"Muscular and punchy" read my notes from my time in the Tidal Audio room. The bruisers responsible for this reaction were the Tidal Audio Piano Cera loudspeakers ($23,900 in midnight black gloss piano lacer) and their partner in crime the Tidal Audio Impact amplifier ($25,990 and I swear I didn't know it was called that until just now or if I did, I'd forgotten). The Tidal Audio Preos preamp ($28,990 w/phono stage) took its cues from the dCS Puccini ($17,999) / dCS UClock ($4,999) combo being fed its digits by a MacBook Pro running Pure Music. Everything was tied up in Kubala-Sonsna cable.

One of the two very affable guys working the Tidal room was Daniel R. Barnum, Tidal's Western US Distributor, and I bring this up because Daniel remembered that we'd met back in 2008 at CES. Which is fairly impressive. Daniel also remembered that I enjoy guitar players and the music they make so he played me some guitar-heavy music which was not only impressive but plain old considerate. Nice, even. I mean, I couldn't even remember the name of that guitar player later that same day (it was Nguyen Le).

But what does this have to with computer audio? I bring this up because this is, in the end, a human hobby whose main concern is the enjoyment of music and personable people reinforce this as well as the other fact about hi-fi in general—we're here to enjoy ourselves. Some people get that, like Daniel, and other people don't like every one of those people who get angry about anything to do with hi-fi that has nothing to with them.