THE VERY FIRST RECORD PLAYER I can remember owning was a little plastic thing my parents got me for Christmas decades ago. It was basically a stand with a turntable perched on top with two plastic speakers tucked in underneath. Everything was white, like I imagine an Apple iStereo would be. But the turntable platter's diameter was smaller than the diameter of a 33-rpm record, meaning that my LPs were always overhanging the turntable platter. And that wasn't good because there was a volume knob right beside the platter, so if a record was even slightly warped it would hit the volume knob every time the warped bit came around, which would cause the record to skip.
I fixed that problem with a stack of quarters that I taped together and glued to the top of the needle. I say needle because it wasn't anything like a cartridge. It was just a little needle stuck on the end of the white plastic tonearm. It was a forever needle. You couldn't change it. Needless to say - but I'll say it anyway - I sincerely hope you don't run across any of the records I used to own back then.
The first experience I can recall with a real stereo system was when I was a newly-minted teenager, in the front half of the mid-70s, and a friend of mine was given one by his parents for his birthday. It came from Sears and had a big stand with imitation wood-wrapped components on every shelf. The receiver had all kinds of dials, knobs, buttons, meters, switches and blinking lights.
I know better now, but it seemed very cool at the time. It was what I imagined the dashboard of a space ship might look like. The speakers were massive and very loud. By any measure of today's modern audiophile they no doubt actually sounded awful, but we didn't know that. At only 14 years of age we had nothing to compare it to, other than my little plastic record player - kind of like today where people think Spotify sounds great because they've never heard an all-analogue record played back on a halfway decent sounding system. I was really jealous of my friend's new stereo.
But time marches on, and a few years later another friend introduced me to his system, which included a couple of Paradigm speakers and a NAD amplifier. It was a revelation, and it wasn't long before I got my own pair of Paradigm 7s to go with the Dual turntable I had by then acquired (can't remember which one) and a NAD amplifier. Funny thing about the NAD: it blew up. Just one day - boom! So did its replacement. I was told by a NAD rep that this was a known issue, although a very rare one. In my case, lightning struck twice. I can't seem to buy a winning lottery ticket, but I somehow managed to get two rare NAD bombs. Not wanting to risk another explosion in my living room, I replaced the second NAD amp with a less volatile Yamaha receiver. I'm sure that by now, some 40-plus years later, NAD has fixed whatever the problem was.
I remember a Nakamichi tape deck being in the mix somewhere around that time, and a Technics tuner, too.
Around 1989 I got serious about home audio and acquired a Robertson tube amplifier and pre-amplifier, a Linn LP12 Sondek (which I still have), an Arcam CD player with an outboard motor that I bought while on vacation in Scotland (they had to change the power supply and send it to me later) and a pair of Linn Nexus speakers. The Robertsons lasted a couple of decades and were replaced with a Rega Brio integrated amp, which I really liked. But at 40 watts per side it wasn't powerful enough, so I eventually gave the Brio to my son and slipped a Rogue Sphinx V2 onto the shelf in its stead. The Sphinx has a tube phono stage, which is really nice and warm sounding. I also bought a Nordost Blue Heaven power cord for the Sphinx, which I think helps make it sound so nice. At least I hope it does, because it wasn't cheap.
The Arcam CD player eventually went to CD player heaven, but that was OK. An outstanding player in its day, it had by then been surpassed by newer technologies that had pretty much rendered it obsolete. These days, where the Arcam once sat, now sits a Marantz CD-605. It doesn't play SACDs like its successor (CD-606), but it's a solid, high-end CD player (one of the best, I have been told) that does a wonderful job making CDs sound better than they have any right to. I only have one SACD anyway, but it's a hybrid that can be played on any CD player. And my focus is on vinyl, not CDs, so I'm not likely to upgrade to an SACD player.
I eventually replaced the Linn speakers with some KEF Q700s and tethered them to the Sphinx with about $400 worth of speaker cable, which sounds really nice, especially bi-wired. I don't know if the speaker cable actually made much difference, other than to my bank account. But let's say it did.
