The Audiophiliac

Matt's turntable, amp, and speakers.

(Credit: Matt Calderone)

What's the definition of a great hi-fi? It's the one you're listening to. Not just for background "listening," but actual, focused listening.

Investing a lot of money on a hi-fi isn't the only way to get there. In fact, spending as little as possible on decent gear is the best way to get acquainted with good sound. Who knows, you might become an audiophile.

My friend Matt Calderone might be on his way. He was given a used Denon DP-7F turntable, and recently bought a Kenwood KA-701 integrated stereo amplifier on eBay and a pair of Klipsch speakers through Craigslist. All told, he spent less than $200.

Calderone is 26 years old so I was curious about how and why he wound up with a hi-fi. He says he's always been interested in LPs, and he likes listening to them over a decent stereo, not computer speakers. Calderone thinks good speakers make a big difference.

It's not just that the sound is better, music engages on a different level when heard over a hi-fi. Calderone frequently winds up just sitting on the couch and get this, he listens to entire records! The music is the main focus; vinyl has that effect on some people. Calderone is going to add a CD player soon, but for now his system is analog only.

The hardest part of buying a used hi-fi is picking the right gear. If you're new to hi-fi ask an older relative who knows audio about which brands are worthy, but for starters I'd recommend steering clear of Sony and Bose products. I like Creek, Denon, NAD, Onkyo, Pioneer, and Yamaha amplifiers and receivers; look for used Advent, AR, Boston Acoustics, DCM, Epos, Infinity, Klipsch, Magnepan, Mirage, Monitor Audio, NHT, Polk, Snell, or Vandersteen speakers. For a few hundred bucks you can put together a very listenable used system.

Inside the box you'll find four discs.

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

The Rolling Stones really were the world's greatest rock and roll band in 1969. That was 40 years ago, but if you need proof to verify the ancient claim, check out the "Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! The Rolling Stones In Concert--40th Anniversary Deluxe Box Set."

The Stones' live shows of the '70s, '80s, '90s and '00s were spectacles of frenzied energy, extravagant sets, video projections, and lots of flash, but "Ya Ya" was the real deal. The five Rolling Stones were the show, and that was more than enough. If you're going to only buy one live Stones CD, get "Ya Ya."

The original album was recorded over two nights at Madison Square Garden; I was there at one of those shows. I had a great time and bought the LP as soon as it came out. Still have it.

Keith Richards and Mick Taylor's yin vs. yang guitar styles meshed perfectly on "Midnight Rambler" and "Sympathy For The Devil." Mick Jagger and Richards paid tribute to the man who invented rock and roll, Chuck Berry, with a romping "Little Queenie." The new box set includes the original version on CD, plus a five-song EP from the same shows, with unplugged performances of "Prodigal Son" and "You Gotta Move." Sound quality is really good for a 1960s-era live recording, but I prefer the sound of the single disc "Ya Ya" SACD that came out in 2002, at least when it's played on a SACD player.

You're "feelin' groovy" but don't have a turntable or a place to plug one in? No problem, the Vinyl Killer, a.k.a., the Soundwagon can play your tunes!

Fidelity isn't a strong suit of the little toy and groove tracking can be hit or miss, but the little machine is a great gimmick. That it works at all is kind of amazing. I doubt anyone could devise a CD Killer to play a CD by driving over the pits.

I actually sold a few of these things back in the 1980s when I was a high-end audio salesguy. They went for $20 or $25, but I bought this one for $80 ten years ago.

Vinyl Killers are no longer made, but they're not hard to find on eBay.

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

Vinyl is back, big time, but the fact is most folks, probably close to 99 percent of the under 40-set, haven't heard records.

For them, music is about portability and vinyl is a stay-at-home deal. Vinyl has more of a hands-on work ethic: you've got to cue the tonearm, lower the "needle," and when the side's over, turn it over or play another LP. Digital requires almost nothing from you; no wonder it's dominated the music scene for the last couple of decades.

Me, I'm having something of a vinyl fling right now. I've always owned a turntable, but there were times I played only CDs for months on end. I guess I didn't want to deal with the extra work of playing vinyl. Sad, but true.

As for LP vs. CD comparisons, I didn't do any. Trust me, you don't have to be a golden-eared audiophile to notice the two formats sound very different. Records are "warmer" and sound more like the sound of real instruments and voices; CDs almost always make them more detailed and brighter-sounding than they are in real life.

What, you don't have a turntable? What's wrong with you?

When the CD was unveiled to the world in 1982 with the "Perfect Sound Forever" motto, everyone assumed the LP's days were numbered. Well, nearly three decades later, vinyl's hanging in there and the CD's future looks uncertain.

Vinyl appeals to oldsters who still covet their LP collections, and kids who are just now getting into the groove. To some vinyl sounds better, more musical than digital, and some just dig the more physical connection to the music vinyl provides.

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

Margery just wants to have fun.

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

Women sometimes buy quality audio, but that doesn't make them audiophiles.

With rare exceptions, all the audiophiles I've known are men. The unifying mantra for audiophiles is that there's always something, maybe an amplifier or speaker just out a reach that might get them a little closer to the music. Audiophiles are gear junkies. They want to have Aretha Franklin or the New York Philharmonic or their favorite music sound like it's in the house. Audiophiles crave an emotional, visceral connection with their music.

