Robert Brook runs a blog called The Broken Record, with a subtitle explaining that his blog is:
A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE
We know of none better, outside of our own humble attempt to enlighten that portion of the audiophile community who love hearing music reproduced with higher fidelity — and are willing to go the extra mile and pay the extra dollar to make that happen.
Robert closes his story with some ideas that I have been advancing for years, ideas that, implemented with the seriousness and rigor required, are practically guaranteed to help anyone find more joy in the music they love.
Systems that have this X-factor are a rare thing indeed. The time and effort they require is far beyond what most of us are willing to put into this hobby, and even then, we need to be blessed with a good ear to boot.
But such a system is well worth striving for. And while not cheap, money only gets us so far in building it. Rather, we need to have a clear understanding of what we’re aiming for. We need to know what a system with this X-factor actually sounds like. Which means we need to be able to hear it in the first place.
Robert is a case study in what it takes to make the kind of dramatic progress in this hobby that he has achieved.
He also has written at some length about what motivated him to devote so much time and energy to the improvement of the playback quality of his favorite recordings. For some of us this is very familiar ground. It has been my experience that only the unrestrained love of the sound of music can be the driver of real success in audio.
Music does the driving, sure, of course it does, but the vast majority of music lovers never cared much about sound, which is no doubt why Spotify has been so successful. I hope to be able to find the time to write about an experiment I carried out not long ago comparing the sound of a track I heard on SiriusXM versus the same track called up on my phone with Spotify. The differences I heard really knocked me back on my heels.
Because I never listen to them, I simply had no idea how bad some of these digital sources could really be. Now that I have heard it for myself, I am so glad I never found the need to make use of any such sources.
Having retired in 2023 from actively running the business, I now listen to music on cassette tape, played back on a cheap Walkman-type player, through earbuds. (I went through about five players and about ten sets of earbuds to find the ones I currently prefer.)
As ridiculous as it may seem, at good loud levels, the complete albums I play all the way through — many of which I transferred from the original vinyl pressings myself — sound amazingly good. They completely immerse me in their sound.
This is how I get back in touch with favorite albums, by playing them during my workouts. It is a positive thrill to listen to the hundreds of albums I have on cassette as they play from start to finish, without interruption, just as the artists who made them intended they be heard. Is that what people do on Spotify? I doubt it, but what do I know from Spotify? It’s a place I never intend to visit.
There is a reason I got into audio in the first place — to hear my favorite albums, from start to finish, at good loud levels, without distractions, at the highest fidelity I could manage, using whatever system I could put together, in the biggest room I could afford to rent (and, much later, buy) that didn’t share a wall with anyone else.
The albums I play have stood the test of time, in many cases for fifty years or more.
Digital rarely entered into it much. Old records were just too good sounding to start with, and they got better and better as the technology to clean and play them improved.
Robert Brook Can Be a Guide
Robert has methodically and carefully — one might even say scientifically — approached the various problems he’s encountered in this hobby by doing the following:
- Improving his equipment,
- Teaching himself how to do a better job of dialing in his turntable setup, and
- Learning how to do controlled shootouts for his favorite albums.
- Because of all the effort he has put into this hobby, he often has something interesting to say about records and audio that we believe are well worth reading.