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We started issuing recordings on the Stereophile label at the end of the 1980s, both to make available some of test tracks that we were using in our reviews and to enable readers to have access to recordings where the provenance was fully documented. That way the "Circle of Confusion" that Bob Katz discussed on the Stereophile website in 2017, where the sound quality of an audio component couldn't be judged using a recording with unknown sound quality potential, could be avoided. As Bob wrote, "How can any reviewer make a judgment about a transducer without knowing what a recording is supposed to sound like?"

I'm picturing a gaggle of cigar-chomping Simaudio execs in an office discussing what to do about the fact that their high-end amplification lines have become so successful that their names have become synonymous with the company. "In the '90s, people thought our company was called Celeste," one floor-pacing exec says, speaking for everyone in the room. "Now they think we're called Moon! How do we fix this?" After much debate, a member shouts: "We add 'by Simaudio' at the end!" The execs hoot, holler, and slap the conference-room table—and thus is born Moon by Simaudio.

A fictional account? Sure, but, as they say in the movies, it's based on a true story.

In 1955, Canadian pianist Glenn Gould surprised executives at Columbia Masterworks by choosing J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations for his debut recording. His performance was fast and fluid and sparkling and delicious, and it was an astonishingly big seller. In 1981, Gould came full circle and recorded the Goldbergs again. It was his last studio recording. That second attempt could not be more different from the first: relentlessly intellectual, percussive, insistent.

Late last year, to honor what would have been Gould's 90th birthday, Sony put out a package with a full-color coffee table book and 10 CDs of unreleased outtakes from the 1981 sessions—The Goldberg Variations: The Complete Unreleased 1981 Studio Sessions—with an 11th disc containing the 1981 album.

Back in 2003, in an uptown New York City studio, a man who epitomized cool in the 1960s waited patiently for my next question. Well into his 70s but still thin and handsome, Burt Bacharach was casually dapper in his contrasting sweater and polo shirt. In town to perform with Ronald Isley in support of their new record together, Here I Am—Isley Meets Bacharach, the songwriter extraordinaire is warm and approachable, wary but unusually guileless when answering the questions of a lifelong fan of his melodies, a fan who's trying hard to be professional and hide the fact that he's utterly starstruck.

As rhythm has become predominant in pop music and melody has receded in importance, Bacharach and lyricist Hal David's brand of sleek, memorable tune craft has slipped into history. Yet despite Bacharach's death in February 2023, at age 94, their body of work is timeless.

Mick Survance of Quintessence Audio in Morton Grove, IL knows his brands well. Wilson Audio, Dan D'Agostino Master Audio Systems, Clearaudio, DS Audio, dCS, Transparent, Bassocontinuo, Sonus faber, Boulder, Critical Mass Systems, Hana, and Kubala-Sosna: these are among the major, time-honored brands that fill the homes of many audiophiles with means.

Each of these rooms had several elements in common: premium equipment, meticulous set-up, and heavy black draping that, while necessary to reduce multiple issues in narrower air-walled spaces (which were nonetheless larger than my music room), also reduced three-dimensionality and air. It was thus a wonder that individually as well as collectively, Quintessence's showcases produced some of the best sound I encountered at the show.

Grandinote owner/designer Massimiliano Magri (above) joined his North American distributor Reinhard Goerner at AXPONA for the premiere of the Grandinote Premier Mach 8XL loudspeaker ($30,800–$33,000/pair, depending upon finish). According to Grandinote's endearingly "English as a second language" website, the Mach 8XL's eight full-range drivers utilize a special treatment behind the drivers' membranes that prevents cone break-up. The drivers roll-off above 13kHz, allowing a super tweeter that handles harmonics above 7kHz to come to the fore. Rather than employing a crossover—the Mach 8XL has none—drivers are modified to create "a solution in the middle between bass reflex and transmission line."

Some believe that Dolby Atmos, Apple's spatial audio variant, and other immersive technologies are the wave of the future. While the best way to determine what the future will bring is to live long enough to render the future the present, Jim Austin and I independently dipped into Focal Naim's impressive self-contained 7.2.4. Dolby Atmos Theva exhibit, staged within their larger exhibit space, to get a taste of what's available right now.