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Another heavy hitter, showing in five rooms with multiple product lines, was Rob Standley’s Playback Distribution, featuring equipment from TEAC, the new-to-me company Advance Paris, PMC, Amphion, Vienna Acoustics, and a heaping helping of Esoteric.

That title must have gotten your attention. Not the part about Art Pepper but the part about the CD. Nobody has anything good to say about the compact disc anymore. CD sales suck. Streaming and downloads rule the world. Vinyl (an album format that warps, scratches, and has to be flipped every 22 minutes) now outsells CDs.

But the CD still deserves a place in your heart. One reason: box sets. Many of them are worthy of coveting. For example, there is an amazing new project on the Omnivore label, Art Pepper's The Complete Maiden Voyage Recordings. It contains eight hours and 20 minutes of music on seven CDs. Collections that large do not lend themselves to LPs.

When some folks think of Audio Note, they picture of low fog over English lakes, Earl Grey tea, The House of Commons, and Big Ben. Tubes for sure. Likely, Classical music. Well hold on to your remote control, 'cause this latest sighting of Audio Note, at the Florida Audio Expo, was more drum'n'bass than Dvorák, more techno wampum than Die Walkure.

As Stereophile managing editor Mark Henninger and I scurried up and down the Hilton halls, fulfilling our tasks as intrepid reporters, we had little time to compare notes. But we agreed on one room, Axiss Audio. In a room filled with exceptional gear, Axiss's Cliff Duffey and TJ Goldsby had set up a fantastic rig, well beyond the norm, which overachieved and set my ears afire. (Not literally.)