“Man, it’s been forever since I played this,” said Babson as he pulled the album out of its yellowed, paper dust jacket. “This really takes me back to high school.”

Babson handled the record as though he were unearthing a holy artifact from a long-lost civilization, embodying the spirit of a great archaeologist as he blew short, forceful streams of air onto the record, and then used a specialized felt brush to get the final particulates off the disc.

“You just can’t get the same sound from a digital file. This is how music was always meant to be listened to,” explained Babson, beads of sweat dripping from his forehead as he attempted to perfectly align the record on the turntable. “The quality is worth a little extra effort.”

Babson demanded complete silence as he lifted the needle and painstakingly lowered it onto the spinning record. “This is where a lot of people get it wrong. If I drop the needle here and scratch the record, it’s over. There’s no coming back from that. Years of conservation and work will be lost.” In a climactic moment, Steely Dan’s classic jazz rock began to play from Babson’s $400 speakers as he stood back and gave the grin of a true disciple of the archive.

At press time, Babson had put on sterile cotton gloves and entered minute five of slowly sliding the record back into its cardboard sleeve.