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Last May I got a text message from my vinyl-loving electrician: "Hey Michael, I'm listening to WFMU and a young 12 year old analog genius is guest DJ-ing, Malachi Lui. He mentioned you, and talks about mastering and pressings—he's incredible. I imagine he's been in touch with you. Hope all is well, Craig."

During my 100 years on earth, I've owned mostly separate amps and preamps, but only because that is where I started—or I should say, that is where my audio-savvy friends directed me when I began asking for guidance. Nevertheless, the audio system I've used the longest (unchanged for almost 10 years) consisted of 1984 Rogers LS3/5a loudspeakers (15 ohms, with factory wall mounts) powered by a proletarian-looking Creek 4330 integrated amp sourced by an Oppo CD player.

The central question behind Déjà Vu was "How do you top a classic?" The eponymous debut album by Crosby, Stills & Nash was a case of magic musical synergy meeting the perfect moment. It peaked at #6 on the Billboard 200, won the Grammy for Best New Artist, and opened the door for the trio's legendary performance at Woodstock.

Register to win a Pro-Ject The Beatles SGT. Pepper Essential III, Special Edition Turntable (value $500.00) we are giving away.

According to the company:

"Pro-Ject is celebrating the 54th anniversary of a Beatles' landmark with our "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"-inspired Essential III turntable. This high-performance table is based on one of our most popular models and features variable 33/45 RPM speeds. It's also one of the most striking pieces in our entire collection. We're excited to be collaborating with our friends at Stereophile and Analog Planet to offer readers a chance to own this historic piece."

[This Sweepstakes is now closed.]

Almost exactly a year ago to the day that I'm writing this—March 11, 2020—the WHO officially declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic. If you weren't paying attention, maybe you didn't see it coming (incredibly, some still deny the pandemic's existence), but I had already canceled a March 14, 2020, flight to Atlanta to speak to the local audiophile society. I'd made the plans for that visit at the Florida Audio Expo a few weeks earlier. Remember hi-fi shows?

Power amplifiers should be boring. They have a single, well-defined function: Make the input signal large enough to run a loudspeaker so that it makes sound at levels suitable for listening to music. Generally, controls and features are few or none. Peter Walker of Quad famously defined the ideal amplifier as a "straight wire with gain." That's just one feature: gain.

To borrow Lyric Hi-Fi owner Leonard Bellezza's words from last month's Re-Tales, the traditional audiophile customer base "is graying."

That doesn't mean the future is bleak—not necessarily. Many in the industry have hope for hi-fi's future. For that potential future to be realized, however, audio dealers must adapt. Interest in better sound seems to be rising. Consider vinyl's resurgence; regardless of your views on vinyl's ultimate fidelity, it's a big step up from the earlier fashion for MP3s and cheap earbuds. (There's good news on that front, too: Those earbuds morphed into Beats headphones, then Beats into good-quality headphones.