Listener is the wittiest, hippest, and most aggressively honest audio magazine the hobby has ever known. Some readers have compared it to the golden era of Creem (“Imagine if Lester Bangs did an audio magazine...” was how one phrased it), others liken it to a pre-1985 The Absolute Sound, before it started to suck. Listener writes about affordable products, kits, and DIY projects. Instead of joining other magazines in lapping up the industry’s surround-sound vomit, Listener looks the other way for musical enjoyment, toward vinyl, tubes, and overlooked classics in the used marketplace. Listener’s equipment reviewers pay close attention to how products make music, not just sound, and the magazine’s record reviewers ignore audiophile recordings completely in favor of real music—the kind of recordings that normal people buy. This magazine was created for readers, in other words, and not for advertisers or a small cadre of wannabe pundits.