<I>She responds as expected to the only sound: hysterical voices!&#151;Brian Eno</I>

Ah me, another year gone by. The rest of my holiday-gift suggestions are at the end of this column, but I wanted to kick off with a hearty recommendation of <I>Aja</I>, a book by Don Breithaupt. You may recall Breithaupt as a co-author (with his brother, Jeff) of the survey <I>Precious and Few: Pop Music in the Early '70s</I>, which cracked me up in my <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/thefifthelement/the_fifth_element_56">October column</A>.

Ah me, another year gone by. The rest of my holiday-gift suggestions are at the end of this column, but I wanted to kick off with a hearty recommendation of <I>Aja</I>, a book by Don Breithaupt. You may recall Breithaupt as a co-author (with his brother, Jeff) of the survey <I>Precious and Few: Pop Music in the Early '70s</I>, which cracked me up in my <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/thefifthelement/the_fifth_element_56">October column</A>.

Ah me, another year gone by. The rest of my holiday-gift suggestions are at the end of this column, but I wanted to kick off with a hearty recommendation of <I>Aja</I>, a book by Don Breithaupt. You may recall Breithaupt as a co-author (with his brother, Jeff) of the survey <I>Precious and Few: Pop Music in the Early '70s</I>, which cracked me up in my <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/thefifthelement/the_fifth_element_56">October column</A>.

Ah me, another year gone by. The rest of my holiday-gift suggestions are at the end of this column, but I wanted to kick off with a hearty recommendation of <I>Aja</I>, a book by Don Breithaupt. You may recall Breithaupt as a co-author (with his brother, Jeff) of the survey <I>Precious and Few: Pop Music in the Early '70s</I>, which cracked me up in my <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/thefifthelement/the_fifth_element_56">October column</A>.

Ah me, another year gone by. The rest of my holiday-gift suggestions are at the end of this column, but I wanted to kick off with a hearty recommendation of <I>Aja</I>, a book by Don Breithaupt. You may recall Breithaupt as a co-author (with his brother, Jeff) of the survey <I>Precious and Few: Pop Music in the Early '70s</I>, which cracked me up in my <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/thefifthelement/the_fifth_element_56">October column</A>.

The January 2010 issue of <i>Stereophile</i> is now on newsstands. Hooray! A new volume! A new year! Twelve more issues of <i>Stereophile</i>! Whee! We are pretty excited about starting the year off with a review of a PC soundcard. And at just $200, the ASUS Xonar Essence is the least expensive product to ever grace the cover of our magazine. Plus, it’s got that pretty golden tiger thing on it. What aroused John Atkinson’s interest, however, was the ASUS’s claimed signal/noise ratio of 124dB: “True high-end territory.”