2007 Was an Odd Year
Odd in that as a writer for 6moons, I only wrote one formal review. And that of a speaker I own. While I probably listened to more gear this year than any other, personal and professional obligations intruded. I did write a bunch of RoadTours which I enjoyed very much. I enjoy hanging out with people I don't know and getting to know what it is about their hifi and their music that makes it an important part of their lives. It's not the same for everyone.


I suppose if I had to pick a favorite from the '07 RoadTours, listening to the Komuro 212e amplifiers on the DeVore Silverbacks with Komuro and John DeVore would be it (caveat #1: I know and consider John DeVore a friend which I understand means something different to different people so I mention it here for any number of reasons). While I'd heard the Silverbacks a number of times with a number of amps, this particular pairing was truly exceptional. For my tastes, the Komuro seemed to take control of the big DeVores and together the music sounded at once effortless, powerful and above all else beautiful.

My sole '07 review was of the Auditorium 23 SoloVox so it moves directly to the top of my favorite list (caveat #2: I know and consider Jonathan Halpern a friend. Jonathan is the US importer and distributor for Auditorium 23 and Shindo Laboratory which I understand means something different to different people so I mention it here for any number of reasons). I've been living with the SoloVox for over a year and they continue to amaze and delight on a near daily basis. My work keeps me at home and I work from my listening room. There's music playing throughout the day and when I need a break, I'll sit and listen. But it's after dark when everyone else has gone off to bed, that I do my listening. It's how I unwind. How I relax. How I escape. In some ways, this daily ritual of listening to music on my hifi has become necessary and the SoloVox make the sojourn effortless.

One other very visible change, if you keep up with these things, is my equipment rack. As I began to feel more and more settled in with my current system, I wanted a rack that fit not only it but my room and tastes more exacting than my previous one. So I designed a rack and had it built. As with all things, I prefer a cooperative approach and the rack's builder, Anthony Abbate, suggested some wonderful details for the end joint and inner shelf which you can see incorporated in the rack. While I'm awaiting delivery of footers, I couldn't be happier.

Another focus worth mentioning is vinyl (no caveats). I'd estimate my listening time is near 95% LP these days. Possibly more. The simplest reason I can give is that I find vinyl to be more engaging. And this engagement, this involvement is centered on the music. Perhaps it's part nostalgia, part love of the ritual. I couldn't be certain. But I have a feeling it has more to do with vinyl's ability to bring the life and breath of music into my home. I've included the cover images of some LPs that I'd recommend which are a bit off the beaten path (some more, some less so). And no detailed info coz I think it may be more fun this way - like a treasure hunt.


Other than that, I've been doing a lot of thinking about hifi. Imagine that. As silly as it may sound, I've been tossing around a bunch of thoughts about listening to music on a hifi. Thinking about listening is undoubtedly the least productive basis for thought I can think of. Besides, anyone can do it. But I've been - shall we say obsessed. I've been bugged and bitten by so much slop about hifi that I nearly didn't want anything to do with it. I didn't want to add more fuel to the piddle, more feed to the fodder, bring more prigs to the trough. But what the hell. Another opinion falling in the e-forest doesn't make a sound.
Thinking About Listening
By my admittedly quick and not so scientific calculations, there are over 40 websites dedicated to reviewing hifi equipment with well over 400 reviewers writing in the English language. If we include reviews of specific components posted on the various forums, I'm sure we'd easily come up with an average monthly count of over 500 reviews. That's roughly 6,000 reviews per year. Give or take.


One obvious benefit from this bountiful list is that you can pretty much rest assured that you'll find someone in agreement with your opinion of your gear if you just look around long enough. If after hunting and pecking you still can't find someone who loves your new amp as much as you do, just write your own review. After all, we always agree with ourselves. Don't we?


But the question that badgered me was : Can the hifi component review really help the hifi buyer buy a better hifi? Coming into my third year's end as a writer on hifi for 6moons, you'd think I'd have an answer. But I didn't, at least not one that held water. So I examined the review process to see what I could find.