That pretty much sums up Margery Budoff's audiophile urges. Like most audiophiles I know, Margery had an unusually strong affinity for music at a young age. She described herself as "A child musician with an industrial design fetish." Even as a little kid she loved the look of stuff, especially older, big and clunky 1950s and 1960s record players.

The first record Margery bought was "Telstar," then Dionne Warwick, then the Rolling Stones. The record player was the thing that could "Decipher the secret code encrypted in the records. I wanted to hear the sound in all its glory. That's how I became an audiophile."

David with his Teac recorder.

Most audiophiles are 40+.

True, there's a small sprinkling of twentysomethings and thirtysomethings who love gear, but are there any teenage audiophiles? They're pretty rare, so when I heard about a 17-year-old with 1,500 LPs and a huge collection of analog tapes I had to talk to him.

David M has it bad.

When he was five, his father had Bose speakers. Maybe they were too big, so his dad tossed them out and little David threw a fit! By the time he was eight or nine he started putting together his own hi-fi.

Like a lot of audiophiles David doesn't think he's one. He said, "I've always loved music, and as I've bought better equipment I found I liked the music more. It cycled from there." He's read audiophile magazines like Stereophile since he was in the eighth grade. David sounds like an audiophile to me.

He's totally into it, "I'm all audio, all the time...I thought I was done when I had a Sansui receiver and JBL 4311 speakers, but I'm still on the upgrade path." He now regularly records concerts at his high school and of his friends' bands. I've listened to some of David's recordings and he's good. But David has yet to turn any of his friends into audiophiles; even most of his musician buddies aren't into sound quality. He said, "They don't care. Some of them have already lost some of their hearing." Yikes!

He has one friend with a decent turntable and a collection of records handed down from his parents, but that guy's no audiophile. David set up his ex-girlfriend with a nice hi-fi, and she's getting into vinyl and tape.

He's not turned on by much new music, or anything that's played on commercial radio stations. He likes folk music and obscure '70s pop, a bit of classical, some jazz. David says he's open to trying anything.

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

I'm not sure why, but there's a never-ending stream of articles cheering on vinyl's comeback. I guess if it's a slow news day, editors can't resist plugging in yet another story about booming LP sales, and they always claim something along the lines of "Kids are digging the grooves, they've seen the light, and now crave analog sound!"

Puh-leeze!

Don't get me wrong; I wish it were true. Maybe in some alternative universe, vinyl is flying off the shelves, and kids are ditching their iPods and buying turntables.

Back here on the Earth we know and love, 2008 sales of LPs were up 89 percent, from 990,000 in '07 to 1.88 million in '08. That's hardly a boom, now that CD sales are in the hundreds of millions. The best-selling LP of 2008 was Radiohead's "In Rainbows," which sold a piddling 28,800 platters. Second-place honors went to another British band, The Beatles, which sold 16,500 "Abbey Road" LPs. If those numbers are accurate, and Radiohead's Thom Yorke and company were trying to live off LP sales, they'd have to get day jobs.

So sure, there's more and more new and reissue vinyl, and that's great, but only a teensy-weensy number of people buy new vinyl. Most of my vinyl-loving buddies regularly score free records on the street, or pay a buck or two for used vinyl to play on their megabucks high-end turntables. Again, no problem there, but it's not the same as a true vinyl resurgence. That's just media hype.

I love vinyl because it looks cool and sounds great. I own around 4,000 LPs. And I'm hoping that the vinyl revival keeps growing. But the market for physical media--CDs and LPs--has nowhere to go but down. More than anything else, people want cheap or free music, playable anywhere they want.

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

We're getting close to the day when a major artist or group releases a download-only album. Maybe it'll be the next Rolling Stones or Sufjan Stevens album. That'll be a dark day.

Just last week, I went to my local record store to pick up "Hemispheres," the new release of Bill Frisell and Jim Hall, a jazz guitar duo. I left the store empty-handed.

Next, I checked on Amazon.com. It stocked the album in MP3 format only. Great, but I refuse to pay $17.98 for a crappy-sounding MP3.

Next, I checked the record label's site, and yes, you can buy the CD there, but I wasn't in the mood to navigate the trials and tribulations of its order form. I already own a lot of Frisell and Hall CDs; I guess I don't need another one.

Tower Records shuttered its doors a few years ago, and now another big record chain, Virgin Megastores, is closing down, so there are fewer and fewer places that sell CDs.

These days, I'm buying more and more CDs from Amazon.com, but even Amazon may not move enough product to justify the labels pressing CDs. And local record shops are an endangered species; here in New York, the better ones are barely hanging on.

Still, the fact is that people buy more CDs than downloads, and download sales aren't expected to surpass those of CDs for another couple of years. There's a lot of conflicting information floating around.

Then again, LP sales are on the rise, so maybe we'll wind up with the choice of low-quality iTunes, MP3s, or vinyl. That would be strange.

If you couldn't buy CDs anymore, would you care?

Would you buy vinyl instead?

Do iTunes sound about the same as free downloads? If they do, why buy them?