In 2020 I upgraded the LP12 with a Cirkus bearing and Trampoline support system and gave it a new belt, cables and cueing mechanism. That turntable has been a marvellous piece of equipment - and a wonderful investment - and the upgrades cost under $2,000, which isn't too much to spend after 30-odd years of loyal servitude. And it was certainly worth it, sonically. The only other investment it's required was a new Grado Reference cartridge a few years back.
And that's the system I'm using now.
Audiophiles can be silly, me included, and in the 1990s I was really into the silliness. I had a large, soundproofed listening room in the basement, in which the only piece of furniture was my listening chair, which was very carefully situated at exactly the right spot in front of the speakers - something I was always tweaking, moving the chair an inch or two this way or that in search of new sonic delights. The back wall of the listening room was covered in tapestries that were handmade by my wife's long dead, great, great something-or-other more than 100 years earlier. Every serious audiophile back then had tapestries or blankets or acoustic panels or egg crates on the back wall of their listening room to dampen the sound waves, especially the heavy lower-end ones that I imagined were flinging themselves out of my speakers and careening across the room like army tanks.
My LP12 was on a proper Target turntable shelf in a closet with the door closed so that none of those sound waves, if one were to go rogue, would interfere with the arm and cartridge.
I also subscribed to Stereophile and UHF Magazine and eagerly absorbed all the new equipment and record reviews. I remember one article in one of the magazines in which the author claimed affixing a quarter to a bottom of a back wall tapestry would yield a significant improvement in sound quality. I actually tried that, but I couldn't hear any difference. That's kind of what I mean about audiophiles being such a silly bunch. You wouldn't believe the nonsense we get up to in search of the sound.
Anyway, that's my setup. It's not ridiculously high-end but it's certainly decent enough, something any wife might allow her husband to put together. I'm in a much smaller house now, and my listening room is longer than it is wider and the speakers have to sit on the long side. That's not the ideal listening room setup, but I've made it work by positioning the speakers to their best advantage and it really does sound great. I've been to the Consumer Electronic Show, back when it used to be in Chicago, and heard some pretty impressive and outrageously expensive speakers that cost upwards of several hundred thousand dollars - yet my system still sounds good enough to me. Just because something is expensive doesn't mean it's better, and a lot of those really expensive components I saw at the CES way back when can now be had on the second-hand market for pennies on the dollar.
One thing I did do as a raging audiophile was buy records. Lots and lots of records. I never stopped buying records. I was always buying them and I'm glad I did because the music is really what being an audiophile is all about and a lot of what I collected back then isn't available any more and hasn't been for years. If I have any advice to offer a newbie audiophile it would be this: get yourself a halfway decent system - the best you can afford - and then listen to the music. And never mind Amazon. Support your local record store and buy LOTS of records.
I fixed that problem with a stack of quarters that I taped together and glued to the top of the needle. I say needle because it wasn't anything like a cartridge. It was just a little needle stuck on the end of the white plastic tonearm. It was a forever needle. You couldn't change it. Needless to say - but I'll say it anyway - I sincerely hope you don't run across any of the records I used to own back then.
The first experience I can recall with a real stereo system was when I was a newly-minted teenager, in the front half of the mid-70s, and a friend of mine was given one by his parents for his birthday. It came from Sears and had a big stand with imitation wood-wrapped components on every shelf. The receiver had all kinds of dials, knobs, buttons, meters, switches and blinking lights.
I know better now, but it seemed very cool at the time. It was what I imagined the dashboard of a space ship might look like. The speakers were massive and very loud. By any measure of today's modern audiophile they no doubt actually sounded awful, but we didn't know that. At only 14 years of age we had nothing to compare it to, other than my little plastic record player - kind of like today where people think Spotify sounds great because they've never heard an all-analogue record played back on a halfway decent sounding system. I was really jealous of my friend's new stereo.
