A principle guiding the wise audiophile life

Audiophilia reminds me of dating or what I remember of it in my distant, puerile youth. I used to shell out more money than I had to wine and dine prospective girlfriends in college. There were always "performance" surprises both good and bad and most often unexpected. It was always difficult to judge "equipment" until it arrived at home and was unboxed, and by then it was too late to take countermeasures if necessary, nor would you ever get your money back.

A good male friend of mine in college once developed a crush on a woman and commenced to wooing her. On the second date after dinner they wound up on the beach at night whereupon they commenced hanky-panky to the sound of the waves. It was then that my friend discovered an unexpected part in the box in the form of the male appendage. Normally, an extra, free part would be cause for jubilation; but in this instance it was met with shock and awe. My friend was able to laugh at it all eventually and even became good friends with the "amplifier" though not at the level of tinkering.

Everything is a sort of hobby, and then we die. If we die even a little bit happy for whatever reason and by whatever means, then we have had our revenge. Myself, I intend to die with a smile on my face even if it is a very faint smile.

WORD

"So the five o'clock shadow and Adam's Apple didn't give it away?

Not that hard to tell the difference between a rooster and a cat."

This was the early 70's, and we were about 18 years old. No one was much thinking about Adam's Apples back in those days.

These depicted below were my first dorm room speakers:

Zenith "Circle of Sound" Speakers

My mother bought these for me probably because her father was always going on about the high quality of Zenith TV sets. Simpler times all around.

My dominant recollections of those days were ones of befuddlement and anxiety. Every night in my dorm bed I would listen to a vinyl recording of "nature sounds" from somewhere in the countryside - crickets and a faint sound of a dog barking at the next farm over sort of thing in a vain attempt to fall asleep. I used to hang on to my dinky little system for dear life, but without the slightest notion of "audiophile." It was all about psychological survival by whatever means were at hand.

Then I made a college friend who opened the door for me. This guy had a fairly advanced reel-to-reel sound system. He said "Here, smoke this," and then he told me to lie down and put some Koss headphones on me and fired up Cat Stevens' "Tea For the Tillerman" album.

"Ok," I said to myself after floating back down to Earth. "Now I see."