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"'Happy' is our primary product," Elliot Fishkin, the proprietor of Innovative Audio, which is entering its 45th year of business, told visitors early Thursday evening, January 21. "We want you to be able to be connected to the music in profound ways." A small crowd was gathered in the lobby outside Innovative's newly renovated showrooms, in an expansive underground space on the east side of Manhattan, to hear amplifiers by VTL, cables by Transparent, and loudspeakers by Wilson Audio.

Available on newsstands and the Stereophile online Shop this week is a special 148-page "Collector's Edition" of Stereophile, in which we have compiled all of the reviews comprising the past 10 years' worth of R2D4—some 500 albums selected by 46 writers, organized by musical genre and listed alphabetically. Along with six short essays on recorded music by the magazine's music editor, Robert Baird, there are: 48 pages of Rock reviews, 20 pages of Jazz reviews, 15 pages of Opera & Vocal reviews, 14 pages of Classical Orchestral & Film Score reviews, 9 pages of Chamber Music & Instrumental reviews, and 10 pages of Folk, Blues & World Music reviews.

"The Record Player Reborn" declare the new issue's cover, referring to reviews of LP players from Oracle, Acoustic Signature, and VPI. But digital isn't forgotten, with John Atkinson raving about about Chord's new $599 portable DAC, Larry Greenhill upgrading his Bryston BDP-2 file player with a new soundboard, and Digital Audio Review's John Darkø kicking off the issue with a guest editorial on the boom in personal listening in Japan. And topping it all off is our annual "Records to Die For" listing: 56 albums every audiophile should have in their collection.

Slated to open in March 2016 in Nashville, TN, Thiel Audio's Aurora "Ultra-HD Streaming Studio" is positioned to merge the legacy of Thiel loudspeakers with the vibrancy and "wow factor" of Music City. Thiel's plan is to create a state-of-the-art venue where fans, specifically younger-generation fans, can unite with name musicians and emerging artists via live, interactive performances that are streamed in Ultra-HD video and lossless audio.

Saturday, December 19, from noon –7pm, Sandy Gross, president of GoldenEar Technology, will be at Manhattan high-end audio retailer Stereo Exchange (627 Broadway, New York) demonstrating GoldenEar loudspeakers, including the Triton One, Stereophile's Joint Loudspeaker of 2015, as well as the new SuperSub XXL. Sandy will also be there to answer all your questions, and to talk about the speakers, the design process and his 40+ years in the audio industry.

Technics’ little gem of a speaker, the two-way SB-C700, signifies both the Japanese brand’s return to the high-performance audio scene and the start of Stereophile’s 54th year of continuous publication. Paradigm’s Prestige 95F tower speaker also gets the full review treatment, along with an idiosyncratic two-box CD player from the UK’s Audio Note, BAT’s cost-no-object Rex II tube preamplifier, and Apogee’s affordable but great-sounding Groove D/A headphone amplifier.

In a four-room, every-seat-filled extravaganza that rivaled some of the Music Matters events in the number of high-quality components simultaneously on active display, the Berkeley, CA wing of Music Lovers Audio devoted the afternoon of December 5 to showcasing components from Vivid, dCS, Wilson, Luxman, Spectral, and other companies. With Philip O'Hanlon of On A Higher Note (distributor of Vivid, Luxman, and other brands), John R. Quick (dCS), Peter McGrath (Wilson Audio), and yours truly (above) on hand to give introductions and offer guidelines on how to listen and evaluate, a large store filled with audiophiles auditioned four fine-sounding systems at four different price points.