more music/stereo thoughts...

... i have an old pair of AR2AX speakers. they're the most wonderful speakers in the world. for the kind of music that i listen to, they sound great. everyonce in awhile i'll listen to a song with some hard hitting base, and while they don't sound bad, some of today's speakers would probaby sound better. i could probably get a subwoofer, but the need isn't really there. every year i'll get an urge to go wander out and check out new speakers, but i always end up convinced that what i've got sounds as good or better than anything else i heard while shopping.

my dad has an identical pair. when he was a kid he was a real stereo buff. he built his own phonograph which he still has and which still works. picked up a nice kenwood receiver to power the ar's and had an extensive collection of old reel-to-reels... probably 15 years ago when i was in college i picked up a little pair of cerwin vega speakers. at the end of one semester i moved back in with my parents for the summer and brought them up. i was telling my dad how great they sounded for how little they were. he didn't believe me so he hooked them up to his stereo and we played them side by side with his AR's. much to his surpise, mine sounded much better. this baffled dad. come to find out that over the years, a rheostat that acted as an equalizer on each speaker had rotted out over the years. it was just a little knob on each speaker that adjusted how much of the signal/power went to the midrange speakers and how much to the woofers. because it rotted out, he was basically playing off of just his tweeters. the funny part is, the change was so gradual, that he never noticed it. (kind of a metaphor for life there, huh?). since his new receiver had an eq built into it, it was uneccessary, so we spent a night taking the broken part out of the circuit, plugged the speakers back in and they blew mine away! i was gushing over them, and my dad remembered that he'd bought his brother a pair and the last time he'd visited, he didn't remember seeing them in the living room.

i called my uncle and asked him about the speakers. he said he couldn't bring himself to throw them out, so they were still in the basement, but he didn't think they were any good. they hadn't been hooked up in over a decade. when his kids started growing up, there was always homework, or tv or whatever going on, and he never got a chance to listen to his stereo. so he sold it, kept the speakers in the basement and bought a little boombox for the bedroom. funny how parents let so many of their passions slide away for their family. and usually it's little by little. he didn't think they'd work, but he'd send them to me, free of charge. felt it was only fair since my dad had bought them for him and hadn't gotten any money out of the deal.

i got them about two weeks later. he was right, they were a mess. but after closer inspection, it really just looked cosmetic. a cat had clawed up the front of the speakers and that little rheostat in the back was rotted out. dad and i performed our surgery on that again, and i got some linen from the fabric store to recover the speakers with. i've now had them for close to 15 years and wouldn't trade them for anything. they're probably close to 40 years old now and to me still sound wonderful. i've never heard johnny cash or chris isaak sound as good on any other speakers. the stuff i listen to alot at home? the tom petty, traveling wilburies, lucinda williams, harry connick jr, stan getz, garth brooks, foo fighters, stones, aerosmith, lyle lovett, beastie boys, classic billy idol, ramones, suicidal tendancies, social d, bonnie raitt, johnny cougar, the cars, cracker, ccr, dianna krall, dire straits, the donnas, dramarama, dropkick murphys, flogging molly, eagles, eddie money, edie brickell, clapton, sinatra, geoge clinton and the p-funk, george thorogood, good charlotte, green day, iggy pop, old INXS, j. geils band, buffett, kinks, knack, KISS, lenny kravitz, living colour, skynard, michael penn, miles davis, old crue, nirvana, paul westerberg/grandpa boy/placemats, old peter gabriel, the police, portishead, STP, stray cats, talking heads, thelonius monk, violent femmes, weezer, zztop and whatever else i can't think of now, it all sounds great on those old AR's. and the icing on the cake? we lost my uncle about ten years ago to cancer. so that old set of speakers is a link to him.

when i'm listening to music, i'm not a fan of surround sound. i want to be over here, while the music comes at me from over there. i don't want to be in the middle of the band. i want to sit on the couch (or really lay on the floor with my feet up on the couch) and feel the music wash over me. feel the base vibrate through the floor. i love being equal distance between the speakers and cranking the volume and listening for little subtle nuances in the recording. a real pleasure is a song where the producer took full advantage of the stereo medium and i can pick up the differences of one speaker vs. the other.

i'm growing up. i keep feeling pressured to invest in a house, but to be honest don't want the headache involved. i love being able to call a landlord when something is broken. i'm totally capable, i just don't want to waste the little time i have fixing things that have broken. but the reality is, i need to quit paying money to someone else every month for rent. i should be making that money work for me. the biggest argument for me buying a house though? is so that after a year away like this? or a long roadtrip? i want to be able to come home, drop my bags by the door, plug my mp3 player in, pick one of my favorite songs, and blast the hell out of it without having to hear a neighbor complain...