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Founded in 1925, Luxman has long been one of Japan's most highly regarded audio manufacturers. Throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, Luxman's tube preamplifiers and power amplifiers occupied the top shelves of high-performance audio retailers, and to many older American audiophiles, the Luxman name is as familiar and esteemed as those of such storied American brands as McIntosh and Marantz. Luxman's combination of rich, warm sound, superb build quality, and indelible industrial design made its products fully competitive with other brands then considered among the world's best.

Reader T. Bloom asks: "Do you tend towards bass frequency-response accuracy, or would you prefer either a little more or a little less bass than measures flat in your listening room?" In other words, how much bass is enough?

It's Friday evening. I would like to be at home, sitting on the orange couch, a beer in my hand, the light rain tapping against my windows, listening to Grails' <i>Doomsdayer's Holiday</i>. Sounds bleak, doesn't it? But Grails are really kind of perfect for this sort of warm, rainy autumn night, with their dark mix of Eastern psychedelia, folk, metal, and free-jazz ramblings. Beautifully recorded, too, with heart-jolting impact and sweet, sweet dynamic range.

Thursday, December 4: <i><b>The Sound Experience</i></b> (233 South Federal Highway, Boca Raton, FL) will celebrate their official grand opening with a listening party. Michael Fremer is the guest of honor and will give an analog clinic. RSVP: (561) 391-7868. For more info, visit <a href="http://www.thesndexp.com/">The Sound Experience</a>.

It is November 14th, and it's hot as heck outside. I wonder how many polar bears just died. That's not funny. The arctic is vanishing, the oceans are rising, we have brown clouds in the sky. Awesome. We are doomed. Screw it. Let's buy some vinyl!

<i>Jimmy Boyd's "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus." Columbia, 10" (MJV 152).</i>

Here's how God makes audiophiles: He starts with several million blank brain cells, then programs each one, individually, to function as either a love for one single aspect of music reproduction or a hatred for another. There are over a thousand such cells&#151;far too many to list here&#151;but theologians and audio reviewers have worked together to compile this list of the Top 20, which, just like real life, contains a little more love than hate:

Naxos has taken a major step toward distributing higher-quality downloads of classical-music recordings. <A HREF="http://www.classicsonline.com">ClassicsOnline</A&gt;, the label's impressive download site, now offers the world's largest collection of classical-music recordings free of digital rights management (DRM). All of the site's nearly 22,000 albums, from more than 100 independent labels, are available at 320kbps.

The year’s not quite over, but it’s a safe bet that Sonny Rollins’ <I>Road Shows Vol. 1</I> (on his own Doxy label) will be the best jazz album of 2008 and rank among the best of the decade.

It isn't enough to say that engineer <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/artdudleylistening/404listening">Denis N. Morecroft</A> is one of contemporary audio's few visionaries: He's one of a <I>very</I> few mature designers whose passion for doing things a certain way hasn't abandoned him in the least, and whose well-argued convictions seem stronger than ever. Thus, as others cave in to commerce&#151;the tube-amp designer who offers a solid-state product just to help his dealers fill a price niche, the source-component manufacturer who rails against digital audio one day and starts cranking out CD players the next&#151;DNM Design remains the likeliest of all modern companies to stay its course.