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That is me you see hanging out the car window like an old hound dog—ears flappin' in the slipstream—a big smile on my face. I am happy in the wind 'cause I am heading down to Rockville, Maryland to Capital Audio fest (starting today, November 3, and running though Sunday November 5) where I will see at least 60 fine audio rooms and I'll chatter on a panel about "The Virtues of Vintage" with old pals, Art Dudley, Joe Roberts, and Blackie Pagano. I'll be cruising the Rockville Hilton Hotel halls meeting new people and visiting the rooms of some old and (hopefully) some new friends. Tickets for entry are only $20 a day or $30 for the whole weekend.

Prelude
The setting of the Prelude to our opera, The Margules Saga, is the California Audio Show, in August 2012. There, on first hearing Margules Audio's tube electronics, I wrote in my notebook, "great inner vitality, warm but with a welcome and appropriate bite." An encounter the following January inspired me to write, of a system that included an earlier version of the company's U280 amplifier, "The sound? Beautiful and warm. I've heard these electronics at two shows, and each time, I've left the room feeling good."

By no means could I undertake a survey of candidates for Your Last Perfectionist-Quality CD player—so far, my ongoing series of reviews has focused on models from Audio Note, Bryston, EAR, Luxman, and Metronome—without including Naim Audio. After all, it was Naim that brought to market the first really good-sounding CD player of my experience: the two-box CDS, introduced in 1991 at a then-staggering price of $6999. In doing so, they convinced me that a digital future might not be so bad after all.

Halloween Music: It Was a Graveyard Smash!

For some months now, I've lived mostly without music. To survive the dust and grit of the renovation of our Manhattan apartment, all electronics had to be covered with heavy plastic, the speakers encapsulated in large green lawn bags, and the listening room partitioned off with a temporary wall. We could listen to music with our little 3.1-channel TV system in the den (eh) or through headphones (not!), or we could decamp to our house in Connecticut, which we did as much as possible. I felt deprived. Now that it's all over, I'm grateful to have it back—and grateful for the improvements in the main system, some of them direct byproducts of the renovation.

From a small regional show, Gary Gill's seven-year old Capital Audiofest has grown into the East Coast Show of 2017. Set for November 3–5 in the Hilton Hotel Twinbrook in Rockville, MD, CAF will offer 57 exhibit rooms spread over three floors plus the hotel Atrium. That amounts to 93 exhibitors and over 200 brands, including a CanMania with 20 headphone vendors. For a show that, just last year, maxed out at 40 rooms with 65 exhibitors and 85 brands, this represents major growth.

Did I really listen to and love the hi-rez (24/44.1k) file equivalent of four CDs chock-full of piano music written by and for the great Terry Riley (b. 1935)? Not only is the answer in the affirmative, but I can now honestly attests that pianist/pedagogue Sarah Cahill's Eighty Trips Around the Sun abounds in opportunities to take you on multiple mind-bending excursions through the mind of a true master.