Amanda Monaco: Deathblow; Timo Vollbrecht: Bremen New York; Sun Ra And His Intergalactic Myth Science Solar Arkestra: Sleeping Beauty & On Jupiter.