When JD Events' Liz MiIler invited me to give the keynote speech at the 2018 AXPONA, in Chicago suburb Schaumburg, I was at first not sure what to talk about. But then I realized that not only was 2018 the 32nd anniversary of my joining Stereophile as editor and the 42nd anniversary of my joining Hi-Fi News & Record Review magazine as a lowly editorial assistant, it also marked 50 years since I bought my first audio system!

Herb and Jana were visiting me in Albany, NY, at the 1936 semi-mock-Tudor house I now call home. The real star of this video is my dog, Chatter Dudley, an 8-year-old Jack Russell Terrier with a fierce fondness for Herb Reichert (they had met once before), and who had Jana Dagdagan saying, by the end of the day, "I wish I had a dog." Unfortunately, the cameras weren't running when Chatter took a running leap to sit next to Herb while he was on the couch, listening to the blue-vinyl version of Puente Celeste's Nama.

The Los Angeles Audio Show (LAAS), scheduled for June 8–10 in Orange County, opposite the John Wayne International Airport at the former sites of T.H.E. Show, seems to have been cancelled. Although the LAAS website briefly contained a note that conversations were in progress about the possibility of the show being saved by the Los Angeles & Orange County Audio Society (LAOCAS), that note has now been removed.

While covering CanMania at the 2017 Capital Audiofest, I was sitting at the table of HeadAmp Audio Electronics, listening first to John McEuen singing Warren Zevon's "Excitable Boy," from McEuen's Made in Brooklyn (24-bit/192kHz AIFF, Chesky JD388/HDtracks), then to Macy Gray's Stripped (24/96 AIFF, Chesky JD389/HDtracks). I was listening through HeadAmp's extraordinary GS-X Mk.2 headphone amplifier ($2999–$3199), but midway through Gray's "I Try," I stopped, pulled the Audeze LCD-4 headphones off my head, and asked HeadAmp's head of sales and marketing, Peter James, what DAC he was using.

"Do you know the HoloAudio Spring DAC?"