During one of the periodic lab cleanup sessions that I enjoy because I like throwing things out and reducing clutter, my eyes fell on a box towards the bottom of an ignored shelf, the abandoned property of an investigator who had long left College. Dust blurred most labels but I could read quite clearly three capital letters inside a black square. This is why I had never given the box a second look before. NAD is an originally British manufacturer of audio equipment with no place at all in a biochemistry lab.
I had always assumed there was some random junk in that box and ignored it, but when I wiped the dust off and opened it now, an integrated amplifier appeared, causing mystification all around. There were no speakers or input source and no trace of ownership. It was decided that I should carry the box home to test the content.
I bought my stereo late in high school, probably more out of a desire to impress than from audiophile inclinations, but once I had it, I took it seriously. Half a year in, I got rid of the tape deck and went CD-only when most of my friends didn't even own a CD player. This severely limited my exposure to music – I could afford a disc only ever other month – and kept the teenage institution of the mix tape from me, but I got hooked on good sound.
When I swapped my Sony for the NAD, the effect was immediate. The music sounded much more open, much clearer, alive. Instead of coming from the speakers, it filled the room. It was an epiphany. My system was all I could afford as a student. I've been reluctant to upgrade because I doubted I'd be able to hear the difference to something truly HiFi. Now I know better.
I dropped onto the sofa, closed my eyes and let the music flow through me. It was a different game. North End Road isn't exactly the place for quiet enjoyment – unless you're deaf and get a kick out of ambulances passing in rapid succession – but here I was contemplating a new pair of speakers to go with the amp.
It is ironic that as recorded music has become ubiquitous, the quality of its playback has dramatically decreased. Just take the kids on the bus playing the latest hit through the speakers of their phones. My grandma would have sent her first gramophone straight back, had it sounded like this, and vowed never to listen to music outside a concert hall again.
Headphones have become tokens of trendiness, a visibly worn membership card to the club of the cool kids but also a display of conspicuous consumption. White shone brightly when the iPod was new. Now red is the color. The headphones have grown in size and price but it's still style over substance.
I have all my music on mp3, which is fine for traveling or to drown out the noise of equipment at work, but when I want to listen to something that matters, I turn to CDs. Maybe I should also get a new CD player to max out the sound? It was while entertaining these thoughts – nonsensical because I won't buy anything into the geographic uncertainty of my present life – that I was rudely awoken.
The left speaker started crackling, then fading, handing over the dissonance to its mate where it stayed for a while and then returned. It sounded as if a connection were failing, corroded contacts or some audio circuit warped by oxidation or dust. I swapped the speaker cables, cranked up the volume, cleaned the connectors – the sound came and went. One moment it was sublime, then it faded and grated. Instead of taking music to a new dimension, a tired and exhausted NAD 314 is now cluttering up my living room.
No comments:
Post a Comment