In the mid-'60s, modern jazz pivoted. Charlie Parker, the previous era's key revolutionary, had been dead for a decade. "Hard bop," the soul-and-back-beat variant of Parker's bebop, was running out of steam. The Beatles were rocking the world, and jazz would never recover as a branch of "popular music." In response or indifference to these tough transitions, jazz musicians set sail on several experimental paths. In those first few years, the most adventurous voyages were mapped and carved out at Blue Note Records.

In poker, "tells" are subtle physical or verbal actions that give away the strength of players' hands.

I am not a poker player, but I am an audiophile, and I use a variety of "tells" as my prime tools in critical listening. You know my worn-out line: "You can't hear what you're not listening for."

Why am I once again falling down the rabbit hole of alternating current? A while back, I committed to listening to SMc Audio's AC Nexus power conditioner, designed by SMc founder Steve McCormack and distributed by dealer Hi Fi One.

Technics, an arm of the Japanese giant Panasonic Corporation, has long been a major player in the hi-fi world, even if, in some recent decades, it stayed below the radar.

In the 1970s, analog-centric audiophiles particularly praised the Technics SP-10, the world's first direct drive turntable. Created by Matsushita engineer Shuichi Obata in 1969, the SP-10 and its successors became the standard in vinyl playback for American radio stations during that heyday of broadcast radio.