My stereo history continued - I had bought some JBL speakers which I knew were probably not the historical JBL lineage - they were from a chain stereo store or even a big box store. I used them with my Yamaha receiver and tried to workaround with different setups for “home theater”, etc. I decided I wanted to get real quality stereo loudspeakers - I really didn’t know what this meant but I would know them (and hear them) when I saw them. Since I had my own house and I could do whatever I wanted, I could make a little noise and a little mess trying things out.
By then the internet really was a rich javascript-powered information superhighway. So my quest began - online, not so much in person. I did go to a decent stereo store which had all the fancy technologies and brands that were popular in 1999. But the prices were high - you could easily spend 2-5k for a set of two speakers. I would not trust someone to sell me speakers from that store for anywhere near that kind of money.
I realized in that store that I could no more decide which speakers were the best any more than I could guess which were the best for the money, or even which speakers were good enough to satisfy my desire for “good sound”. The salesman had experience and he could show me some differences between speakers, but I saw that speaker placement and obviously the size and type of the drivers (the actual speaker cone units with the voice-coils and magnets) made a real difference IF you paid enough attention while listening to music. So I decided to take a break from trying out expensive speakers in a store - the speaker room had dozens of sets of stereo speakers which could be switched into the audio signal chain. But if you were standing back it was hard to distinguish them and tell which ones were actually playing. You could tell some things about what you were seeing and hearing, but it became too confusing for me to learn much about a speaker that way.
I decided to “retire to the internet” to do further research. As I discovered a lot of audiophile information I was basically blown away . I knew there were “audiophiles” out there, I had seen some peoples’ stereo systems in my college years and after.
The term “audiophile” means of course “a person who loves audio”. What it really means is “a person who spends time, energy, and money to create a listening environment that gives them thrills”. I knew someone in college who I would think was an audiophile. His father was likely an audiophile because in college this guy had the stereo equipment and albums that could only have existed with the support of an audiophile Dad in a really nice living space. This guy would play albums on a fancy turntable with fancy audio components, and to me he would be an audiophile based on that. But what really took his audiophilia to the next level was how he did this. He would take out out the album, coat the surface with some sort of Kodak photographic fluid, then play the album while it was wet with this fluid. After the album played he would take it off the turntable and set it on the carpet leaning against a chairleg or the wall until it dried. There were six or eight albums leaning around in the room. I had no idea you could do this! but obviously it was to protect and present the vinyl grooves to the stylus in the optimum way. This guy loved his audio experience!
This was years before 1999 but I understood the nature of audiophilia when it all came flooding back to me as I read about acoustics, tubes versus solid state amplifiers, speaker cabinets and 4th-order Linkwitz-Riley crossover design. Speaker and component cables were debated with religious fervor - how could a coat hanger work as well as this fine speaker cable design?
I learned about how different components had to be compatible to make a good sound system even though you could basically connect anything up to get music to play. Most of it made sense because of similarities to computer engineering and engineering in general. I had a limited knowledge of electronics, less than a lot of the audiophiles on these websites, although probably more than the average “audiophile” because a lot of different factors went into the concept of the audiophile. Some audiophiles were more concerned about equipment aesthetics than equipment electronics. Another underrated factor in the hi fi arena is acoustics and psycho-acoustics. I was seeing that psychology and human nature played a huge part in sound system appreciation. I was aware that I wanted to hear and should be able to hear, in my room, the concert hall with the symphony beautifully rendering Ravel, or the studio perfection of Aja as a visceral experience that could bring tears to my eyes. Many people at this point decide to go for headphones, but many want the sound to be heard from the speakers while sitting in the “sweet spot” of the listening room. This is the type of audiophile that I wanted to be!
I learned that the wavelength of the lowest audible sounds are more than 17 meters (56ft) ! How can you hear them in a room? They have to reflect - how does that work? You can pinpoint high frequencies coming from a speaker immediately, but you can’t locate the source of isolated low frequencies with your two ears. You can also see a 20Hz speaker cone vibrate with the naked eye. So much to learn and consider.
Meanwhile in Thailand this was happening
