Having majored in a low-paying profession, and not getting much help from the Mrs., I didn’t have the money to replace the stereo system stolen from my bachelor apartment. And when you don’t have money, what is the point of window-shopping for audio equipment, or anything nice? (Sad, I agree). And the people we hung out with didn’t have much more than we did.
I was still using the Sony receiver, Pioneer CD and Jensen speakers I’d had for 25+ years when, this past December, my she’s-the-one girlfriend decides to move on. Bummer. And what’s a guy to do? I decided I would finally indulge my long-time interest in fine electronics. I have only been acquiring pieces since early January of this year. I don’t know what sounds good yet, and instead of going to a local hifi store where they tweak equipment to make it sound better than it ever would for me, I decided to research on-line to find items in my price range that are well-regarded (and seek opinions here).
Now the “what sounds bad” part: I have recently been moving my new subs to see where they sound best, and I was close to my speakers and realized that there wasn’t much sound coming from the right main. I heard this before and I thought it strange that so much music would have been mixed with most voice and guitar coming from the left channel. Being closer and realizing “this ain’t right”, I switched the speaker cables and found that most music now came from the right channel. Great! Something is wrong with the right channel on my new-used amp!
But before I got panicked, I started checking various connections and finally both channels played! I sat back at my usual listening spot and realized that I was just now hearing my system the way it should be! I know this sounds utterly stupid — how could I not have noticed before? But there was some sound coming from the right speaker, but it was less than half the volume that was coming from the left, and I still thought it sounded good. So . . . the weakest link in a stereo set-up is obviously ME!
