Entry-Level Audioby Bill Tuomala Part
I - Hardly An Audiophile
By
the fall of 1988, a few months after being hired to my first real
post-college job, I had saved up enough money to buy one of the few purchases
I figured to ever care about in my adult life: A stereo system. At the time,
I was running a turntable through a boombox in my bedroom, a slight upgrade
from the JC Penney fall-catalog all-in-one stereo that got me through high
school and college. I wanted an upgrade, but something that would still be
affordable. Entry-level job, entry-level stereo components, right? Without
doing much research, one night I headed to Best Buy. This was back when they
were still trying to take themselves seriously as an audio store. Their
salesmen wore white pressed shirts and ties. They had a certain dignity,
unlike today when you deal with some squeaky-voiced high school kid in khakis
and a blue polo shirt trying to sell you a three-year extended warranty on a
$75 DVD player. The salesman I dealt with was a couple of years older than
me, professional, friendly, and even told me he couldn't sell me a warranty on a compact disc player as
the technology was still too new. I already had a Technics turntable that I
had bought in college and considered it a trusted brand, so I picked out a
Technics receiver and CD player. I also chose some JBL speakers as a college
roommate swore by the brand. Some
of the equipment was on back order, so I went to go pick up all the
components a few nights later. The salesman had called to tell me they would
be in boxes near the front door marked for me and to just grab 'em and head
out. I went to the store and found the components' boxes and two speaker
boxes, one with my name on it. Two speakers, two boxes, right? I got home,
opened a box, and found two
speakers in it; meaning I had heisted another set of speakers by mistake. I
felt like crap. I called the store to let them know of what happened, but
they were closed. I spent the next day worried I would be arrested for
robbery. I drove back that night and left the extra box with two speakers in
it by the front door where I had found it. Of course I didn't tell anybody. The
night that I set up the stereo I just stared over and over at the receiver. I
couldn't decide which feature was cooler: A built-in equalizer or a volume
dial with a series of lights around it that indicated the volume level. I was
stunned that I actually owned a compact disc player and that both components
had remotes. Bring on the nineties. As
it turns out, that first CD player was special, it was a single-disc unit and
I had it repaired a couple of times in the nineties until a repairman told me
that the cost of a repair was more than the player was worth. I should have
had it repaired into eternity as the multi-CD players I moved on to were
nothing but bad news for me over the years. (And in the age of the iPod
doesn't the "shuffle disc" feature seem quaint?) Last year I bought
a single-disc player online - the only one I could find - and it crapped out
the very first day I had it, refusing to cough up my Elastica disc. (I shipped the unit back for a refund and
they mailed the disc back to me.) So I settled for playing CDs with my DVD
player, which works fine practically but confuses me remote-wise as the DVD
player is over with the video components and not with the audio components.
Multitasking isn't what it's made out to be sometimes, and neither my living
room nor I are suited for one of those enormous entertainment centers. That
first receiver finally crapped out six years ago and I bought another
affordable Technics model at Best Buy. And how times have changed: I just
grabbed it off the shelf and hit the checkout lane, where they of course
tried to sell me an extended warranty. The JBL speakers still plug away on
the Schmidt returnable bottle cases that I improvised as speaker stands back
in '88. And I still have a Technics cassette player that I bought in 1991,
though it's mostly for atmosphere these days. I'm on my third or fourth set
of headphones as I tend to stand on their cords in the dark and then damage
them by pulling on them while stepping away. As you can see, I am hardly an
audiophile, still not too far removed from the JC Penney fall catalog. I'm
not sure that higher-end equipment would make a difference for me ... how
much clarity do you need to fully appreciate Machine Head? Part
II - Back To The Future
The
first compact disc I bought was Birth, School, Work, Death by the Godfathers. I loved the first three
songs, but the fourth was a drippy ballad as only Limeys can horribly groan
out. And while in retrospect the rest of the album was good, at the time I
unfavorably labeled it to be what was a nuisance in the new CD era: An album
with the three best songs up front and then the rest padded with filler.
There is no flipping CDs over to a new side and a new beginning, so no need
for artists to use the gambit of placing captivating songs at the "four
corners" of the album - the first and last songs of side one and the
first and last songs of side two*.
And
then earlier this year, I phased out buying CDs in favor of iTunes downloads.
This hasn't been as traumatic as expected. As mentioned earlier, CD booklets
torment me. And now there are no worries about buying and finding additional
space for CD storage. Cool used (and maybe new?) vinyl plus digital downloads
feels like a great balance. I'm referring to this new stage of music purchases
as "A New Hope.*"
The mp3s - whose library will expand as I import more CDs - are great for
while at the computer and while on the iPod. The vinyl is great for days or
nights in the living room, the turntable spinning and the music blasting.
Blasting out into the open spaces in daylight or into headphones at night.
Except for maybe in your car, the former is the place to be: Music sounds
best on headphones while a little fuzzy in the brain. |
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