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The vinyl boom is one thing, but do analog-loving audiophiles actually buy new records? How about you? Do you buy new LP records?

I was having breakfast in my hotel room on December 13, 2008, finally getting down to preparing the presentation I was to give at the Los Angeles and Orange County Audio Society scant hours later (footnote 1). I procrastinated a little more by checking my e-mail one more time. The message from Ivor Humphreys, once my deputy editor at the UK's <I>Hi-Fi News &amp; Record Review</I> magazine (now just plain <I>Hi-Fi News</I>), and for many years technical editor at <I>Gramophone</I> magazine, was typically terse: "John Crabbe has died. He had a fall on the wintry ice a few days ago and broke an arm. He died at home yesterday. He was 79."

You've seen the ads from YG Acoustics: "The best loudspeaker on Earth. Period." It sounds arrogant. But come on&#151;high-end audio has never been a field of shrinking violets. When <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/1101ivor">Ivor Tiefenbrun</A> of Linn announced that the turntable, not the cartridge or loudspeakers, dictated the sound quality of an audio system, that was a man convinced that he was right and taking on the world. And was Krell's <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/1203dagostino">Dan D'Agostino</A> any less arrogant when, in 1980, he introduced the KSA-100 power amplifier? In a world where small size and high wattage were the norms, didn't it take a pair of big brass 'uns to bring out a honkin' huge slab of metal that put out only 100Wpc?

Just to be clear: I never felt imprisoned, or controlled, by <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/the_transformation/">my television</a>. We had enjoyed a harmless, casual relationship. My television never told me what to do, never told me who to associate with; my television never judged me, never questioned my motives; my television gave me my space when I needed it. It had been a good television, for the most part. Sure, sometimes it could be obtuse or aloof with its poor reception; sometimes it seemed like it didn't want me to watch the Mets game on Saturday afternoons. But, all in all, I liked television. I still do. It's just that I like <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/my_new_rega_p3-24/">my turntable</a> <i>more</i>.

When my LP collection grew larger than space allowed for them on the couch, I started stacking records up against my short stools. A stack of a dozen or so LPs soon became a stack of three or four dozen LPs; soon became impossible to move and stretched from the left side of one stool all the way to the right side of the opposite stool. I had the Pulaski Skyway of vinyl LPs arcing through my small apartment.

I had made room for vinyl LPs on my small bookshelf. It worked out alright, except that the shelf only went ten inches deep, leaving a good two inches of my poor, homeless LPs hanging off into open space. I could not continue to subject them to this sort of abuse. They would need a proper home, and soon.

The LP rack now stands in place of the small bookshelf. Books: Who needs them?