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Articles and Reviews
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Audiophilia
Nervosa Once upon a time I was an audiophile, or at least I had pretensions of being one until the day my wife, who was then merely a girlfriend, laid down the law and forbade me from spending any more money on audio equipment. I think my musing about buying a CAN $10,000 Mark Levinson CD player triggered off major alarm bells in her head, but really now, ten-grand on a CD player? Even I wasn’t that crazy. Nah, I was only going to spend five-grand on a new CD player and another fiver for some new speakers. And then truly I would have been finished with that round of upgrading and been satiated. Instead I blew the money on photographic equipment, and…well…you would know the rest if you have already been through this web site. Beginnings I have to go back in time to 1988 when I started my freshman year in university. It was then that I met one Wesly Bolander, a fellow who had a pretty darn good stereo for an 18 year old, while I was slumming it with some Rat Shack equipment pilfered from my parents’ restaurant used for background music. Being the naïve country boy in a university town, I was pretty impressed with his mid-fi gear, but then you got use to such displays of money quickly with all the private school kids running around in designer labels with Mercedes driving parents. The flipside were all the granolas eschewing the material possessions and dressing in their own uniform of thrift store clothes and tie-dye shirts. Girls with more hair than men were the norm in this crowd. Meeting Wes and listening to his rig left some kernels of desire in me, but I never had that kind of money and the parents bankrolling the hefty education bill had no desire to indulge me in frivolous possessions at that time. The kernels grew larger the following sophomore year when I met up with Wes again and it turned out my new neighbor in the dorm was a friend of his, so we all hooked up and again I was impressed that a 19 year old (my new neighbor) would also have his own stereo. Down the hall was another mutual friend with his own rig too. I’m surrounded and in the finest tradition of wanting to keep up with the Joneses, I’m getting a bit tired of that Rat Shack gear. Back in those days cassette tapes were the medium of choice for the masses with the moneyed students buying the new-fangled CDs and a smattering still buying and playing back vinyl. Ah, the good old days when three types of media coexisted, if only for a brief moment before CDs took over fully in the 1990s. Of course, a healthy dose of late teen/early adult male taunting ensued and a resolve that I would not be taunted once I had the funds to buy a kick-ass stereo of my own. Key words though “once I had the funds”, for alas, I had none throughout my university years and what little I had I blew on that other great preoccupation that my group of friends developed, paintball. Another case of keeping up with the Joneses resulting in a mini arms race of who had the bigger, fastest firing gun on the block, or who could run amok in the field as animalistic as possible after several hours of watching Vietnam war flicks the night before. I wouldn’t have the funds to buy my own “real” stereo until I graduated and a tidy sum of money was released into my hands from the bank of mom and dad. Oh, what a mistake that was. Through the years I spent in Victoria attending school, Wes and I along with some others would frequent the local A&B Sound to slobber over the latest and greatest mid-fi gear arriving from the Far East. I wanted to prepare and make some decisions for the eventful day that I would finally be able to purchase my own stereo. On a few of those listening sessions we listened to some mid-level Energy speakers hooked up to the electronics through a comparator box, a device that facilitates the hooking up of dozens of amplifiers to dozens of speakers and allowing one to choose any combination of the two for comparisons. It is also a device known to rob much of the quality inherent in the speakers and electronics and much derided by audiophiles. Listening to those Energy’s (5.1e if memory serves correctly) left me with little desire to actually want to own them, but given the high degree of praise offered by Wes, I resigned myself to the fact that these speakers along with some Yamaha components would be the best that I could afford given the budget I set in my mind at the time. To go with the Energy and Yamaha amp, I had a Sony carousel CD player bought with a bit of largess I accumulated just before starting my fourth year of university. Yes, I know I stated I had little money, but it’s amazing what a diet of Kraft Dinner can do for the wallet (less than $1 per meal), but to this day, I refuse to eat anymore KD given that I ate