What Makes Audio Different

It's ironic that around my building, I've been hung with the reputation of being a "Fine Arts" hater. This isn't my platform to debunk that particular myth, but I'll simply say that I'd bet that there aren't many (if any) teachers at my school (including band, and drama) who are as involved in the hobby of music reproduction as I am. Why is this, and why should you care?

I'll start by saying that I, like everyone else am a product of my environment. My father, loved music and it was played in our home most nights. It was our electronic hearth. There was no TV, no Internet, no Smartphones...... heck, the real phone rarely rang in the evenings. So, our console system very much like the one above was what we gathered around.

Ours was built around the Telefunken Operette receiver. It was a fine piece of German engineering and at the time in the early to mid-60s, it was considered "cutting edge"...... it was STEREO!!! Those years, having stereo was the next "new thing" after Hi-Fi (or High Fidelity). My father being an Engineer by profession was pretty serious about his equipment. So, within this environment, I grew up. 

But it wasn't just they equipment though, Listening to music connects to us like no other activity. It has to ability to transport us to another place and time, complete with virtually all the sensory aspects fully intact. Like being transported in a time capsule. On the other end of the continuum, it can encapsulate a place, time and feelings in a way that nothing else I can think of. 

To this day, I can't listen to anything from the Styx Grand Illusion album without being immediately teleported to a car in my Senior year of high school, going somewhere with the 3 guys I went with everywhere.

Whereas the Supertramp Breakfast In America album immediately takes me to Waco, Texas and a different group of people at a different time! It's in there; inextricably hooked into our brains for the rest of our lives. It works with everyone. Just a different piece of music.

These connection are what makes audio/music very different than my other hobbies of photography or computers, just different. I'm not getting into those today because they'll have their time. For me, audio has almost come full circle. 

For a time, that hardware, was replaced by this hardware! The years when those of us who chose family make everything else secondary. However, as I approach that time when the kids are old enough to not require constant attention AND importantly, they close to the age where they appreciate what fine audio (and video) equipment can do; I'm starting to get back "in the game". 

No, not in the old, I'm out of college, I'm single and my desires are the most important idiom. Those days and that level of hearing are long gone! Plus, the college years are still looming for my children. No, this is the much older, and hopefully wiser and more circumspect me.

No; more along these "bang for the buck" separates, although some will argue that there's no such thing. Next time, we'll discuss what I have, what I'd like for that to eventually turn into and how I'm planning on getting there.