But time marches on, and a few years later another friend introduced me to his system, which included a couple of Paradigm speakers and a NAD amplifier. It was a revelation, and it wasn't long before I got my own pair of Paradigm 7s to go with the Dual turntable I had by then acquired (can't remember which one) and a NAD amplifier. Funny thing about the NAD: it blew up. Just one day - boom! So did its replacement. I was told by a NAD rep that this was a known issue, although a very rare one. In my case, lightning struck twice. I can't seem to buy a winning lottery ticket, but I somehow managed to get two rare NAD bombs. Not wanting to risk another explosion in my living room, I replaced the second NAD amp with a less volatile Yamaha receiver. I'm sure that by now, some 40-plus years later, NAD has fixed whatever the problem was.
I remember a Nakamichi tape deck being in the mix somewhere around that time, and a Technics tuner, too.
Around 1989 I got serious about home audio and acquired a Robertson tube amplifier and pre-amplifier, a Linn LP12 Sondek (which I still have), an Arcam CD player with an outboard motor that I bought while on vacation in Scotland (they had to change the power supply and send it to me later) and a pair of Linn Nexus speakers. The Robertsons lasted a couple of decades and were replaced with a Rega Brio integrated amp, which I really liked. But at 40 watts per side it wasn't powerful enough, so I eventually gave the Brio to my son and slipped a Rogue Sphinx V2 onto the shelf in its stead. The Sphinx has a tube phono stage, which is really nice and warm sounding. I also bought a Nordost Blue Heaven power cord for the Sphinx, which I think helps make it sound so nice. At least I hope it does, because it wasn't cheap.
The Arcam CD player eventually went to CD player heaven, but that was OK. An outstanding player in its day, it had by then been surpassed by newer technologies that had pretty much rendered it obsolete. These days, where the Arcam once sat, now sits a Marantz CD-605. It doesn't play SACDs like its successor (CD-606), but it's a solid, high-end CD player (one of the best, I have been told) that does a wonderful job making CDs sound better than they have any right to. I only have one SACD anyway, but it's a hybrid that can be played on any CD player. And my focus is on vinyl, not CDs, so I'm not likely to upgrade to an SACD player.
I eventually replaced the Linn speakers with some KEF Q700s and tethered them to the Sphinx with about $400 worth of speaker cable, which sounds really nice, especially bi-wired. I don't know if the speaker cable actually made much difference, other than to my bank account. But let's say it did.
In 2020 I upgraded the LP12 with a Cirkus bearing and Trampoline support system and gave it a new belt, cables and cueing mechanism. That turntable has been a marvellous piece of equipment - and a wonderful investment - and the upgrades cost under $2,000, which isn't too much to spend after 30-odd years of loyal servitude. And it was certainly worth it, sonically. The only other investment it's required was a new Grado Reference cartridge a few years back.
And that's the system I'm using now.
- UPDATE: Upgraded to a Dynavector 10X5 cartridge in 2022.
Audiophiles can be silly, me included, and in the 1990s I was really into the silliness. I had a large, soundproofed listening room in the basement, in which the only piece of furniture was my listening chair, which was very carefully situated at exactly the right spot in front of the speakers - something I was always tweaking, moving the chair an inch or two this way or that in search of new sonic delights. The back wall of the listening room was covered in tapestries that were handmade by my wife's long dead, great, great something-or-other more than 100 years earlier. Every serious audiophile back then had tapestries or blankets or acoustic panels or egg crates on the back wall of their listening room to dampen the sound waves, especially the heavy lower-end ones that I imagined were flinging themselves out of my speakers and careening across the room like army tanks.
My LP12 was on a proper Target turntable shelf in a closet with the door closed so that none of those sound waves, if one were to go rogue, would interfere with the arm and cartridge.
I also subscribed to Stereophile and UHF Magazine and eagerly absorbed all the new equipment and record reviews. I remember one article in one of the magazines in which the author claimed affixing a quarter to a bottom of a back wall tapestry would yield a significant improvement in sound quality. I actually tried that, but I couldn't hear any difference. That's kind of what I mean about audiophiles being such a silly bunch. You wouldn't believe the nonsense we get up to in search of the sound.
