October 2010

In This Issue....
Getting A Bit Bored With Your System? Me Too!
Article By Steven R. Rochlin
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  Audiophiles can be a wrangly bunch. This year's hot item is next year's Audiogon's flooded marketplace at 50% off. If you are like me, having learned the hard way -- through the loss of tens of thousands of dollars -- to avoid 'audio fashion', you let those newfangled $5000 SACD players come to the market years later at fire-sale pricing as the format flounders. Better still, you find great universal players for a few hundred dollars like the Oppo. But what if after nearly 15 years of being in the analog source (vinyl), single-ended tube and high sensitivity speaker camp -- long before it was fashionable -- you become bored. Feeling as though things are great of course, yet stagnant.

It is not that the system is not amazing, it is. It is not that i am ungrateful for such an amazing grouping of gear, i am very grateful actually. But as many have heard yes i have been selling off most of my system. The last unit, still here for sale, is my beloved turntable. The VOYD .5 was truly the best turntable in my home, and even bests the fabled Goldmund Reference and various modern alternatives. It was very innovative in its time and funny to see the three-motor thing only now getting mainstream 15 years later! Maybe this is my way of thumbing my nose at what was avant-garde years ago is now popular fashion, and those who know me realize am not one to generally stay in that crowd. But hey, if you need a great turntable for reasonable money i got one left for sale with awesome Audio Note silver-wired tonearm.

Change Is Good... Or Is It?
As previously discussed on this website, oh, about a decade ago is that change is neither good nor bad, it simply is. Ok, technically i literally said that word for word back in February 2003. So why the change and why now? Because life moves pretty fast, if you don't stop and look around once in a while you could miss it (nod to Ferris Bueller, click here for .wav sound file). Look, tubes are awesome and so are horn speakers and turntables. They are capable of audio nirvana to the Nth degree. If you have not been down that road perhaps now is the perfect opportunity to sell your system and start anew. On the other hand if you are like me and been there, done that, read the book, saw the movie type, you need something really different to get your music inspiration going. Face it, no matter how amazing it is listening to Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue or Zeppelin's Stairway To Heaven, they can get downright irritating to the point you never listen to it again for a decade. But once that decade is over you listen to them again are remember how great this music truly is!

Here is an idea, instead of selling your system there could be a 'system swap' program where audiophiles swap out their systems for other's system, thus avoiding the devaluating dollar and all the other problems with selling gear like commissions and other fees. Shipping costs aside, you swap for free and enjoy the music! But color me not the swap type, as am a very particular, and peculiar, breed of music lover. As an example, while those in high school were listening to Cindy Lauper and Aerosmith i was playing the drums to King Crimson and Rush Farewell to Kings, Hemispheres and 2112 before they got all mainstream popular with Moving Pictures. Still, last thing i'd want to do is be like those old goats and get all High School Puppy-Love Crush at a band called White Stripes, which sound like rip-off 60's. Perhaps the old goats like that stuff, but damn that gets boring, too.

Excite Us Audiophiles!
So am throwing the gauntlet down here and now, high-end audio manufacturers needs to come up with new and exciting goodies. A cartridge that has one less winding or wood instead of metal body just does not cut it. Another DAC with 24-bit/192 decoding is, like, so 2006. And for the love of all that is audiophile, can someone please make mainstream room acoustic devices that are not scams based on hokus pokus! Something to tame the room that would look good in a normal room, and dare one ask this, even in the finest luxury homes. Some of the room acoustic devices are so ugly, it is like me putting an old towel over the fine leather seats in the Bentley. If the room your system resides in sounds like crap, what is the point of putting an expensive system within it?!?!?  Always nice to be able to make a point by using larger text and bolding/italicizing it :)  .

Since the RMAF 2010 is right around the corner and CES 2011 a few months from now, please for the love of music can you manufacturers make something a guy like me would actually want to own? Sure it may be a bit pricy, yet if you can make it for a lower price all the better! Hey, the world economy is tanking and the United States of America dollar has lost 5% of its value this past month alone and still going down like a cheap.... (yikes!). So here is my siren calling out to you manufacturers. Surprise me. Tantalize me, titillate me. Make me beg for a review sample. Well, maybe not beg (please please please oh c'mon please don't make me beg for it!). i want it now and need it bad.

Oh, and please let me be the first one in the world to review it. Who knows, my wallet is very fat from 15 years worth of gear recently sold and looking to buy with cash money, yo. Of course in the end what really matters is that you...

Enjoy the Music,

Steven R. Rochlin