Michael Fremer

Here are some gift-giving ideas for this holiday season that come late, but not too late! Among the suggestions are books, record cleaning accessories,records and vinyl boxed sets. The embedded video has more suggestions.

2017 has been an amazing year for vinyl and an equally amazing one for AnalogPlanet editor Michael Fremer. He attended a Direct to Disc recording session at London's famous AIR Studios and during the same trip interviewed recording engineer Phill Brown and toured Rega Research. In a second London trip he visited SME and interviewed Pink Floyd's "The Wall" illustrator and balloon designer Gerald Scarfe. Later in the year after the Munich High End show he visited Pro-Ject's new Czech Republic factory and over the summer attended audio shows in Bangkok, Hong Kong and Tokyo. But the most exciting adventure was being an expert witness in the recently concluded Quincy Jones vs. The Estate of Michael Jackson lawsuit won by Quincy Jones.

Despite being shown concrete documentation that analog is alive, well, and growing, there are still some audio writers who deny its very existence. I'm talking about some of the folks at Sound & Vision. I haven't popped off in print about other magazines in this column (much)—it's not good form. True, when yakking with industry types, I've occasionally referred to that magazine as Deaf & Blind, and it's obviously gotten back to them: the "Hellos" and handshakes at press events have turned to icy stares. Just joking, guys! After all, we're Stereopile. Then there's The Obso!ete Sound. Ha ha ha ha. Sticks and stones, etc.

First, let's throw egg on a few faces. Due to a communications screw-up, I passed on to you some wrong and incomplete information about the workings of the Lyra Helikon cartridge in my August 2000 "Analog Corner." Without assessing percentages of blame, let's just say that the three likely suspects (manufacturer Scan-Tech, American importer Immedia, and yours truly) accept full responsibility for the misinformation and miscommunication. I'm being generous here by including myself, but hey, you know me. (Actually, you don't, which is why I can claim to be generous.)