My oldest aural memory is my mother singing nursery rhymes to send me off to sleep. After that, it's vinyl records. Being the third child, I benefited from a constant stream of audio-related hand-me-downs, starting with a 1960s kiddie phonograph and a pile of well-worn records from my older brothers.

Sonus faber has announced the Amati Supreme, a floorstanding loudspeaker derived from concepts developed for the Suprema. The company positions the model as a compact implementation of its “Voice of Sonus faber” engineering approach.

My Russian neighbor Alex forges ax heads and smokes pig chests 5' from my bedroom window. At 2:00am, shirtless, in February. One especially cold night, I woke up to the sounds of hammering and loud music. When I looked out, Alex was blacksmithing a glowing red meat cleaver blade, with Rachmaninoff plays Rachmaninoff blaring from a cassette in his boom box.