Anyway, that's my setup. It's not ridiculously high-end but it's certainly decent enough, something any wife might allow her husband to put together. I'm in a much smaller house now, and my listening room is longer than it is wider and the speakers have to sit on the long side. That's not the ideal listening room setup, but I've made it work by positioning the speakers to their best advantage and it really does sound great. I've been to the Consumer Electronic Show, back when it used to be in Chicago, and heard some pretty impressive and outrageously expensive speakers that cost upwards of several hundred thousand dollars - yet my system still sounds good enough to me. Just because something is expensive doesn't mean it's better, and a lot of those really expensive components I saw at the CES way back when can now be had on the second-hand market for pennies on the dollar.
One thing I did do as a raging audiophile was buy records. Lots and lots of records. I never stopped buying records. I was always buying them and I'm glad I did because the music is really what being an audiophile is all about and a lot of what I collected back then isn't available any more and hasn't been for years. If I have any advice to offer a newbie audiophile it would be this: get yourself a halfway decent system - the best you can afford - and then listen to the music. And never mind Amazon. Support your local record store and buy LOTS of records.
THE VERY FIRST RECORD PLAYER I can remember owning was a little plastic thing my parents got me for Christmas decades ago. It was basically a stand with a turntable perched on top with two plastic speakers tucked in underneath. Everything was white, like I imagine an Apple iStereo would be. But the turntable platter's diameter was smaller than the diameter of a 33-rpm record, meaning that my LPs were always overhanging the turntable platter. And that wasn't good because there was a volume knob right beside the platter, so if a record was even slightly warped it would hit the volume knob every time the warped bit came around, which would cause the record to skip.
I fixed that problem with a stack of quarters that I taped together and glued to the top of the needle. I say needle because it wasn't anything like a cartridge. It was just a little needle stuck on the end of the white plastic tonearm. It was a forever needle. You couldn't change it. Needless to say - but I'll say it anyway - I sincerely hope you don't run across any of the records I used to own back then.
The first experience I can recall with a real stereo system was when I was a newly-minted teenager, in the front half of the mid-70s, and a friend of mine was given one by his parents for his birthday. It came from Sears and had a big stand with imitation wood-wrapped components on every shelf. The receiver had all kinds of dials, knobs, buttons, meters, switches and blinking lights.
I know better now, but it seemed very cool at the time. It was what I imagined the dashboard of a space ship might look like. The speakers were massive and very loud. By any measure of today's modern audiophile they no doubt actually sounded awful, but we didn't know that. At only 14 years of age we had nothing to compare it to, other than my little plastic record player - kind of like today where people think Spotify sounds great because they've never heard an all-analogue record played back on a halfway decent sounding system. I was really jealous of my friend's new stereo.
But time marches on, and a few years later another friend introduced me to his system, which included a couple of Paradigm speakers and a NAD amplifier. It was a revelation, and it wasn't long before I got my own pair of Paradigm 7s to go with the Dual turntable I had by then acquired (can't remember which one) and a NAD amplifier. Funny thing about the NAD: it blew up. Just one day - boom! So did its replacement. I was told by a NAD rep that this was a known issue, although a very rare one. In my case, lightning struck twice. I can't seem to buy a winning lottery ticket, but I somehow managed to get two rare NAD bombs. Not wanting to risk another explosion in my living room, I replaced the second NAD amp with a less volatile Yamaha receiver. I'm sure that by now, some 40-plus years later, NAD has fixed whatever the problem was.
I remember a Nakamichi tape deck being in the mix somewhere around that time, and a Technics tuner, too.
Around 1989 I got serious about home audio and acquired a Robertson tube amplifier and pre-amplifier, a Linn LP12 Sondek (which I still have), an Arcam CD player with an outboard motor that I bought while on vacation in Scotland (they had to change the power supply and send it to me later) and a pair of Linn Nexus speakers. The Robertsons lasted a couple of decades and were replaced with a Rega Brio integrated amp, which I really liked. But at 40 watts per side it wasn't powerful enough, so I eventually gave the Brio to my son and slipped a Rogue Sphinx V2 onto the shelf in its stead. The Sphinx has a tube phono stage, which is really nice and warm sounding. I also bought a Nordost Blue Heaven power cord for the Sphinx, which I think helps make it sound so nice. At least I hope it does, because it wasn't cheap.
