Heavenly Streams

I’m 82 years old. I like good sound but am not an audiophile. I have a respectable A/V system– not high-end, but all the components got a good review somewhere. Many of them I have had for a long time; I don’t replace anything until it quits working or becomes technically obsolete. When I was a child, I had a wind-up Victrola and a large stack of “pop” 10-inch 78s. When I went off to college at age 16, I developed a passion for classical music. I listened to mono LPS on a portable phonograph with a crystal cartridge, a one-watt amplifier, and a four-inch speaker.

Then I read something in a review in High Fidelity magazine that got my attention. The reviewer was trying to justify the high cost of audio components (as you still do today). He said to look at it this way: “For $5,000 ($50,000 in today’s dollars) you can get a car that will take you to California and back. Or you can get a hi-fi that will take you to heaven and back. It all depends where you want to go.” Well, I knew where I wanted to go, so I started upgrading the portable phonograph with Heathkit components. Before long I had a 20-watt Williamson tube amp and preamp, a folded horn corner cabinet with Jensen speakers, and a Rek-o-kut turntable with a GE magnetic cartridge. I was the envy of the dormitory. I had arrived.

But along came stereo, so Dynakits replaced the Heathkits, and ARS replaced the Jensens and the Rek-o-kut. Then transistors came along and the Dynakit tube amps got replaced with a solid-state model (a mistake). Next, CDS came along and my LP collection got replaced with silver discs (another mistake).

Then things really started to get weird. I found that if I ripped my CDS to the hard drive on my computer and connected it to my audio system with a USB DAC, the music sounded better than when the same CDS were played on a CD player. I also found that downloaded and streamed music sounds better than CDS. Why? Who knows? Maybe it is just my imagination. So now I have no more physical media. I listen to music online using Qobuz and watch concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic app on Roku. It is all wonderfully convenient. Anything I could possibly want to listen to is only a click away, with a sound quality that is better than anything I ever had before.

But this is the sad part: the heaven-andback thing. Being 16 and hearing Beethoven’s 7th symphony for the first time, even on a 4-inch speaker. That was heaven.

Ken Green / Atlanta, GA