Stunning high end audio equipment on sale at Montrose shop

Vinyl coming back means wehavealot of young customers —but they’re not necessarily coming in with modern music. ROBBIE RITCHIE

ROBERT RITCHIE HI-FI IN MONTROSE OFFERS LUXURY AUDIO EQUIPMENT The turntable alone costs more than a brand new Audi A1 and the entire music system could buy a one-bedroom flat in Dundee. I had asked Robbie Ritchie, owner of Robert Ritchie Hi-Fi shop in Montrose, to set up a high-end audio system and the results were quite frankly astonishing. As the needle drops on the opening track of Steely Dan’s 1980 album Gaucho it’s as if I have been transported into the recording studio. The sound from the gloss black B&W speakers, with the price tag of £18,500, are loud but it’s not just the raw power that’s impressive. Each part in the song is so clearly defined it’s easy to hear nuances I’d never heard before, from the intake of breath by the singers to the subtle differences in the hit of the drums. It is like the music is no longer emitting from two speakers but coming at me from all directions. We had to make do with a £7,500 amplifier as Robbie’s preferred £30,000 power and pre amp combination had only just returned from a home demonstration. The jewel in the crown was a top-of-therange Linn Sondek LP12 turntable. Yours for just £18,870. “What a hi-fi system is trying to do is recreate what you’d hear in a concert or in the studio,” Robbie explained. “It brings people closer to the music because it’s more accurate in what it does. There’s more emotion in voices, more twang on the guitar, more sustain on the piano... it brings more information out of the CD or record.” The shop was founded in 1978 by Robbie’s father, an audio enthusiast who was previously a television engineer. Robbie’s grandfather, a fisherman, made speakers in his garden shed and cut up his gran’s coats to put them inside. Although Robbie officially joined the business in 1988, before then if he wasn’t in school he was in the shop. Throughout the decades the technology of the items for sale may have moved on but the company’s ethos remains the same. “We give people fair and honest advice, let them hear what they’re buying, deliver and install,” Robbie explained. “We don’t try to push things on people. Some shops get more margin if they sell one thing rather than the other. We don’t do any of that – we want to sell what’s right for the customer. “If it’s good, we’ve got it and we’re always on the look out for something new.” The business moved from a small shop in Murray Street that is now a hairdressers to its current location in the early 1980s when it was one of the first in Scotland to have a demonstration room for customers to hear the equipment. In 1990 the flat above the shop was purchased, which has since been transformed into three demo rooms. Although the shop is known throughout Scotland for carrying the best equipment, it also caters for people who want to replace their television and install Sonos as well as audio equipment. The most recent development was a home appliance arm that runs as a separate business. The renaissance of vinyl records has been beneficial at attracting younger people into the shop. “Vinyl coming back has meant we have a lot of young customers but they’re not necessarily coming in with modern music,” Robbie said. “We can set people up with a really good system of a turntable, amp and speakers for about £500.” The shop recently reopened after being closed during lockdown. Demand is still high for audio equipment – people spending more time has meant more music being played – but Robbie admits the next few years will be a “great unknown”. “It still excites me when a new piece of equipment comes in,” Robbie said. “Often I’ll take it home to assess it – if it’s really good, then you miss it in your own system. “A lot of my customers are very loyal and go on musical journeys through upgrades over the years. “When you hear the next upgrade it’s difficult to go back when you hear the difference that a new turntable arm or amp makes.”