I was fascinated by Herb Reichert's adventures with the KEF KC62 subwoofer, so I borrowed one. Beautifully engineered, contoured, and finished and chock-full of cutting-edge technology, it would be welcome in any room and easily integrated into any system. However, it struck me as not just small but miniaturized, like the meticulously functional samples made for the traveling salesmen of a century past. Since its two force-canceling 6.5" radiators were the same size as or smaller than the midrange drivers in my main speakers at the time, I had low expectations and returned it without comment. That was in 2021.

I asked for a pair of KEF KC92s in early 2024 in the hope that these two relatively small subs would improve my system. Like the KC62, the gloss white cube with radiused edges and white diaphragms is an aesthetic match to our redesigned room, and the KC92 ($1999.99) is chock-full of the same cutting-edge technology.

Like romance or car racing, the act of playing records is tactile by design. Like drifting through curves or making out, spinning vinyl is a learned skill that requires users to touch everything with practiced assurance.

To play a disc with Technics' new SL-1300G record player means pushing its round On button, then touching one or more of its rectangular speed selector buttons, then pushing the big square [Start:Stop] button, then unclamping the tonearm and using its cue lever to raise it up.

Next comes the part where my heart beats a little faster: using the headshell's fingerlift to position the arm over the disc and lower it into a groove.

When the needle contacts the groove, the whole system kicks in and sound comes out.

Before the bits and bytes, before the streams, the music business and its most talented artists, producers, and engineers conjured up a notion of musical-sonic holiness: the perfect album side.

Remember albums? The idea is quaint in the era of streaming, a time of "summer songs," one-hit wonders, meme songs, song snippets on TikTok, songs tied to viral videos, robot-generated playlists, and whatnot. Those of us older than the World Wide Web itself, we remember albums. They were 12" slices of happiness, sadness, escape, epiphany—all the feelings.

The return of vinyl, which has stayed popular and profitable since its resurgence, has now developed a surprising nuance. Pierre Markotanyos, the owner of the reissue label Return to Analog and Montreal record store Aux 33 Tours (which refers to the speed at which an LP spins), has noticed a distinct change in the makeup of who's buying vinyl these days. "In the late 2000s," Markotanyos reflects, "it was mostly 55-to-70-year-old guys who were coming in, buying records to play on their high-end stereos that they bought at the audio show in Montreal." [Sound familiar, Stereophile readers?] "They were the purists and the true believers."