Please Consider Taking Some of Our Audio Advice
You know why this guy has a wall full of records?
Probably because he likes collecting records. It’s really not all that hard. You just go around buying lots and lots of records. Many of the more popular titles were produced in the millions. Records are quite plentiful when you stop to think about it.
To collect them, you also never have to figure out how to play them properly. In fact, you really don’t have to play them at all.
To be a record collector these days, the two most valuable skills you can have are finding space to store them and learning the alphabet. Everything after that is gravy. Go on, take a picture!
That’s the Collector Game record lovers and record-loving audiophiles play in a nutshell. You start buying records and if you are obsessive enough and dedicated enough you end up buying enough records to fill a whole wall, ideally from floor to ceiling.
But don’t stop there. You can keep buying more records — again, no need to learn how to play them with even minimal fidelity — and when you run out of room on the first wall, all you need then is another wall to fill.
That’s the Collector Game. That’s not the game we think audiophiles should be playing.
No. To get your stereo and room to sound right, and recognize when they do sound right, or at least better than before, is the name of the game we recommend audiophiles play. It’s also much, much harder. It can literally take a lifetime of effort depending on how important good sound is to you.
I’ve been at it for forty-five fifty years. I still work at it and try to learn new things every day.
UPDATE 2022
Or at least I did. I retired in 2022 and left the running of the business to my dedicated, hard working and exceptionally talented staff.
Until you get your stereo, room and ears working, collecting good sounding records is all but impossible.
You will very likely waste a fortune on “collectible audiophile records.”
The kind with collector value and not much else.
These are precisely the opposite of Hot Stamper pressings. Practically all of the value of a Hot Stamper is tied up in its wonderful music and superior sound quality, which is where we think it should be.