A poets audio obsession, from collecting his earliest vinyl to his quest for the ideal vacuum tubes. A captivating book thatingeniously mixes personal memoir with cultural history and offers us an indispensable guide for the search of acoustic truth(Yunte Huang, author of Charlie Chan). Garrett Hongos passion for audio dates back to the Empire 398 turntable his father paired with a Dynakit tube amplifier in their modest tract home in Los Angeles in the early 1960sBut his adult quest begins in the CD-changer era, as he seeks out speakers and amps both powerful and refined enough to honor the top notes of the greatest opera sopranos. In recounting this search, he describes a journey of identity where meaning, fulfillment, and even liberation were often most available to him through music and its astonishingly varied delivery systems.   Hongo writes about the sound of surf being his first music as a kid in Hawaii, about doo-wop and soul reaching out to him while growing up amo