Michael Fremer

Tube freaks got a dose of "valve porn" in Kevin Deal's Upscale Audio room. Deal has been roaming the world in search of NOS tubes and he put on display some of his treasures: musty old boxes filled with NOS (new old stock) tubes unearthed in former Soviet bloc country warehouses as well as a huge trove he discovered by chance recently in Paris.

Channel D's Rob Robinson, creator of Pure Music and Pure Vinyl software showed and played for me via an AMG Viella turntable and tonearm, the upgraded edition of his battery powered direct coupled, fully balanced Seta Model L Phono preamplifier.

T.H.E. Show Newport Beach 2013 is underway and coverage will begin later today. I participated in the ribbon cutting ceremony with John Atkinson, Robert Harley and Dr. David Robinson wearing the GoPro camera so you could see the event from my perspective but the camera was accidentally set to 'still' and I didn't get the video.

David Bowie fans who lost the thread around his Tin Machine days or who meandered mystified or perhaps less than fully satisfied through his end of century output and beyond need to return for The Next Day his first album in a decade, following his 2004 heart attack and major surgery. Not that Heathens wasn’t a good outing