The Arcam CD player eventually went to CD player heaven, but that was OK. An outstanding player in its day, it had by then been surpassed by newer technologies that had pretty much rendered it obsolete. These days, where the Arcam once sat, now sits a Marantz CD-605. It doesn't play SACDs like its successor (CD-606), but it's a solid, high-end CD player (one of the best, I have been told) that does a wonderful job making CDs sound better than they have any right to. I only have one SACD anyway, but it's a hybrid that can be played on any CD player. And my focus is on vinyl, not CDs, so I'm not likely to upgrade to an SACD player.
I eventually replaced the Linn speakers with some KEF Q700s and tethered them to the Sphinx with about $400 worth of speaker cable, which sounds really nice, especially bi-wired. I don't know if the speaker cable actually made much difference, other than to my bank account. But let's say it did.
In 2020 I upgraded the LP12 with a Cirkus bearing and Trampoline support system and gave it a new belt, cables and cueing mechanism. That turntable has been a marvellous piece of equipment - and a wonderful investment - and the upgrades cost under $2,000, which isn't too much to spend after 30-odd years of loyal servitude. And it was certainly worth it, sonically. The only other investment it's required was a new Grado Reference cartridge a few years back.
And that's the system I'm using now.
Audiophiles can be silly, me included, and in the 1990s I was really into the silliness. I had a large, soundproofed listening room in the basement, in which the only piece of furniture was my listening chair, which was very carefully situated at exactly the right spot in front of the speakers - something I was always tweaking, moving the chair an inch or two this way or that in search of new sonic delights. The back wall of the listening room was covered in tapestries that were handmade by my wife's long dead, great, great something-or-other more than 100 years earlier. Every serious audiophile back then had tapestries or blankets or acoustic panels or egg crates on the back wall of their listening room to dampen the sound waves, especially the heavy lower-end ones that I imagined were flinging themselves out of my speakers and careening across the room like army tanks.
My LP12 was on a proper Target turntable shelf in a closet with the door closed so that none of those sound waves, if one were to go rogue, would interfere with the arm and cartridge.
I also subscribed to Stereophile and UHF Magazine and eagerly absorbed all the new equipment and record reviews. I remember one article in one of the magazines in which the author claimed affixing a quarter to a bottom of a back wall tapestry would yield a significant improvement in sound quality. I actually tried that, but I couldn't hear any difference. That's kind of what I mean about audiophiles being such a silly bunch. You wouldn't believe the nonsense we get up to in search of the sound.
Anyway, that's my setup. It's not ridiculously high-end but it's certainly decent enough, something any wife might allow her husband to put together. I'm in a much smaller house now, and my listening room is longer than it is wider and the speakers have to sit on the long side. That's not the ideal listening room setup, but I've made it work by positioning the speakers to their best advantage and it really does sound great. I've been to the Consumer Electronic Show, back when it used to be in Chicago, and heard some pretty impressive and outrageously expensive speakers that cost upwards of several hundred thousand dollars - yet my system still sounds good enough to me. Just because something is expensive doesn't mean it's better, and a lot of those really expensive components I saw at the CES way back when can now be had on the second-hand market for pennies on the dollar.
One thing I did do as a raging audiophile was buy records. Lots and lots of records. I never stopped buying records. I was always buying them and I'm glad I did because the music is really what being an audiophile is all about and a lot of what I collected back then isn't available any more and hasn't been for years. If I have any advice to offer a newbie audiophile it would be this: get yourself a halfway decent system - the best you can afford - and then listen to the music. And never mind Amazon. Support your local record store and buy LOTS of records.
I fixed that problem with a stack of quarters that I taped together and glued to the top of the needle. I say needle because it wasn't anything like a cartridge. It was just a little needle stuck on the end of the white plastic tonearm. It was a forever needle. You couldn't change it. Needless to say - but I'll say it anyway - I sincerely hope you don't run across any of the records I used to own back then.
