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Register to win an AudioQuest Silver Anti-Static Record Brush (retail value $19.95 US).

From the company:
Keep vinyl LPs free from annoying static, microscopic dust, and harmful debris with AudioQuest’s Silver Anti-Static Record Brush. Simple, attractive, and remarkably effective, AudioQuest’s Silver Anti-Static Record Brush features 1,086,000 conductive carbon fibers and an uncoated metal finger grip to create a reliable electrical path between fibers and handle.

In the August issue's As We See It, Tom Fine and I encouraged readers to hold on to their physical media—those black and silver discs—even if they're stashed away in a closet or attic, replaced by hi-rez streaming. An important reason we gave is that with physical media (in contrast to streaming), you know exactly what you're listening to—or at least you can know, with a little work.

Also if you want to, you can do a lot of work, since there is much to know and to learn, especially about vinyl records (and shellacs), and learning about them—about the labels and those arcane codes in the runout groove area—is a big part of the music-collecting hobby. Serious record collectors are likely to have several pressings of favorite albums and to know the provenance of each one. With streaming, you're limited to whichever version they end up with, and usually they don't bother to tell you which version it is. An example is Rock for Light by Bad Brains, which is considered by Robert Baird in this month's Aural Robert.

To me, that made no sense. Far from imposing "unnecessarily prescriptive requirements" on amplifier manufacturers, the Amplifier Rule had long forced manufacturers to clean up their acts.

As I wrote in an article published on the Stereophile website in 2021, in the hi-fi boom that began in the 1960s, the Institute of High Fidelity became alarmed by amplifier manufacturers exaggerating their products' output power. Such mystical numbers as "Peak Power" and "Music Power" were used willy-nilly to produce sales-oriented ratings with little to do with reality.

First comes the anticipation, that initial jet of warm water, that miraculous searching, finding the sweet spot, then heaven on earth as it cleans and caresses. As if by magic, warm, soothing wafts of air gently and sensuously dry my tush. I had forgotten just how wonderful Japanese toilets can be.

It was 5am in Tokyo. I was on my way to Hong Kong, but my ticket demanded a change of planes. Haneda Airport was empty, save for a woman driving a golf cart. She offered me a ride to the other side of the airport where some restaurants were. As we drove off, the cart started playing "Around her neck, she wore a yellow ribbon," filling the cavernous hall with echoes of John Wayne astride his horse, galloping through Monument Valley.