In the past year, I've gone from a lovely Denon micro-system and its "convenient" sound, to an Electrocompaniet integrated SS amp and Cal Audio Labs CL-15 CDP and bookshelf speakers; to an Aragon 8008ST power amp, Rotel RC-995 pre, AR Complete CDP, and Taylo 7U floorstanders (95# apiece); to a computer-sourced system with Sonus Faber monitor speakers; finally to a Cary integrated tube system with a Cary 303/300 CDP and Sonus Faber Grand Piano floorstanding speakers. I still have every piece of these systems and, now, less than a year after I initiated this journey, I can say that what I've been after is SQ and the way music can inspire and transport me. Convenience is convenience, but it is not "SQ"--which I translate to mean that which can create real aesthetic rapture and not mere convenient pleasure.
I don't knock iPods--I have a Nano myself to play on the bus when I commute to work and I'd bought them first for my wife and sons. In fact, a musicologist friend, away on sabbatical to Ruskin's I Tatti Villa near Florence, once said to me, "The ability to bring along one's entire music collection in one 60-gig iPod is nothing less than a gift from God.... Or should I say McIntosh?"
But at home, I want the richness of music to embrace me and to be able to forget that what I am hearing is a representation, a recording. That means I usually go for the best equipment I can afford and much of it is conventional digital and hi-fi rather than computer. It's too hard to learn a completely new system of sound reproduction, no matter how convenient or veritably "LossLess" it may be. I'd rather run the old paths.
In fact, all my friends are predicting that a move to vinyl is in my future. That would be lovely.
I remember well my father's own elaborate hi-fi, his brass and walnut Dual turntable and Empire cartridge spinning Big Band music in our humble living room 40 years ago now. He kept input tubes in the pocket of his shirt and swapped them in and out of his Dynakit amp. He said, "These are called Bugle Boys, named after us GI's I think." Though his perhaps sentimental speculation wasn't true, this love for sound that released feelings of homage and honor in him so they'd found expression in the brief and swift sentences he spoke to me is something I have as a kind of legacy. It is not convenient. It is loving.
