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It's one thing to know that you're attending what has quickly grown into the largest annual high-end show in the United States. It's something else entirely to try to take in even a third of the 180 exhibits that were spread over the width, breadth and height of the Denver Marriott Tech Center.

RMAF 2010 drew such a huge rush of attendees on the first day (October 15) as to cause at least one overly packed elevator to spend what seemed like a minute in limbo, considering whether it should dare try to ascend. When it finally determined to go up rather…

Our designer, Natalie Baca, tried a few new things…

On the morning of Monday, the 18th, just hours after the 2010 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest had come to an end, I was feeling the post-show blues, dissatisfied with the number of exhibitor rooms I had covered and convinced that I had done a poor job with the rooms I had covered. On the evening before the show opened, Jason Victor Serinus, John Atkinson, and I met for a beer and tried to figure out how the three of us would be able to cover the show’s nine floors, 180 rooms, and 400 exhibitors. We decided to divide the show evenly, each of us taking three floors…

We are currently putting together the January 2011 issue of Stereophile. (That’s Volume 34 Number 1!) The January 2011 issue is especially exciting for me because it includes the first installment of our new monthly column, “The Entry Level,” in which I’ll attempt to uncover really excellent, affordably priced hi-fi components and explore how and why we become audiophiles. It should be fun.

While at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, we introduced the idea to several equipment manufacturers and…

There will be no computers, and there will be very limited cell phone service. There will be lots of rum, and lots of beer, and lots of time spent in the ocean.

I’m also hoping to…

But Mosaic Records’ new 9-CD boxed set, The Complete Ahmad Jamal Trio Argo Sessions, 1956-1962, has set me reeling. It’s a mind-changer.

I still have my reservations, which the collection has only confirmed. Some of the ballads are jejune beyond measure; he treats even a sex-soaked number like “You Go to My Head” as just another tasty, bouncy tune; one of the discs (#5), which features a backup of strings (…

Don’t get me wrong. I like their arch covers of Pink Floyd, Nirvana, and Burt Bacharach as much as the next postmodernist. And I believe them when they said that they’re not spoofing those pop tunes, that they truly love this music. (In my interview with him long ago, the group’s pianist, Ethan Iverson, extolled "Mr. Cobain’s Stravinskyite open-fifths.")

Still, these guys—Iverson, Reid Anderson on bass, and Dave King…