Virtually listening to records
I’m spending the evening listening to records. I’ve been doing that a fair bit recently. But these records I’m listening to aren’t from my shelves. I can’t hold them in my hands. I’m actually listening to digitised records, which is an interesting thing to do – or rather, I think it’s interesting – and here’s why…
I would like to be an audiophile. I say “I’d like to be”, rather than “I am” because I don’t have audiophile equipment. I have an okay stereo as home bookshelf stereos go, but it’s sort of overdue for an update and (more importantly) an upgrade. But I’d easily be looking at £1500-2000 for a step up of the kind I’d really be interested in. Turntable, amp and speakers alone. And that’s barely scratching the surface – and the bottom surface at that – of audiophile gear.
But I’ve started doing all the audiophile stuff. I sit in the sweet spot between the speakers and listen to records, marvelling at the recording quality, the performance, the presence and the space in the sound. All that sort of thing. And of course, mp3s don’t really cut it on that front.
I reflected yesterday afternoon that I’ve now been a university lecturer for 10 years. I started toward the end of 1998, filling in for my friend Bryce for a few weeks at AUT while he went and did something in the radio industry. He never came back.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=7d7e5963-b695-431f-9784-f4aaf94a4786)
