Here's a little something to warm your hearts: The March 2014 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands, and it's a very special issue, indeed. Inside, you'll find that our editor, John Atkinson, has fallen in love with a new pair of headphones. Has the sexy Audeze LCD-X seduced him away from his old, beloved Sennheiser HD650?

Of course, there's more.

Since the first digital processor on the market using UltraAnalog DACs appeared (the $12,000 Stax DAC-X1t, reviewed in August 1990, Vol.13 No.8), there has been a proliferation of good-sounding processors using this extraordinary—and expensive—part. Among these are the Audio Research DAC1, Audio Research DAC1-20, VTL Reference D/A, and the groundbreaking Mark Levinson No.30 reviewed last month.

Koetsu. Kiseki. Keebler. Products from all of these firms are shrouded in at least a bit of mystery. Do I believe that Koetsu cartridges are hand-built by an octogenarian samurai swordsmith, or that Kisekis are imported from the planet Vulcan, or that Keebler's cookies are baked by elves? Not really. But it does help to liven up the domestic audio scene.

"Look, son—see what Scottie just beamed down."

"Gee, Dad, it's big and blue with a gold spot on the front, and it kind of looks like a cartridge."

"Nice guess, son. No ordinary cartridge, this one. Let me tell you about the Vulcan analog freak in Hong Kong..."

If there's one article in Stereophile that generated more reader response than any other, it was Peter Breuninger's review of the classic Fisher 500-C tubed receiver in June 2005. Peter reviewed another classic component from the 1960s, the Bozak B-410 Concert Grand loudspeaker; my involvement in the review, in the October 2005 issue, brought home to me with a vengeance how much the science of speaker design has evolved in the 40 years since this armoire-sized model was introduced.

Instagram is the first app I check each day. What does that say about me? I certainly like pictures. I also enjoy keeping up with friends and family through images, seeing what they see each day, glimpsing a day in their lives. But, beyond that, I’m not sure.

Interestingly, more and more audio manufacturers are showing up on Instagram. I follow several, including:

Sunday, February 23, 12–5:30pm: Essential Audio (715 Braeside Place, Barrington, Illinois) will host an audio demonstration with Brian Zolner, president of Bricasti Design, for the grand opening of its remodeled, expanded facilities.

I've never been a mono-phile. Yes, mono is better than electronically reprocessed stereo. And yes, for some of the early stereo recordings, where the engineer smacked one of the horns in the left speaker and the other in the right, it's better to hear everyone in the center. And, finally, there are cases, most notably on many of The Beatles' albums, where the musicians supervised the mono mix and ignored the stereo, making the mono, in a sense, the authoritative version. But in general, those albums that were recorded in stereo, I prefer to hear in stereo.

But the latest excavation from the Miles Davis archive, The Original Mono Recordings, nine CDs of the nine albums made for Columbia from 1955–63, is an exception, a set worthy of attention—though not so much because the discs are in mono.