Hot Stampers and Audio Progress Go Hand in Hand
It doesn’t put you at the finish line.
The finish line for an audio system is so far off that it cannot be seen. It can’t even be reached.
You can give up on audio if you want, that’s your call, but don’t kid yourself — you can never cross the audio finish line. There is always more to be done if what your after is better sound.
The goal should be to create a system of such quality that you never want to give up on listening to the albums you love in the privacy your own home. Striving for better audio will keep you engaged in a way that settling for the sound you currently have probably won’t. (And please don’t embarrass yourself by invoking the law of diminishing returns. It has no relevance to the world of audio.)
This insight comes from personal experience, circa the early-80s, when I had a lot of other things going on. It’s also true for plenty of audiophiles I have met who got halfway there and decided to move on and do something else with their time.
And you should want to keep finding new albums to fall in love with. (Maybe start with some of these?)
If exploring the world of music through an advanced, hi-fidelity system becomes a habit that brings you joy, you will most likely never give up on your stereo or your records.
Graham Nash’s song Better Days from Song for Beginners (1971) was one of the records that started me off and kept me going, a subject I write about here. An excerpt:
Song for Beginners is one of the records that convinced me that I should enthusiastically and actively pursue high quality home audio. I realized pretty early on that I needed to devote the time, energy and money into improving my system so that I could play records like Songs for Beginners better and figure out how to get them to sound more like live music.
I had such irrepressibly deep feelings while listening to the album that I knew I had to do everything in my power to get it to sound as good as I possibly could.
Songs for Beginners is an album that made me want to become a better listener.
And the song that really did it for me on the album was Better Days.
I was originally thinking of calling this commentary “Why I Became an Audiophile,” but I quickly realized that being an audiophile — a lover of sound — doesn’t necessarily involve buying lots of expensive audio equipment or endlessly searching out recordings with the highest fidelity.
No, being an audiophile simply means you love good sound.
Songs for Beginners couldn’t make me an audiophile; I already was one. It did, however, make me a more dedicated audio enthusiast. It’s precisely the kind of record that rewards the 40 50 plus years I’ve put into this hobby, trying to get it as well as hundreds — now thousands — of other wonderful records to sound their best.
Further Reading