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In Reply to: RE: You Might Be An Audiophile If : posted by JURB on June 08, 2017 at 02:17:13
You are an audiophile if you answer yes to at least two of the questions.
Do you have less than 150 records/discs/files?
Do you worry more about the frequency extremes than the midrange?
Do you spend more time tweaking than listening to music?
Follow Ups:
Do you have less than 150 records/discs/files?
I've told the story before, but when I worked part time at a hi-fi store in college, we had one customer we called "Al Gear" which was very close to his real name.
Al ended up alternately buying and selling a couple of pair of MG-IIs and DQ-10s from us before settling down with his third pair of the latter. One day, he invited the guys at the shop over to hear his system and I went along. Nice room, Audio Research electronics and - about four inches of albums. Many of which were Sheffield or Crystal Clear DTD.
LOL - that's funny.
I used to work at a little hi-fi shop where Dr. Richard Greiner (AES Fellow, and Professor of Electrical Engineering at UW-Madison) would come in pretty regularly. So, we got to know each other. He invited me over to his house, where he had probably two or three thousand records. I don't remember the electronics, but he had these huge refrigerator-size custom speakers. A line of JBL slot tweeters (maybe the 077), a line of JBL 4-5" mids next to them, and four 12" or 15" JBL woofers next to the mids. Maybe something else also in there (don't remember if it was a 3-way or 4-way system - it's been a long time). Those puppies could crank. And, they sounded good, if you didn't move. But if you moved, the comb-filtering was clearly audible. I mentioned this to him.
A few months later, the cabinets were sitting at the curb, sans drivers. I don't remember what new speakers he bought. He sure was a fun guy, and taught me some stuff, too - especially about cables and loudspeakers.
:)
It was at that same shop I met a number of mentors who proved to be highly influential to this scrawny teenager. The owner had a huge classical collection and introduced me to an entirely new world of products from companies like Magnepan and Audio Research. Another regular was a Cuban lighting architect who was very much into jazz and latin music who had a fun system.
And it was there I met Dr. John Cooledge who was a prominent TAS reviewer at the time. He invited the four of us from the shop over to listen to his system - where I heard his Dayton-Wrights and was immediately transformed into my moniker. I discovered my hyper-sensitivity to coherency back then. And through JWC, I met his long term friend HP. Over a period of decades, both of them taught me invaluable lessons about music and the critical observational listening experience - even though my preferences were different than each of theirs. As a member of the ASO board, JWC got me a small role in one of their Telarc recordings. And introduced me to more than one conductor and performer.
I simply cannot imagine what my interest in audio and music would have been without having those formative experiences and mentors. :)
"I simply cannot imagine what my interest in audio and music would have been without having those formative experiences and mentors. :) "
Actually I was blessed by a couple of good sounding floor models.
One was an RCA TV/stereo combo that had some quite smooth low end response, in fact decent overall. It had an RC-1227C radio chassis that was OTL and solid state, gut had a driver transformer running pairs of PNP germaniums in TO-3 cases.
This thing had oval woofers, 15X9s. Topped off with 4X6 mids and 3½" tweeters. The Fm was so strong with the igh level of AFC you could not get to a place on the dial with no station, I shit you not, it just kinda flopped to the next station even if it was 2 MHz away. It also had an Astatic 353D self weighted cartridge (about 2g) that was the best sounding ceramic cartridge I ever heard. It was SESAPP but cap coupled to the speakers. Supply voltage was about 35 volts or so, so I guess it was around 20 WPC or so.
I remember reveling in the low bass of Herb Alpert - Magic Trumpet. Used to have a Buddy Holly collection, and one album which was a part of a set titled "CKLW" after the famous radio station in Detroit, Michigan. We also used to listen to their station, but it was AM and thus not in stereo. They did some out with CKLW FM for a time but that didn't last, plus we didn't really get all that good reception, AM actually sounded better. Actually, the AM wasn't all that bad, you know it can do damnear 10 KHz.
Then there was The Fisher. Toobes, I think 6V6s. Records only, no radio section. Mono, had three 10" or maybe 8" in series, one in the back. Terrific bass. This thing was so old it had "AES" and RIAA and all that on the selector for phono EQ.
Not to be outdone of course was the Columbia that preceeded all of this. Actual srereo, and I think it had a variablee reluctance cartridge These need a preamp of course like any magnetic, but this thing was hot chassis. No power transformer, which means no real feedback loop either. The instructions say to never touch the arm, to let the changer puit on your records, as it will do it more efficiently or whatever of course.
And then you would also not discover that the cartridge was a shock hazard. It also had one speaker removable, you could slide it on out for stereo realism when needed. But the speaker wires were adequately insulated from the mains. I do get the impression though that if the UL had a look at that unit today they would suffer cardiac arrest.
So beware of those elcheapo units like the flipdowns that some old people might like. Many of them are hot chassis which makes the cart hot. Sometimes you see like a nylon insulator, and there might be a sticker like "THIS PART IS PART OF THE SAFETY OF..." or some such, but not always.
And you might be an audiophile if you have one of those in your silverware drawer
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