Alex Halberstadt

For Koenig, this issue wasn't merely academic. Before making his name as head of Contemporary Records in Los Angeles, he had attended Yale Law School, worked as a screenwriter and producer at Paramount, and gotten blacklisted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. At Contemporary, he set out to become a leading practitioner of the art of phonography.

So what's the problem? Well, a few turns of the knob suggest that negative feedback isn't as useful as it appears on paper.

If you're going to Germany to immerse yourself in big-city excitement—churning dance clubs, matterful contemporary art, visitors and food from around the world, and street life that goes on all night—you'll probably find it in Berlin. Though rents have been climbing and there's no shortage of dirty sidewalks and petty crime, the German capital remains one of the most youthful and vibrant cities in Europe, an art and culture center with large expatriate communities and endless things to do. For urban thrills on a smaller scale, you can make a case for Cologne and even Leipzig.

Just maybe don't go to Munich. As soon as you leave the airport, you know you've reached the epicenter of German burgherdom—a place where manicured lawns, public safety, tidy storefronts, and respectful revelers in Tyrolean costumes are the norm.

The vectors of tradition, originality, and talent came together in Jones to produce a strange and unlikely gift. His music can make you feel things as suddenly and deeply as just about anyone's, but on top of this Jones had the greatest instrument of any male vocalist in country music, almost outlandish in its range and power. Then there was his technique: He could wring four syllables out of a four-letter word, and even when performing the same hit night after night, he varied the stresses and melismatic leaps depending on his mood. Sinatra called him "the second-best singer in the world."

Better still, as listeners have become more knowledgeable and demanding, vinyl releases have become more scrupulously sourced, pressed, annotated, and packaged. Many of today's records show an unprecedented level of care and transparency about their production—and sound terrific to boot.

In the articles on hi-fi that he contributed to the Japanese magazine MJ, Sakuma-san also wrote about film, fishing, karaoke, and pachinko machines, and he usually began and ended his contributions with a poem. He considered himself an evangelist for emotional sound and demonstrated his audio systems in homes, at conferences, and on concert stages around the world. Though he passed in 2018, his fan club, called Direct Heating, remains a happening concern. Sakuma-san was fond of coining mottos—one was "farewell to theory"—but what has stuck with me most is his description of an ideal sound: "endless energy with sorrow."

This phrase came to mind often during the months I spent living with the Klipsch La Scala speakers, which imbued my musical life with unprecedented amounts of sound and emotion, and which I believe Sakuma-san would have enjoyed.