The first experience I can recall with a real stereo system was when I was a newly-minted teenager, in the front half of the mid-70s, and a friend of mine was given one by his parents for his birthday. It came from Sears and had a big stand with imitation wood-wrapped components on every shelf. The receiver had all kinds of dials, knobs, buttons, meters, switches and blinking lights.
I know better now, but it seemed very cool at the time. It was what I imagined the dashboard of a space ship might look like. The speakers were massive and very loud. By any measure of today's modern audiophile they no doubt actually sounded awful, but we didn't know that. At only 14 years of age we had nothing to compare it to, other than my little plastic record player - kind of like today where people think Spotify sounds great because they've never heard an all-analogue record played back on a halfway decent sounding system. I was really jealous of my friend's new stereo.
But time marches on, and a few years later another friend introduced me to his system, which included a couple of Paradigm speakers and a NAD amplifier. It was a revelation, and it wasn't long before I got my own pair of Paradigm 7s to go with the Dual turntable I had by then acquired (can't remember which one) and a NAD amplifier. Funny thing about the NAD: it blew up. Just one day - boom! So did its replacement. I was told by a NAD rep that this was a known issue, although a very rare one. In my case, lightning struck twice. I can't seem to buy a winning lottery ticket, but I somehow managed to get two rare NAD bombs. Not wanting to risk another explosion in my living room, I replaced the second NAD amp with a less volatile Yamaha receiver. I'm sure that by now, some 40-plus years later, NAD has fixed whatever the problem was.
I remember a Nakamichi tape deck being in the mix somewhere around that time, and a Technics tuner, too.
Around 1989 I got serious about home audio and acquired a Robertson tube amplifier and pre-amplifier, a Linn LP12 Sondek (which I still have), an Arcam CD player with an outboard motor that I bought while on vacation in Scotland (they had to change the power supply and send it to me later) and a pair of Linn Nexus speakers. The Robertsons lasted a couple of decades and were replaced with a Rega Brio integrated amp, which I really liked. But at 40 watts per side it wasn't powerful enough, so I eventually gave the Brio to my son and slipped a Rogue Sphinx V2 onto the shelf in its stead. The Sphinx has a tube phono stage, which is really nice and warm sounding. I also bought a Nordost Blue Heaven power cord for the Sphinx, which I think helps make it sound so nice. At least I hope it does, because it wasn't cheap.
The Arcam CD player eventually went to CD player heaven, but that was OK. An outstanding player in its day, it had by then been surpassed by newer technologies that had pretty much rendered it obsolete. These days, where the Arcam once sat, now sits a Marantz CD-605. It doesn't play SACDs like its successor (CD-606), but it's a solid, high-end CD player (one of the best, I have been told) that does a wonderful job making CDs sound better than they have any right to. I only have one SACD anyway, but it's a hybrid that can be played on any CD player. And my focus is on vinyl, not CDs, so I'm not likely to upgrade to an SACD player.
I eventually replaced the Linn speakers with some KEF Q700s and tethered them to the Sphinx with about $400 worth of speaker cable, which sounds really nice, especially bi-wired. I don't know if the speaker cable actually made much difference, other than to my bank account. But let's say it did.
In 2020 I upgraded the LP12 with a Cirkus bearing and Trampoline support system and gave it a new belt, cables and cueing mechanism. That turntable has been a marvellous piece of equipment - and a wonderful investment - and the upgrades cost under $2,000, which isn't too much to spend after 30-odd years of loyal servitude. And it was certainly worth it, sonically. The only other investment it's required was a new Grado Reference cartridge a few years back.
And that's the system I'm using now.
- UPDATE: Upgraded to a Dynavector 10X5 cartridge in 2022.
