mrgoodsound's Alternative Audio Wisdom for 2021

By mrgoodsound

I am not sure if I am old enough yet to be considered wise but if we treat years spent towards the pursuit of good sound as dog years then I should be about 35 in audiophile years - married with children and chipping away at a mortgage.

My Christmas night was spent listening to spiritual jazz from the greats - Sun Ra, Mingus, Coleman, Don Cherry and of course Coltrane. Having just shaved my head (I avoid the barber due to COVID), I was feeling especially monk-like and engaged in a year-end reflection. I know this has not been a great year for many people, I am very fortunate to say it has not been that bad for me, but in terms of audio and music it was in many ways a great one.

Here are just a few audio milestones for 2020, in no particular order:

1. Acquisition of Klipsch La Scala loudspeakers

I acquired a 1970s pair of La Scala's early in the year, by chance not so long after this home visit where I heard them for the first time. I love these speakers, to do better I would have to DIY a horn system using higher quality drivers at great expense - and even then I am not sure I could match the greatness of the folded bass horn in a DIY endeavor. 

A turnkey, fully horn-loaded speaker system, available at used prices well below the retail cost of modern bookshelf speakers. If you have the space to support these speakers you will be rewarded with high-efficiency (in the true sense of the term) sound, where amplifier choice becomes a matter of taste, not requirement.

2. Converting 1s and 0s using NOS (non-oversampling) multibit DACs

Technically, I had already started becoming interested in NOS DACs in 2019, but it was not until this year that I realized their full potential. Having spent the better part of the last 3 years churning through over 20 digital audio converters priced from $100 to $2500, I actively avoided NOS DACs due to sonic descriptions from others indicating these DACs were overly warm, rolled-off, soft, etc. The irony was that these same people were recommending the 20 or so other DACs I tried and found unsatisfactory. 

After some encouraging experiments with NOS, I went out on a limb and purchased the DAC2.2SE from Ukranian manufacturer abbasaudio. I have not done a formal review of this DAC anywhere and don't plan to. I will just say this is the DAC that has made me stop thinking about DACs. It's renders music from digital sources well enough to make me cry. That's good enough for me.

3. Mono mia! (Telefunken Opus 6 Röhrenradio)

This year I gained an exponential interest in monophonic (single channel) playback, spurred on by an ever-involving interest in historical monophonic recordings. Articles such as "Mono Mia" by Vincent Gallo (pub. Sound Practices Issue #1, 1992) and "Стерео или моно" by Anatoly Likhnitsky (pub. 2001) got me thinking about home sound reproduction in a completely different way. 

I began experimenting with listening to a single speaker (for appropriate recordings), and eventually purchased a Telefunken Opus 6 radio receiver. This fine mono radio from 1956 has 6 speaker units and was carefully engineered to completely fill a room with glowing, glorious music like I have never experienced before. 

There is nothing quite like listening to a late-night classical or jazz FM broadcast on a set like this - it has opened my eyes and inspired me to attempt to achieve the same quality of sound in a full-range high-fidelity system, though I believe I am still quite a ways off from accomplishing that.

4. An expanded musical consciousness

Victories in other audio departments such as the 3 listed above have afforded me the ability to expand my musical consciousness and taste at an exponential rate. In 2019, I listened mainly to rock music, with only a cursory and surface level interest in jazz and classical. Just a year later, I can truly say I am 'into' jazz, classical, oldies, folk and even foreign artists. The discovery of new music has become something as natural and effortless as breathing, enabled by an audio system that not only satisfies but allows me to relish the aesthetics of different genres, recording eras and musical consciousnesses. 

Most of my digital listening is done now on YouTube, where Google's extremely powerful algorithm has a never-ending hole of increasingly obscure recommendations to make. I have subscriptions to many small-time channels whose owners take time to upload rare recordings and performances, including the delicate digitization's of LP and shellac records. The ability to sample a lifetimes worth of music before purchasing a physical copy is a true modern-day blessing.

5. Letting go of audio pretenses & pretentiousness

I use the term 'pretense' here as a polite way of saying bullsh**. 

Bullsh** like:

• caring what anyone else thinks about your system
• the audio tribalism and groupthink present consciously and unconsciously in so many aspects of this hobby
• the meandering and meaningless arguments that take place in so many audio discussion groups and forums
• what dogmas the 'audio scientists' have to proclaim as false shepherds about what is and is not possible in sound reproduction
• most of all what those who do not even understand or appreciate music (though they are often the loudest to proclaim that they do) have to say about anything audio-related.

Forget them all. The ability to see through such noise and remained focus with acute perception on what matters most to you will be the most useful tool in achieving aural nirvana and good sound. I say this as someone who is now achieving one audio success after another, only after completely discarding such pretenses and pretentiousness. 

I suggest to ignore anyone who provides you advice without asking and understanding first: what music do you enjoy? what sounds do you like to hear? what sacrifices are you willing to make? These questions form the basis of your aural matrix, and let you pick and choose system components that fit inside of it.

I suggest to not ask even a wise master for advice if you do not have the answers to these questions. It will only lead to disappointment and a sure path to audio hell. 

I suggest to keep around some form of inexpensive system which is capable of providing musical satisfaction: equipment which allows you to enjoy the music you have while finding more, equipment in which your engagement with it remains utterly non-cerebral. It may be a cheap receiver you inherited from a family member, a $20 CD player you found at a thrift store, and speakers you rescued from a dumpster. The less pretentious, the better. 

Assembled, these components will become your sanity control, something to fall back on if you take too many steps on the wrong path in the pursuit of aural nirvana. The one time this pursuit becomes truly dangerous is if the soul & spirit are denied the nourishment of music for an extended period of time, generally from having an expensive system you don't feel like listening to. This is what causes burn-out and audio depression. You have been warned!

Sources of alternative audio wisdom

If you are ready to or are already in the process of rejecting mainstream audio ideology, here are some sites which may provide nice reading material during the holiday break.

The Triode Guild - this website contains articles and publications of the late Dr. Harvey 'Gizmo' Rosenberg. As the name suggests, most of the articles are about vacuum tube amplification, but Rosenberg was a truly hilarious and entertaining writer regarding any subject. I burst out laughing more than once reading articles such as Sex, Music, and Pentodes.

Arthur Salvatore's Audio Critique - this website contains articles and essays of Arthur Salvatore, a lifelong audiophile who shares information on audio philosophy, audio components and the high-end audio industry. I do not expressly agree with all of the opinions on this website, but I would especially implore readers to carefully review the sections of the website detailing the escapades of the audio press and review magazines. The insight is invaluable.

Sound Practices - a magazine published in the 1990s as part of the underground American audio scene, consider it a sort of counter-culture to Stereophile and TAS. Many articles have been republished online though I recommend paying for the entire archive here. The fact that information in articles which are nearly three decades old are still so relevant today show how little forwards progress there is in the audio industry.

Nutshell High Fidelity - the home page of Lynn Olson, containing many well-written and insightful articles on tube amplifiers, loudspeaker design and DIY. Especially recommended is A Tiny History of High Fidelity.

AML - the home page of the late Russian audio engineer Anatoly Likhnitsky. Only a few articles were translated to English but the site can be easily understood using Google Translate. Likhnitsky thinks more deeply and clearly about audio reproduction than anyone else I have ever encountered. He has a cult following of sorts in the East, and some Western admirers as well, including Peter Qvortup of Audio Note UK. Especially recommended to read his article on the death of high-end audio.

With all that said, I leave you with a beautiful tune to relax to as we close out this year. I wish all readers a happy holiday break and much audio success in 2021!