more than my fair share in the starving student days. So, end of fourth year, I’ve graduated with a degree and have a pocketful of change to finally splurge on the hi-fi that I’ve been longing for the past four years, but I’m not entirely sure of the apparent choice I seemed set to make. Then I met another fellow through a mutual friend, an engineering and computer science student who hailed from a small community not far away from my hometown. He educated me that there was more to fine music playback than what A&B Sound had to offer. I was thinking he meant Sound Hounds, the only high-end audio store I knew of in Victoria, but one that a person never felt all that comfortable in if he or she didn’t have a huge wad of cash to spend on the gear they carried. How ignorant I was. No, there was in fact another shop in Victoria that catered to high-end audio playback, but one that I never heard about and rather unfortunately, one that was in its death throes due to lack of business. Stereotypes was the shop and walking in that first day was a revelation when I saw a pair of the highly acclaimed B&W 801 III speakers. Wow, stores actually carried speakers that big and that expensive? A pair of CAN $7500 speakers was well beyond my meager budget, but I spied a pair of B&W DM640 speakers in the corner of the large store and asked to listened to them. They were pretty good sized, black and looked like they could rock, so they attracted me as they would many other young males. Hearing them definitely confirmed that they could indeed rock and were to that day, the best sound I had ever heard (no, I didn’t ask to listen to those 801s, but did get a chance on subsequent visits – DEEP bass and authority). After listening I looked at the price tag on them and noticed their princely sum that was almost the entire budget I had originally set aside for an A&B Sound purchase. There was simply no way I could afford the YBA Integre amp and the Micromega Solo CD player that were lashed to the DM640s. I decided to give into young male lust and bought the speakers along with a lesser amp in the Carver TFM 25 power amp that could be hooked up directly to my Sony carousel player thanks to the Sony having a variable output capability. Some thick Monster Cable for the amp to speakers and Prisma interconnects for the CD player to amp connections finished off the system. Less than two weeks later I was back in the store to buy an Arcam Delta 70.2 CD player, offered at half it’s retail cost due to the close out sale at Stereotypes. While I was happy as a pig in mud with my new hi-fi that was the class of my group of friends, the purchase decisions I made at the time would have their consequences down the road. Just as I could not pinpoint exactly what was disconcerting at those A&B Sound sessions with the Energy speakers, there was something gnawing at me at the way my new system sounded. Before leaving Victoria, I completed the system by adding a Nakamichi cassette deck, Teac tuner, and a Rotel preamp, all budget items in the world of hi-fi, but a pretty good rig in my eyes, but at times, not for my ears. Big City Influences Moving to Vancouver introduced me to a whole new world of hi-fi. This was around the time I discovered Stereophile magazine and began to read about such exotic brands as Krell, Levinson, Wilson, Thiel, Magnepan amongst others and now I was in the big city with stores that actually sold those big American brands. That big city exposure to some of the best audio brands in the world led me into the trap of desiring more – more than I could afford, but I still went about doing a slow upgrade because I decided that based upon what I first heard back at Stereotypes versus what I was hearing now that my current amplification was the weak point. The Rotel preamp and Carver power amp gave way to a Sonic Frontiers SFL-1 hybrid tube/solid state preamp and solid state Classe CA200 power amp. No question that these were solidly hi-fi components, not the best by any stretch of the imagination, but very much superior to my old setup. I also liked that the two new amplification components were designed and built in Canada, a notice to the world that hey, we Canucks can also build them with the best in the world. Sonic Frontiers appears to be no more, which is a shame, but Classe is still going strong and producing world-class components (Omega series) that can easily sit as equals amongst the Krells and Levinsons of the world. Whenever I’ve gone into hi-fi stores, the inevitable question of what I currently own is asked and when I mention Classe, a nod of high respect is given. At one store, the associate was so surprised and impressed that he stuttered for a minute, as he stammered, “Classe?! Oh…yah…those are great…wow…Classe!” That store now carries Classe in Vancouver J
