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From mobile turntables to RadioGlobes, there are plenty of techy gift ideas for the music lover in your life.

The next time you're preparing to play a record, try doing a little experiment. Once you have the record mounted and spinning but before you lower the stylus into the groove, lower your gaze to just below record level and look for a gap between the platter and the record. It helps if there's a light source or a brightly colored wall behind the platter. You may discover a gap—that very little of the record's playing area is making true contact with the platter mat or (if there is no mat) the platter.

I'm a music lover first, not the most Type A of audiophiles. Sure, I clean my records, but I'm not obsessive about keeping them immaculate like my audiophile father is; he cleans each record ultrasonically before it lands on his turntable platter, writing the date of each record's last bath and which cleaning machine he used on the outside of a fresh plastic inner sleeve before sliding the LP back inside. I don't think his cleaning schedule is rigid—he has far too many LPs for that—but it's regular.