Audiophile crisis
A copy of Hi-Fi News has somehow found its way into our house. I am not responsible for this I’d like to stress – I may love reading about music, but I don’t necessarily love reading about moving-magnet cartridges.
However amongst its pages of Hi-Fi porn, the magazine does have some pretty amusing album reviews. Each record gets two star ratings based on its performance and on its recording. This means that the 180g vinyl reissue of Linda Ronstadt’s Don’t Cry Now gets a 4/5 for recording, but 3/5 for the actual performance (there’s a lack of energy and excitement which doesn’t compare well to the great recording).
Thank God I’m not an audiophile. I’d have a break-down each time I attempted to buy an album with all these additional things to worry about (and I’d have 50 ever so slightly different copies of Kind of Blue).
The recent vinyl reissue of Steely Dan classic Aja gets 5/5 for both performance and recording, but sadly I have an inferior 70s pressing so I will forever be missing out on something or other.
Tags: Hi-fi porn, vinyl
February 14th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Sound quality? What is ‘Sound Quality’?
I say we lock these guys in a room with nothing but a Dansette and a pile of well used Motown 45’s. Maybe get them dancing…………
February 14th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
Dancing? What is dancing?
I say you should abandon those C60s of yours and get a Linn CD player – “Midi-size, with all-metal three-motor mechanism, 24/96 Burr-Brown PCM 1732 DAC, switch-mode power supply which allows you to focus on individual instruments easily, with good articulation of fine detail, yet a ‘relaxed’ treble focus. XLR balanced analogue and XLR AES/EBU digital outputs.” Yours for only £2,000.
February 15th, 2008 at 11:05 am
It’s about as engaging as reading about car parts and ‘torque’. High end audiophiles always come across like the Jeremy Clarksons of sound.
The sort of bods that spend thousands on a system, then play Simply Red, Dire Straits or Bryan Adams.
Give me scratchy ol’ Studio One, Motown and Northern Soul anyday.
February 15th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
The Jeremy Clarkson of sound is a very scary image. I can imagine him down the pub boring for Britain comparing his superior stereo to my namby pamby one…