Despite the upgrade I was still unsatisfied with the sound and thus I determined to upgrade the speakers and CD player. While mulling over these additional major upgrades and trying to reconcile the budget required, I decided to do a lateral move to new set of speakers. The B&W DM640s were sold off in favour of a pair of Dynaudio Audience 8 speakers. The relative cost of the two speakers were the same, but the sound was much different and for me, much better. In the room that began to give me fits about the sound of my original stereo (my old Vancouver condo), the DM640s had a very generous bass, too generous in fact and while it added good foundation to orchestral pieces, it always seemed too much of a good thing. Using a Radio Shack sound pressure meter, I was able to determine that I had a massive spike in the 80 Hz range with those speakers in my living room. The metal dome tweeters often sizzled to my ears as well, so listener fatigue got to me far sooner than I would have liked for a good listening session. As sexy as they were when I was 21 years old, at a more mature age of 25, I decided they had to go, and even though the Classe and Sonic Frontiers combo tightened everything up, not enough to provide a reprieve. The Dynaudio Audience 8 speakers are physically smaller with a cloth dome tweeter and two mid/bass drivers compared to the DM640s with a metal dome tweeter, separate Kevlar woven mid-range and dual eight-inch bass drivers. The DM640s has a great mid-range thanks to those Kevlar woven units and I wondered if the lack of a dedicated unit might cause the Dynaudios to fall short, but after a lengthy break-in period, my worries soon faded. Where the B&Ws sizzled and farted in the top and bottom, the Dynaudios were smooth and tight. Despite the Audience speakers being the entry level range for Dynaudio, I felt they were far superior to the same cost DM640s that are the mid-range for B&W. The smaller Audience speakers even went down a bit farther into the deep bass, surprising for a physically smaller speaker with smaller bass drivers, but then the even more diminutive Totem speakers do incredibly well for bass performance. I understood why Dynaudio drivers are used by many other speaker manufacturers as OEM parts in their designs (Totem, ProAc and Wilson for example). They really do offer great sound for the money even in their entry-level products. With the Dynaudios in the mix, I had a really smooth sounding system that it almost made the need to upgrade the CD player seem moot, but it would be one of the last upgrades and plus I regarded the Dynaudios as a mid-step towards even better speakers. I was getting pretty close to firming up the decision on the last upgrades. I would go with either the Sonic Frontiers or Classe single-box CD players and most likely, a pair of Dunlevy SC-III speakers. My initial preference for the speaker upgrades would have been the Thiel 3.6s, but Sound Plus dropped the brand just before I was ready to make the big purchase, so I did a few listening sessions at the Sound Room with the Dunlevy’s and they sounded like the speakers for me and within the budget I had in mind. My head was in a heady state for I was so close to finally completing the upgrades I had in mind. Classe or Sonic Frontiers front end CD player, SFL-1 preamp, Classe power amp and Dunlevy speakers, all wired up with some good Wireworld or MIT cables. Then it all came crashing down on me when the significant other laid down the law and forbade me from doing the last round of purchases. Coward of a cuckold that I am, I obeyed and went from a budding audiophile to a budding photographer. Ironically, I have spent considerably more than what I would have originally for the audio upgrades. My final purchase to close out my audiophile status would have been a McCormack headphone amp, but the clerk made a mistake on the pricing and I decided not to pay the extra freight and instead blew the money set aside on a Nikon F70 kit. The rest, as they say, is history… Present Day Fast forward to today (May 2004) and my main hi-fi is frozen in time from 1997:
I dabbled with vinyl in the form of an old Oracle Delphi turntable that came with an arm of unknown origin but with an intriguing and exotic sounding Koetsu Black stylus. With the right material, I had to admit it provided some damn good sound compared to CD, but the endless process of cleaning and maintaining all those records got to me and I aborted the experiment, especially in light of the large sums of money required to bring the 1980s Oracle to mid 1990s standard. If I were to do vinyl again, I would either keep it extremely simple and buy a Rega Planar 3 rig or a Linn for potential upgrade down the road when I might be able to afford it. Reality would most likely see me with a Rega 3, but I have no desire to walk down that path again with DVD-Audio offering such fidelity that even vinyl fans acknowledge its superiority.
