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 May 15, 2007 Rediscovery About a year ago, life for me seemed to go a little off-kilter. I was turning 50, and I wasn’t adjusting well to that milestone. Books that had sat unread on my shelf for years suddenly cried out, "Time is short! Read me soon!" I began to wonder if I’d reached any of the goals I’d set for myself when I was younger, then remembered I didn’t want to be a rock’n’roll star or the editor of Rolling Stone after all. Many things in my life seemed, for some months, to be less hopeful. One of the most disturbing things to me was that music, which I could always count on to pull me through, no longer seemed to have the power to move me as deeply as I needed it to. It wasn’t helping me through my slump. I could still listen to music and enjoy it, but I often felt restless. I was able to review CDs for SoundStage! and GoodSound! because evaluating music requires at least some objective listening. Besides, I still knew what I liked and didn’t like. But I was missing the immersion in music I usually experienced when I wasn’t reviewing it. What was up? I realized that my mood explained part of my problem, but I also realized that I hadn’t really enjoyed listening to music for a while. One Sunday morning before church, I was listening to a Soul Stirrers disc on the boombox in our kitchen when it occurred to me that I was getting more from the music coming out of that lo-fi boombox than I’d been getting from my "real" music system. At that moment, I realized I hadn’t been choosing music to listen to because it would move me or lift my spirits. Instead, I was listening to CDs and LPs that I knew would sound good on my hi-fi. Los Lobos’ Good Morning Aztlán is a good disc, but The Ride is a cleaner recording, so that was my choice. Art Blakey’s Mosaic might be a jazz classic, but the cymbals sound a little tizzy, so I’d listen to something that sounded better. By the standards of most SoundStage!, GoodSound!, and SoundStage! AV readers, my stereo system is modest. I have an H.H. Scott 299A integrated tube amp, a Cambridge Audio CD player, a Denon DP59L turntable with an Ortofon OM 20 cartridge, and Ohm E speakers. The Scott has been reworked. I’ve had four of the top-side capacitors replaced, along with the rectifier and the power cord (nothing fancy, just a Belden cord you can pick up at Home Depot), and I’ve had some other work done, as needed. I use a Powervar power conditioner that isn’t designed for audio use, but I can hear a difference. My audiophile odyssey is somewhat typical. I heard music on good equipment when I was in college and realized I wasn’t getting anywhere close to hearing what was in the grooves of my records by playing them on a cheesy stereo. I took what little money I had and put together a primitive version of a decent system: i.e., I bought a BSR turntable with a magnetic cartridge and put it through the Aux line of my Soundesign all-in-one stereo. It wasn’t hi-fi, but at least I wasn’t killing my records with a heavy-tracking tonearm and a stylus as big as a toothpick. I used my first real paycheck after college to begin assembling a better system. Over the years I’ve had progressively better gear, including a Rotel integrated amp I still remember fondly. But only in the last 15 years or so that I’ve been reading audiophile magazines have I gotten an idea of how exciting a truly great system can be. My moment of truth occurred about ten years ago, in a hi-fi shop in Charlottesville, Virginia. I was visiting a friend, and we went to his favorite hi-fi emporium, where I heard a JoLida integrated tube amp through a pair of Alón speakers. The speakers were a little too forward for my taste, but the music had an immediacy I’d never heard before. The vocalist was right there in the room. I had to have a tube amp. I’ve since owned two Scott tube amps (I don’t know why I sold the first one -- I immediately regretted it). After I’d bought the Cambridge Audio CD player and upgraded to some good interconnects and speaker cables (which required a further modification of the Scott), I could hear that I was closer to hi-fi than I’d been with the Yamaha amp that still powers my living-room setup. I heard details I’d never heard before from records and CDs I’d played many times. Soon, I found myself getting a thrill every time I’d catch the rattle of a snare drum or the sound of a pianist shifting on a piano stool. I wasn’t just hearing instruments more accurately. I was getting a feel for the room they were recorded in. It was exciting and new. Unfortunately, listening for those kinds of inner details in a recording can take on a life of its own. Gradually, I began choosing CDs or LPs for their sonic qualities, rather than coming to the music on its own terms. Wes Montgomery’s Smokin’ at the Half Note is a terrific performance, but I was listening to it because the 2005 Verve remastering was so spacious and deep I felt as if I were sitting in the audience. Not every disc or record gives you so vivid an experience. The truth is that a lot of great music was indifferently or even badly recorded. Horace Silver’s Cape Verdean Blues is a beautifully played disc that sounds great. The Jodi Grind, Silver’s next disc, is just as well played, but the cymbals are a little too hot. I know from some of the exchanges in audiophile newsgroups that it can become easy to focus on how a recording shows off our gear. We forget that high fidelity should bring us closer to the music we love. My trip back to enjoying my stereo setup began with staying away from it for a while. After that Sunday morning with the Soul Stirrers, I listened to music on one of our boomboxes or the living-room stereo. I listened while I washed dishes, or I looked out the window on a sunny day while enjoying a Bill Evans disc. After a couple of weeks I went back to my better-quality sound system and remembered again why I enjoyed it, even when listening to less than stellar recordings. About 15 years ago, an interviewer from Fi magazine asked Keith Jarrett about his audio equipment. Jarrett named each component, and it was all very high-end. And yet, he told the interviewer, he wasn’t sure it revealed to him anything more of what really mattered about music than the cheap stereo he had when he was in college. I love listening to music on good audio gear, and I hope to upgrade to even better equipment. But I think I’ll step away from hi-fi every once in a while, just so I can rediscover the music. …Joseph Taylor
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