Category: Audio, Music and Hi-Fi

Limits and Listening enjoyment

Sometimes it is most pleasurable to work with limits. When I was a young boy, I played SimCity games on the computer for a while. I learned of a cheat that meant you never ran out of money. Even if your city was invaded by aliens, hit by tsunamis and earthquakes, looted by the criminals and polluted beyond repair – the money kept rolling in.

This cheat quickly ran out of appeal. Far more exciting is to work with what you have and try to fight off the baddies with little to no chance of survival. Sure your city crumbled to the ground most often – but once in a while the enemy retreated, the civilians loved you as a mayor – happy days.

I find listening to music to be similar. I have a NAD 3020i amplifier which is almost as old as the LP’s that I play. My speakers are small Q Acoustic 2020i’s. I know there are infinitely more expensive and powerful setups out there, but still i have never enjoyed listening to music so much. The limits of my setup means that I have to experiment with alignment of speakers, with LP needles, volume settings, and pushing the amp and speakers to breaking point. Working with these limits opens the door to miracles. Perhaps it is my brain tricking my ears into the effectiveness of some tweak, or maybe its something as simple as the amount of sleep i have had, or the food i have eaten, but sometimes it all just sounds perfect.

I suppose my biggest point is that most of us don’t have the very latest and greatest equipment. But limitless resources and equipment does not necessarily give you happy listening. Working within ones means and limits, and recognising when it all comes together is my secret to listening enjoyment.

To be an audiophile Part 1: Origins

How does one become an audiophile? What does it mean to be an audiophile? I’ve been pondering the personal origins of my hobby, my passion, my obsession lately.

My own ardent interest in high-fidelity sound kind of snuck up on me. If I really think about it, this hobby makes no sense at all – I can’t afford it, clearly marketing and placebos are all around me tricking my brain. My younger self would have ridiculed my current self for hankering after another DAC, for considering cables worth more than my TV, or for the stream of images of outlandish speakers that dominates my newsfeed – and yet…

…and yet when I have the right set of headphones on, or when I have speakers, a bunch of cables and a new amplifier to set up from scratch, or when I get lost in reading hundreds of vinyl covers – it all makes perfect sense.

My first clue into the origins of my own audiophile conversion comes in the form of playing live music. I played in bands for most of my teenage years and early 20’s. Music was my haven, my happiest place. I have always found peace listening to music and actually playing it gives me something that is quite hard to describe – but it is something like the feeling you get when you hit a massive drive off the tee at golf, or when you see a long lost friend for a good catch-up session. It feels so good.

So the first clue to my own audiophile origins lies in the source material – music as a form of media has always made me happy. Extraordinarily happy. But I enjoyed playing and listening to music for 30 years without caring one bit about the quality of its reproduction, and without knowing what a bitrate, a tweeter or a soundstage was.

Uncovering the true underlying reasons for my obsession is going to require a deeper analysis: The technology, the marketing, the current music industry trends, the psychology, the biology. I will try to attack them in this blog, and you are welcome to join me.

Chimp with cans.