Taking Care of Business

As Jim Austin wrote in this space in the December 2024 issue, following a medical procedure that he had in mid-October, he needed to take several weeks' leave to recuperate. He delegated the magazine's production to Managing Editor Mark Henninger, AVTech Editorial Director Paul Miller, and myself. The three of us worked with copy editor Linda Felaco and longtime art director Jeremy Moyler to produce the issue you hold in your hands.

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As readers probably know, I was Stereophile's editor for 33 years until my retirement at the end of March 2019. However, they probably don't know that for the 10 years prior to my joining this magazine in 1986, I was first an editorial assistant, then Deputy Editor, then, in 1982, Editor of British magazine Hi-Fi News. (In a twist of fate, Paul Miller is now Hi-Fi News's Editor.)

I have thus been working in publishing for almost half a century, and as I started work on this issue's content, it struck me that I had forgotten how my life used to be dominated by monthly publishing schedules. Need to take a vacation? Only if the time taken doesn't conflict with the demands of the schedule. In June 1997, I wanted to tour Italy, starting and finishing in Rome, with stops in Florence, Venice, and Milan. (If you ever find yourself in Milan, you must visit the Leonardo da Vinci museum.) The only way that I could take the necessary two weeks off was that a year before the trip, I worked with the printer on the magazine's schedule and managed to get six weeks instead of the usual four-five for the August 1997 issue's production.

Other than accommodating the schedule, something that was a constant during those decades was the joy I got from listening to recorded music. When I joined Hi-Fi News in 1976, I had a Thorens TD-150AB turntable, a Shure phono cartridge, a Sony integrated amplifier, and Wharfedale loudspeakers.² I've never been a keepingup-with-the-Joneses kind of audiophile, but I have purchased many products over the years that impressed me with their ability to involve me in my music.³