For right price sound can transform you
Is it worth spending more than $10,000 on a sound system? It depends on how you listen to music, says Alice Clarke.
One of the best parts of my job is getting to listen to and spend time with truly amazing sound systems that I could never afford.
As any audiophile will tell you, listening to a song that means something to you on speakers that don’t limit the music can be a transformative experience.
Knowing that, is it worth spending more than $10,000 on a sound system? Probably not, but it depends on how you listen to music.
One of my mottos is that life is too short for bad quality audio. Being able to hear is something I’ll never take for granted, and often it’s those little details in songs – like the scrapes on steel strings or the sound of a wellworn, frayed brush on a snare – that makes them come to life.
But there is an ocean of difference between the sound from a $5 novelty Bluetooth speaker that makes your soul shrivel and the A$90,000 (NZ$96,000) Meridian Audio system that managed to bring a tear to my eye even when it was playing a punk song called Ballad Of A Ladyman.
Somewhere in that gap is the right system for you, though for most people the price tag will be closer to a dubious used car being sold on Facebook than a house deposit.
I’ve been lucky enough to be quarantined with a brilliant Sonus faber and Cambridge Audio system, which the owners couldn’t pick up for months due to the pandemic rules.
The A$6495(NZ$6938) Sonetto III floor standing speakers sounded brilliant, with every tone reproduced just right. The A$2195 (NZ$2344) Gravis II subwoofer conveyed those deep, low tones with a richness that didn’t overwhelm.
The A$2190 (NZ$2339) CXA81 amplifier provided more than enough power to either deafen my neighbours or give the music room to breathe. And the A$1899 (NZ$2028) CXN (v2) network music player and A$599 (NZ$639) AXC35 CD player gave it music to play.
If you sat in just the right spot in the living room, it sounded like every band I ever loved was playing a concert just for me.
If you weren’t sitting in that perfect spot, it still sounded really great, though no longer transcendent. And that’s the thing with high-end audio: it’s designed for people to sit in their perfect spot or listening room and listen to a whole album from beginning to end to appreciate it fully.
If you frequently sit down to just truly listen to music for extended periods of time, and the idea of spending A$13,000 or more doesn’t make you feel stressed, then highend audio is for you and this system is amazing and worth investing in.
A few days after The Cambridge/ Sonus faber system went back to the warehouse, I was sent a pair of the new Sonos Fives (NZ$800) and the new Sonos Sub (NZ$1067).
Of course, sitting in that perfect listening spot, they very obviously missed about 25 per cent of those little details that made the more expensive system sound like magic.
But with them set up in stereo mode and the Sub placed just right, they sounded almost exactly the same when I was moving around the living room and making dinner, further compounding the situational difference between midtier high-end audio and accessible mid-end audio.
Still, A$2500 is very expensive and out of reach for many people. However, the modularity and easy setup of the Sonos system makes it immediately more accessible to budding audiophiles who want to build up each room.
For many music snobs and audiophiles, the most important thing is how premium their system is and whether or not they’re actually getting the most from it.
But while you dream of that system that’s worth more than your car, just keep in mind that great quality audio isn’t confined to English artisan products, and is more accessible than you probably think. – Sydney Morning Herald
If you sat in just the right spot in the living room, it sounded like every band I ever loved was playing a concert just for me.