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Beautiful strains of music lured me into the Audiophile Experts room, where the song "Göttingen," written in 1964 by French chanteuse Barbara (real name Monique Andrée Serf) as an ode to the German city by the same name, was playing. As well as having become a hit in her native country, the song has been credited as having helped improve relations between France and Germany in the years following the Second World War. Barbara called the song "a hymn to Franco-German reconciliation".

As soon as I entered the room hosted by distributor / reseller Distribution Phonographe's room, I thought, "where's all the gear?" There wasn't much around, and of the few items that were around, one was so small as to be nearly imperceptible at first glance.

Recently, I tried out one of the many RCMs currently on the market: the redundantly named Nessie Vinylcleaner ProPlus+ ($2495), which despite the name does not hail from Scotland, nor is it a monster; in fact it's smaller than some other record cleaners I've used.

Does anyone who's been in our audio hobbyist orbit for some time not know speaker designer Andrew Jones? Wouldn't it be funny to imagine that in alternate 'verses in the multiverse, Jones might be something other than a famous speaker designer? Perhaps a famous pianist in one 'verse, an accountant in another (footnote 1)?

Although it may seem like it sometimes, not all the exhibitors at an audio show play the same typical audiophile fare, which sounds great but rarely challenges the power and dynamic reserves of their systems. Mark Jones, of Ontario-based retailer Audio by Mark Jones, is one of those exceptions to the rule. The first track he played for me was Led Zeppelin's chord-crunching, drum-whacking "Moby Dick," at high volume.

Let me tell you a story that involves a young lady and a preteen.