My home office system, only recently put together comprises of:
This much smaller second system is not too bad despite the less than stellar or budget nature of the components. The Yamaha CD player when compared to the much older Arcam is thin sounding, but the smooth NAD amp ameliorates the bite a bit. The Energy’s were bought because they were the cheapest name brand speakers I could find at A&B Sound. I just couldn’t tolerate spending more money for better speakers when I knew that for the most part, the office rig would be for background music listening. I could just play back music through the computer, but I don’t always have the big desktop on all the time, as it is now a dedicated photo-editing machine. And the sound is chintzy played back through the Mobo’s sound chip into some computer speakers. Speaker placement is not ideal, as the Energy’s are higher than ear level, but when I sit back in the second chair in the office, it is not unlike sitting near the front of a theatre and looking up at the performers. Position wise, the speakers are also a bit too close together, but this can’t be helped given my desk layout. The Energy’s needed a few days of continuous use to break-in, sounding closed and distant straight out of the box, but they opened up as the hours of use passed and now with the right type of material, the soundstage will even extend beyond the speaker boundaries. All in all, not too bad of a sound from a budget system that comes under $1000 if bought brand new. But I’m missing the ability to connect more than one component and I would like extra inputs for the computer as well as an external MP3 player. I am now seeking either a cost-effective integrated amp from the likes of Rotel or NAD, or an entry-level preamp from the same two brands. There are certainly many other choices available, but Rotel and NAD are two companies who continually have satisfied many a music fan looking for a way into good sound at real world prices. Since I spend more time in the office, it is more appropriate to build up this second system than work on the big rig that has not been listened to with any seriousness since I started having kids. Who knows, I may even be able to upgrade that CD player yet and add in a small subwoofer to get better extension from the XL-150s. BUT, if I do get carried away in this process than I fear that I will have fallen back into the same trap that I got myself into in the mid 1990s. That is that I began listening to equipment instead of the music. Audiophiles often state that what they are seeking is musical enlightenment through their expensive equipment, but it really does seem that the chase is more important than the prize, because the prize itself is not that difficult to find and enjoy. You don’t need dazzling and expensive components to enjoy music, just some sensible components that have been matched well and such a budget system can definitely sing better than some massive components costing like houses yet are mismatched and cannot produce what it is we are seeking, music. I recall in one listening session back in Victoria at another stereo store, listening to Adcom components lashed to Mirage speakers. The sound, in a word, blew! Adcom is not considered top-end equipment, but it is pretty solidly entry-level hi-fi and costs as such, but the sound it produced through the Mirages left me speechless with disgust. My friend and I walked out and then ranted about how bad it sounded while the store clerk had waxed poetically about how good the system was. Moving to Vancouver and a visit to Sound Plus had one of their associates suggesting the same Mirage speakers as consideration, but I demurred and explained why I was hesitant to consider them due to the Victoria listening session. He gave me a look that could be best described as “No shit Sherlock” and then went on to explain that the Adcom components were definitely not up to driving the Mirage speakers with any sort of quality. This despite Sound Plus being an Adcom dealer. The Sound Plus associate hooked up the Mirage M5 speakers to entry-level Classe components, I think the 30 preamp and 70 power amp with probably a California Audio Labs CD setup. I sat back and listened and Jesus H. Christ, they blew me away. Excellent sound and if I knew then what I knew now, it wouldn’t have been any surprise since Mirage is reputed to use Classe equipment to “voice” their speakers – Sonic Frontiers also used Classe’s best pre-amp as a reference when they were designing their highly regarded Line 1, 2 and 3 pre-amps. Basically, what I heard would have been a synergistic combination between the Classe components and the Mirage speakers and this really is the goal behind audiophile pretensions, to match components perfectly so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts for musical bliss. Ah, what heady days those were when I spent my days off at the various audio shops listening to, asking and talking about hi-fi, as I researched how my upgrade path should follow. Those days are gone. I’m nearly ten-years older from my apex of hi-fi acquisitions and I do not foresee when I might be able to pick up the hobby again, other than what I have recently done for the office system. Dreams of Wilson X-1 Grand SLAMM speakers still dance in my head, but unless the Lotta 6-49 winning ticket comes through my hands, there is no hope of such incredibly expensive speakers ever making their into my house. Besides, I don’t think my floors could take 1000 lbs of speaker weight, let alone the hundreds more for the Levinson, Krell or Classe amps needed to power them. Even a more toned down system with some B&W Nautilus 802 speakers with second tier Classe electronics to drive them would still be more dear than I could afford. I also shudder at what my three kids would do to such high-dollar components given the pushed in tweeters in my Dynaudio speakers and near roasting of my Classe amp thanks to finger pushes on the power button while a dust cover towel was on top of the amp, covering the ventilation holes. It’s amusing to think back to the old teenager days relative to what I have now and expressing amusement at how some of my current components are worth more than a whole typical stereo I admired back then. Back then I actually listened to music for its own sake instead of equipment. |
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Correspondence & About this website Copyright © 1998-2008 Edwin Leong |
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