Fidelity
21/07/07 22:27 Filed in: Music
When I lived
in London, I used to be a bit of a hi-fi geek. I used
to read the mags and knew which shops on Tottenham
Court Road were worthwhile, and which were not. I
always knew that a good hi-fi system consisted of
"separates", i.e. each component was chosen
separately, and the final system could be made up of
components from several different manufacturers.
My first "hi-fi" was assembled while I was living with my aunt in Milton Keynes. It consisted of a Sharp tape deck, an amp (the make of which I have forgotten) and a pair of KEF speakers. I later added a record deck. It was known as a "linear tracking turntable", which meant that the whole arm moved straight across the record, rather than being mounted on a pivot. Back in 1986, a linear tracking turntable was a cool as a polar bear's arse, but sadly this one was a pile of junk. I was working part-time for an electronics chain called Tandy, and the deck was part of one of their own-label ranges called Realistic. Unfortunately, the sound it emitted was anything but.
As time went on, I got more into the whole hi-fi thing. For a vinyl junkie like me, the holy grail was a Linn Sondek LP12. This was to turntables what Apple was to computers, but it was also practically unaffordable. The deck itself was one thing, but then you had to get a tonearm and a power supply. I wanted one so much, it hurt. And I never did manage to requite that desire.
In 1989, I upgraded almost everything. The amp was replaced by a NAD 3020e, which I still have. The tape deck, which I had flogged to the Record and Tape Exchange in Notting Hill a year earlier, was reinstated, this time by a Denon DRM 10. Being unable to stretch to an LP12, my compromise was a Dual CS 505-3, which sat atop the whole lot. To set this off, I invested in a hi-fi table and speaker stands.
This kept me going for a few years, until I started finding it increasingly difficult to find new releases on vinyl. I had long resisted the move to CD, but finally in 1993, I succumbed. I swore that I would only buy the CD version of an album if I couldn't buy vinyl, but the truth is that I have never bought an LP since the day I brought that CD player home.
When I moved to France, I couldn't take the hi-fi with me, so I left it with my a mate of mine. I got it back after I moved back to Ireland, but one of the speakers got damaged in the moving around. As by then they were more than ten years old, I replaced them with a pair of Tannoys.
A couple of years back, when my wife and I were still living in Dublin, we invested in a couple of bookcases from Habitat for the apartment. We decided to put the TV and hi-fi into one of them, and so the hi-fi table fell from favour. I kept it though, as I felt that one day it would come to be useful again. By this time, the CD player and the tape deck had both given up the ghost, so I dumped them. The record deck was on its last legs too, but I was determined to get it fixed. As well as that, I had bought an iBook and an iPod, and so these had become the main sources of music for the apartment.
When we moved to the new house, the hi-fi-table was reinstated, though my wife let it be known that its days were numbered. Once the baby started crawling it would be a hazard and would have to go. So today I took it to the dump, along with the record deck that hasn't worked for years. I bought a new baby-proof cabinet for the TV and the remainder of the hi-fi (the amp, a DVD player and the Chorus box).
These days, the music is on the iMac in the kitchen. We rarely play a CD now. It's just to easy to use the Mac or to hook up the iPod to the hi-fi. I'm sure hi-fi enthusiasts would be appalled by the arrangements I have in place, but that's how it is in a house like ours.
Mind you, I think we could do with a decent set of speakers for the iMac…
My first "hi-fi" was assembled while I was living with my aunt in Milton Keynes. It consisted of a Sharp tape deck, an amp (the make of which I have forgotten) and a pair of KEF speakers. I later added a record deck. It was known as a "linear tracking turntable", which meant that the whole arm moved straight across the record, rather than being mounted on a pivot. Back in 1986, a linear tracking turntable was a cool as a polar bear's arse, but sadly this one was a pile of junk. I was working part-time for an electronics chain called Tandy, and the deck was part of one of their own-label ranges called Realistic. Unfortunately, the sound it emitted was anything but.
As time went on, I got more into the whole hi-fi thing. For a vinyl junkie like me, the holy grail was a Linn Sondek LP12. This was to turntables what Apple was to computers, but it was also practically unaffordable. The deck itself was one thing, but then you had to get a tonearm and a power supply. I wanted one so much, it hurt. And I never did manage to requite that desire.
In 1989, I upgraded almost everything. The amp was replaced by a NAD 3020e, which I still have. The tape deck, which I had flogged to the Record and Tape Exchange in Notting Hill a year earlier, was reinstated, this time by a Denon DRM 10. Being unable to stretch to an LP12, my compromise was a Dual CS 505-3, which sat atop the whole lot. To set this off, I invested in a hi-fi table and speaker stands.
This kept me going for a few years, until I started finding it increasingly difficult to find new releases on vinyl. I had long resisted the move to CD, but finally in 1993, I succumbed. I swore that I would only buy the CD version of an album if I couldn't buy vinyl, but the truth is that I have never bought an LP since the day I brought that CD player home.
When I moved to France, I couldn't take the hi-fi with me, so I left it with my a mate of mine. I got it back after I moved back to Ireland, but one of the speakers got damaged in the moving around. As by then they were more than ten years old, I replaced them with a pair of Tannoys.
A couple of years back, when my wife and I were still living in Dublin, we invested in a couple of bookcases from Habitat for the apartment. We decided to put the TV and hi-fi into one of them, and so the hi-fi table fell from favour. I kept it though, as I felt that one day it would come to be useful again. By this time, the CD player and the tape deck had both given up the ghost, so I dumped them. The record deck was on its last legs too, but I was determined to get it fixed. As well as that, I had bought an iBook and an iPod, and so these had become the main sources of music for the apartment.
When we moved to the new house, the hi-fi-table was reinstated, though my wife let it be known that its days were numbered. Once the baby started crawling it would be a hazard and would have to go. So today I took it to the dump, along with the record deck that hasn't worked for years. I bought a new baby-proof cabinet for the TV and the remainder of the hi-fi (the amp, a DVD player and the Chorus box).
These days, the music is on the iMac in the kitchen. We rarely play a CD now. It's just to easy to use the Mac or to hook up the iPod to the hi-fi. I'm sure hi-fi enthusiasts would be appalled by the arrangements I have in place, but that's how it is in a house like ours.
Mind you, I think we could do with a decent set of speakers for the iMac…