RAMBLINGS.

Welcome to Issue #84, which contains our annual staff picks of recordings. Each year I ask our contributors to submit lists of their favorite recordings, and each year they respond with an amazing variety of picks. A special treat in this year's edition is the contribution of David A. Rich, whom many readers have probably stereotyped as some sort of techno-geek who listens mainly to test tones and the occasional square wave.

The World's Biggest CB Radio: I was surprised to read in the archives of an audio discussion forum (not RAO, by the way) that a fellow who claims to live only a few miles from me has seen me at several of the "designer forum" affairs put on by a local high-end audio store. He noted that I like to attend these things and that I sometimes ask questions of the designers, often in an attempt to put them on the spot. In fact, he reported that one evening I asked some rather impertinent questions of one particular high-end designer, trying my best to put the poor fellow on the spot with a rather boorish and impertinent line of questioning. The designer tried to reply civilly, apparently not wanting to embarrass me, but the person who posted this account jumped in and made some clever remarks in defense of the designer, defusing the situation and putting me in my place.

It certainly was an interesting account of that evening, marred only by the fact that it is a complete fabrication, at least in terms of having anything to do with me. Not only did I not attack the designer in question, but I have never attended any of these forums, ever, even though the owner of the store is a personal friend whom I have known for more that 20 years, and for whom I have great respect and admiration as a businessman of high integrity and an all-around good guy. I hope our readers have more sense that to believe everything they read on the Internet.

Then there was the RAO thread that started when someone wrote that in an issue of T$S, one of our staff had claimed that some particular brand of cable sounded better than other brands. A number of people jumped in to offer their ...