Hi-Fi for old men
What do you get when
you start to realise that your growing collection of all the LPs you would have
loved to own when you were younger but are now available on CD are being played
through crummy PC speakers or some funny ear-pieces plugged into your
iPhone?
The attack of the hi-fi nerd syndrome.
Let's start at the beginning and the beginning for Hi-Fi and me was back in the
early 1960s.
The whole problem with being a teenager is that you have high aspirations
backed up by zero spending power. I was listening to music that I liked but the
equipment was poor to very poor and even I could hear that was the case. My Dad
had upgraded from a simple fifties radiogram to an amp with a loudspeaker that
he had built into a book-case and it was a definite step up but it wasn't
exciting and it shared a front room with the TV so it wasn't freely available
in the evenings. I started to try and build my own system piece by piece in
parallel with drooling over the latest and greatest in the magazines I bought.
There was a perfect system in my head and I knew the bits I would choose... All
I needed was this huge pile of money...
In the end the home-made wasn't too bad. A reasonable auto-changer deck with a
cheap but decent ceramic stereo cartridge. Some commercial PCB only amps and
preamps and all built into a plywood DIY case covered in a 'proper' leather
finish material. I also built a pair of nice eight inch speakers also in
relatively thin plywood cases because that was all I could buy on pocket money
and carry home on a push bike. This was the system that went up to the
University of Sussex with me in '68 and lasted a good few years.
Finally the inadequacies of the cheap amps became too apparent and I built a
full Class-A amp that was my rework on a Wireless World magazine design in
about 1971. This lasted many years through the rest of my academic time. The
picture is my desk, part way through my time at Brighton Polytechnic in about
1974, with the turntable on top of the (homemade) oscilloscope and the amp on
the left with the preamp (with all the knobs on) underneath that. This is all I
have to remember it by. I don't even have a copy of the circuit diagram any
more. I never did manage to improve on the speakers.
The home-made finally got squeezed out for the sheer practicality of a 'System'
that worked for my wife and I in our new home in about 1978. This was the point
where Hi-Fi and I parted. The system was adequate. It played cassettes and
vinyl and it had an FM radio. It wasn't convenient but it worked and since my
wife and I differed in musical taste I didn't use it all that much.
Now leap forward another thirty years or so. The children had now long since
grown up and left home and as a widower I had fewer restrictions on my silly
ideas. Plus I had a growing collection of CDs, both my own and my late wife's.
What I didn't have, since the demise of the old system, was a way to play them
conveniently other than on my PC and, let's admit it, normal PCs don't do
hi-fi. The decision had to be made about what I want to about it all.
So what were the options? The first was the obvious 'do nothing' because music
doesn't have to be hi-fi to be enjoyed. The next option was obviously another
ready made system but somehow that just didn't quite seem worth while. Then the
teenager that every man carries not far below the surface remembered the old
dreams of the 'perfect' system.
OK I admit I laughed at myself. What was silly money back then was probably
even more silly money now but I banged the old names into Google and browsed
the pages it threw up. Yes, it was gratifying to see that my old choices had
stood the test of time and were still highly regarded by people who weren't
even born when they were being manufactured. Then I looked at the EBay pages
that Google threw up as well and was quite surprised to find that you could
still find them changing hands. Yes, the prices could be a bit steep but they
made a fun read. Nostalgia is a bit like that.
Well what has happened over the next few years is that I have watched stuff for
sale and slowly, when I thought the price was good, I have acquired the bits I
wanted. It might not be up-to-date by any stretch of the imagination but it is
still a good system that delivers quality sound. Some parts needed fixing and
it all needed work to turn it into a convenient rig to run but that is done
now. It makes a pleasant evening sat in front of the computer even nicer to
have some music properly played even if it is slightly perplexing, at times, to
be sharing my office with a jazz quartet. However I am at least now able to
assure myself that I was right all those years ago. It is a first class system
and by now it probably out performs my poor old ears.
You want the list? You do realise you're just encouraging me?
That could be a bad move...
It all started with a pair of Quad Electrostatic loudspeakers. There are two
classic models now identified by their launch dates as the 57 and 63 models. I
have a pair of 57s which many people prefer although there are reasons why the
63s should be better. They are not high power but the stereo definition is
magnificent. If you look at the picture you can see where the flash is coming
back through the grill from the huge sheet of shiny metal foil that is simply
driven by electrostatic forces. Hi-Fi buffs wax lyrical about detail and
transparency. I'm not quite sure what is meant by that but I can assure you
they are very good. I have a thing for 'unplugged' live jazz and on the ESLs
musical instruments sound real.
They weren't cheap but they were local and 'buyer collects' must have depressed
the price into my range. Remember at this point I had nothing to plug them
into so they were a very silly thing to buy.
However I knew that ESLs are an appalling electrical load to drive, especially
around the zero point, and most amps are just not quite suited to the job. This
called for one of the old Quad Current Dumper amplifiers to run them. Now Quad
had improved on these amps after I stopped following them so the 606 model
here, although still old, is later than my dream but I'm sure I would have
approved. It does need limiter diode boxs as it has enough power to destroy my
ESLs but they are available. I bided my time watching vintage audio auctions
and got the matching model 44 preamp and the model 4 VHF tuner modules to go
with it.
Now I did have a turntable, arm and cartridge on the old list in my head but I
don't have any significant investment in untrashed vinyl so I put in a
reasonable CD auto-changer deck from Marantz and thought that was it. It
sounded good and it just ran. It encouraged me to listen to more music which
made it more worth while.
There was one other member of the dream team but reel-to-reel tape isn't the
thing these days and I assumed that digital systems via the PC would cover
anything like that... Until I saw it. It wasn't cheap and it did have some
problems but it was a Ferrograph Logic 7 and it was in my price range. I caved
in and bought it. It took quite a bit of work to fix the broken linkage but
mending things is just what I do. Admittedly getting good bulk quarter inch
tape is a game these days. Most of what is on offer is old and the coating is
coming off in clouds.
I admit it. This one was a mistake, I don't need a tape recorder, but it was so
much fun I forgive it.
So all this sits with me in the 'office', which is just the dignified end of
the workshop. It just does music on demand. I stuck a big fat mains relay in a
box on the power output of the preamp so everything switches on in one place
and I cabled it all up reasonably neatly. OK the 'office' is not an ideal
'listening room' but it is where I go to flop. It is where my mind can work or
can go off duty so it is where I want to listen to music.
As a postscript I dumped the CD player and added a VortexBox system. This runs
the Logitech Media Server and swallowed all my CDs so it just regurgitates them
through a precision A2D converter into the 44. OK logging onto a web browser to
change the disk I'm playing seemed a bit wierd when I started but it works well
once you get used to it. It runs under Fedora (Linux) on a cheap PC clone with
a 2Tbyte drive so it sniffs at all my CDs as uncompressed FLAC and the MP4
copies so I can download them to the iPhone. "2% used? Is that all you can
do?"
As I type this Disc 1 of Miles Davis 'Kind of Blue' is running to an end. Life
is good.
