Don’t tell his kids, but during his sophomore year at Stanford back in 1967, Lew Black spent most of finals week building an FM tuner. The Summer of Love was imminent and the Bay Area was its epicenter, with one of the country’s first underground radio stations cranking out the soundtrack. Thus young Lew felt compelled to assemble the tuner. Four decades later he’s still playing with electronics…

As an A/V lifer, Lew has seen the business evolve from analog, two-channel music setups to surround sound systems with high-definition video. “When high-definition arrived, I was stunned,” says Lew. “If you’re into movies and appreciate cinematography, it’s a whole new world. And it’s pretty great for sports, too. I watched the very first Super Bowl that was broadcast in HD using the over-the-air signal from my antenna, and I was just blown away.”

Of course, Lew first got into home electronics because of his love for music, and he has seen a bit of a renaissance in that area recently.

“With a Sonos multi-room digital music system and a subscription to Rhapsody, it has really become fun to discover music again. I had an older gentleman come in last Christmas to buy a TV, but he also said he wanted to get music back in his life. He named a rather obscure jazz combo he liked and I was able to dial them up on Rhapsody. The look on his face was priceless. After he listened a while he looked at me and said, ‘Sonny, it’s nice to deal with someone who’s been in the business longer than five minutes.’” Call it the Winter of Love.