Audiophiles can be silly, me included, and in the 1990s I was really into the silliness. I had a large, soundproofed listening room in the basement, in which the only piece of furniture was my listening chair, which was very carefully situated at exactly the right spot in front of the speakers - something I was always tweaking, moving the chair an inch or two this way or that in search of new sonic delights. The back wall of the listening room was covered in tapestries that were handmade by my wife's long dead, great, great something-or-other more than 100 years earlier. Every serious audiophile back then had tapestries or blankets or acoustic panels or egg crates on the back wall of their listening room to dampen the sound waves, especially the heavy lower-end ones that I imagined were flinging themselves out of my speakers and careening across the room like army tanks.
My LP12 was on a proper Target turntable shelf in a closet with the door closed so that none of those sound waves, if one were to go rogue, would interfere with the arm and cartridge.
I also subscribed to Stereophile and UHF Magazine and eagerly absorbed all the new equipment and record reviews. I remember one article in one of the magazines in which the author claimed affixing a quarter to a bottom of a back wall tapestry would yield a significant improvement in sound quality. I actually tried that, but I couldn't hear any difference. That's kind of what I mean about audiophiles being such a silly bunch. You wouldn't believe the nonsense we get up to in search of the sound.
Anyway, that's my setup. It's not ridiculously high-end but it's certainly decent enough, something any wife might allow her husband to put together. I'm in a much smaller house now, and my listening room is longer than it is wider and the speakers have to sit on the long side. That's not the ideal listening room setup, but I've made it work by positioning the speakers to their best advantage and it really does sound great. I've been to the Consumer Electronic Show, back when it used to be in Chicago, and heard some pretty impressive and outrageously expensive speakers that cost upwards of several hundred thousand dollars - yet my system still sounds good enough to me. Just because something is expensive doesn't mean it's better, and a lot of those really expensive components I saw at the CES way back when can now be had on the second-hand market for pennies on the dollar.
One thing I did do as a raging audiophile was buy records. Lots and lots of records. I never stopped buying records. I was always buying them and I'm glad I did because the music is really what being an audiophile is all about and a lot of what I collected back then isn't available any more and hasn't been for years. If I have any advice to offer a newbie audiophile it would be this: get yourself a halfway decent system - the best you can afford - and then listen to the music. And never mind Amazon. Support your local record store and buy LOTS of records.
BONUS TRACK
AUDIOPHILE JOKES
► Two audiophiles are talking. The first one says, "Did you hear the sad news about Bob? He died of a sudden illness." The second audiophile says, "That's so sad, what did he have?" The first audiophile replies, " A Cambridge Audo AXA35, Klipsch RP-600M speakers, Rossner and Sohn turntable … "
AUDIOPHILE JOKES
► Two audiophiles are talking. The first one says, "Did you hear the sad news about Bob? He died of a sudden illness." The second audiophile says, "That's so sad, what did he have?" The first audiophile replies, " A Cambridge Audo AXA35, Klipsch RP-600M speakers, Rossner and Sohn turntable … "
❖
Q: How long does it take for an audiophile to change a light bulb?
A: Forever, because he can't get past the double blind testing.
❖
► An audiophile, on his way to his Linn dealer to have his LP12 adjusted and tweaked for the millionth time, stops at the bank to make a quick cash withdrawal. He leaves his precious turntable in full view on the back seat of his car and runs into the bank. Upon returning to his car he notices that one of the windows has been smashed. When he looks in he sees TWO LP12s on the back seat.
❖
Q: How can you tell that the audiophile is sitting in the sweet spot and that his listening chair is perfectly level?
A: He's drooling out of both sides of his mouth.
❖
Q: How do you keep an audiophile in suspense for 24 hours?
A: I'll tell you tomorrow.
❖
► An audiophile was crossing a road one day when a frog called out to him and said, "If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful princess". He bent over, picked up the frog and put it in his pocket. The frog spoke up again and said, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will stay with you for one week." The audiophile took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to the pocket. The frog then cried out, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I'll stay with you and do ANYTHING you want." Again the audiophile took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket. Finally the frog asked, "What is the matter? I've told you I'm a beautiful princess, that I'll stay with you for a week and do anything you want. Why won't you kiss me?" The audiophile said, "Look I'm an audiophile. I don't have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog? That's cool."
