Objectified: The Home Stereo
Upstater Magazine Summer 2017 | By Peter Martin | Jason Cring
With Bluetooth-connected speakers and easy access to most of the world’s music in the palm of your hand, it’s never been easier to listen to your favorite tunes. But is easier better? What is sacrificed for the sake of convenience? How much more of the music would you hear if it were on vinyl and not compressed into an MP3? What might be left in the ether on your favorite song’s journey across the internet? And what subtle nuances are getting lost in the conversion to zeroes and ones? Maybe the difference is negligible. Maybe it’s worth it for the convenience. But maybe you should shell out for a special elliptical diamond stylus for your vintage turntable. And maybe you ought to grab those Borg & Holaffson titanium-cone, driftwood-encased speakers forged by monks at the famed Borg monastery. Perhaps buying $1,000 audio cables tipped in platinum dust and lovingly coated in gold foil will make all the difference. But just to be safe, connect those to your vintage, analog preamp using Soviet-era East German power tubes salvaged after the fall of the Berlin Wall. And be sure to check the connection to the custom receiver with single-digit signal loss, and gently dust off your priceless records using an archaeology hand brush. Finally, place your pristine copy of The Velvet Underground & Nico onto the turntable—gently, gently—sit back, and drift on a euphonious ocean of high fidelity. Never mind that you’d need 3,000 square feet of warehouse space to store the vinyl equivalent to the 130 million or so songs you can hear on Spotify. Who cares that NASA put men on the moon with less wires, knobs, and buttons? You’ll finally be free to hear your favorite songs unadulterated, unfiltered, undiluted, and pure. So listen up.