When writing reviews, we attempt to stick traits to the gear under review; stuff that belongs to the piece in question that will travel with it wherever it goes. When all is said and done and we've scrutinized, dissected and compartmentalized all of the relevant sonic attributes of said piece, can we be sure that those bits and pieces will translate directly into your experience of your music in your listening room?


Of course not. All component performance minutiae are part and parcel of the system and room and are perceived/filtered through personal preferences. But as a general guide, given the reader has a) some familiarity with the reviewer and b) similar gear, room and tastes or the ability to understand how any differences can affect their experience of the component under review, we're good to go.


But sometimes, when reading component reviews I think we're dealing with misattribution; sticking traits onto things that really belong to a combination of things. After all, an audio component doesn't sound like anything by itself and I've certainly had the experience of hearing the same piece of gear sound nothing like I thought it sounded with a change in associated gear and/or venue.
The more we attempt to dissect the listening experience and zoom in on a particular
component's performance, the farther we move from the enjoyment of the recorded performance and musicality. At times, we seem to get so caught up in the minutiae of hifi mechanics (as distinctly opposed to musical nuance), we lose sight of the music. We start listening to the hifi, not the music. We start to praise the things hifis do that don't mean a thing to music. The tail wags the god while the cat's away. Thus begins the hifi sickness (and the need for 500 reviews per month).

But if we focus back on the music, I think we'll find music is much less fussy. It's much more generous and forgiving. It can speak to us through our car's stereo, our iPod, from down the street, in a crowed bar, on an airplane, a bus or a phone. Nearly anywhere. The only place I've found the power of music to be somewhat tamed and caged in is at hifi shows.


Music is satisfying. HiFi isn't. It's a sickness really. If you find yourself fretting along the lines of so much gear, so little time, you've got the hifi sickness. However, if you find yourself lamenting so many recordings, so little time, I'd say you've got a healthy hifi relationship.


The Hi-Fi Hobby-Horse or Goldilocks Enters The House Of A Thousand Bears
So why not just run down to Best World and buy a super-sized system with cheese. Or a designer Bose ensemble in all black, white or this year's black, red? Because we are hifi hobbyists. Because we love music. I couldn't even get those two reasons in the same sentence. You'd think they naturally just go together but they don't. One does not need the other.


As a 2nd generation hifi hobbyist, I've lived with the sickness all my life. I call it a sickness but I really mean that in an endearing way. As a member. A carrier. One who is infected and afflicted. Hifi vampirism. Once bitten, it's always better in the dark. Goldilocks enters the house of a thousand bears and she's never heard from again.


So sure, the pursuit can seem more interesting than the goal when riding the hifi hobby horse. We can even become experts in perceiving differences. Nuanced in noticing the sonic flavor of paper, beryllium, electrolytic capacitors, ferrite and alnico. As expert listeners, we can second guess designers, topologies, circuits and parts choice. There's no end to how much more we can know compared to the people who actually design and build the stuff we listen to. They really need to listen to all of us instead of spending so much time listening to the stuff they're building. Our prowess as expert hifi listeners is nearly boundless. We've heard The Difference.

Exactly how all this expertise relates to the enjoyment of listening to music on our hifi remains a mystery. Yet as listeners that is our only job.


Either/Or
There's a choice to be made. Do we want to be an expert hifi listener or enjoy listening to music on a hifi? Certainly both are noble pursuits. But we can't have it both ways. It's an either/or deal in the best Kierkegaardian sense. Maybe, just maybe, you can turn it on and off at will. I believe some people call this 'critical listening' versus listening for pleasure. I certainly believe this is possible but not as easy as some might think. A delicate balance to be sure.


But I've found a cure. I've stopped rocking and rolling to the same few reference tracks. Bela Lugosi is dead. And the cure I've found (or perhaps the thing that ultimately joins those two seemingly disparate goals, hifi hobbyist and music lover) is Art.


