MCLEANS SMARTER HOME ENTERTAINMENT
At Sound+Image we always recommend buying from a proper hi-fi shop which can recommend the right gear for you. This issue we talk with Bill Mclean, from Mcleans Smarter Home Entertainment in East Gosford, where Bill and Margaret Mclean have been servicing the audio & AV needs of the Central Coast and beyond since opening what was one of Australia’s first audio-visual home entertainment stores in 1982.
SOUND+IMAGE: What’s exciting you in the industry at the moment in terms of what’s happening, what’s changing?
BILL MCLEAN: Back to the 70s! — with young people coming and buying turntables; that’s the exciting thing that’s happening. And they’re buying records secondhand and new, doing what we used to do — reading the covers and learning about the musicians and the mastering place where it was done; it’s fantastic. And there’s new vinyl being pressed of the music that they want to buy as well.
S+I: And how do they go when they realise they have to buy a system to plug their turntable into?
BM: That does come up! But that’s exactly what we want to happen, isn’t it. And these are music lovers that we haven’t been seeing who are the ones coming in buying the turntables. There’s a mix of the guys and ladies who want to be home sharing the music with their friends while they’re kicking back and doing their thing, but it’s also bringing in the music lover who wasn’t spinning vinyl, they were just listening to headphones in a lot of cases, streaming. Now they’re getting into music in a bigger way, and involving significant other halves in that process because it’s now set up in the lounge room, not just headphones... and involving their friends when they come over, handling this piece of vinyl and the cover. That’s the best thing.
S+I: What about home cinema, is there movement there?
BM: Well the larger speakers that used to populate the lounge room in a 5.1 system are definitely being pushed aside and soundbars are happening, but there are also more dedicated cinemas, and amongst a lot of retailers you talk to, you find they’re doing more custom jobs and dedicated cinemas. So 5.1 in the lounge room is being pushed down to a soundbar, but there are other rooms being built specifically for film. Of course this has been around a long time but I think it’s now matured and there’s a certain market that wants this in their home at that level.
S+I: Is there acceptance of Atmos and immersive soundtracks?. BGMo:vWerenllmtheantt’spthoelicinytesrtaesttuinsg thing. In a cinema most definitely. In a home environment, maybe not so. But enthusiasts who already have a system are adding Atmos, just like they’re doing 4K, so that’s a market, that’s happening..
S+I: Can you recommend some music to our readers, perhaps a dem track and why you use it? BM: I’ve got a lot of demonstration music, and I’m always searching for new music to play… I think one of the best things to happen for me in finding that music is Tidal, and Roon. If we’ve got a genre of music we like, and we might have a few albums from an artist that we like listening to, then in Tidal we can find the other five, ten, twenty albums that artist has done, we can go through them and find music we enjoy... and also find the best recording quality of that artist. Quite often I’ll spend time going through 50 albums from an artist and suddenly there’ll be a couple of gems, you put them on and immediately the artist is in the room, the band sounds absolutely fantastic. So that’s how I find a lot of good recordings.
One particular example? Well, last week, we had some friends come up from Adelaide and they stayed with us, and they had a listening experience in our listening room at home, which is a dedicated two-channel room but also involving a cinema as well, and on the Tuesday night were having a few
bIeTforAe gLoingRoAut fDor dIiOnne|r, anEdUI asked him what he’d like to hear... he brought up an artist which was disco music, and then we played some more disco music — which we might not normally listen to, ending up with Michael Jackson. We had an absolutely fantastic time, purely based on being able to look at all those albums on Tidal, pick one that I already knew sounded great... and next thing you know we were going to be late for dinner because we were on such a trip with the music!