alfa100,
A timely reminder.
The nature of this addiction (the bloom, the air, the dynamics, the timbre - yes all mainly from those vinyl years!) which can lead to many problems including that 'you could end up playing the same 12 tracks all your life on equipment demos'.
'I remember enjoying music off a budget 2 speaker, all in one record player system in my high school days.'
My experience too. I've often wondered what it would be like to get a well preserved example of that same system and listen again. Would it sound great, or more likely crap? I don't know, but I suspect the latter.
What I do know is that nothing, no system since has given me anything like the same pleasure as that one did. I was totally immersed in the music for years. The only tweaking issue being occasional adjustment of the t wire aerial for FM reception on some weaker stations.
So what happened? Well, first of all I must have started to run out of the supply of this purely divine music and tried to somehow maintain the strength of the musical hit I was intoxicated with via the route of equipment upgrades.
I mean once you get past Sgt Pepper, Revolver, Rubber Soul, White album, A Hard Day's Night, Help!, Blonde on Blonde, Highway 61 Revisited, Bringing It All Back Home, Astral Weeks, Forever Changes, Led Zeppelin IV, Velvet Underground, Unknown Pleasures/Closer and greatest hits by Elvis, Buddy Holly, Rolling Stones, Who, Sex Pistols and various 45s it's just got to be downhill after that, hasn't it?
This all happened mainly between the age of 15 and 19. After that it was university and the discovery of separates. As you say, 'akin to going down a rabbit hole and doomed to audiophilia nervosa.'
Is this what this all is, an unending Proust like attempt to recover the lost pleasures of youth?
Or is it simply a transition problem? In my case, after university I took some time before grudgingly settling into a job and even more time before settling down into marriage and family. I wasn't keen on the family aspect but my wife was. I'm far happier with it now, and it's certainly precious to me now, but it was one hell of a transition.
Or maybe is this all simply a case of searching for something elusive in a digital format which was easily found in analogue LP? I don't know, but I suspect not. After all why would my cheap all in one system give me far more pleasure than my later LP12/Ittok/K18? Doesn't make sense until I factor in all that 'audiophilia nervosa' nonsense.
There's also the fact that digital can sound beautiful on rare occasions admittedly, but it definitely can. For example check out the sound on a few of those early Smith's CDs.
So thanks again for reminding us of what's really important here. It's very easy to skip over posts here as you have your morning tea, but yours I had to read a few times.
My journey too.
