LATEST ADDITIONS

Back in the 1990s, my friend Nick Despotopoulos and I published an article in The Tracking Angle titled "Zen and the Art of Record Cleaning Made Difficult," describing author Michael Wayne's record-cleaning methodology. That regimen, like the article itself, was the most comprehensive one I knew of at the time.

Fontaines D.C.: A Hero's Death, Paul Weller: On Sunset, Jenny O.: New Truth and Joan Osborne: Trouble and Strife.

Maria Schneider Orchestra: Data Lords, Keleketla, Joel Ross: Who Are You? and John Zorn and Jesse Harris: Songs for Petra.

In March 2003, as news networks broadcast images of American tanks racing north toward Baghdad, my infantry platoon dug shallow foxholes in southern Iraq. We were part of a defensive perimeter guarding FARP Exxon, a helicopter refueling point for the Army's 101st Airborne Division.

Before starting this review of Rotel's Michi P5, the 60-year-old, Japan-based audio company's recent preamplifier design, I thought it appropriate to consider "What is an audio preamplifier? What should it do?" There are plenty of opinions to be found at stereophile.com:

"What a preamp ought to do, apart from changing volume and switching sources, is as little as possible," wrote Stereophile Editor Jim Austin in his 2017 review of the PS Audio BHK Signature preamplifier.

"As long as you're happy."

That's the line long uttered by the most dreaded members of my family, and their friends, whenever they tried to pry into my personal affairs. Often the last word, "happy," was uttered with a downward cadence and accompanied by a shrug.

Then came the kicker. "You are happy, aren't you?" said with eyes boring into my soul. "Well, as long as you're happy."

Ever since I stopped using my Audio Research SP10 preamplifier in the early 1990s—its eight phono-stage tubes used to get too noisy too quickly—I tried a variety of standalone phono preamplifiers. Seeing the most service through the 1990s and 2000s were, first, a Mod Squad Phono Drive EPS, then a Linn Linto, both of which I purchased. But when I measured Channel D's Seta Model L, which Michael Fremer reviewed in the August 2010 issue, the Linto was pushed to one side. The battery-powered Seta L (footnote 1) had the lowest noise and distortion I had encountered in a phono preamplifier, and I eventually bought the sample I had been sent for a follow-up review in 2013.