Analogplanet.com editor Michael Fremer returned home yesterday from Japan and had planned to run an old show today, but somehow that didn’t seem right.

During my visit to Audio-Technica in Machida City, Tokyo, Japan, I was I given a tour of the factory, which mostly produces microphones along with some headphone components. Other than the new ART1000, all of the cartridge manufacturing and assembly takes place either at another factory in Fukui, Japan or at an Audio-Technica owned factory in China.

Yosuke Koizumi, 36, who took over the ART 1000's final production supervision brought some of his 45rpm collection on the second day of my visit...perhaps to assure me that he's way into vinyl and not just doing a "job”.

Analogplanet recently visited Audio-Technica’s new Machida, Japan headquarters opened in 2015 to learn more about the fifty four year old company founded by the late Hideo Matsushita, and today run by his son company President Kazuo.

Analogplanet reported from Munich's High End 2016 show on Audio-Technics's "evolutionary" new ART1000 phono cartridge.

Reunited with his old friend, producer and engineer Roy Halee, Paul Simon delivers an imaginative and vital record—his most fully realized since Graceland., though its musical complexity and mood more closely resemble Rhythm of the Saints”

An IKEA IVAR shelf full of records came tumbling down a few weeks ago. Fortunately no records or people were injured. The shelving was old, the records heavy, and the glue failed that had held together the upright’s cross members. (Photo show a pair of Pryma headphones from Sonus Faber. Beyonce worse a pair in the "Lemonade" video.) I thought I'd monitor the show in style.

The response to the Sophia Pfister story and YouTube video has been incredible.

Register to win the Intervention Records catalog (seven LPs with a retail value of $248) we are giving away.

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"Intervention Records is the NEW antidote for the same old reissues of the same old albums! IR exists for one simple reason, to produce archive-quality LPs of music we love! Intervention's sonic goal is that each record we do must be the definitive, go-to version of that album, the must-have edition that real music lovers will seek out. "

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Last week, McIntosh Group Inc. CEO and chief visionary Mauro Grange invited a few hundred guests to Forte Village a luxury resort on the Italian Island of Sardinia for five days of work and fun.