"And if we can agree that there's art inherent in the mechanics of the listening experience, and I will never cede that point so you may as well just agree, then progress yields to the personal experience of timeless artistry."


Yes, I just quoted myself. But I said what I meant so why not. Now is also a good time to share my definition of the term musical as it applies to hifi gear: the experience of listening to music on a hifi where the music, its qualities and attributes, become the listener's sole focus. The cure lies in tying these two observations together. The Art in the mechanics equate to a musical presentation, i.e. the hifi dissipates as the music comes into focus. A delicate balance and disappearing act rolled into one. I think that's what reviewers mean when they say a hifi is "magical" or "eerie". Maybe not.


In a very important way, we're leaving our hifis behind along with our cherished hifi listening expertise. We don't need it and it actually gets in the way. Listening to music on a hifi is an aural illusion and you can only focus on the profile or the vase, never both.
Since Art is inherent in the mechanics of the listening experience, the act of listening is not bound by objective measures. And no matter how expert one becomes in writing or reading (or thinking) about hifi, there's no substitute for listening. Art appreciation lies in the experiencing and the only real credential in terms of Art appreciation that amounts to anything is time. Time spent listening in hifi's case. A Listener. And the artful hifi hobbyist spends his time listening to music. If we focus on the hifi and what it's doing, the art dissipates.


The Enjoyment of Listening to Music on a HiFi
I've come to a point where I enjoy writing about The Enjoyment of Listening to Music on a HiFi. Working from the so many recordings, so little time perspective, each system becomes a means toward that endless end of exploring the infinite joys the music experience holds.


It's in the exploration of music over time where we begin to appreciate the real value of our hifi (that's worth saying twice). A hifi's worth does not exist as a relative value amongst a collection of similar boxes. Surely the fact that we can listen to whatever we want whenever we want outweighs the perceived difference between component A and component B.


The RoadTour format I've focused on this past year has been above all else a blast. Sharing in people's experience of their music on their systems reminds me what the hobby is all about - enjoyment and diversity. For 2008, I plan to continue my RoadTouring and write up some details on my system(s) if they change. I've always enjoyed the system-review approach as well as the recommended system so one way for me to accomplish both is to keep you up to date on the gear I'm listening through.
A Shot in the Dark
I've owned the Shindo Laboratory Monbrison preamp, Cortese amplifier and the Shindo interconnects going on a year and the Shindo tone arm and cartridge for about 6 months. I've also had the opportunity to listen to the majority of the Shindo line in a bunch of places; 9 of the current 10 amplifiers, all of the preamps (8 of the 8 current models and some older ones), the turntable, tone arm, cartridge, stepup transformer, power conditioner, two pair of speakers and the interconnects. Nearly everything in all kinds of configurations with all kinds of other gear in a bunch of different rooms.


With all of the above caveats (and there's a boatload) plus system, room and personal preferences taken into account, I'd say with no small amount of confidence: If you love music and if you love listening to music on a hifi, I can think of no other manufacturer I'd recommend more highly than Shindo Laboratory. The laboratory at Shindo has cooked up a cure for the hifi sickness; they've got a vaccine and its name is musicality. Unlimited refills with every purchase.
Of course Shindo gear is not for everyone and you need to listen for yourself. I very purposefully said 'a' cure, not 'the' cure. Not everyone wants to stop rockin' that horse and not everyone cares for Shindo's particular shade of green. It may not match your sofa. It is Art after all. And I'm no expert.


Addendum
It's worth pointing out that I first read about Shindo Laboratory on 6moons way back in 2004. I'd already heard two pieces, the Cortese and Monbrison, but I was looking for speakers at the time so even though I heard them, I was only listening to speakers, another near-miraculous expert listening skill that I've since somehow lost. In any event, reading about Shindo on 6moons reignited my interest and led me back for a closer listen. And I believe I've just answered my initial question - can the hifi component review really help the hifi buyer buy a better hifi? Sometimes the answer is yes.